Pavonis Interactive Forums

With the addition of the Technical Trooper and Coil weaponry, it is making me wonder how much are planning to change the opposing forces of AYYY. Should we be expecting some of the aliens from the LW aliens pack be dropped out and replaced with enemies better to adapt to your tactics Or will you be granting foes more terrifying abilities, limiting your counters against once trivial threats? (Chryssalids be an earlier game threat. Chryssalids are one of the most fascinating foes in XCOM and I would love it if they had a stronger presence in the game, Facelessess are cool, but Chryssalids add in a sense of "OH GOD THIER EVERY WERE KILL THEM BEFORE THEY IMPREGNATE ALL THE CIVS WITH BABY LIDS!"

It's safe to say that all custom made models from the alien pack will be included. They wouldn't want to waste their art assets. There might be the occasional new addition, but I think we've seen most of it.

Since they have said that the campaign will be 100+ missions long, they must have figured out a way to keep the enemies interesting throughout all of this time. Either they implemented a rather granular alien progression (e.g. muton -> muton centurion -> muton elite but with more steps) or they did something similar to LW1, where perks are assigned to aliens procedurally based on their tech level etc.

Either way, it's safe to say that we'll be seeing a different alien setup compared to the alien pack.

They've previously said all existing LW xcom 2 mods are included in LW2, but most have been modified and rebalanced to a degree. So I'm pretty certain we'll see most if not all of the Alien Pack aliens. Whether they have made any adjustments to vanilla aliens, or added any extras, hasn't been announced.

The new Dark Event system JL mentioned in the megathread will give some aliens some new perks, which (I can say from experience) definitely contributes to tactical variety and a general feeling that the aliens are working just as hard as you are to improve.