Alpha Protocol - Previews @ GamePro, Thunderbolt

A couple of Alpha Protocol previews from PAX East, spotted by GameBanshee. First, GamePro:

Alpha Protocol will no doubt draw constant comparisons to Mass Effect 2 when it releases this summer, and for good reason; the conversation system is virtually identical, and the leveling system even appears to be very similar. While developers Obsidian Entertainment would have players believe that AP is a mixture of Bourne, Bauer, and Bond, in video game terms it's probably more accurate to call it a m‚lange of Mass Effect 2's RPG and conversation elements with a touch of Metal Gear Solid. The "three B's" analogy is still apt though; one of the neatest things I saw in the conversation system was that each possible response tends to correspond with one of those characters. Essentially this isn't a Bourne/Bond/Bauer mash up like many other spy games--it's a Bourne, Bond, Bauer lifestyle choice made by the player.

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...and Thunderbolt:

With the demonstration concluded and the story hook revealed, one of the developers from Obsidian opened the floor up for a brief QA session. Much like the Madison sequence from earlier, he continued to stress how the combat could have been approached differently and how the General could have been spared. Keeping with the many middles theme it was revealed that the game has close to twelve hours of cut-scenes, but given the branching nature of the storyline it’s likely during a single playthrough you’ll only see about four hours worth.

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More information.

A bit miffed that people still don't seem to be seeing the bigger differences between ME and this. It's true that the cinematic dialogue and the "dialogue wheel" looks similar of course, but I'd say it's pretty damn big difference seeing as how A) the dialogue is timed in AP and B) you can't repeat any conversations in AP.

Same goes for the gameplay. Comparisons could be made to ME2s missions. But in AP there will be different paths through the missions and your skills seems to affect how you'll get through them in a rather important way. In this way, I think AP is leaning more towards the RPG side of things and ME2 leaning more towards the action side of things (with both games being action-RPGs). I also think the player will play a much more active role in how the story plays out in AP though that remains to be seen.

Though of course ME2 has the more "classic RPG" approach of walking around in some hub areas while AP seems to be almost exclusively mission based (with interludes in between the missions in safehouses).

Don't get me wrong, there are many similarities on the surface, but I think the games look pretty damn different from one another if one just looks past the surface. Sorta like BG and PS:T even though both are using the IE engine (though I think the differences between ME and AP will be greater still, seperate rulesets for one).