No spoilers in here - just some stuff that I either missed or wasn't explained well.

At the start of the game, you can choose your background, which determines the agency you're initially employed by. Additionally, you also have a handler from this agency.

All of this makes perfect sense - you start with your home agency, then build up a team of agents from wherever you can, since you're fighting a conspiracy that has infiltrated organisations around the world.

However, when the game starts, you already have a small team - which is comprised of agents drawn from intelligence organisations around the world. Which is fine, except you still start with a handler from your home agency - which would indicate that the operation (and therefore, the team) is part of that same agency (at least initially).

So what I want to know is, why is a CIA/KGB/Mossad operation comprised of agents drawn from all over? Is this some kind of international agent exchange program run by your home agency, and they're on secondment or something?

I get that at some point your team is effectively a separate entity, answering to no official intel org of any nation - except at the start that's not the case, since you have a handler (so I assume you're initially considered loyal to your Nation).

So... did I accidentally skip some plot points at the start? I get why we'd want to distance ourselves, and it also makes sense to recruit agents from other places - after a certain point the whole premise makes a lot of sense (in the context). I'm just wondering what the purpose of this multi-national spy outfit was originally created for. At the moment, it just kind of... exists.... because... ??

If the reason is simply "this is a cell from CIA/KGB/Mossad whose initial purpose was to find enemy agents in the world and potentially recruit them to turn them against their enemies" - or something along similar lines - that makes some sense. It's just that this isn't really communicated in the game at the moment. Or I'm overthinking it... ;)

Yeah when I said "intel org" that probably wasn't broad enough - but you know what I mean, they come from various organisations (official and otherwise).

OK what you posted are (roughly) the lines I was thinking along - except it raises the question of who created this group and for what purpose? After a few chapters this doesn't matter any more - and I believe in all storylines there quickly becomes a point where you're effectively no longer working for your original employer - and at THAT point your purpose becomes more clear as well.

I guess initially we're a team ostensibly run by CIA/KGB/Mossad, but comprised of agents from all over - it's just not explained. As a comparison, in the XCOM games it's made clear that your organisation is international and separate from everyone else, accepting people from all over the world - while here it seems like the team was created before there was a need for a separate team (if that makes sense)?

Meh, I'm probably overthinking it. It's probably just a case of the game effectively merging "official" operatives (recruited to an agency from their own population) and "spies" (foreign nationals generally recruited to carry out covert ops and drawn from the target country).

I'm currently enjoying the feeling of getting snippets of data, not really knowing what's going on, yet still trying to stop whatever it is while gradually uncovering more. I definitely don't understand those reviewers that didn't find the story engaging - I suspect they were confused and didn't want to admit it. ;)

Agents always come from various countries if thats what you mean. Its for different cover IRL actually. I mean, you cant send a white guy into a terrorist cell to find intel on them, you send someone from the middle east to do that job.

Yeah of course - but that person from the middle east will not generally be a trusted member of the team and wouldn't likely be training with them. I imagine they'd be used to get intel (so closer to the "informer" in the game).

The alternative could be sending someone from your own country who is descended from someone in the general region - e.g. a loyal operative who can pass as a member of a particular group/culture - but in that case the operative would still be from your organisation. So I'd imagine you'd have a CIA guy whose parents emigrated from Saudi Arabia or something - as opposed to, say, someone from Saudi intelligence.

But as I said I think I'm overthinking this - or I'm remembering one too many Clancy or Forsythe novels - and the whole team setup makes a lot more sense a few chapters in.

Edit: Of course the agency association could actually just be part of their "cover" as well - which would make sense, except it's fixed per agent, so it likely indicates their origin (also, the occasional "event" that occurs related to agents seems to support this).

Why wouldnt they be trusted? Obviously the agency does make a background check on all agents first anyways. You dont have to be from a specific country to be loyal towards its secret agency.

Well yeah they do background checks, but if they're from another country - especially another country's intelligence agency, military or Government - then they're effectively a "defector". Valuable to recruit - yet the thinking apparently is, if they defected once, they can do so again. Also defecting is a kind of treason. Naturally that's often not true (defectors tend to often become incredibly loyal, and don't defect back or anywhere else as far as I know).

BTW I'd better clarify that I consider immigrants that have been naturalised (e.g. they become citizens of USA after immigrating) to be equivalent to US-born citizens - so they're not what I'm talking about here. I would expect someone who takes a citizenship oath to be just as potentially trustworthy as someone who was born there. And finally, in the game practically everyone has an original organisation that they belonged to, which are all similar - military, spy agency, organised crime, etc.

This is just going off of various Tom Clancy novels. While fiction, Tom Clancy did get a lot of research help from ex-service members and the like - pretty sure there were some (ex)-intelligence officials among them. Possibly also "Spycraft" (the PC game), which featured ex-KGB and ex-CIA directors as actors (playing themselves, mostly). For what it's worth.

I dont think they worry that much about anyone defecting back to wherever theyre from. How things usually go is, they send new agents on easy assignments, like a loyalty test. Sometimes its a trap of sorts if they would screw over their new boss.

I meant more the people agencies recruit that were not spies to begin with tho. And recruiting other spies is a lot harder than recruiting simply a government person like someone close to politicians.

Some people (in real life) have been approached to spy though not being initially spies themselves, just civilians. For instance an American was recruited to spy for the KGB even though he had no position or even job... yet. He spent years training before he even got into the navy and was able to get secret papers. His father had however been a spy for a long time.

He was only found out because another close relative was then approached to spy, she declined and told someone else who spilled the beans.

True, I imagine this happens quite often - from what I understand, actual "operatives" (from the actual spy agency) generally recruit locals to do the actual spying, while the operatives for the most part would set up drops/meetings with the spy and then pass this intel on to their organisation. While sometimes they'd end up recruiting enemy operatives (i.e. double agents), for the most part they'd likely want to recruit people with inside knowledge about enemy activities (military R&D, internal politics, etc.).

As for what you've described, it sounds very similar to something I read about a while back - in this case, the KGB used their existing (US) connections to help this individual succeed, which ultimately lead him to be employed by the CIA and rise to a reasonably high level in their ranks, and they also gave him training such as how to beat lie detector tests and the like. That particular case was Aldrich Ames, one of the biggest moles in CIA history. He was actively spying for the KGB for decades. I believe he was caught in part due to not hiding the extra income from the KGB terribly well...