The first shot of the game is historically inaccurate, but not without good reason.

"As much as possible, I try to stick to history," says Erik Caponi, the narrative designer. "There's actually a huge pet peeve I had that I finally gave up on. It's the first shot of the game. Sputnik is there. Sputnik should not be there in 1962. Nobody recognizes the Vostok 12 satellite, which is what should be there, so we stuck with Sputnik because it's iconic and recognizable."

The Russian satellite becomes a subtle lie in The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, a game by 2K Marin that has endured several revisions throughout its history. It's not a first-person shooter (it's third-person now), warfare isn't waged in polite turns (time slows while you're issuing orders), and it's not about overseeing the modern XCOM organization, which acts as Earth's weaponized umbrella when the aliens rain down.

Instead, you're where the real Sputnik would be in the early 1960s: on the ground. Playing as pragmatic agent William Carter, you assist in the birth of the XCOM defense organization, jolted into premature operation by a manipulative alien race dubbed "The Outsiders." You also learn of Carter's motivations and the fate of his family - the kind of story you couldn't quite make out from the perspective of a commander in XCOM: Enemy Unknown.