It's a classic tale of a UFO cover-up: Extraterrestrials invade a military base, soldiers battle the ETs, then press officials and government agents explain away this interplanetary conflict with lies involving weather balloons and military test flights.
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, a video game released Tuesday, lets you do just that. Set during the Cold War, The Bureau allows you to play the role of a United States government agent, using your tact to thwart the alien occupation while also weaving a web of lies for the public.
Peculiar, though, that a game about UFO conspiracy came out within a week of the federal government's declassification of Area 51 documents. It's even weirder that the man heading the public relations side of the game's release is Nick Pope, the former head of the British Ministry of Defence's now-defunct UFO desk.
So The Bureau must be a government ploy to steer our fragile minds away from the real Area 51 and more toward the creepy, unbelieveable aliens that inhabit pop culture, right? The Internet seems to think so. During a promotional interview for the last game in the XCOM series, Pope told reporters that Britain had weapon capabilities specifically geared toward an alien invasion.
Message boards were quick to point at Pope's government ties.
"[Is this] a green light for alien propaganda?" wrote one user.
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