Declassification: The determination that, in the interests of national security, classified information no longer requires any degree of protection against unauthorized disclosure, coupled with removal or cancellation of the classification designation – DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms 08 November 2010.
You’re William Carter, it’s 1962 and you’re a special agent working for a top-secret US government organisation called The Bureau. It’s your job to investigate attacks from extraterrestrials and conceal the evidence afterwards. The Bureau has been operating secretly for decades but as with most classified operations, the truth eventually comes out.
2K Games have today announced The Bureau: XCOM Declassified which is a third-person tactical shooter set in the XCOM universe in 1962. Players will play as William Carter and lead a squad of special agents as you defend Earth against attacks from extraterrestrials. It’s a far cry from the first person shooter we were shown last year but maybe 2K have listened to fans of the series and made it a little more in-line with their XCOM strategy games by introducing the third-person mechanic.
Little information has been released by 2K other than the above but it is due for release on August 23rd this year on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC (Steam). One of my first thoughts on this game are genuinely how much XCOM Classified is starting to sound like that time when Agent J time travelled back to 1969 in Men in Black 3. Ok, so it’s a little earlier but it has a top-secret organisation which very few people know anything about working to protect planet Earth from extraterrestrial beings and making sure no one finds out about it. I know it probably won’t play out in that way, but it’s certainly exciting to think about how cool it would be if we could all wipe player’s minds with neuralyzers.
In any case, alongside a snazzy new Bureau website 2K have also released 3 screenshots and a live action trailer, check them out below. Can you spot the Sectoid which they have hidden in the trailer somewhere?
Interested in finding out where the Sectoid appears in the trailer if you can’t find it yourself? Check out the embedded tweet below on 2K’s Twitter account after I was the first one to discover it.
@ajb123644 Well spotted Agent Bridgwood. I wonder how many more secrets you can discover?
— 2KUKPR (@2KUKPR) April 26, 2013