The Bureau: Plotsholes Declassified (some minor spoilers)

[Killbeam]

Hi guys,

So I have been playing The Bureau for about 8 hours now. I like the game. It is not perfect, but it does capture a part of the strategic depth of games like XCOM EU. Yet, there is one aspect of the game which I find EXTREMELY annoying. What is this exactly? Plotholes.

My goodness, the plotholes. I'll name a few of them I have come across so far.

1. During the intro mission, when earth gets attacked the first time, you team up with two level 5 dudes. Each of them has got high-level abilities, like turrent and arty-strike. Now, this makes no freaking sense. During the first assault, why is a sniper able to call down arty (not conventional arty, like a howitzer, but "blue, energy" arty). Isn't that a little advanced for the 60s.
The same goes for the turret. Where does he get the technology during the first assault

2.At the first encounter of the "Muton", one of my squadmates immediatly said: "Look out! A muton!!!" Like it was something we had already seen before. He did not just think that up at the spot.

3. Almost all alien doors just open by pressing a button. Never is explaint whether the brace does something or that you just happen to know how to open alien technology.
If the door refuses to open by a press of a button, just send a squadmate, who has no experience with doors like this, to yank at some cables. He will surely open this alien door with ease!

4.The captured alien, the infiltrator, responds to his capture by immediatly explaining how to get to his home world. He did not even TRY to keep his mouth shut.
While it is trie that he was "enslaved" by the mosaic and what now, he only told us about that until after he gave us all the details.

5. During the mission that you get into the tower where DaSilva went, Dr. Weir runs towards a console which is linked to the Mosaic. He proceed by opening a few doors and eventually presents the thing you are looking for on a silver plater.
First of all, how is it even possible that humans are able to comprehend the Mosaic? Even if they can, why is it accessable on a console? Isn't it mainly a mental means of communication? How on earth can Dr. Weir just "hack" the Mosaic and open doors and get the thing we want??

6. When you find out where Axis is, Angela Weaver gets very hypped up about it and demands that she wants to go with me and my squad. After talking for a bit, she said she had been tracking Axis for years.
Years... WHAT??

I am sorry, did I black out somewhere in the middle of the game for a year or 2? Didn't the invasion start like at max 6 months ago? Or perhaps even 1 month. I do not remember being told that there passed multiple years. What were the aliens doing during that time? I mean, they have superior tech and they wipe out armies with ease. Yet, they didn't find the XCOM base during those years that appearantly went by?

7. None of the abilities are talked about or explained how they work. You start off with the Lift ability. They say nothing about how they made it other than saying it is all in the brace. Later in the game, where I currently am, you get the drone and also that blob thing. Why they both are very helpfull, never is explained how in the hell they found a way to make a blob and drone out of thin air. It is just /there/ all of a sudden.


That is it. Now, please tell me whether I am right or that I missed something extremely obvious! Thanks for reading :)

[phantoh]

The story is a bunch of nonsense, it's gets worse.

The game is still pretty fun.

[Aeneas2020]

They do at least try and explain point 7 later in the game, although it's pretty unconvincing... as for point 6 weaver explains she has been tracking axis ever since "before she knew what he was" which was when her brother was abducted by aliens some years ago. Apparently he left a trail of destruction etc etc but yeah the story is full of holes. The muton thing really bugged me as well as a lot of the sleep walker stuff. I enjoyed the gameplay a whole lot if i'm honest but the story is so disjointed it's hard not to be pulled out of it.

The sad part is you can see where they were going with the whole lived in base feel, i'm sure they had a tech tree, research etc etc in there at some point but just couldn't get it all together enough to save the game. A lot of missed chances in this one.

[watcherzero]

Yeah if you go to the lab after main missions they will variously be testing various alien technology like lift, a captured Sectopod, etc... They will also talk about how the Sillicoids are unitelligent they can be controlled by anyone who gives the commands, using captured drones, etc.. The more advanced abilities of Carter are also explained but that would be spoilers.

6. Her brother had been missing for something like five years (theres an investigation side mission where you can research the details), when you go to the infection lab its revealed that its been operational in secret for years and that there were others like it in the infection hot spots built in secret where missing people had been abducted to produce the infection. She had been hunting the suspect of the abduction 'Axis' for years but only found out he was an alien a couple of months before the invasion started alongside Xcom. Xcom had also been investigating the abductions and infiltrations as well as mysterious radio signals for several years but until shortly before the invasion believed they were caused by the Soviets.

As to them targeting Xcom, remember the General at the start who was an infiltrator? If you read the documents lying around during the game you will learn he had been trying to shut down xcom for years but didnt know where it was.

As to the duration of the invasion, dialog indicates its been going at least a month possibly as long as three months by the end.

5. Dr Weir had been studying machine communication (what we nowadays call computer language) and had designed the equipment for Xcom, he had also been studying the alien signals for years before the invasion and had decoded enough to have built his own basic Venn gate, he was unwittingly helped by the fact that his assistant was a Outsider deserter in disguise. Mosaic is a technological communication network built on top of a psychic communication network enhancing its powers. It requires implants or the infections (sillicon technology) suppression of conciouness as well as basic link in order to take control of someone not nearby.

4. Hes been enslaved his whole life, he wants Xcoms help to liberate his people from the Mosaic control network.

3. I could just walk up and open most doors on Earth because they have handles or buttons, the doors with yellow lights are locked and the ones with blue lights are unlocked. When you come to a locked door you have to pass through you get one of your men to hotwire the door, they are field agents and trained in breaking entry and bypassing security.

2. Why do you presume you were the first to see a Muton? While your the commander of the first team there are many other teams of agents out in the field for instance Nico runs the second team, most of the other teams are doing more basic stuff like securing supplies for the base, rescuing scientists, evacuating civilians, scouting and surveliance and coordinating with the conventional military.

1. Put the blue down to graphical effects it could just be mortars of someone else close by, having it inside is a bit dumb yes but its a game mechanic not a plot element, you had people in the field calling down supporting artillery and air strikes from the start of the second world war and to a more limited degree back to the first world war. They have had the technology for the lasers for some time discovered or captured alien equipment and their elerium mine (the artifact you were carrying at the start was being shipped from that elerium mine), remember Xcom had been aware of the aliens for a few months and the aliens themselves had been on Earth for several years.

[Killbeam]

@watcherzero
Thanks for your elaborate reply!

I can agree with you on point six, about weaver, and point four, about the infiltrator.

I will replay to your points in the same order:

5. Okay, so his experience with the alien technology explains why he is able to understand and use Mosaic. Yet, this does not explain how he is able to open doors and stuff. You would think the military of the aliens would put some extreme defensive program on their to keep it from being hacked or used by humans. It would be carzy to assume that Dr. Weir can circumvent this defense just because he analyses the signals. It is a defense mechanism designed to prevent hacking. For example, the both of use can use a human computer withe ease, yet, we cannot hack the pentagon. Even very experienced hackers or even some military programmers are unable to breach it's defenses. And that i human tech! The alien tech has bound to be MUCH more complex, making hacking by any human virtually impossible.

3. The difference with doors on earth and these aliens doors are their purpose. Here on earth, our homeworld, we have doors to keep intruders out of our homes and to close off a room. The alien doors are part of a military base. They are intended to keep heavily traind and armed intruders out. Why would they make a door that opens by just pressing a button without any trouble?
The doors that ARE locked are appearantly so easy to open, that it takes a squadmember a few minutes to open. I know that they are heavily trained, but that doesn't take away the fact that this is alien tech which has never been seen before! They cannot train someone for a doortype which we might run into. Why should we assume that the doors happen to have a similar wiring than the doors the agents trained for?
All this could have been fixed if they gave a small briefing on that brace and explain that it automatically analyses tech and figures out a way to open the door. It would be a weak explaination, but MUCH better than nothing.

2. It is true that we might not have been the first to have seen the muton, eventhough I had a strong feeling we are the first to make first contact, it is possible that weren't the first.
However, it still does not explain how MY agents knew their name or what they looked like. We didn't get a briefing on them and I have not seen a picture of the things before we actually met one. You could argue that the agents got a briefing while you were busy, but that is nonsense. Keeping the commander of the best squad in the dark about intel on a heavy enemy is utterly idiotic.

1. I don't know if you have seen a mortar seen explode, but it is not blue. I am pretty sure it has a laser sound effect too.
While it may be a gameplay element, it STILL is part of the plot. If you have a game in which you play in both the second world war and in the cold war, it would make no sense if you started the game with 2 dudes who had the weapons which were made in the cold war. While they are gameplay elements, it does not work with the story.

They may have researched it for years, but I see no reason WHY they would shoot the aliens with M14 when they already got freaking laser turrents

[watcherzero]

If you went to a military base you would actually find very few locks, between tents, guard posts and the need for strangers to come and go security tends to be through the posting of guards and patrols rather than locks. Can you imagine a military base where the soldiers all had to carry round a keychain full of keys to all the different doors they might have to enter on a daily basis?

Most of the Outsider structures are quickly erected field fortifications akin to sandbags, bunkers and trenches.

[axe11154]

I can awnser some of these yay.
1.Its astablished the two agents your with have been in the Bureau for some time. Once you finally get into the lab the very first thing they are testing is a turret and a pulse lift. both you cant get that early in game even with all enemy kills. They even say some agents have used them in field test.

2.remember you arnt the only team out there. very possible another team saw it and told the other.

3.its exsplaint its your brace when you get it that it can interact with alien devices.

4.in my play through I beat a good bit outta him before I let him talk. then I had to offer him my world before he realy started talking. maybe its jsut the choices you choose?

5. Mosaic is an AI that likes to chat and has the same thinking pattern as a living being. Weir even says this and as he puts it "wont allow him to free the people". Its possible it wanted the agents to find out botu axis.

6. She never new what axis was but she knew he had done somthign with her brother. SO this is possible.

7. all your abilities are talked about in the lab. and I mean all of them. just go in after each mission and go through every thign and window and you may notice it. they dont exsplain it directly too you because your sopose to be a detective agent of sorts. you fin that stuff on your own. no ones gonna hold your hand and tell you about it.

[Egobyte83]

I can let most of these things slide, as they are gripes about the realism and some slack has to be cut when it comes to functionality, for instance, the guys shouting that its a muton, its just a programmed response that they use in combat, it is not story-significant.

Something that really DOES bug me, however, is the fact that Axis is supposed to have been "debriefed", i.e taken back to the base and get interrogated. But no, Axis just says we are defeated and Carter mentions something and then Angela goes up to Axis and promptly has him shot. When is Axis supposed to have told people what they wanted to know? Wasn't the whole point about this mission to take him alive? And in fact, to STOP Angela from shooting him? o.O It even says in the mission debriefing that Axis was debriefed.... when??? When was he debriefed? He didn't convey anything of importance for the few minutes he was down on his knees, he didn't have time.. and as far as I could see, he didn't surrender any datapads or anything. That one bothers me, cause its an outright omission of something that is heavily story-significant.

[BartoGaleno]

The Axis mission bugged a whole lot as well. You'd expect Weaver to have her ass thrown at jail for going rogue and deliberately desobeying orders, but nah, after you come back to base all is ok. Axis shot? No biggie. Wtf!

What also bugged me a lot was, and this is more of a game trope than anything else, that Weir was giving directions to Carter through alien buildings, pointing out key locations with precise details like he had a camera feed from the agents with a blueprint overlay. For what I'd guess, Weir was a flipping infiltrator gone rogue, just so that I could make sense of it.

The Ethereal shenanigans felt forced, more supernatural than anything else.

I could go on a lot more on the holes the game presents, and how it damages the whole package, which is unfortunate because the gameplay is so good once you get enough skills and are used to the commands.

Finished the game in 12 hours of mostly fun combat and dialog, but it could've been so much better.