This is not marketing. This is SUICIDE.
And then after weathering the inevitable shitstorm all their thunder is suddenly stolen by the surprise announcement of a "proper" XCOM game. Which, unsurprisingly is VERY popular. And then they start scrambling around trying to be more like this new version. Because desperately aping whatever happens to be popular always works SO WELL. But they do it and they finish the game and then just before it's finally released, what happens?
MOTHERFUCKING CHICKEN LEGS HAPPENED.
The great big incredibly awesome expansion for Enemy Unknown is suddenly announced out of nowhere. And just like that nobody gives shit about The Bureau again.
Which, in all honesty is probably for the best.
I suppose the best way to describe The Bureau (aside from shittily titled) would be to call it a "Fine" game. I don't mean "Fine" as in a straight description of quality. More as in the sentence "Ugh, okay, FINE. Whatever, I don't even care anymore".
As demonstrated here by Bill Pullman, a man who knows a bit about fighting the alien menace.
There is throughout an inescapable feeling that this isn't so much the game that the devs wanted make as something that they could just get fucking released already and then move on with their lives. It's not entirely bereft of interesting ideas, but their buried under the giant mess that is everything else in the game.
What's sad here is that this mess is totally unnecessary. See, if we're honest the only real problem with the original FPS incarnation of the game was that, like EVERY XCOM game since Terror From The Deep it was yet another game in an entirely different style and genre than the original. All XCOM fans have ever wanted was more of the turn based strategy that made the original so great. But instead we were given shooters and flight sims. So to then be told that a new XCOM is being made only now it's an FPS was obviously going to incite rage. Once again we were being given something we didn't want instead of something we did.
And that's the important phrase right there. Instead Of. Because once the new Enemy Unknown was announced it was no longer a case of Instead Of. Is was additionally. There was a proper XCOM game, and also a shooter if you fancied it. And thus we were able to chill out and start judging the game on it's own merits. Only by this point it was too late as they'd started the process of hacking up what they had in order to try and make it fit into a different box.
The massive problems with making a prequel to the XCOM franchise should be painfully obvious to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the property. For a start there's the obvious fact that Enemy Unknown IS it's own prequel. That's pretty much the plot right there. Aliens show up and suddenly the nations of the world need to set something up to deal with them. The only thing missing is a 3 hour cutscene depicting the initial funding meetings, maybe with a signing paperwork minigame. Then there's the twin problems of technology and recognizability.
If you're continuing a franchise in whatever direction then you need recognizable elements of that franchise in place on some level. Themes, characters, enemies, gameplay, whatever. Something that says "This is XCOM". Only if you've got any aliens or their technology AT ALL in a prequel to Enemy Unknown then the first question anyone will ask is "Why don't we have these guns in the next game?". If you've got reconizable ones then the question is "Why am I spending so much time dissecting Sectoids in Enenmy Unknown if we already did this back in the damn 60s?".
FIRST.
So, any attempt to include more recognizable elements only serves to undermine the whole franchise. But not including them only serves to disconnect this game from the series of which is attempting to be a part.
What I guess I'm saying here is that trying to make an XCOM prequel is basically like trying to fight off a rabid grizzly bear by tying 2 orphans together and wielding them like nunchucks: It's just not going to end well, no matter what you do.
Especially if her boyfriend shows up.
So, really, baring all that in mind the question is not really "why is this game such a mess?" but "How did anyone think it would ever be anything else?".
In principle the gameplay sounds like it might be kinda fun. A third person tactical shooter where the gimmick is you can slow down time and give your team members orders to all kinds of cool shit. Could be cool, right?
The reason this SOUNDS fun is because we're still thinking in terms of the tactical options and control afforded by turn based gameplay. We're forgetting the simple fact that the worst level in EVERY OTHER GAME EVER MADE is the one where they give you one or more idiot NPCs to look after. Because we've momentarily forgotten that every friendly NPC in every action game has a the sort of death wish that a lemming genie would be jealous of. The practical upshot of all this hyperbole is that gameplay is basically all about pausing the game every 10 seconds to try and see where your idiot squadmates are and try to convince them to go where you need them or use an ability.
Sadly there's no options for making your teammates STAY where you want them. You can train dogs to sit, but apparently that's a bit to complicated for Americas top agents.
To give credit where it's due the various classes do have some decent special abilities on offer, at least when you level them up. But the problem is that they won't actually USE any of them until told to. I guess this is at least in part so that they don't waste their abilities by pointing turrets at walls or bombing unoccupied corners of the map. But in practice it just means constant babysitting micromanagement of everything they do. Which is fine in a proper strategy game, but doesn't really work in a shooter.
Or, more specifically, a cover based shooter.
I suppose I'd been quite lucky in generally avoiding the genre until now. That was nice whilst it lasted. But the preponderance of chest high walls in everyone's interior decorating schemes isn't the worst part. It's how you interact with them. Or more specifically, don't. It's kind of incredible to actually have a control scheme that seems specifically designed to the exact opposite of what you want to do. I mean, if it's doing that then surely all you need to do is reverse the polarity and it'll start working, right?
But no. You're ability to stick to walls is random at best. If you need to get to a downed
The combat itself is a chaotic mess, generally involving you crouching in one place whilst everyone else runs around like headless chickens. Short range weapons like shotguns are basically useless as being close enough to actually use them effectively basically guarantees death. So most of the combat is just sniping at things behind chest high walls and the occasional panicked retreat when reinforcements spawn directly in your asscrack. Completing fights is often simply a case of remembering where the next wave will spawn from and trying to avoid being there on your next attempt. I was playing on standard difficulty, but the actual challenge of individual fights is all over the place, spiking randomly in places and easing off in others. I mean, I did most of the last couple of story missions with a new recruit from a class I generally never bothered with, simply because there was an achievement for using all the different abilities and I'd realized that I'd missed one. Never had a problem. Then other places where it took several attempts to complete a fight without one of the lemmings dying.
The subject of losing recruits also needs to be addressed, seeing as how it's core part of the traditional XCOM experience. I guess that's why they felt they had to put it in here, but the system simply doesn't work. There's no reason to ever actually lose an agent, as there's always a checkpoint somewhere before or after every fight. If one does go down, you can always just reload, and there's never any reason not to. There's no Ironman mode or anything. The disadvantage you'd be at without one of them would be quite severe, but there's never anything to counterbalance it. As far as I can tell once you lose a mission it's game over and time to restart anyway. In proper XCOM you're balancing the setback of losing a trooper with the overall gain of completing the mission, even if you're not playing Ironman. But here there's nothing like that going on at all. There's not even a cost involved in hiring new agents. You just add new ones to the roster whenever you feel like it. It doesn't add anything to the game aside from a lot of reloading checkpoints due to the agents lemming-like desire to always be in the worst possible position.
I mean, it's ALMOST an alright shooter. It just decided to hamper itself with these weird halfway measures to try and make itself look like a strategy game.
Then of course there's the story. Or what's left of it after 3 or 4 different iterations of the game ahve left a whole mess of different ideas, directions and unused art assets that you need to try and get some use out of. The story is a total mess and has no idea what it's trying to do. It's almost saved by one REALLY good idea towards towards the end, but ultimately nothing is really done with it and it just feels wasted. And in order discuss this there will obviously be SPOLIERS, so consider yourself warned. Now, where should we begin?
Yeah.... About that. I get that in terms of doing the whole Cold War Paranoia Secret Agent Roswell Etc vibe thing that it makes sense to set the game in America. And, if the story did ANYTHING AT ALL with any of those elements it would be great. But it doesn't. You get a couple of throwaway lines about the Bureau having been originally set up to fight the Russians or whatever, but that just begs the question of the hell they called it XCOM. Not to mention the fact that XCOM has always been international in scope rather than being tied to any one country. So to jump from defending the Earth to defending America feels rather odd.
I guess Cap was busy doing something else that day?
So anyway, you're a gruff and generic secret service dude and then there's aliens. Only none of the writers seem to know what sort of alien invasion this is. It's either a huge, full scale invasion with bloody great battleships flying overhead, skyscraping alien structures being erected and whole towns wiped out by legions of invaders OR it a secret infiltration that nobody else knows about. Or is it BOTH?!?!?1 Because conspiracy?
This is one of the major problems. You're either doing War Of The Worlds or you're doing the X Files, but you can't do both at the same time. But the game can't make it's mind up so keeps telling you contradictory things. The tone is all over the place. In the base you have a big map showing the progress of the alien invasion and providing reports from all over the country about utterly fucked everything is going, and then in a room just behind you stands a communication officer who will happily tell you about how nobody knows it's going on. The integrity of the plot relies entirely on the Chewbacca defence.
There are other characters around the base in addition to the protagonist, but in all honesty none of them are worth talking about. Their not interesting, even in a bad way. They're just there to provide poorly written exposition. The only exception is the Alien Infiltrator who you capture early on in the game. Him I quite liked. Once he's disconnected from the evil alien hive mind he becomes quite helpful, and my one hope was that I'd be able unlock him as a usable character. Needless to say, this did not happen.
There's a great rule in storytelling and worldbuilding that I'm a big fan of. Show, Don't Tell. The Bureau is perhaps unique in that it somehow manages to do neither. Important plot elements are not so much introduced as just mentioned. Eventually you get enough additional exposition and context for most of it to almost make sense, or at least as much sense as anything makes in this, but it's all pretty shoddy writing.
A good example of this is Axis. Axis is apparently some sort of high ranking alien general. Even though none of the Aliens have names or even much concept of self at all because they're all part of a collective hive mind thing but please just ignore that particular central element of the plot for the purposes of this shitty boss fight. So anyway, early on it's mentioned somewhere that agent Token McWoman is possibly kinda sorta after Axis. No mention of who what an Axis might be. It could be a special brand of Bakelite dildo for all we know. Then the subject is quickly dropped and forgotten about, right up to the point a boss fight is needed and then suddenly everybody just knows he's the dude in charge of the invasion even though all the aliens are actually being controlled by someone / something / who the fuck cares anymore called Origin. And despite the fact that he's apparently been known to the security forces BY NAME for years before anyone even knew aliens existed no one so much as blinks when they find out he's kinda sorta not really behind everything.
Just mentioning someones name once is neither build up nor foreshadowing. It's bollocks is what it is.
Take a moment to think about and you can see how there are ideas in there that could be used really well. Start the game with your secret agent guy tracking down what appears to be a group of communist spies led by the notorious mastermind known only as Axis. Give us a bit of exposition to that effect. Opening level goes through the enemy base fighting apparently human enemies, and then when you get to the end and corner Axis he reveals himself as an alien and summons the invasion down on your head. Suddenly there's a reason to give a shit about him and you're actually using the setting as part of your story. Then only AFTER you've finally gotten him do you reveal the power behind him and up the stakes.
Still, never mind eh?
Anyway, you trudge through the various irrelevent turgid nonsense of the plot, until finally you get to the twist. And this where we step into the realm of both major spoilers and painfully wasted opportunities.
In the opening scene of the game, our painfully generic hero is meant to be delivering a mysterious alien something or other, but is accosted and nearly killed by an infiltrator. Only then there's a big explosion he wakes up to a dead enemy and dissapearred whatnot. AND NO ONE MENTIONS THIS EVER AGAIN.
Much later it is revealed that the mystery something was in fact an Ethereal. And all this time the Ethereal has been possessing the protagonist. In fact, all this time the player hasn't been playing the protagonist at all. They've been playing as the alien force controlling him.
This is a sweet idea. Admittedly, it might have a little more impact if the shock reveal hadn't come AFTER the big boss alien had not only already told you that you were possessed by an ethereal all this time, but actually SHOWED you the damn thing. But I digress.
This was actually an interesting enough idea that it actually rekindled my interest in the game, which by that point was at the level of "Please merciful god why is this not over yet?". Sadly however all that ultimately happens is that you get to change main character for the last mission. Because the hero decides he doesn't like being granted super powers by a friendly and helpful alien who is totally up for helping defeat the invaders. I guess he's either a massive racist or saw that Green Lantern movie. So then you get to pick one of the other characters to be the main one whilst the ex hero goes off to burn crosses on DCs front lawn.
Although after all this business I'm sure they're used to it.
Now, just think how cool this idea would be if used well. Have hopping from Agent to agent as a standard thing. When one dies you just port across to another one, taking all your command abilities with you. There's a great moment in the game when you're floating free of the protagonist. It only lasts for a few seconds before you get to press A to take him over again, but it's a fun moment. That's the sort of thing you should have floating between agents on the battlefield. You'd probably need to put the reveal a lot sooner, but then maybe you could have everyone actually pay attention to all the massive obvious signs that your character is under alien control.
Seriously, there's a part where they come with a test to identify disguised alien infiltrators and the protagonist flat out FAILS IT. But nobody cares. They keep going on about how paranoid the boss guy is. How anyone could be under alien control or replaced by an impostor. But there's no consequences at all. They give you your plasma cannon back and let you straight back into the nerve center of the organisation without so much as a hint of concern.
Still, doing stupid random shit for no reason whatsoever is basically how stuff goes in this game, so whatever I guess.
The thing about the big reveal and sudden switch of characters is how tacked on it feels. It happens after you've already blown up the boss dude controlling all the others. Not that you actually get to see him getting blown up or anything. I guess they didn't have time to render that sequence for the cutscene. But when you get back you're assured by everyone that you did. And then of course he comes back because why wouldn't he and suddenly we have an extra bloody mission to wade through, only now with the option of being Australian instead.
So, after already fighting your way to the center of the alien network once in order to blow it up, you now get to do it again. Only now in order to take it over. I guess they had a spare one out the back or something. Who can tell at this stage? Certainly not the writers. I think they were about to clock out, thinking they were finally done, when someone told them that an extra levels content was required and would they mind staying a bit longer?
So, the ending. You fight your way in, and take control and tell all the aliens to stop fighting. Then you tell them to clear up their mess. Then you tell them to go away. And that's why there's no evidence. Because you used them as SLAVE LABOUR to cover up their own existence, and then exiled them to depths of space. Apparently not keeping any examples of the fantastically advanced technology that was lying around in big piles afterwards.
WHAT.
THE.
FUCK?
I wasn't expecting much from the ending, given how much o a mess the story was. But to just be told that they put their toys away and then went home and that was that? That's pretty special. Maybe there's different endings depending on which character you pick, I don't know. I'm not sure I'm interested enough to find out.
The whole thing is, as I said, a mess. The good ideas are woefully underused and buried under so much dross that it's hard to note that they're there at all. The funny thing is There's enough good ideas in here that I can see them working really well in an expansion for a Enemy Unknown. The classes would be great fun in a proper turn based game, particularly one where you could actually use more than two of them at a time. The ability to send agents you're not using off on their own to level up is one I'd LOVE to see in a real XCOM game. The extradimensional invasion storyline could work well as a sequel, where the presence of pre-existing XCOM technology and aliens would be quite so baffling. There's a lot you could do with what you've got here. It's just a pity that they didn't.
Had they stuck to their guns and made the original version of the game it would at least have not been such a muddy, last ditch effort. Even better if they'd just went ahead and made that, but taken the XCOM label off.
As it is, we're left with a game that will stand alongside such classics as Interceptor and Enforcer. I.E. Ignored and derided by fans of the franchise.
And if you think that's a depressing note to end on, just remember:
CHICKEN LEGS!
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