[SPOILER]Weird transmission mentioning "alien snakes with rayguns"

[Pantheon]

So I was walking around LA when a distress call to Mr. Manners came in from a guy in Pico (or was his name Pico?), mentioning an attack by alien snakes with arms and rayguns or something along that line. Mr. Manners basically made fun of him and told him not to call again.
After the transmission ended I was expecting a call from Santa Fe, telling me to check it out, but there wasn't one, which I found weird, as the distress calls before that all had some "quests" from HQ associated with it.

So my question: was that just some random transmission or is there actually something behind it? Is it maybe a nod to the first game or to something else entirely?

[wendigo211]

This is the warm up to one of the big set-piece battles of the game. I won't say much more but wander around the area between Rodia and Angel Oracle.

[Pantheon]

Thank you :)

[VexusMalius]

Sounds like Snakemen from the original XCom game.

[Sentient_Toaster]

I believe it's a call-out to the original game, actually.

In the original game, quite a bit of text was not in the data files, but in the hardcopy 'paragraph book'. You'd reach a place or examine something and it'd say "Read paragraph 12" or the like.

Now, not only where the paragraphs in the book arranged in a pretty arbitrary order so you couldn't just read it front to back and get a coherent narrative, but many actually weren't even referenced in the game, ever. Notably, there were multiple paragraphs referring to a never-in-game alternative plot where the Rangers and Irwin John Finster eventually travel to Mars to take on the Serpiods (snake-like aliens with ray guns who attacked Earth and enslaved people...). Even /that/ fake plot split in two, with Finster either helping you defeat the Serpiod queen, or betraying you in the end...

That same plot also mentions Verchitin armor, incidentally, which is also referenced in WL2.

[Pantheon]

Thanks a lot for that interesting tidbit :)

[Papa Shekels]

Sentient_Toaster, thanks for that lore point. I've been wondering what the verchitin armor was referring to ever since I finished the game and realized it was not some end-game gear.