Gameplay and Guttered narrative, XCOM: The Bureau

XCOM: The Bureau isn't the game it was back when it was first shown at E3 2011. Edgy neat, reeking of the Hitchcock Hour and The Prisoner, with an air of survivor horror.

It was, supposedly, going to rock our socks off. It was going to be as great as Firaxis' remake, a real show stopper.

But it wasn't.

It was a well polished tactical 3rd person shooter, as clean shaven and square as any game before it.

It didn't do anything new.

Under the hood it seemed to be a poor man's Mass Effect with none of the scale. A better shooting and gameplay mechanic in ordering your squad with enemies around, but ... it just wasn't enough to tide me over into thinking that it was a good game.

Just a good tactical shooter, not a good game.

The slow motion effects when issuing orders and the cleverness of the AI to flank, to pull back and forth, with the rise and fall of battle, to have cover change in an instant with the movements of the enemy.

It pulled that all off with flying colours. The battles went across the fields, out from streets and into barn houses. Not in any spectacular way, just solid, actions would force enemy aliens to move across from you in a sinister dance of war.

But its story.... it just brought it down to its knees, the whole spectacle of U.S. military bases being blown up, your secret weapon to destroy the alien threat, the lack of any nuanced guerrilla activity, it all just seemed to fall away in the execution.

But there was still that something, a small element of storytelling that makes  it to the end of The Bureau and ties up your technical abilities. Through the presence of the Ethereals (the ascended/incorporeal "good" aliens), or as the game states, through your presence. This clever, player within alien, within character makes the decisions of your character and the divide that he has of different choices all explainable and relevant to the plot.

In probably one of the best immersion/out of nowhere moves, the main character collapses as you're running down a corridor, Carter runs, trying to get away from something. Then, all of a sudden you notice the camera pulling back from Carter, refocusing as a first person viewpoint with four outstretched tentacles. You are the alien creature, pulling the strings of Carter. From then on, the game progresses quickly, Carter refuses to host the alien presence any further and attempts to blow up the facility, the ethereal takes control of another member of the staff and continues to fight off the invading aliens. The conspiracy, along the lines of  Bioshock's (2006) "Would you kindly.." is nice twist in an otherwise boring game.

<I'd have a screenshot here, but the section in question is in this link)

The problem is that it's too little too late. A small reminder of what the game could have been, if the pro-America, freedom or death, linear path hadn't stopped it from becoming the game that it could've been.

Perhaps it was  comment on the very conformist suburbia of America's mid 50s? A homage to the black and white tales of pulp science fiction tales? A satire on America's homeland defence? I don't know, but with that small segment, I almost saw what it could have been.

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Not too much of a deep analysis here, but if I slaved over it, I'd probably end up hating the game. In all fairness it's a solid game, 2K just didn't really go all out on what they wanted - it seems as though marketing or someone smothered it in it's infancy and all we're left with is an oxygen starved shell.

Anyhow, next up Gone Home (since everyone is talking about it, and it has decent characterisation of female characters).