New details for 2K Marin's reimagined XCOM shooter have been released. We've spent some quality time with the game, and you can read our full impressions in our The Bureau: XCOM Declassified preview.
But for those of you who just want the cold hard facts, we've plucked out all the new gameplay information and compiled it in an easily digestible list below.
2K has said The Bureau: XCOM Declassified will 'stand out' from a number of highly-anticipated multiplatform titles on a competitive day for new releases this August. The game is scheduled to go up against the Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Saints Row.
All the latest XCOM Declassified details follow this new trailer:
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- Gameplay for The Bureau has been redesigned to make strategy, tactics and careful planning crucial
- Designers thought it would elegant to stick a single viewpoint, so the first-person view has been dropped in favour of a third-person tactical view
- Gameplay is likened to Gearbox's Brother's in Arms
- Players control William Carter, the main character, and must use the 'Battle Focus' command wheel to deal with enemies
- The wheel is split into three sections for Carter, the commander, and two agents
- Time slows when Battle Focus is activated and players can issue commands using a free-roaming, almost top-down camera. It feels like XCOM, but in real-time
- Battle Focus is primarily used to manouever characters, but becomes very effective in conjunction with powers and combos, which are unlocked by capturing aliens
- Engineers can place turrets, Carter can then lift these up and hold them in the air to reach entrenched enemies
- In many respects, The system is a carryover from BioShock 2, which required players to use traps, weapons and plasmids in similar ways. 2K Marin wants players to experiment with powers, gadgets and weapons to cater playstyles to themselves
- The Bureau is set in 1962, when aliens first arrive on Earth
- Players will see XCOM form as an offshoot of the FBI
- Art style mixes '60s American nostalgia and modern sci-fi. The agents are described as what it would look like if Mad Men's Don Draper joined the Ghostbusters
- Agents in The Bureau can be customised, named, individually levelled up, and they all have their own skill trees. Their deaths are premanent
- The story is "fully-formed", and has interactive, branching dialogue, as well as environmental storytelling
- Not classic XCOM, but also not a shallow shooter
- The Bureau will have an explorable HQ, let players research and develop new weapons and powers
- There will also be side-missions, and a story affected by choice and consequence
