More information about Obsidian’s Alpha Protocol comes at us from two more E3 previews posted over the past few days.
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E3 2009: SEGA’s Alpha Protocol
Another game that was being featured by SEGA is their upcoming espionage RPG, Alpha Protocol. You play a modern day spy with a morally ambiguous alignment that removes the good/bad elements normally found in role playing games.
The demo was lead by the game’s producer, Tim Ernst.
In this third-person RPG, you play as Michael Thornton and as with most RPGs, you are able to choose your look and weapons, and you are able to build trust with other characters. The dialog system has been shortened so you will not see the long sentences or paragraphs that you usually see in traditional RPGs. In Alpha Protocol, they have introduced a timer which creates some amount of tension by forcing you to choose to either be aggressive, to bluff, or to be honest. Each response will trigger something different between you and the other characters – making things easier or more difficult by using how you respond to people. As in real life, if you are constantly aggressive, you will find that you will make more enemies than you will friends and so-on.
The game also uses a reputation system that will affect how NPCs will perceive you. There are 9 different skills that you can level up throughout the game. Leveling up your skills will affect how well you can do certain thinks like hack into computers or use particular weapons. There are even a variety of hacking mini games that you will need to beat in order to break into computers to gather intel and more.
The game features many different weapons and armor that all have active skills and abilities that can be upgraded or modified.
You can choose to play the game with three different styles: combative, stealth, and attack. You can engage in melee combat where you can choose to subdue or kill your enemies. You can even score critical hits – if you keep the weapon reticle still, it will get smaller, and you can do more damage. You can even level up in martial arts for more hand to hand combat skills. With levels in the martial arts, you can go into Fury where you will enter a bullet-time mode that will slow time.
There are even mini boss battles – if you choose the attack option while in conversations, certain characters will go into a mini-boss battle mode. These generally don’t end in death but can change how the characters align with you.
When you complete missions, you go back to your safe house, your RPG hub, where you can check your email or go to the store to buy intel or buy and upgrade your weapons. There is even a dialog system within emails where you can choose to be brief, direct, or snarky!
During the demo, we got to see the same scene twice – each time using a different approach so that we could see just how much the character’s attitude will dramatically affect the outcome.
You can only go to Level 15, however, you will not max out your abilities your first run through. You will need to play the game a few more times in order to fully max out all your levels. The game promises 25+ hours of game play with over 40 missions available. With the new dialog system, playing the game 2-3 more times seems likely as the outcomes will be change dramatically each time you choose a different approach so there seems to be some replay value to the game.
My only issues with this version of the game was that the enemies seemed a little dumb. Also, I did notice that the subtitles overlapped notifications like when you gain points in certain abilities. I do hope this gets changed in the released version. However, we were later notified that the game is still buggy, the kinks are being ironed out, and that the AI had to be lowered for E3 for demonstration purposes.
Alpha Protocol comes out later this fall for the Xbox 360, PS3, and the PC.
E3 Impressions: Bond, Bourne, Both, or Neither? In Alpha Protocol, It’s Your Choice
In a way, Alpha Protocol reminded me of fellow E3 sleeper hit Scribblenauts. See, both games stumped me – Scribblenauts through a clever, mind-bogglingly detailed word entry system, and Alpha Protocol because no matter where I tried to poke holes in its concept and execution, developer Obsidian Software was always one step ahead. Of all the games I saw at the show, Alpha Protocol was the only one that really had me silently mumbling, “They thought of everything.”
At first glance, you could be forgiven for thinking Alpha Protocol and Mass Effect were separated at birth. After all, both are chock full of smooth-talking macho main characters, third-person gun-centric dead-making, and a cast of mouthy side characters who serve as a peanut gallery to your morally motivated actions. Thing is, Alpha Protocol takes many of those shared fundamentals and does them up in suave spy style, resulting in an RPG that’s both streamlined and familiar. The bottom line: if you generally like BioWare RPGs but think they could use a few tweaks here and there, keep reading.
After a quick look at the character customization screen, our presenter tossed main character Michael Thorton straight into a mission. The objective: infiltrate a Russian Mafia compound and make life difficult for the Russians primarily by shooting them. However, seconds into the mission, a gun-toting mercenary named Sie, whose tank top was wholly unsuited to the snowy weather, bounded onto the scene. Working with an organization called the VCI, she was also out to spill some Mafia blood. Thus, our silver-tongued spy did his thing.
Here, we saw the game’s conversation system in action. Like Mass Effect, Alpha Protocol presents you with a series of phrases that get at the gist of your character’s response without actually blabbing the whole thing. There’s a twist, though: chit-chat in Alpha Protocol is on a timer. Nope – students of the Captain Shepard “stare blankly ahead for fifteen minutes while trying to untie your tongue” school of conversation etiquette aren’t welcome here. As a result, conversation never skips a beat, making speech an involving, straight-to-the-point action – not unlike that of the spy movies that inspired the game.
As if you weren’t already under enough pressure, your choices in conversation also affect other characters’ opinions of you. In the demonstration I saw, the presenter chose to put up his verbal dukes and get a bit rough with Sie. Surprisingly, she actually liked this, and Thorton’s reputation with Sie increased. In the end, Sie agreed to let Thorton do his own thing, so long as he didn’t get in her way. That whole exchange seemed to indicate an element of unpredictability to the game’s reputation system, which – to me – would seem to make getting everyone to either hate your guts or lick your high tech Q-manufactured jet boots somewhat of a challenge. With any luck, this will make sticking to a single persona more appealing than trying to tailor your responses to what Character X obviously likes or Character Y obviously hates.
After parting ways with Sie, our presenter decided to forget stealth and instead barrel through the facility, guns blazing. The bloodbath began normally enough, but before long, our presenter broke out a couple skills, one that allowed him to quickly lock onto enemies’ vital points, and another that hulked up his melee damage to bone-shattering levels. We were also shown a bit of stealth – which, I imagine, terrified enemies allowed to be performed on them simply because they’d already seen their comrades’ barely recognizable husks and wanted their demises to be quick and clean. Stealth takedowns came in two flavors: lethal and non-lethal. Apparently, non-lethal takedowns are best used when infiltrating friendly territories. Beyond that, well, just remember, God is watching.
However, even He doesn’t seem to care too much, as evidenced by the next confrontation Thorton encountered. At the end of the mission, Sie approached once more, and this time, our presenter chose to betray her. I, of course, flinched in apprehension of the heavily portended “Evil Points Acquired” notification that’d surely result from such an action. But it never came. From what I could tell, Alpha Protocol has no good vs. evil morality system in place. You’re judged by other characters and that’s that. I might’ve written an entire editorial essentially about this topic, so I’m just a wee bit thrilled about this.
With Sie non-lethally defeated (and, I’m guessing, slightly confused), Thorton was given the choice to either send his big mission objective – some missiles – back to an arms dealer he was working with, or simply destroy them as ordered. So, do you lose some reputation with your bosses and get some new equipment, or do you make an honest living? Quality of the options given notwithstanding, the point here was that choices are everywhere in Alpha Protocol, which can apparently lead to all manner of diverging plotlines.
Color me impressed. After the presentation ended, though, I still had one ace up my sleeve. Jokingly, I asked if – like James Bond – your main character could potentially romantically “get with” all the main female characters in the game. “Yes,” said the presenter. “There’s even an achievement for that.”
October can’t get here soon enough.
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