The studio had previously revealed plans to release comprehensive modding tools - granting access all the way down to the game’s scripting - for the community, allowing players to tweak the game however they want it.
This partnership is the first tangible result of Firaxis’ intent on fully supporting XCOM 2 modding. It’s so well-crafted that it caught the attention and undivided praise of Enemy Unknown’s lead designer, Jake Solomon, who in a June 2015 interview with IGN said: “We’re basically a 20-hour tutorial for The Long War, and that’s okay.”
It’s labelled as such simply because the mod has so much content it might as well be an expansion - it extends the campaign, overhauls the strategy layer, increases squad size, adds new voice packs, new classes, new perks, and so on and so forth. Long War Studios are named after their masterpiece, Long War, a total conversion mod for XCOM Enemy Unknown and its expansion, XCOM: Enemy Within. Sometimes, hardcore iron man mode just doesn’t cut it for some people. In a very welcome move, Firaxis Games has brought Long War Studios onboard to provide multiple launch-day mods for XCOM 2.
