The recent XCOM game (the good one) is receiving a most interesting new enemy type in its upcoming expansions Enemy Within, Flying squid assassins. As in squids that assassinate your team by swooping down and...I've seen enough hentai folks.

The seekers, as they are known, are a rather nasty little squilien (squid alien) that can fly, have tentacles and can even turn invisble for short periods of time. Descending from on high to scoop up your hapless squadmates and crush them to fine pink mist. A most ignoble fate indeed. They also come in pairs, making them decidedly nasty all around and suggesting they are likely to be late game (hopefully) arrivals on the battlefield. According to Ananda Gupta, the game's lead designer, these nasty little critters were planned way back in the development stages of Enemy Unknown, but were initially left out in favour of emphasising the 1993 XCOM lineup. But now they're back. And boy are they pissed.

"Making the Seeker a flying unit made a ton of sense; an assassin has to have a lot of mobility, especially if we want it to make hit and run attacks with a close-quarters ability. Stealth would also help it approach the player's squad without getting chewed up before it can get to grips. But stealth proved very difficult to get right; in a turn based game, there are defined windows for player action, and we needed to make sure that players didn't spin their wheels hunting the last cloaked enemy on the map. The Seeker's stealth was initially unlimited, but this was quickly changed to a fuel-like system both for multiplayer balance reasons and so that "hunt the Seeker" didn't become a problem during abduction and terror maps once it was clear the player had a strong advantage."

Well, if that doesn't have your skin crawling, you are made of stern stuff indeed. Perhaps, just maybe, you might even have what it takes to deal with this new alien threat. But...hentai dude. Hentai. If you have the stomach for it, you can read the full details at the latest devblog and look forward (you sick, sick pupppy) to tangling with, and within, them on November 12th.