The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is going to kick your arse to hell and back, according to 2K Marin's creative director Morgan Gray. What's more, it's going to have your arse stuffed and mounted, then invite its lady friends over to throw darts at it. That's an Intolerable Cruelty reference, yes. You know what else is cruel and intolerant? The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, that's what. "XCOM's not a game about putting on your diaper and giving you a bottle of milk," Gray told Games.On.Net in an interview. "It asks you to be a hero if you want to have any chance of succeeding."



Set in alien-rife '60s America, The Bureau reprises many of XCOM: Enemy Unknown's core principles - squad management, research and tactical combat - in real-time. "The emphasis on tactics cannot be stressed enough," Gray insisted. "We're trying to get a very hardcore, really small-unit tactics game.

"This could easily have been a game about modern day special forces, but in our version imagine modern day special forces back in 1962, using technology provided by NASA that never could have existed - but should have, because it's cool - fighting an alien threat.

"Anybody who attempts to run and gun or Rambo this will die. It's about a team working together."

The Bureau may actually be tougher than Enemy Unknown, in some respects. "Unlike, say, Firaxis' excellent Enemy Unknown, in our game the campaign does not wait for you. There's no ability to sort of delay the major beats. The battle is near and present and constantly moving forward. The repercussions of losing an agent are extremely huge. It's serious stuff."

There was time during the chat for a few grand, state-of-the-nation pronouncements. "We felt confident that the modern gamer was gravitating towards things like Demons Souls, like Firaxis' XCOM, and that we can make games with a difficulty and a skill level more in line with what us old-school gamers were used to growing up and cutting our teeth on," Gray recalled.



"What is generally happening in the more modern era is that things are almost obscenely accessible," he went on, presumably tearing up at the thought that it's possible to relax while playing videogames nowadays. "So it was nice to see this movement towards more skilful play - and I just want to call it difficulty because it's not about hard games, it's about challenging games - and seeing that wave come back, seeing people really wanting to have some games with some crunch to them, some meat, is one of the things that let us go 'yeah, we can bring this aspect of XCOM into The Bureau'."

Read more about The Bureau here. They're more than a little out of date, but you may wish to revisit our thoughts from 2011 on why the game could be a poor remake but a promising shooter.

Source: Rheena.com