Your donations keep RPGWatch running!
Box Art

Alpha Protocol - Previews @ 1Up, Kotaku

by Dhruin, 2009-06-11 00:12:05

A decent Alpha Protocol preview is up at 1Up, describing the scenario in Obsidian's E3 presentation.  Here's a bit on the dialogue system:

When the actual mission starts, Thorton is immediately presented with a dialogue/decision point: the Russian Mafiya is under attack by another organization known as the VCI. The VCI representative, Sie, is best described as a "mercenary cougar", and she proposes a temporary alliance with Thorton. Throughout the whole dialogue system, I notice that the responses are timed, and they never repeat; you can't dilly-dally while talking and you can't just have the characters endlessly restate stuff over and over again. The conversation briskly moves forward, and depending on the choices you make, you gain and lose reputation with the individual character you're dealing with. So there doesn't seem to be a global "are you a good or bad dude" meter; it's more like how much does each significant character likes you. Rorie has Thorton make direct, aggressive, and no-nonsense statements, gains quite a bit of reputation with Sie as a result, and then agrees to a temporary truce.

Kotaku has a much shorter piece - here's a bit on player vs character skill with weapons:

I was most intrigued by the way the weapons operate. Since the game plays like a shooter, but is actually an RPG, Obsidian had to find the right mix to reflect both styles of play. What they ended up with was a system that used your skill ratings and the weapon type to impact the size of your targeting reticule. The more skilled you are with a weapon, the better the weapon is, the smaller the reticule is.

So when you're fire off shots with a gun you're not proficient with, your reticule is pretty big and the shots can go anywhere in that targeting circle, either hitting or missing your target depending on how much space they take up in the reticule. It's a great way to have skill levels impact a shooter without taking control away from the player.

The Obsidian site also has news of some E3 award nominations for AP.

Information about

Alpha Protocol

SP/MP: Single-player
Setting: Modern
Genre: Action-RPG
Platform: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Release: Released


Details