The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

X-COM
X-COM: UFO Defense	1994
X-COM: Terror from the Deep	1995
X-COM: Apocalypse	1997
X-COM: Interceptor	1998
X-COM: Email games	1999
X-COM: Enforcer	2001
XCOM: Enemy Unknown	2012
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified	2013
XCOM 2	2016
XCOM: Chimera Squad	2020

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is a singleplayer bird's-eye view shooter and strategy game in the X-COM series.

The game has PhysX effects enabled by default, heavily impacting performance. In order to get playable framerates, either disable PhysX Particles under the advanced graphics options, or dedicate a separate Nvidia GPU to Physx.^[1]

General information

Port Report

Official forums

UFOpaedia - A huge wiki for the XCOM series

GOG.com Community Discussions

GOG.com Support Page

Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
GamersGate

GOG.com		Includes all DLC.
Green Man Gaming
Steam
Mac App Store (unavailable)

Monetization

DLC and expansion packs

Name	Notes
Code Breakers
Hangar 6 R&D
Light Plasma Pistol

Essential improvements

Skip intro videos

Use the `-nostartupmovies` command line argument^[2]

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\XGame\Config\^{[Note 1]}
macOS (OS X)
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/65930/pfx/^{[Note 2]}

Save game data location

System	Location
macOS (OS X)
Steam	<Steam-folder>/userdata/<user-id>/65930/
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/65930/pfx/^{[Note 2]}

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud

Video

Graphics settings. Tesselation only shows with DX11 enabled, HUD size adjust and brightness available as separate menus.

Graphics feature	State	Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor		Use Widescreen Fixer with this plugin to fix HUD and menus.
Ultra-widescreen		Proper Hor+ scaling natively supported. HUD elements are at the edges of the screen.
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)		65-100°. For additional tweaking, see Field of view (FOV).
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		Up to 16 samples
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)
60 FPS and 120+ FPS		Supports 30, 60 and 120 FPS smoothing. See High frame rate for disabling and other values.
High dynamic range display (HDR)		See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

Field of view (FOV)

Custom FOV values^{[citation needed]}

Go to <path-to-game>\XGame\Config.
Open XEngine.ini.
Locate line DefaultFOV=xxx in section [SystemSettings].
Change it to the desired FOV value.

Aiming FOV cannot be changed and will always remain at 60°.

High frame rate

Change frame rate smoothing^[3]

Go to the configuration file(s) location.
Open XEngine.ini.
Search and change bSmoothFrameRate to FALSE or raise MaxSmoothedFrameRate value.
Save the file.

For more information, see the Unreal Engine 3 page.

Changing value in game resets the changes.

Input

General settings.

Key rebinding.

Controller settings.

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping		If mapped to movement controls, the left and right arrow keys do not function correctly in the Hangar 6 R&D DLC.
Mouse acceleration		Mouse smoothing option is available under Gameplay Settings.
Mouse sensitivity		See Mouse sensitivity to fix the difference between horizontal/vertical movement.
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support		XInput only.
Full controller support
Controller remapping		Couple placement change options.
Controller sensitivity
Controller Y-axis inversion		Combined with mouse.

Controller types

XInput-compatible controllers
Xbox button prompts
Impulse Trigger vibration

DualShock 4 controllers		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.

Generic/other controllers		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.

Additional information
Controller hotplugging
Haptic feedback
Simultaneous controller+KB/M		Rapidly changes button prompts

Mouse sensitivity

Use same sensitivity for X- and Y-axis^{[citation needed]}
Go to `<path-to-game>\XGame\Config`. Open `XInput.ini`. Change `LookUpScale` to the same value as `LookRightScale` (default `300`).

Audio

Audio settings.

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls		Master, SoundFX, Music and Voice Over.
Surround sound		No setting available, support up to 5.1.
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio		Combination of original and licensed music.

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
French
German
Hungarian				Fan translation.
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Brazilian Portuguese				Fan translation; download.
Russian
Spanish

VR support

3D modes	State	Notes
Native 3D
Nvidia 3D Vision		See Helix Mod: The Bureau: XCOM Declassified.
vorpX		G3D Officially supported game, see official vorpx game list.

Issues fixed

Low frame rate

Disable PhysX Particles, see Middleware below

Disable "Screen space reflections"

Run in DX9 mode

Set Ambient Occlusion to Medium instead of High

Game does not start in DX11 mode

Run in DirectX 9 mode

Blacklist executable from RivaTuner Statistics Server

Open up Rivatuner, and on the bottom left, select Add
Browse to <path-to-game>\Binaries\Win32 and select the TheBureau.exe.
On the top right of RivaTuner, under Application detection level select None

Optionally, close RivaTuner while playing.

Large frame rate drop when aiming

Disable VSync

Crashing during the first mission in the room with the plane suspended from the ceiling

Replace the game's version of PhysXCore.dll with a newer version (Automatically)

This has only been tested on the Steam version but may work on other versions as well.

Download and extract this .zip file into <Steam-folder>\steamapps\common. Overwrite files when prompted.

Replace the game's version of PhysXCore.dll with a newer version (manually)

Either find the newest version of PhysXCore.dll on the computer or download it from Nvidia.
Copy the newer file to <path-to-game>\Binaries\Win32 and overwrite. Make note of the size, in bytes, of the new dll.
Now open PCConsoleTOC.txt in <path-to-game>\XGame.
Search for \Binaries\Win32\PhysXCore.dll, should be line 23.
Replace the first number on the line with the new dll's size in bytes, excluding commas. So if the new .dll is (9,919,032 bytes) the replacement number should be 9919032.
Save the file. Make note of what the txt files new size is, then edit that in PCConsoleTOC.txt too. It should be the very last line or line 3099.

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
Direct3D	9.0c, 11	Selectable when launching the game. Tessellation exclusive to DX11.

Executable	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)

Middleware

	Middleware	Notes
Physics	PhysX	Has Nvidia's proprietary PhysX effects enabled by default. In order to get playable framerates, either disable PhysX Particles under the advanced graphics options, or dedicate a separate Nvidia GPU to Physx.^[1] The PhysX Cloth simulation effect does not decrease performance to the same extent.
Audio	Wwise
Interface	Scaleform
Cutscenes	Bink Video

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	Vista SP2 32-bit	7 SP1 64-bit
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz AMD Athlon X2 2.7 GHz	Quad Core
System memory (RAM)	2 GB	4 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	12 GB
Video card (GPU)	ATI Radeon HD 3870 Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT DirectX 9 compatible	AMD Radeon HD 6950 Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 DirectX 11 compatible
Sound (audio device)	DirectX Compatible

macOS (OS X)
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	Mountain Lion 10.7.5	Lion 10.9
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core i series
System memory (RAM)	4 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	15 GB
Video card (GPU)	AMD Radeon HD 4870 Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT Intel Iris Graphics	AMD Radeon HD 5870 Nvidia GeForce GT 650M

Notes

↑ When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/65930/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (65930) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 Guide; Use old GPU to solve physX problems. :: Steam Community Discussions
↑ Verified by User:Marioysikax on July 29, 2016
Launch parameter works absolutely fine, removed file renaming and config editing methods.
↑ Verified by User:Marioysikax on July 29, 2016

[gamedir-3] When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).

[Proton_path_note-4] 2.0 ^2.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/65930/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (65930) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

[physx-1] 1.0 ^1.1 Guide; Use old GPU to solve physX problems. :: Steam Community Discussions

[2] Verified by User:Marioysikax on July 29, 2016
Launch parameter works absolutely fine, removed file renaming and config editing methods.

[5] Verified by User:Marioysikax on July 29, 2016

[1]

[2]

[Note 1]

[Note 2]

[3]

Developers

	2K Marin
	2K Australia
macOS (OS X)	TransGaming Inc.
Publishers
	2K Games
Engines
	Unreal Engine 3
Release dates
Windows	August 20, 2013
macOS (OS X) (Cider)	December 3, 2013
Reception
Metacritic	66
IGDB	69
Taxonomy
Monetization	One-time game purchase, DLC
Microtransactions	Finite spend, Unlock
Modes	Singleplayer
Pacing	Turn-based
Perspectives	Bird's-eye view
Controls	Direct control
Genres	Shooter, Strategy
Art styles	Realistic
Themes	Sci-fi
Series	X-COM