Player and Protagonist Integration: For the final level, the commander controls an Avatar psionically.Humans Are Special: In the final battle, the Commander is apparently psionically-powerful enough to defeat the combined psionic power of the Ethereal council in a Beam-O-War duel (though it's mentioned earlier on that the Ethereals are likely weakened from having to maintain the psionic network controlling their army by themselves without the aid of the amplifier device you just blew up).Hope Bringer: To the resistance movement, allowing them to finally rise up, unite and take action.Must Survive: Letting the Commander die during the assault against the Avatars is grounds for automatic failure.Heroic Mime: Continuing the tradition from the previous game, the Commander never says a word.The Gift: The Commander is confirmed to have latent psi potential like the Volunteer of the first game.After taking control of their Avatar, the Commander, armed with the Avatar's advanced Psionic powers, leads the XCOM squad in the final battle, but their actual body is still (mostly) safe and sound on the Avenger, so they're more like an Armchair Military with a kick ass remote-controlled toy. However, when hit, the Commander's Avatar screams like an ADVENT soldier.

The Commander's Avatar looks like any other, namely an androgynous albino with a faceplate that never speaks on its own. Featureless Protagonist: The Commander is modeled in-game as a bulky self-contained stasis suit that obscures any identifiable features, including gender.11th-Hour Superpower: The final mission has the Commander control an Avatar to fight alongside their soldiers.While the Commander is around for the whole game, the final mission is the only time they fight in-person (sort of) on the battlefield. Vahlen during her time as XCOM's chief scientist, and also shows the consequences of that minder's removal. Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Alien Hunters reveals that the Commander served as this to Dr.It's also because of this that the Commander is chosen as the best possible candidate to control an Avatar against the Ethereals in the final mission, due to their previous integration into the alien's psionic network making them the one most likely to survive the procedure. The Chosen One: The aliens considered the Commander as such a useful asset that they went out of the way to capture them during the intiial invasion, made them the unwitting leader of their entire military, and even after the Commander escapes again, the aliens are intent on recapturing them instead of killing the new leader of the Resistance.Blue Is Heroic: The Commander's psionic aura turns light blue during the last confrontation, in contrast to the purple aura of other psionics as well as the Elders/Ethereals.Authority Equals Asskicking: The final mission has the Commander take part via their own Avatar, and is more than capable of keeping up with a squad of colonels.They never physically leave the Avenger after the Gatecrasher mission. The Commander takes to the field in person exactly once, and even then they're largely safe from actual harm because they're remote-controlling an Avatar. Armchair Military: Type 1, although without the negative connotations.Ambiguous Gender: Their gender is never referred to in-game, allowing any player to identify with them.They are rescued from stasis at the start of the game, and proceed to take charge of XCOM's campaign to save humanity.

Xcom 2 made whole