This review contains spoilers
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified
I started out hating this game. Not only did it seem like a more shallow version of the already-lackluster Mass Effect 2 combat from 2010, the story was nothing to write home about either. And yet I did write about it, so what changed? Well first of all, I have to acknowledge that the aesthetic is very well done. In terms of fidelity the game isn't amazing, but it has a very cohesive retro-futuristic look mixed with a weird XCOM 2 alien structure design, and it works for some reason. They feel appropriately out of place next to each other, like you have been invaded by a technologically superior race. Bravo. Second of all, and this is where it gets good, at some point after the halfway point I realized that this aesthetic of a 50s sci fi B movie was not just surface level. Rather it translated into the writing, the acting, and the story itself. Now obviously I can't know if this was intentional or not, but it certainly feels exactly like the corny stuff you'd expect from those productions. Certainly the art assets are made this way intentionally, and it would take really, really awful writers to come up with the stuff unintentionally, so my gut feeling is that it was on purpose. And while that may not make for a great game, it makes for a great concept for one.
Let's talk about the story for a minute. It starts off very predictably with the standard tropes of an in medias res by way of an alien attack on the government facility where you work as Special Agent William Carter. He literally looks like the family man you'd see in a Fallout poster which itself parodies 50s American propaganda. And the story itself follows suit; it is a clear allegory for a Cold War for a long while. The aliens are the Soviets, complete with infiltrators, sleeper agents, and a hivemind with no room for individuality. The main characters are, of course, the main characters; Americans who patriotically and heroically sacrifice their own lives for the country, and by God they look good doing it! Only, in the background and left unsaid for much of it is a more sinister undertone. For example, on the main base in the campaign there is a shooting range, as is customary in these types of games. At the start of the campaign this is a standard operation, you push a button, the targets line up, and you can shoot their heads or whatever you want. After a few missions, however, when you push that button little grey aliens show up. And then the game becomes not about shooting the stationary targets but about shooting a defenseless creature that, as you later come to know, is actually just a slave to the system, forced to build structures and only shooting at you in self-defense. Furthermore, Carter (the main character) slowly becomes fed up with the system and his (yours) boss, Faulke. Becomes of the way the chain of command works, he doesn't get to know all the information, and that often leaves him in the dark on missions.
All the above is fine and it could certainly make for an interesting experience if developed. But it's not. Instead after like half the game the allegory is dropped, the aliens are no longer Russians, now they're just regular aliens again. And Carter's outspoken dissatisfaction with the system morphs into something else. Throughout the game you find out that the main bad guy, the one that you must kill to turn off all the other aliens (because of course), has a telepathic bond with the entire rest of the alien species and gives them commands that way. When you finally confront him, he calls you Prisoner, as he has done in the past, and tells you that he actually doesn't care about you, he cares about your demon. It turns out that the reason Carter is special and has these abilities to overlook the battlefield in the way that forms the main mechanic of the game, is actually because he has an Ethereal living inside of him. Basically they're telepathic ghosts. Carter then promptly kills the bad guy and seals away the bad guy ghost in his arm (roll with it). They then return to base and lock it away in a giant tube of green gas that they conveniently had lying around. From this point on, Carter hears more and more voices, and he speaks out explicitly against them. This all comes to ahead when, after the base has been attacked for a second time, he faces the camera and speaks directly to you, the player and the ghost. He says he is done being a slave to the system, he has his own free will and he would rather die than be a puppet to someone else. So he gives you an ultimatum; he sets down a bomb and gives you 30 seconds to decide if you want to stay with him and be killed or detach yourself from him and leave the situation alone. The guy you've been controlling the entire time gives you an ultimatum. And you actually do have 30 seconds to decide. Incidentally it's not really a choice because if you choose to stay with him for the entire duration of the countdown, the bomb really does blow up and you get a game over screen. Instead you must detach yourself from him. And then you choose. Throughout the game there have been 3 minor characters; Director Faulke as mentioned before, the scientist Doctor Weir, and a hot female agent named Angela Weaver. Now you must choose one of them to possess, and you thusly play the last mission as that character. Not only that, the character you chose saves you from being assassinated by Carter, and so he is now an anti-hero in the story! You then proceed to go into space and kill the bad guy (again but for real this time I promise), and you have to choose whether to kill Carter or not. On one hand he threatened to kill you multiple times, and he has become a liability to the sytem, on the other you just spent something close to 10 hours playing as the man. This feels a bit like Mass Effect 3's ending choice of reprogramming the machines for your own benefit or destroying the system and breaking free will but at a severe cost to your progress. Except here there is no choice. You made your choice already. You chose to leave Carter, the only person who could've stopped the system, and instead you invested in Weaver, Weir, or Faulke. It doesn't matter who because they're all The System, they're all the same, there is no individuality between them. And so you dutifully step into the chamber from which the enemy army is controlled, and you take over. And then, and here's the good part, you order them to systematically slaughter each other. You don't just genocide the fuck out of them, you force them to genocide the fuck out of each other. Then, even though you EXPLICITLY FOUND A CURE FOR THE BODYSNATCHER DISEASE WHICH THEY INFECTED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WITH EARLIER IN THE GAME, you genocide anyone who has been "compromised", anyone who was a victim, and you wipe out their towns, their cities, their entire histories. All to preserve the lie that there was no alien invasion. Everything gets redacted, every person who knew about it is either forced to work for XCOM or they're assassinated. And that's why I had to write about it.
I started out hating this game. Not only did it seem like a more shallow version of the already-lackluster Mass Effect 2 combat from 2010, the story was nothing to write home about either. And yet I did write about it, so what changed? Well first of all, I have to acknowledge that the aesthetic is very well done. In terms of fidelity the game isn't amazing, but it has a very cohesive retro-futuristic look mixed with a weird XCOM 2 alien structure design, and it works for some reason. They feel appropriately out of place next to each other, like you have been invaded by a technologically superior race. Bravo. Second of all, and this is where it gets good, at some point after the halfway point I realized that this aesthetic of a 50s sci fi B movie was not just surface level. Rather it translated into the writing, the acting, and the story itself. Now obviously I can't know if this was intentional or not, but it certainly feels exactly like the corny stuff you'd expect from those productions. Certainly the art assets are made this way intentionally, and it would take really, really awful writers to come up with the stuff unintentionally, so my gut feeling is that it was on purpose. And while that may not make for a great game, it makes for a great concept for one.
Let's talk about the story for a minute. It starts off very predictably with the standard tropes of an in medias res by way of an alien attack on the government facility where you work as Special Agent William Carter. He literally looks like the family man you'd see in a Fallout poster which itself parodies 50s American propaganda. And the story itself follows suit; it is a clear allegory for a Cold War for a long while. The aliens are the Soviets, complete with infiltrators, sleeper agents, and a hivemind with no room for individuality. The main characters are, of course, the main characters; Americans who patriotically and heroically sacrifice their own lives for the country, and by God they look good doing it! Only, in the background and left unsaid for much of it is a more sinister undertone. For example, on the main base in the campaign there is a shooting range, as is customary in these types of games. At the start of the campaign this is a standard operation, you push a button, the targets line up, and you can shoot their heads or whatever you want. After a few missions, however, when you push that button little grey aliens show up. And then the game becomes not about shooting the stationary targets but about shooting a defenseless creature that, as you later come to know, is actually just a slave to the system, forced to build structures and only shooting at you in self-defense. Furthermore, Carter (the main character) slowly becomes fed up with the system and his (yours) boss, Faulke. Becomes of the way the chain of command works, he doesn't get to know all the information, and that often leaves him in the dark on missions.
All the above is fine and it could certainly make for an interesting experience if developed. But it's not. Instead after like half the game the allegory is dropped, the aliens are no longer Russians, now they're just regular aliens again. And Carter's outspoken dissatisfaction with the system morphs into something else. Throughout the game you find out that the main bad guy, the one that you must kill to turn off all the other aliens (because of course), has a telepathic bond with the entire rest of the alien species and gives them commands that way. When you finally confront him, he calls you Prisoner, as he has done in the past, and tells you that he actually doesn't care about you, he cares about your demon. It turns out that the reason Carter is special and has these abilities to overlook the battlefield in the way that forms the main mechanic of the game, is actually because he has an Ethereal living inside of him. Basically they're telepathic ghosts. Carter then promptly kills the bad guy and seals away the bad guy ghost in his arm (roll with it). They then return to base and lock it away in a giant tube of green gas that they conveniently had lying around. From this point on, Carter hears more and more voices, and he speaks out explicitly against them. This all comes to ahead when, after the base has been attacked for a second time, he faces the camera and speaks directly to you, the player and the ghost. He says he is done being a slave to the system, he has his own free will and he would rather die than be a puppet to someone else. So he gives you an ultimatum; he sets down a bomb and gives you 30 seconds to decide if you want to stay with him and be killed or detach yourself from him and leave the situation alone. The guy you've been controlling the entire time gives you an ultimatum. And you actually do have 30 seconds to decide. Incidentally it's not really a choice because if you choose to stay with him for the entire duration of the countdown, the bomb really does blow up and you get a game over screen. Instead you must detach yourself from him. And then you choose. Throughout the game there have been 3 minor characters; Director Faulke as mentioned before, the scientist Doctor Weir, and a hot female agent named Angela Weaver. Now you must choose one of them to possess, and you thusly play the last mission as that character. Not only that, the character you chose saves you from being assassinated by Carter, and so he is now an anti-hero in the story! You then proceed to go into space and kill the bad guy (again but for real this time I promise), and you have to choose whether to kill Carter or not. On one hand he threatened to kill you multiple times, and he has become a liability to the sytem, on the other you just spent something close to 10 hours playing as the man. This feels a bit like Mass Effect 3's ending choice of reprogramming the machines for your own benefit or destroying the system and breaking free will but at a severe cost to your progress. Except here there is no choice. You made your choice already. You chose to leave Carter, the only person who could've stopped the system, and instead you invested in Weaver, Weir, or Faulke. It doesn't matter who because they're all The System, they're all the same, there is no individuality between them. And so you dutifully step into the chamber from which the enemy army is controlled, and you take over. And then, and here's the good part, you order them to systematically slaughter each other. You don't just genocide the fuck out of them, you force them to genocide the fuck out of each other. Then, even though you EXPLICITLY FOUND A CURE FOR THE BODYSNATCHER DISEASE WHICH THEY INFECTED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WITH EARLIER IN THE GAME, you genocide anyone who has been "compromised", anyone who was a victim, and you wipe out their towns, their cities, their entire histories. All to preserve the lie that there was no alien invasion. Everything gets redacted, every person who knew about it is either forced to work for XCOM or they're assassinated. And that's why I had to write about it.