You’ve seen the XCOM strategy game, but now it’s finally time to learn just what exactly the XCOM shooter is. After being reworked, canned, then reworked again, 2K Margin will be bringing the newly titled The Bureau: XCOM Declassified to current-generation platforms in the summer.
The Bureau, which will tell the origin story of the XCOM organization, arrives on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC in North America Aug. 20 and the rest of the world three days later. The game takes place during the height of the Cold War, as The Bureau, an elite organization meant to deal with the Soviet Union, shifts gears from handling Reds to an alien threat. Taking on the leading role will be special agent William Carter, who’s ordered to both extinguish any threats and hide the existence of intelligent life.
Morgan Gray, creative director at 2K Marin, today spoke with Polygon about the more tactical nature of his team’s project.
"What we're attempting to do is a third-person, squad-based tactical shooter," Gray said. "Putting you right there in the field. No more sitting back, watching everything unfold from a god's eye view."
With the sheer number of basic run-and-gun experiences on the market, it makes sense to give The Bureau its own identity. Instead of comparing it to Call of Duty, Gray sees Rainbow Six or Full Spectrum Warrior as more apt.
"What we're trying to achieve on the gameplay front is a very tactical … a game that demands skillful play from the player and a game that expects that," he said. "In true XCOM fashion, it's not just your Rambo brawn, but it's using your brains, your team, the technology at your disposal, creating plans and then executing them.
"There is never a frozen time, you're always making snap decisions," he said. "To use a sports analogy: It's more about calling audibles then huddling. We are trying to emulate the fantasy of being the squad leader out in the battlefield versus the commander sitting at the desk who has all of the time in the world observing from afar."
It’s been a long road for this summer release. It’s taken many alterations to place a hard date on the project, first shown in 2011. However, Gray feels confident that while it may still look like what’s been shown in the past, fans will be happy with the changes made to The Bureau.
"2011 for us was showing sort of an expression of we think we've cracked the code of finding a different reinterpretation of the classic XCOM DNA and then we spent the rest of the time iterating on that and refining that," Gray said. "I think it will draw a nice through line from what you saw there, but obviously we've been dark for awhile. We have so much new stuff that we've cooked up, refined and has become a game that we're currently poised to finish."
