Five of those hours will be hiding behind this car while things explode, though.
In a reddit ‘Ask Me Anything’ (AMA) session that kicked off about an hour ago, 2K Marin’s Morgan Gray (creative director) and Erik Caponi (lead narrative designer) have been fielding a few questions about The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. The game is a third-person, tactical squad spin on the XCOM universe, based in the 1960s when the agency was just being established.
According to Caponi the game’s length will (inevitably) depend on how deeply you delve into stuff, but he says the main story will “last about 10-15 hours if you focus on it.” If you’re following the bits of side-narrative and between-mission base dialogues, however, that “can extend the game by about twice that much.”
DLC is already confirmed as being worked on, and Gray (what a perfect surname for an XCOM game) cryptically adds that “we do have some stuff in the works right now to help expand on where the game leaves off, but I’m not supposed to talk about that…”
There are even some hints that Caponi has pushed for a Terror From The Deep remake of sorts. “I would love to see another game set under the ocean. I might have even already written a pitch and started a movement for a remake of TFTD. Maybe. Possibly. I’ll never tell,” he says.
Regarding the noticeable change in attitude towards the game (from outright horror in 2010-2011 to cautious acceptance or optimism today,) Gray says, “I believe that we did a poor job explaining that we were trying to make something supplemental to the classic XCOM (and the awesome remake from Firaxis) vs. something that was trying to usurp those games. Changing our name helped make it clear to everyone, that we were of the XCOM universe, but not trying to replace anything that has come before.”
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is released next week.
