Discussion YMMV / TheBureauXCOMDeclassified

Food for thought, and it will be long.

First of all, to the people sensitive to spoilers, this analysis will practically give the entire plot away. This being said, let's start.

I just finished playing The Bureau: X Com declassified. It was a rather passing game with a troublesome production story and even more troubled gameplay, you assume the role of the CIA Agent Carter, whom at the start of the game is waiting for orders to bring a certain briefcase to Director Faulk. Due a mishap with an infiltrated alien agent posing as an army lady sent to escort Carter to Faulk, Carter ends with a bullet, his apartment in blazes, and the infiltrated alien as a crispy body on the floor.

From there, it's the usual la resistance game, X-Com mounts resistance, you go through USA killing aliens, while learning that:

A- They're quickly terraforming any place they conquer, turning cozy 60's towns into masses of alien metal with spires that soar for the sky through luminous "Seeds". This super-terraforming effort is due to the desperate need of these aliens to "Find a planet of their own". They're in a situation where they -must- keep conquering planets over and over and enslaving their populaces to maintain their already established but quickly-degrading empire.

B- They infected the populace with a thick black goo that makes them into "Sleepwalkers", zombies that keep repeating themselves over and over, obeying subliminal commands from...

C- Mosaic, an all-encompassing network that controls everything alien, from their installations to each soldier. These soldiers do not have personalities of their own while linked to this network, will obey commands blindly of the central figure behind Mosaic:

D- Origin, the central mastermind commanding Mosaic and the invasion forces. At first, I found it strange to such emphasis being placed on Mosaic, the network behind the alien attack, especially after the first antagonist arrived: A general called "Axis" by Mosaic, an inspirational, experienced leader though, as many cartoonish villains before him, suffered from an awfully big ego. After capturing an infiltrator and learning of this antithesis between being "plugged in the network" and having a personality of its own that every soldier of the alien threat suffers, Carter is sent to capture Axis in order to learn from the implants of the latter, unfortunately, the 'strong woman' of the game, Agent Weaver, decides to put the whole planet in jeopardy and kill the alien commander because Axis captured her brother and experimented on him. Things got even more heated when the usual suicide mission of boarding the mothership and blowing everything to space a la Independence day turned out in an interesting plot twist: Mosaic was powered by a transcendent being made of energy called the "Ethereal". Carter captures this being onto his wrist gadget like a true ghostbuster and brings it to base where is revealed...

That Carter was being controlled by a separate Ethereal all this time, which was stored in the briefcase of the starting point, healing him and giving him it's mind-controlling powers. But the real interesting thing is what happens when Carter rebels against the control of the Ethereal for seemingly no reason:

You assume first-person-view, with you as the Ethereal.

Returning a bit on the plot, the way it's revealed that Carter is the host to an Ethereal is through a simple conversation between the one that was bound to Origin and the one bound to Carter, the one bound to Origin, Shamash, tells the one bonded to Carter, Asaru, that there is an Ethereal for every planet with life, bonding with someone in specific, and effectively becoming said person while working to improve the bonded creature's species. She had bonded with Origin, but origin took control of her and used her to create Mosaic, effectively dooming everyone and kickstarting the plot.

Upon learning this, Carter enters in a berzerk state, gets free of Asaru's control, and, in a cg, kills Shamash. Later, while the X-com base is being invaded due them reconnecting the freed spy back onto Mosaic and thus pinpointing their location to the invaders, Carter is willing to blow everything sky-high if Asaru don't back down from its control, and surprise, you can only choose to either obey, or let him blow everything. Assuming the player removes the bond from Carter, they must choose a new host to control and finish the game by invading the mothership and gaining control of Mosaic, alongside all the alien forces, by replacing Origin. Of course, Carter will be after you, and you will end up choosing if he lives or dies.

First of all, let's pay attention to the whole deal of whom the -real- player character is. Asaru. You view the entire game as a third-person shooter, except in the moments where you are without a host. It doesn't need a genius to see that the whole game was in fact a -first person-, but with you, the gamer, as Asaru controlling someone. And as an Ethereal, it's your responsibility to "improve" the species you bonded with, protecting them, enhancing them and so on. The same duty was laid upon Shamash, but she was taken by whom she was bonded with, ending with chaos and destruction. A videogame player is technically an entity who isn't "physical" in the game's world, but not only controls, it basically pushes it's personality and quirks into a certain character, anyone being controlled by Asaru showed certain physical quirks while interacting with other chars, and it was -your- decision as a player that affected them and everyone around them, it was you, Asaru, calling the shots, while at the same time "Being the person" who you were bound to. Failing to do this task, like being controlled by whom you should be controlling (like Shamash) ended in disaster.

Now brace up, things are about to get heated.

The Bureau: X-com had a bumpy developing story, at first made to be a first person shooter in a setting where techno-aliens probably inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos before severe backlash from the internet and the original game's fans (made worse by an outburst of the then president of 2K games, but I won't dwell on it) forced it not only to return to its strategy roots, but to become essentially a prequel of the most recent iteration of the X-Com game. "But how could an all-scale invasion disappear from the radar only to suddenly become relevant years ago?" A keen player will ask. Essentially, by becoming a prequel to a game that already has a "fixed" story that has no call-outs for events past essentially turned The Bureau null and void. Bureau can't make big long-lasting story changes, because it would contradict the newest X-Com, thus, it's fate is already traced, no matter what you do, it's story will essentially kill itself, there won't be anything of importance to leave out to the next generation.

How it happens? Mosaic, an amorphous force derived from a single source, Origin, attacks planet earth of the 60s with the intent of draining every resource it has and turn it into a bland metal alien wasteland, turning it's natives into drones that repeat the same thing over and over. Origin has the help of an Ethereal whom he controlled, and the only thing in his path is another ethereal controlling an agent. Assuming that the "Ethereal" is a representation of a physical player, and having the knowledge of the story of the game's production, many interesting things unfold. The Bureau was supposed to be a first person shooter when it started, but due internet backlash, it supposedly changed it altogether. The forces of Mosaic, a blatant representation of the internet, seek to terraform the colorful earth of the 60's and turn it into the 'bland' design of the future game. It's powered by an ethereal, a player, but a player who was taken by it's role, a player who lost control of the role she was supposed to be doing, of guiding the game. Said failure makes Mosaic infect the attacked populace and make it repeat itself, which could be an allegory to how an idea spread in the internet takes out gamers in forums, making them repeat the same idea over and over, this case "We want the TRUE x-com!" "We want tactical action!". But the whole point of the game is, it didn't obeyed those commands, it wasn't a third person shooter, it never was. It was a first-person all along, with you as Asaru taking control of a single being.

The first action of the game is to attack Axis, the 'commander' of the invasion, I won't dwell on it, but Axis is a central 'figure' who commands the troops, though when killed, he is of no importance at all to the whole plot. This can be a central figure in forums, an specific review site and so on. I shall leave that for you readers to think about.

Then, you attack "Origin", the commander of the whole invasion force and Mosaic. And if the Ethereals are the players and Mosaic is the internet, who is behind this attack? It would be the X-Com game, the "Origin" of this whole problem. It was from there that the backlash originated, and from there that all the problems with The Bureau started. But to simply nuke the origin, erase the previous game, won't suffice. In Bureau destroying Origin's physical body merely delays the inevitable, the whole thing will just go on. No, in order to truly -stop- the menace posed by Origin, you as the Ethereal, the player, has to go to its core and -replace- him, the new X-Com game has to effectively replace the old one and command it's legions. In the end, -how- you got to do it won't matter, your choices won't affect the next game, who lives or who dies won't be of importance, because it's all laid out to the next game.

Going on with the topic of human-alien relations, there's also Dr. Weir and his infiltrator assistant, whose true allegiance or motivations are in the dark. Based on the recordings, we know he was filling in the blanks on Weir's theories about the Venn dimensional theories. He sounded guilty about Weir theorizing about peaceful alien life (being an infiltrator for a hostile species attempting to take over Earth). When Rosemont university came under attack, the infiltrator was still in human disguise, had not killed Weir but was in fact trying to make him leave, and willfully assisted XCOM in extracting him, not to mention being responsible for the dead sectoid in the room he was found in. Lastly, the XCOM personnel at the base imply Weir was having an romantic affair with the assistant.

Is this "My species doth protest too much" or love-induced heel face turn here?

How should the relationship between Asaru and the humans it controls be classified? The extent of it isn't defined, so we don't know if Asaru is only acting when abilities are invoked or if it is totally in control all the time until control is broken?

Just before the penultimate battelship raid, I had chosen Weir to be the new host and it was clearly Asaru talking there with Faulke when he asked about how Weir was handling the new situation.