Alpha Protocol Retrospective

While it points out many of the game’s shortcomings, this retrospective of Alpha Protocol also highlights its many strengths, going so far as to say that Obsidian’s espionage-themed RPG is “a treasure trove of ideas and unspoiled systems just waiting to be cracked open and presented as new innovation.” Flaws or not, this is one of those games I’m very glad that I played extensively:

For all its faults though, what it does well it does really well. Alpha Protocol’s greatest tragedy is that its ideas and brilliance have been completely overlooked by the games that could have benefited so much from them. Deus Ex: Human Revolution for instance springs instantly to mind. So many times, in so many games since finishing it, I’ve caught myself saying “You know what this needs? The words Alpha Protocol 2 in its title.”

Rewind.

Alpha Protocol was “The Espionage RPG”, and for all its faults, it’s easily the best spy game ever made. By that, I mean it’s the only one that’s set in the modern world, and that has a crack at the entire experience – the action, which, say, Spycraft lacked, the social side ignored by the likes of Goldeneye, and at least an attempt at a strategic element via a web of contacts, assets, betrayals and negotiations with friends and enemies that nobody ever really bothers with, but deserves to be important part of any fictional agent’s life. Other games offered bits. Alpha Protocol did it all.

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The detail here is insane. The stats screen doesn’t just have “Pistol Shots Fired”, it’s got “Orphans Killed”. Contacts react differently depending not only on how you talk to them, but how you’ve performed in previous missions – and even whether you came to see them first. Old school assassin Marburg for instance respects professionalism, with his highest compliment being that he had no idea that you were even in town. If you’ve made a scene though, he’s disdainful of your methods. Likewise, if you’ve already spoken with a character he hates, German mercenary SIE will not be happy from the start. Even though it’s possible to finish the game and never even meet her.

This is how Alpha Protocol rolls throughout. Make a bad impression on a Russian contact, and a guy you need to save won’t trust you. A damsel rescued in Rome will quickly undistress herself if she decides Mike is as bad as the people she’s threatened by, ambushing him with a taser as he returns to his safehouse. A bungled raid on an NSA listening post can be brought up later, not as a big dramatic moment, but simply to point out that Thorton isn’t going to be able to use hero insurance to wipe it off his record. The game will always continue, but that doesn’t mean choices don’t have an impact. At the very, very least, the characters always act like they care.