Alpha Protocol - Walkthrough Video

Originally Posted by Moriendor
Yep. The gameplay is very annoying and quite challenging even on easy unless you have a console controller plugged in and also some actual experience with the damn thing. Or if you're using a keyboard then it helps to be a pro piano player or something . I still don't know how I managed to put up with all the crap but the story was just too good to quit as far as I can remember. Fahrenheit was an awesome overall experience despite the crappy gameplay.

IMO Fahrenheit would've made for a fantastic art-house sci-fi/horror film. Or a comic, perhaps. But as a *game*… I have to say I'm with bkrueger here: it kinda sucked. It was a perfectly linear narrative interspersed with button-clicking hoops you had to jump through. I didn't find it particularly difficult (but then I'm a pretty fast and accurate typist); I just thought it was in entirely the wrong medium.

And yes, the story, characters, and settings were great (despite occasional warts like the cheesiest sex scene in any game ever, and taking a whizz to avoid going suicidal). But that's not enough for a game — you still need gameplay plus one or two other things, and that Fahrenheit just didn't deliver.

Originally Posted by Grandor Dragon
Perhaps there is an extra answer for when the counter runs out. An answer that will make you sound like Forrest Gump. Slow in the head.

Originally Posted by bkrueger
For me any really timed dialogue would be a reason not to buy a game. I have enough time pressure in real life.

I do believe, based on looking at that video, that one of the three/four choices is the "default" and will get chosen automatically when time runs out.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
From what I can remember that scene must've been less than two hours into the game.
I also doubt your "would have had to restart the game" bit. The game auto/checkpoint-saved at the beginning and at the end of every scene and sometimes in between on longer sequences. I don't see why you couldn't have just started over the scene from the beginning. As far as I can remember there was (unfortunately) no manual save feature and even if there was I still don't know how you could have possibly overwritten or voided the autosave at the beginning of that scene.
Honestly, I believe you either made that up or your memory has failed you.

I surely don't remember the exact save mechanism. But I do remember that I tried two or three times from the last autosave. May be it was like this: there is an autosave at the beginning of a "level" and after something like "cutscenes" . So if you wandered around the apartment looking around, then there came a cutscene showing the policeoutside the door. If you didn't start covering up already before that cutscene but only afterwards, you didn't have enough time. And probably there was an autosave at the "cutscene" overwriting that at the beginning of the appartment-"level".

If there were earlier saves I surely considered using one of these but probably I found that I would have to repeat half an hour ofthe game or something to do that.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
I guess this is PJ's point. Your earlier post suggests the timed responses alone are enough for you to avoid the game, whereas the real situation is probably more like "If I don't like the rest of the game enough, the timed responses might kill it for me".

Yes and no. Sure other qualities of the game may save it for me.

But what I conclude from the mere idea to add a timing to dialogues is: The designer wants to shift dialogue choices away from the "player thinking" department to the "player agility" department. May be thats what chamr likes and calls "make it a gameplay" choice.

And exactly this arises the suspicion that the design is more in the direction of "player skills", "competetive playstyle" dynamics instead of "character skills" and adventuring dynamic.

I don't like if the events in a game depend from how fast I do things. I accept it in the fighting department if it is an action game but I don't see why I should expect a better game, when it is added in other departments.

It still is consolization for me.

Originally Posted by VPeric
I do believe, based on looking at that video, that one of the three/four choices is the "default" and will get chosen automatically when time runs out.

If choices and consequences are in the game I don't want to be forced to default as a punishment for thinking too long.

Originally Posted by bkrueger
But what I conclude from the mere idea to add a timing to dialogues is: The designer wants to shift dialogue choices away from the "player thinking" department to the "player agility" department. May be thats what chamr likes and calls "make it a gameplay" choice.

And exactly this arises the suspicion that the design is more in the direction of "player skills", "competetive playstyle" dynamics instead of "character skills" and adventuring dynamic.

It's an action game. Clear as a bell. Player skills will be more important than character skills. I'm expecting a shooter with some light RPG elements to spice it up.