Alpha Protocol is a damn good game! Here, I said it. It is not perfect by any means. It has flaws, but I really, really enjoyed it. After playing largely disappointing titles such as Mirror’s Edge and Just Cause 2, Alpha Protocol delivered for me. It provided me with the thing I have been craving the most in the last few months – a good story.
It starts a little weak – you become a member of a super-secret spy organization and you are sent to investigate terrorist activity in the middle east because some bad guy got his hands on some dangerous rockets and shot down some passenger plains. Little bit boring, but that’s just the first few missions. Once you get through them, the thott plickens quite significantly. You end up with a roster full of double and triple agent NPC’s who work for organizations which are fronts for organizations secretly funded by fronts of companies that are not what they seem to be. One could even say it gets too complex. I finished the game once, but I’m not entirely sure I fully understood everything that happened in the game. But I loved every second of it. Well, except of the annoying parts but more on that later.
Michael Thornton played by Zach Galafinakis
What really amazed me in this game was the fact that your choices do matter. The game offers you 3 quest chains (Russia, Grece and Taiwan) that you are free to tackle in any order. But choices you make in each one, will affect the events not only in the current location but also affect things in the other two. Bribing the local weapon’s dealer may come back to haunt you when he sells the information about you to your enemies. Accidentally killing marines while infiltrating US embassy will definitely come up in the future. Failing to obtain evidence of an assassination plot will cause someone to die. The game has a definite replay value because different choices will not only generate different dialog options but also give you different game play experience.
Compare that to for example Mass Effect or Fallout 3 – both games which I love dearly – which offer you a mere illusion of choice. For example try playing Mass Effect 2 as a renegade right after finishing it as a paragon (or vice versa). The experience will be almost identical – the only difference is that at the key moments your character will use threats instead of persuasion. In Alpa Protocol being a jerk to the wrong NPC may cause a mission to be more difficult as they can betray you or send in troops to thwart your plan. On the other hand being a jerk to the right NPC may score you a bonus perk, or give you useful intelligence. You never know, until you screw yourself over and then it’s too late to change anything.
Btw, I still haven't exactly figured out what was the agenda of Albatros and his group. Probably because I antagonized them early on.
That’s the other thing that I love about this game – there is no universal karma meter. Obsidian did exactly what I have been asking for all this time. They implemented a reputation system that eschews some global counter in lieu of many smaller ones – each associated with a specific NPC. Gaining or losing reputation with one NPC does not affect your standing with others. More importantly, each NPC has a different personality – so the old RPG trick of always choosing the nice guy option won’t work in this game. Some NPC’s will like when you are a jerk to them because they will interpret it as a sign of strength. Some female NPC’s will love when you flirt with them, but others will shoot you down mercilessly. Some love joking around, while others prefer to keep things professional. You have to get a feel for each character in the game and choose the dialog options appropriately – you know, kinda like in real life.
Sie hates flirting, but she will totally throw herself on you when you are all professional and businesslike all the time.
Oh, and another thing – NPC’s don’t evesdrop on your private conversations. In Mass Effect 2 I spent a lot of time talking to Jack because I found her to be an interesting character. This inadvertently opened up the romance option with her. But then I found out that I could romance Tali – something I have been dying to do since Mass Effect 1. So I quickly started chatting her up – only to have other NPC’s tell me that I should break up with Jack if I want to pursue Tali. When I went to see Jack, she just cursed me out because she somehow magically found out what I was about to say to her. This sort of thing does not happen in Alpha Protocol I was totally James Bonding the crap out of every lady I have met (I mean, hell – I’m a spy, that sort of thing comes with the job, no?) and neither one knew about the other. Hell, I don’t even think my super-possessive and jealous handler have completely figured out why I chose to save Madison in the Spider-man Choice scene. Or maybe she did – but she never said anything because I was careful not to tell her what exactly I was up to with Madison.
I don't know what's on the news Madison. I've been out all day killing people while you sit here and watch TV. You tell me. Preferably in the bedroom over there while we undress.
And yes, the game is big on forcing you to make fucked up choices at critical points. There is one that is the classic Spider-man problem. On the left, bunch of innocent people. On the right, that girl you like. They are all going to die but you only have enough time to save one. Now choose! I chose the girl, because I thought I was Spider-man for a second there. I guess I’m too genre-savvy for my own good. I fully expected the game to reward me for choosing the girl by giving me enough time to save the innocent people as well. That’s exactly what would happen in a Bioware game for example. One of these would be the right choice, while the other one would totally suck. In Alpha Protocol both suck – and boy did I pay for that choice. I’m serious, the game kept rubbing it in calling my character impulsive, unprofessional, reckless, easily controlled and etc.. They kept guilt-tripping me about it – I chose to save some skirt and let bunch of innocent people die. It really made me feel horrible about my choice.
Mina does now know about my indiscretions. Also - my favorite thing to do: turning my back on the people I talk to on the big screen.
And this, ladies and gentlemen is what I want in my games. Difficult choices that mean something. Making a choice only to have it blow up in your face is maddening and frustrating but in a good way. This is the kind of frustration that I want to experience. There is the other kind – the kind where the game snatches the choice away from you at the last minute. The kind where you suddenly realize you have 4 dialog options but they all say the same thing – which is the opposite of what you wanted to say. This is a sort of staple – a standard operating protocol for Bethesda and Bioware as of late. And I was very pleased to see Obsidian chose to write their game differently.
All these things really made me rise my hopes for Fallout New Vegas. If they can combine this freedom of choice with the open ended sandbox environment of a Fallout game, we may have a hit on our hands. Of course these high hopes are sufficiently tampered by all that sucks about Alpha Protocol. But I will talk about this stuff next time.
I’ve considered buying it, but as every other game released by Obsidian Entertainment, I heard it’s quite buggy. I’ll wait for a couple of patches before I try it out, you certainly make it sound like it’s a game I’d enjoy, if only for the story. I hope the game’s poor sales (SEGA announced there won’t be a sequel because they’re too low) won’t delay said patches too much.
From the review I’ve read and comments I’ve heard, the game is really marred by little bugs and annoyances, when will Obsidian ever learn ? You need a big name to get away with releasing a buggy game (Bethesda Softworks…), outsiders need to spend time on polish if they want to avoid the review bashing. It’s not like they had a good reputation or a famous IP to fall back on, they needed good reviews to get the gamer’s interest.
have you finished the game ? because my response to this post would be devastatingly spoilerific
i liked the game a lot on my first run (at least until the ending), it went downhill from there (i still think its worth checking out, the bugs and the minigames can be tolerated with some patience), i cant say much without going into details, ill just say the story works to set up the gameplay but for an espionage game where you are expecting at least 30 conspiracies and 100 twists, it feels kind of … simple
about the “let die the woman you can have sex with… or suffer the little statues (and apparently museum visitors youll never see any evidence of)” sadistic choice, actually i found that one quite stupid, if you save her everyone tells you that you made the wrong choice (including her, i didnt sex her up in that playthough tho it might change if you did and retroactively for other chars if you havent met them yet), make the other one and everyone tells you made the right choice (and i mean EVERYONE, not one person vouched for the lady with the long neck during that playthough), also i felt kind of pissed you couldnt fail saving her, if you *accidentally* kill her (like for example with several incendiary overloaded grenades… oops, or by shooting her in the head, oops again) its game over, why is it ok for her to die if you go right but it breaks the game if you go left ?
The Witcher had an interesting take on consequences of your choices, no matter what you choose the game would always tell you you made the wrong one making you want to go back and try the other one, i cant say its the best way to do it but it certainly made me remember them and the consequences attached
and about Albatross’s motivation, during my first walkthough i was the bestestestest of friends with him and i never found out his motivation either, in fact nobody has any plausible motivation in this game and the ones that do, have one so weak you keep expecting a twist that never comes
@ Zel:
Yeah, there were some bugs but overall I’d say it was less buggy than Fallout 3. AP never crashed to desktop for me. Fallout 3 on the other hand did that all the time.
@ JKjoker:
Yep, I finished it – feel free to spoil away.
JKjoker wrote:
Huh, I didn’t know that. I was very careful not to kill her the first time around. I assumed she would just die.
Alpha protocol still has the “illusion of choice” approach, but unlike bioware games it is well implemented, the game makes you believe you changed something (usually with dialogue or emails), spoken lines change a lot with choices, the gameplay stays the same no matter what tho
examples of how the gameplay “changes”: VCI mercs get replaced by Sam Fisher fans, same quantity, same weapons, same AI
police agents get replaced by marines wearing armor (again same everything they just take more bullets to die)
a few useless mooks may try to help you, shoot at you or just not appear, they make no difference whatsoever because the AI is pathetic
if you are a jerk you get access to vendors that like you being a jerk, if you are not a jerk you get access to venders that dont like you being a jerk, other vendor sell you in any case (only change is the email where they tell you they like you/are afraid of you), at most the only change is that in one case you get access to smgs and in other to assault rifles and since the change between them is pretty much nil it doesnt matter
if you befriend or not characters (the most important ones which you meet in the Russian mission, either its meant to be the first location or they developed that one first and ran out of time) the only changes are that they offer to be your handlers in 2 or 3 missions or maybe appear for 5 minutes at one point and help you take down 3 mooks you could have killed easily by yourself, only changing a few lines of dialogue and the perks you get (pointless perks that do nothing)
you shouldnt expect anything to change other than the dialogue, that part does change a LOT, its too bad the gameplay or the story arent interesting enough to replay the game, it seems like for everything obsidian did well, they had to screw it up somewhere else, and dialogue is completely chaotic btw, you often dont have a freaking clue what your character is going to say or even what he is going to do, a character asks you to do something, click on the “No Problem” button and your character says “No problem, dickhead. you know what ? your momma is so fat she has to diet to enter the diet clinic” (-1 with x character)
the gameplay is very unbalanced and illogical, enemies usually take 1 shot to the head or 500 to the torso to die, i played it on PC so even in the hardest difficulty its a piece of cake (the pistol’s queue 7 shots in frozen time = 7 enemies dead by the press of a single button), stealth is completely broken (they either see you all the time or never) and for all the features they stole from SC conviction not one is implemented properly, yet the game is strangely fun to play, i guess i like the setting
the story works, but its the most godawful generic story straight out of tvtropes ive ever seen, there is not 1 single twist, its an espionage story with NO TWISTS and the most generic “conspiracy” ever that gets revealed 5 minutes into the game, even worse the game tries to “build up tension” putting scenes of your character talking with “Big Bad”about the “choices” at the end that tension blows up into a big ball of nothing as your character sails into the ocean alone or with the few allies you have left (i let everyone die the first time, none of the characters is likable in any way) after a few AWFUL boss battles (the last level is apparently supposed to change a lot with your choices but i havent played it more than once, im not sure i can take those boss battles again)
speaking about the boss battles, Obsidian apparently confused spliter cell with devil may cry, they all go for melee and are bullet sponges, they take forever to kill (unless you have the deadly pistol and use the skill to queue 7 shots into the boss’s face) and kick your ass all the time even if you know your kung fu
oh and i cant close without mention the minigames … goddamn minigames… cant we let those die already ?
every time i write about this game i keep wondering why i like it, its worth trying, its many many many flaws are still worth tolerating for the dialogue and the parts where you feel like a badass and that just makes me so pissed about the things Obsidian left without polish