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Canon Enforcer - What really happened...


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I love that I came back to this site less than 24 hours ago and since then have now started new threads in two of the most neglected forums we have! This one is going to start off as a bit of a transplant based on a little back and forth Silencer and I are currently having regarding the discrepancies displyed by Enforcer that prevent it being officially accepted as canon X-Com material.

 

I am in the Canon camp and accept that the events in Enforcer DID in fact happen, although the game most certainly does embelish them a great deal! We've so far discussed things such as boss fights, teleporters, massive numbers of aliens and the fact that X-Com didn't realise any of this was going on until after the war (or ever possibly)

 

The main purpose of this thread then is to discuss such things and generally get word of the game back into the community for a bit as it gets a pretty rough deal does Enforcer. What would be very interesting though would be to come up with a canon history behind the events in the Enforcer game. If we as a community can explain away enough of the ridiculousness of this game for it to become a logically acceptable chapter of the X-Com universe then I think that'd be awesome!

 

Of course feel free to also discuss the game itself and what not. For anyone not familiar with it I would recommend at least giving it a go if you can find a (free) copy. It's definitely not X-Com as we know it but it's kind of SO not X-Com as we know it that it doens't even matter. It doesn't ever pretend to be a tactical turn based squad game with base building so you shouldn't be disappointed when you realise it's not! What follows will be a bunch of posts moved over from our original convo. I hope some more people will join us in this discussion soon!

 

Simple fact is, and here's the bombshell I'm going to go out on, Enforcer is canon, the Bureau never will be...

 

Enforcer, regardless of what you think about it as a game, was crafted well enough to at least work as a side story that could be slotted into or even left out of the canon entirely.

 

- NKF

 

How Enforcer can be considered canon? Sure it was fun game. Lot's of shooting and stuff.

 

How can Enforcer not be canon?

 

As this conversation started in a dissection of The Bureau I made some comparisons here which I've left in for the benefit of those familiar with both games.

 

Just realised there is an endgame spoiler for The Bureau in here! Last sentence, first paragraph...

 

It's my opinion that Enforcer should definitely be considered canon. I was considering this statement after I finished my post last night and I realised that it actually isn't too dissimilar to the Bureau in several aspects. Remember the teleporter probes that brought in all the enemies? The Bureau has drop pods that do the same thing... The ridiculous weapons in Enforcer? Not quite the same in The Bureau but I'd suggest a rotary plasma cannon (read : heavy plasma gatling cannon) is pretty nuts. There IS also a lightning cannon in The Bureau which is quite frankly ridiculous and I assume only exists in the game because they already developed it for the first iteration of the game... Enforcer threw masses of enemies at the player constantly, nothing like Enemy Unknown. There are dozens of points in The Bureau when this exact same thing occurs though. And remember the bosses in Enforcer? The giant Chryssalid and such? I'd suggest that the Titan (flying eye disk o death thing) in The Bureau is essentially a boss fight. So is the first time you meet a Muton or Sectopod. Then later as the game ramps up we get Elite Mutons and Heavy Sectopods too. All boss fights essentially... Agent Carter IS the Enforcer. He has magical powers and wields some pretty amazing weaponry, essentially winning the war singlehandedly. Hell, the two games even end in the same way. Hero finds alien mothership orbiting earth, kills guy in charge, game over...

 

The reason it is significantly easier to relate to The Bureau than to Enforcer is NOT because of the different story or setting, it's because of the massively over the top arcade elements of Enforcer and the significantly improved graphics in The Bureau. Try to imagine for just 5 minutes, how Enforcer would look without such an endless barrage of enemies, power-ups and 'microchip' point tokens and instead try to picture it in a modern graphical engine with The Bureau's Drop pods and 2012 XCOM's enemy depictions. Seems like a pretty decent game doesn't it? Let's not forget that there was a little R&D in Enforcer too. I daresay that if it was approached sensibly by a competent developer with today's technology, Enforcer could be a VERY different game than the one we got all those years ago. Let's not forget that this game was made by Hasbro Interactive when they were on the verge of bankruptcy. They cancelled Alliance and Genesis to make a quick buck off the franchise. That killed them soon after and we lament the loss of those other games to this day.

 

At the very least, let's be grateful that the internet and social media has allowed the fans to prevent 2k from making the same blunder with the Bureau as Hasbro did with Enforcer. We know there were lay-offs after it was published, even in it's improved semi-tactical form. They could well have faced Hasbro's fate had they gone for an early cash grab with it!

 

Returning to the original point though, I DO think Enforcer fits into the overall story of X-Com, although in a slightly more sensible, watered down version than the game we play. I imagine the Enforcer robot being developed alongside the HWP we end up with in the game. The robot turns out to be too high maintenance and doesn't fulfil the 'guerilla' role taken by X-Com. It's very big, loud and brash, so of course it it sent to America for completition and then proceeds to carve a portion of it up! The Enforcer becomes a blitzkrieg sort of weapon, a counter blitzkrieg if you like. It's sent to areas of heavy alien activity where even a good squad would most likely suffer total loss. We don't see these high levels of activity in the game because the Enforcer deals with them. We simply don't realise this because it's no longer an official part of X-Com.

 

I'd love to see a modernised Enforcer with some serious gameplay added and less of the jazz-hands personally. Don't get me wrong, I would rather see more like the 2012 XCOM but as we know from The Bureau (and arguably Enforcer itself) these different genres are really without comparison. You can't make X-Com into a tactical shooter, but you can make it into a shooter. Enforcer didn't NEED to have cover mechanics or semi-squad based combat. It's a huge robot, not a feeble little mn in a fedora. It was a shooter plain and simple and with modern technology and the addition of improved R&D plus a storyline more strongly integrated into that of Enemy Unknown, I think it could work. Or at least be a lot of fun!

 

1 thing that Enforcer should not be canon. If I remember right the timeline is during the first contact wars. How is it that for enforcer aliens use teleporting pods and in EU don't. Enforcer also protects civilians. Wouldn't the main organisation knew about terror mission? And what about the Uber Etheral. Surely they would know about it?

 

It's certainly very unlikely that X-Com wouldn't have knowledge of the continuation of the Enforcer program and operations. However, I can imagine they would look fairly favourably on both it and it's operators (professor Able Standard in the game) considering all the good work they do. The teleportation IS a good point but think a bit harder about it... I was initially going to complain about the teleporting aliens in the bureau as it isn't shown to be possible in EU. But it IS shown isn't it? Ok so it's only shown in the intro video where the Muton Commander is red and the skyranger looks a bit like a sex toy but still. If the intro sequence isn't at least partially canon then what is? Let's also remember that Terror ships never land at terror sites but they still manage to offload a decent amount of hostiles. I assume you will (like me) go off the theory that they land outside of town and then dust off (or simply sit outside of town) but it's an interesting point to make.

 

If we treat teleportation as canon however it does seem strange that it isn't visibly used by the aliens in EU. Of course it could be that the only alien ship near earth capable of teleportation is the alien mothership which forms the end-game boss of Enforcer which would make sense. It would explain why there weren't more of these large scale attacks and also (if you want to stick closely to the game) why all of these attacks were localised to America. We can assume the mothership to be in geostationary orbit above the States where it launches large scale attacks via teleportation-pods. Something no other vessel in the attack fleet can manage. This actually goes some way to solving other issues in the game, like the high number of enemies encountered compared to EU missions.

 

As for the Uber Ethereal, I guess it's open to interpretation but I don't remember the final fight too well. I would suggest that this is simply an Ethereal Commander (like those faced by the regular X-Com operatives in bases and on Mars) who is a seasoned veteran of other invasion campaigns or similar. He would have skills and experience above those of other aliens met so far. This could also be said of some of the other bosses encountered if we want to try and explain them rather than pretend they didn't happen. I seem to recall large Cryssalid and Reaper bosses in the game. They could simply be seasoned veterans like the ethereal if we try to ignore their extreme size in game and just picture them as possessing more skill so being more challenging as opponents. I think maybe the Reaper had weapons strapped to it as well which would explain it's boss status. That this ship carries such hardened troops would also explain things like the razor discs which are never seen again in X-Com lore. They could be sort of body-guard units for the command structure of the alien mothership for example...

 

Another alternative to the uber-ethereal would be that it was actually a great many ethereals working together. The Ethereal council if you like, that was in control of the invasion fleet and more importantly the mothership invasion force. Alternatively it could be seen as another alien brain or similar being. Like the one on Mars it is in direct telepathic control of the aliens it dispatches. That's why it's death causes the ship to explode for some reason... Just checked the list of bosses, they need to be discussed in their own thread...

 

which is why I created this one! I'll leave room for someone else to pitch in before we get into boss specifics though. It may still be easiest to just forget about the bosses entirely or substitute them with something else (uber-ethereal=ethereal council for example) Off to do some other bits now though so will return shortly. Hope you see this new post Silencer and anyone else out there too!

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I think that the Mothership wasn't orbiting. I think in last missions the Professor detected that it is incoming. Remember Enforcer is during war already in progress so aliens were already there. But it was a long time since I've played it so I might forgot few things.

 

Since Enforcer was operating only in USA, saving the civilians and stuff, surely the US goverment would rather locate the professor and made more Enforcers? He even saved some pilots, so the robot wasn't all that secret.

 

And Uber Etheral wasn't like Etheral Commander. It was ridiculously huge, and could just kill any human soldier just by looking at you.

Even the Uber Etheral in Firaxis XCOM wasn't that badass.

 

https://www.gameanyone.com/video/518521

 

 

 

I can agree that game can be canon if events don't collide with the original. Here we have few things that don't add up.

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The mothership was indeed incoming, not just "sitting there". I've got a vague recollection that this was while X-COM had their troops on the way to Cydonia, but that could easily be wrong - I'm sure I remember a specific mention that the main X-COM organisation simply didn't have the power to deal with the threat presented by the main boss.

 

The basic idea is that all along the way, you're taking out threats that would've ended X-COM; you don't hear much mention of them in the original game because the Enforcer blew them up. Not your problem.

 

That said, the Enforcer had all the subtlety of a war elephant. There's no way you'd want to endorse its use in a populated area. Or any area that you might want to populate any time soon.

 

Granted, these explanations are comic-book-logic handwaves, but frankly I have an easier time accepting them than I do the mechanics of Firaxis's game. That likewise has some ridiculous concepts but takes itself rather more seriously, and they stand out more there as a result.

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I think it wasn't during Cydonias Flight. If so, why wouldn't the mothership destroy the Avenger? The Battleship could deal almost 50% of damage to Avenger, so a Mothership of twice the size and Etheral that had Jedi like powers....

 

Also the Professor was I think expelled from X-COM because others though about his project that he is a loony.

 

That said, the Enforcer had all the subtlety of a war elephant. There's no way you'd want to endorse its use in a populated area. Or any area that you might want to populate any time soon.

 

Don't forget he used Nukes too ;)

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Yes, the lisping Doctor Able Standard was a bit of rogue element and was pretty much distanced from X-Com for being a bit of a loon. Just imagine him getting on with Doctor Valen. He continued the Enforcer project privately and worked in parallel with X-Com though sharing the same goal. If I had had any sway with the story, I'd would have had throw in a few short missions with Enforcer covertly raiding X-Com supply stores for cool gubbins. In fact all the box breaking in the BONUS rounds might have just been that.

 

I often envisage Enforcer as a bit of a mysterious folk legend type. Civilians on the ground certainly know about the Enforcer, considering they keep referring him to what the Americans call a certain torus shaped mint.

 

The arcade-y point collection of 'data-points' and power up aspect of the game I've explained to myself as occurring entirely within Enforcer's head. To a civilian they'd just see the Enforcer running about and doing odd jumps on awnings, crashing through stiles or climbing triumphantly up on some empty boxes. In Enforcers head though, it's picking up Data Points that go towards unlocking safeguards and whatnot.

 

On the teleporters: Mr. Angry Redshirt's ship from the UFO intro had teleporters. It wasn't used for the deployment of the mutons, but was certainly used for their hasty exit.

 

- NKF

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So now we seem to be discussing the Professor and the mothership as well... According to the wiki;

 

In the end, Able Standard discovers the alien mothership, which is behind the recent attacks on Earth. It is about to unleash an attack on Earth, and only Enforcer can stop it. Even though the professor is mortally wounded by aliens, he, in his last moments, sends Enforcer through a teleport right to the mothership.

 

I just had a look for cutscene videos and the like but very few are forthcoming. We really need to know where the mothership is during the events of this game to make any sense of it! Personally I think it makes a lot more sense if it's simply hiding behind the moon the whole time as otherwise how do we explain the massive quantities of aliens being teleported to earth in these missions? If it is en-route as suggested then where are the aliens coming from? And another issue (which remains anyway) is where did this mothership come from exactly? Was it on Mars? If it was from another more distant planet we have to also accept that more vessels like this exist and that isn't particularly condusive of what we're aiming for here! Perhaps this is the main military centre of the Cydonia base or something which is why the final mission on the red planet is fairly easy (as enforcer blew away the majority of their heavy troops and command!)

 

As for professor Able Standard, there isn't a lot of information to be had. Just the opening cutscene which suggests he finished the project alone and the game story itself (which I haven't checked) that states it is an X-Com project cut loose. I believe it's stated that funds were the issue, is that the most likely event? It could simply be that X-Com deemed it too much of a powerhouse for the covert operation. This would have been compounded by the good professor's inclination to develop insane weapons and a jump pack for the monster. Maybe X-Com simply refused to allow the professor continue with his over the top design to work on somethig cheaper, more compact and better suited to populated areas, the HWP.

 

The mystery would still remain of how the professor and the Enforcer managed to get to this other secret lab though, and where did the lab even come from? All we know is it was somewhere in Nevada and there are plenty of theory about the bases out there... Perhaps there was an old X-Com facility in the area that was deemed insecure at the outbreak of war. It would have been abandonned somewhat hastily allowing the prof to cop a squat. It would also explain how the aliens found it before the Enforcer was even fully operational however...

 

Quite where the materials for the project came from would remain a mystery but with so many other secret bases nearby perhaps NKF has a point? Warehouse raids could certainly yield SOME useful loot. Perhaps the professor was even in cahoots with the US government?! Let's not forget that although the US government formed part of the funding council for X-Com they had literally zero say in what went on there. We can assume the yanks wouldn't be best pleased about this... Area 51 was involved in the first contact operation at Roswell if I remember my facts correctly so they would be pretty ticked off when X-Com suddenly cut them out of the program. I reckon they'd be happy to accomodate and maybe even fund the professor and his Enforcer project if he promises them something in return. Like an army of Enforcers once the prototype is complete perhaps, or simply that his creation will operate solely in the US to protect her citizens (as in the game that's just what it does!) Let's not forget that the base, bot and prof are all lost to Earth at the end of the war so whatever arrangement existed would be null and void. No loose ends there...

 

Just found this worrying snippet in the wiki...

 

X-COM: Enforcer is the fifth game in the X-COM series, but takes place in a time line separate to that established by the first four games of the series.
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I wouldn't take the wiki note too close to heart. It's more than likely the authors wish to distance the game from the series.

 

A quick glance at the relevant bits of the storyline section in the manual suggests that the Enforcer project, amongst other programs, had been stopped due to funding cuts around the time the aliens started a campaign of terror by invading cities and urban centres.

 

According to this, the lab is the professors own private lab. No mention of how he took his work home or how he continues to fund the work. All the while he listens into X-Com reports and even taps X-Com's global monitoring system to learn of the alien landings. He then teleports Enforcer to the sites before X-Com troops can arrive. Not too much else, but all this suggests to me he's a bit of a vigilante.

 

I think the general assumption he is loopy just comes from the way he acts in the game. You just can't help it after listening to him for so long. wink.png

 

- NKF

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Is it possible that he once worked for a secret US project in Nevada? Then this entire base was already established and funded before the AW. Perhaps he and his team was then headhunted by X-Com due to their work on bi-pedal tech and so the facility fell out of use when they left!

 

It's then possible that funding was only part of the reason the project was cancelled and the rest had to do with Standard's difference of opinion with the rest of the team and inability to be flexible with regards to what was required by X-Com and his own intentions for the project.

 

Perhaps when things began to fall apart he secretly discussed the project with his former bosses and managed to open sale negotiations between them and X-Com. They agreed to the sale but refused to release any of the personnel involved. Only Standard was to return to the facility following his discharge for breach of trust/ethics or what have you...

 

This explains how he got the lab, the enforcer and all those spare parts. It also explains why he is working alone (sort of) but not why a new team hasn't been assigned to him or why he doesn't seem to answer to any higher authority.

 

The issue with the teleporter is pretty serious though as Silencer makes a valid point. How did he get it and why hasn't he shared it? Of course we could potentially dismiss it to make life easier but that's a cheat. An alternative would be that the prof comes into possession of this technology after leaving X-Com when the aliens invade his lab. He could potentially reverse engineer the alien transporter technology in order to obtain the ability to teleport inorganic material only. That stops it being such a huge issue in the rest of the canon... This tech is for some reason never shared with the rest of the world and is lost after the war when the professor dies. The fact also remains that the Enforcer's primary objective is consistently to destroy all alien transporters so it's quite easy to state that no other examples were ever recovered...

 

Personally, I find it hard to include the transporter tech in an Enforcer viewed from an EU standpoint though. I'd be happier to see the larger forces arriving in some sort of drop-pods or similar known technology that doesn't have quite such serious technological implications for mankind...

 

Might be difficult deciding where to draw the line on this one!

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Referencing the manual again, the Enforcer project is to fuse advanced robotics with alien technology, so there's no doubt X-Com would have already obtained some nice hardware to study from a recovered UFO, placing the time line somewhere in the middle of the game. The manual also mentions that the teleporter the doctor uses is a variant of alien matter transfer technology. So pretty much the professor made it up himself. wink.png

 

I sometimes wonder if the grav-lifts in the game were meant to be teleporters.

 

- NKF

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I'm going to get my manual :P

 

It doesn't hurt that Enforcer starts midway through the game, it does mean that it was NOT being developed side by side with the HWP though which is what I'd always assumed and advocated. Perhaps it was developed alongside the hovertank? Both use alien alloys and weapons along with the ability to fly...

 

Not convinced that the prof would have enough access to alien tech to develop the teleportation tech himself. At least not until his base is attacked by the alien transporters. This may be one part of in-game canon that needs disputing in order to tie well with in a franchise canon... I suppose reverse engineering the tech from alien transporters DOES still work as a theory though doesn't it?

 

Have we decided that we should consider the teleportation aspect of the game canon now? As it's a pretty major consideration! Another one is the alien mother ship but that won't be in the manual... Anyone know if we can access the cut scenes from the CD or something? I played through the whole game in one night a few years ago but don't feel the urge to do it again just for a fe snippets of extra information!

 

I wondered about the lifts too but I think the in-game animation makes it pretty clear that they're grab operated. I also thought it was a little strange that X-Com could use them right off the bat though as I always assumed they would be psionically activated. A good argument against these lifts being teleporters is the horseshoe room in alien bases with the four small rooms on the lower level and a bunch of lifts. If these were teleporters rather than lifts why have this strange 'checkpoint' type room consisting of so four of them?

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