True Concealment Makes XCOM 2 A Better Game
By Jason Prott
True Concealment makes a small change that addresses the punishingly fast-paced missions in XCOM 2 while highlighting the game’s new mechanic.
True Concealment is an XCOM 2 mod that stops mission timers from ticking down while your squad has concealment. This means you can take extra turns planning an effective ambush without wasting valuable turns on that merciless mission timer.
This may sound like a mod built to blatantly circumvent the game’s intended difficulty, but in my experience it hasn’t. The mod compensates the decrease in difficulty that free turns represent by lowering the default time limit for concealment missions.
Rescue and Neutralize mission have been dropped from 13 turns to just 10, and Recover Item, Hack, and Destroy missions change from 9 turns to 7. Any missions which you begin without concealment remain unchanged.
The Recover missions are now more narratively sound. Why would ADVENT house tissue samples which indiscriminately self-destruct in 9 turns? Surely it would make the ADVENT workplace an OSHA nightmare, so True Concealment keeps the aliens from slapping the big red self-destruct buttons until they’ve actually identified a threat. It rewards tactical stealth play instead of punishing you with an ever-ticking timer.
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But these drops in the time limit aren’t the only method True Concealment uses to balance the difficulty. The mod also tosses in a new dark event that you may have to face during your campaign. This devastating event cuts the timer for concealment missions in half, forcing you to embrace the shadows or else risk certain failure.
If those mission timers are still giving you too much of a headache you can opt for the easier sibling of True Concealment which doesn’t lower mission timers. This version blatantly makes the game easier, so I don’t actually recommend it.
Concealment is the largest change in XCOM 2, so it’s great to use a mod that puts a larger focus on this mechanic. True Concealment makes XCOM 2 a better game, now if only Firaxis could figure out those performance problems I’d be a very happy boy.
Note: If you add this mod to your campaign any future saves will require this mod to load/function. This holds true for most XCOM 2 mods, so use at your own risk.