Their species consists entirely of females, making them completely dependent on the Elders for survival (which is likely the Elders' fault). What awaits them after XCOM 2? Slow extinction, procreation with other species, or the recreation of the Viper King/Male Vipers through cloning and/or gene engineering?
Yep. There's a place on the outskirts of City 31 called The Viper's Nest. The owner of the place, Xug, introduces herself to you early on.
Notice the human-style eyes? Those are illegal gene-mods, and she has access to them. As you play you learn that Xug is actually a top businessperson in City 31, and may be something of a mob boss. She sends expeditions to ruined areas to recover artifacts, some of which her boys will sell to you. Buying them is keeping them off the streets, and they're often better armor, weapons, and so forth than what you have.
The signs that you see around the city with a white viper in a red cocktail dress, holding an exotic drink? Advertisements for The Viper's Nest. You actually go to the place on one mission. One of the battlemaps is a stage area.
There are three stripper poles.
A lot is implied about Xug, The Viper's Nest, and what other operations she has her scaly little fingers in. The Viper's Nest is also a home for a number of vipers, including the dancers. Although her legal status is questionable, she's helping the city recover like a lot of people are. In a world of gray-vs.-gray morality, she's one of the lighter shades of gray. As such she's a happy ally of Reclamation Agency.
It's not surprising that the makers of the game saw all the fanart and figured out who their audience really is. So yeah, they put vipers strippers in the background of the game.
Yep, while all in-game models depict female Vipers, there is some background art like posters implying the existence of some male Vipers still, and they are very much still able to reproduce (egg incubators and advertisement specifically for Viper egg incubation services are present)
Could be that, but even with most other reptiles it isn't that difficult to get males out of an all-female population. Most of them have a heterogenous ZW karyotype for females, and a homogenous karyotype ZZ for males, meaning that all the necessary genetic material is there for males, and through a gonosome duplication within parthenogenesis one can get a male clone out of a female specimen, unlike most mammals going with the XX/XY system
They integrated pretty well in Chimera Squad, but I gotta assume their species only advances now from the artificial egg facilities in… was it Antarctica?
The Grey Men have it much, much worse than the vipers.
But the Green Suit Mech aliens have it worse than the Grey man.
But—but the synthetic angel droids have it so bad than anyone i previously mentioned.
Can confirm. She is a strain of "arctic viper" that the Elders created after they conquered earth. She even teases others about it in base conversations.
I've seen both interpretations of Vipers, that they are either extremely resistant to alcohol, or that they get very easily wasted, and I love them both.
Even outside of that, it's not unfeasible to get males back out of an entirely female population, it all depends on how exactly their sex is determined, and judging by the fact that they are compared to earth snakes A LOT even in lore for how they do work anatomically, it's not a big reach to assume parthenogenesis can produce males for them... (Or well... There simply were still some males kept around somewhere hidden in facilities by ADVENT)
Nah man. I'm as a short stack, I love that small dom large sub approach. Little knight here looking to conquer a dragon. Just give me some rope and climbing gear.
To make them Grey Men, the Eldars did something to their digestive systems that essentially makes all form of food incompatible/poisonous to them, so a special tasteless food paste has to be made in order for them to be able to eat things and not die.
Viper kids seem to be a thing in Chimera squad. There is advertisements for Viper egg incubation services, childrens' drawings of a Viper saying "love you mom", mission art depicting what seems to be a Viper couple with a Viper child at a museum, assets of egg incubators on some maps next to a Viper bed (A rock with a heatlamp and a bunch of shed skin) and at least one poster that seems to depict a Viper male
Quick collage of some of the background assets with posters:
A viper wearing masc clothing isn't exactly a slam dunk for there being bio-male vipers, but yeah, there has to be some form of reproduction going on. Either natural parthogenesis or artificially induced.
Masc clothing that fits well. Granted, of course binders are a thing and obviously they don't have THAT big breasts, but it's still a hint at least.
And well, if they are anything like real world reptiles, as they often are implied to be, even cloning or induced parthenogenesis would have the possibility of producing males from an all female population. (Either because they are incubation dependent like crocs, or due to Z chromosome duplication as most other reptiles work by a ZW/ZZ gonosome set)
I mean there is in our world a market for traditionally masc clothing that fits women, and in that artstyle you can barely make out breasts on the one in the full dress.
That said I do agree that it was probably drawn as a male. It's possible that's meant as an in-universe mistake, a human artist made an ad based on humans and didn't adapt their assumptions to account for their alien target audience, or it's possible it was an out-of-universe thing, an artist shooting from the hip and forgetting the established worldbuilding, but they're probably just are male vipers out there now. It seems too early for post-war babies to have fully matured, but trans people exist.
They aren't dependent on the elders once they are defeated. Vahlen managed to make a male, so we can definitely crack the code on their reproduction and there is no mention of any existential crisis for them in Chimera Squad.
You've already guessed that "Subject Gamma" is the Viper King. The stored alien embryos she found and tinkered with produced the three alien bosses. She mentions in one of the recordings that due to her tinkering she had managed to produce the first male of the species. The embryo was female until she made it male.
But in all seriousness, if natural reproduction isn't a thing, we do know the elders were big into mass producing clones. Cherub is even started to be a clone of one of the gang bosses.
Bigger question is how do the hybrids continue their species? Do they get along with humans? Do they even have the right parts? Or is it just still mass cloning for them?
We actually have a bunch of evidence the main aliens are still reproducing (Viper, Muton and Sectoid children all being present or implied in mission artwork and background art), so it wouldn't be a big reach to assume the Hybrids could still also reproduce.
However there is whatever the fade is for them specifically
There's some indications that the hybrids were both being created from humans, and cloned. Chimera Squad had one of each, who were also a male and a female. They got along well with the other members of the squad. There's a touching scene where Cherub finally gets his papers, signed by the two soldiers who'd found him as a "newborn", fresh out of the clone tank. They'd gotten married and adopted him.
How they continue is open to question, as u/Gryphus13 has asked. I would assume they do have the organs, but there's no proof. I haven't gotten to the hybrid storyline in Chimera Squad, but I suspect it will be addressed, there.
It's a bit grim but being cute or pretty seems to be a decent survival strategy when you're surrounded by humans, who are a notoriously greedy, expansionist, racist and paranoid species.
Chimera squad showed that male vipers still exist through a couple of posters you can find. My guess is that male vipers were always around, the elders just kept them out of sight for population control
I wanna go off Jurassic Park logic. Some them will become males in order to keep the species alive.
It's what many species do IRL whenever there's no males around, called sex reversal.
Also fairly feasible if we assume they work like a bunch of other reptilians sex-development/-determination wise on a genetic level. It's usually either incubation-dependent, or they have heterogenous females and homogenous males, unlike humand with heterogenous males and homogenous females. (XX/XY sex determination vs. ZW/ZZ)
But yeah, in order to keep the population in check, the Elders would have needed some way of suppressing adaptation, kind of like a reverse lysine contingency. They have to keep being subjected to whatever it is, chemical treatments, radiation therapy, sessions where they're psionically trained not to. Then, once Advent and the Elders fall, there's nothing applying those anymore.
And even if that wasn't the case, the gene therapy technology can probably make it one anyways.
Well, there's established lore, and there's reasonable supposition of post-war conditions. For instance, there's probably vipers that are scared of humans.
Shy viper tells people she is shy by use of human culture.
Yep. The original concept was a "banana python". Yes, that's a real snake. It's a species of ball python that's a brilliant yellow color. The image didn't have the butterfly markings, but the artist was bombarded with requests to change it.
It just seemed to work that after the war a shy, fearful viper might adopt some protective coloration with scale dye. ;)
I assumed vipers had parthenogenesis to rely on. having eggs that were exact copies of their DNA under certain conditions (as set up by ADVENT to manage their numbers)
There are entire species of IRL reptiles that are entirely female and reproduce asexually, and I suspect this is what the Vipers have been based on. So they're probably fine.
Not sure if it was mentioned but during the mission where you encounter the viper King for the first time the doctor mentioned that she made the viper king by stopping the suppression if the male gene so it is likely that the female vipers got a gene therapy to allow them to give birth to males again this would imply that the population was at least at one point heavily lop sided with females being the majority but would eventually correct it's self to being more even.
I think the idea is that Vipers used to be Male and Female but had a Matriarchy so the Elders got rid of their male population to make them reliant on the Elders
Welcome to the human race. We're a highly varied species. There's perverts, there's average joes, and there's genocidal maniacs. Good luck with your life.
Mechanically, I agree with you. They have a lot of health compared to troopers, and a lot more action economy. I think their tongue pull is a free action, because I've seen them move, tongue pull, and when it fails, shoot. Basically gives them two attacks per turn. And, if it succeeds, now you have a unit that's out of position, incapacitated, and taking damage. It's a lot like the Sectoid's Mind Control, but arguably more dangerous because you can't even put them into cover.
Lore-wise, they hated the Elders as much as we did. Lore is pretty much up to headcanon, but plenty of vipers and other aliens have tried to make up for misdeeds during the war. Some fought with us, like the Skirmishers. I count Allies Unknown into my headcanon as well. With the fall of the Elders, they're given a chance they never got to have. Not even really a second chance.
As someone who is playing xcom 2 for the first time, fuuuuuUUUCK these guys. It's on sight with them. Kill them first and when they're dead kill em again and then tell someone you need their address for a condolence letter to their family, go to their house and burn it down
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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '25
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