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Alpha Protocol |OT| Bourne, Avellone, Denton, and the Agency's Sagacious Secrets

Tokubetsu

Tokubetsu

Member
Digging it as much as I thought I would. Saudi Arabia was awful but the game got so much better once I hit Taipei. Loving the dialogue system, though I wish the stuff in dossiers seemed more helpful during conversations.
 
D

Des0lar

will learn eventually
Ok so wtf,
Omen Deng
is unbeatable to me. How can this happen, that certain skillsets are impossible to play with. I did Taipei first, so all I have are Shadow Operative and the first Chain Shot available. I can't defeat him for the love of god. His Shotgun outmatches my poor assault rifle skills, and I suck at meleeing his ass.
Can't get past his recharging shield. So basically I'm fucked and have to do Rome or Moscow first, till I'm good enough for him?
Fuck that, I really liked the game, but something like that just blows.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
I was happy to see that this got around an 80 in the latest PC Gamer (US edition). That sounds just about right to me. Alpha Protocol would have been a true classic if they had hammered out the mechanics a bit more, but as it stands it is just a very good game.
 
Nemesis_

Nemesis_

Member
Des0lar said:
Ok so wtf,
Omen Deng
is unbeatable to me. How can this happen, that certain skillsets are impossible to play with. I did Taipei first, so all I have are Shadow Operative and the first Chain Shot available. I can't defeat him for the love of god. His Shotgun outmatches my poor assault rifle skills, and I suck at meleeing his ass.
Can't get past his recharging shield. So basically I'm fucked and have to do Rome or Moscow first, till I'm good enough for him?
Fuck that, I really liked the game, but something like that just blows.
Click to expand...

Abuse Chain Shot + Pistol.

Shadow Operative to hide.

Rinse and repeat.
 
D

Des0lar

will learn eventually
Nemesis556 said:
Abuse Chain Shot + Pistol.

Shadow Operative to hide.

Rinse and repeat.
Click to expand...

With only basic Chain Shot, my pistol shots won't penetrate his health bar. So my Chain Shot is useless.
 
Tokubetsu

Tokubetsu

Member
So my ending basically played out like an epic spy revenge movie:
Fucked Sie, left Mina to die since I though my handle [sie] would die If I didn't hurry to her. Convinced Parker he didn't have all the intel so he sorta joined my side and left me intel. Never saw westdridge or marburg IIRC but I did put a bullet in Lelands fucking eye. Fairy certain I got away with everything because of all the evidence I had. Thornton was going on a bout losing himself for awhile and how the only thing he had to worry about was being bored. Basically everyone died save me and sie? She wasn't at the boat though.
 
Q

quaere

Member
So I've now failed a section about two dozen times in a row - on normal difficulty at that.

It's
protecting Surkov.
EDIT: Nevermind. I got past it the first time after discovering the magic of the flashbang :lol
 
D

Danne-Danger

Member
aswedc said:
So I've now failed a section about two dozen times in a row - on normal difficulty at that.

It's
protecting Surkov.

Now I've done the research and looked at the strategies other people are using...

Run around punching guys? No way, unless I am next to him or behind him he's dead in under 15 seconds from a someone coming up to close range. I have no idea how anyone has been successful with this.
Click to expand...
It's really just trying to draw the attention away from the guy and you'll complete the mission. Running around punching dudes is a good way to get attention, though shooting while out of cover works as well. If you have flashbangs, they're good for stunning groups of guys, I guess grenades could be useful since the enemies tend to (when I did it, albeit only once) group together.

I think the mission ends when he reaches the gate, meaning that you don't have to kill a bunch of guys, just keep them occupied and stay alive.

*Heh, good job!
 
L

luxarific

Nork unification denier
Manos: The Hans of Fate said:
Oh did anyone geek out when James Hong popped up as a voice for
the Triad boss in Taiwan
? James Hong appearing in something is always a sign of awesome for me!
Click to expand...


It was so much fun hearing him in this game. Also Nolan North as Steven Heck. :lol <3 <3 <3 Voice of the Forever.

Just finished up a Sabotage/Evasion/CQC run. Invisibility is so overpowered by the end of the game, it's a little ridiculous. I mean it was fun to go invisible and wipe out an entire room full of bad guys, don't get me wrong, but it really unbalances the endgame. They should have countered the power of invisibility by having some sort of reaction from the bad guys when their buddy right next to them keels over dead for no explicable reason. :lol

I was annoyed that I didn't get
Albatross as a handler choice for the endgame even though I saved his life and Sis's. He was only at about a 4 approval though (I pissed him off by implying that his use of Sis as a bodyguard was abusive), so that might have been it.

Will try a Max Asshole run next time through. I was way too nice to people on this run.
 
F

Fredescu

Member
What's supposed to happen when you kill
Darcy
? Whatever it is, it didn't happen and I can't find a way to progress. Would rather not reload, but I guess I might have to.
 
D

dejan

Member
I finished my first playthrough over the weekend and I enjoyed my time with Alpha Protocol. Specialized in Pistols, Sabotage and Toughness with the remaining AP points spent on Technical Aptitude (Basic Armor Customization) and Stealth (Basic Awareness) and with the exception of one or two instances the game felt kinda easy on normal especially the bossfights (Chain Shot -> Brilliance -> Chain Shot).
If I had to summarize my thoughts on Alpha Protocol, i would say that there's a lot to be learned from this game both positive and negative and other developers should definitely take note.

Stuff that worked really great:
- characters and most of their dialog
- Alpha Protocol's take on choices and consequences
- NPC reputation system
- aquiring perks by just "playing the game"
- RPG in a real world setting

Stuff that needed more time in the oven:
- dialog wheel (time constraint is fine, but there needs to be a bit more context to be able to make a deliberate decision)
- cover mechanics and gunplay
- enemy A.I.
- the crouch-walk animation (WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK)

What I really missed throughout my playthrough were some kind of hub worlds. I mean you travel to Moscow, Rome et al., but there's no actual town to explore or npcs to talk to. You talk to an npc only when the game wants you to and these conversations are automatically triggered ... ok with one exception
Madison has a line of dialog in your safe house which she keeps on repeating everytime you click on her
which made me wonder if Obsidian put this in there to make some kind of point.

Regarding the items in the game and especially the equipable gear I was totally overwhelmed by the sheer number of them at first, but in the end I replaced my starter pistol and armor once after Saudi Arabia and that's it. In contrast I used almost all of the gagdets at my disposal.
 
P

PedroLumpy

Member
'Scuse me gents, but given the Steam sale, I was curious as to how the mod community was coming along for this game?

Quick google search didn't turn up much, thanks for any help!
 
B

Bebpo

Banned
My guess is a combination of:

1. It's too early for any interesting mods
2. Very few people care about AP compared to say Dragon Age or Fallout
3. UE3.0 is not very moddable without the right tools provided

I'm hoping in a year or two someone might make some interesting changes like the hardcore Fallout 3 mods, but if no one does...maybe they'll at least be a patch to fix some bugs?

Game is still worth picking up in the sale though. It's a great rpg
 
R

rainking187

Member
dejan said:
Stuff that needed more time in the oven:
- dialog wheel (time constraint is fine, but there needs to be a bit more context to be able to make a deliberate decision)
Click to expand...


I always have a problem with this in games. I really like that you can check out the different email options before you send them, but don't like you just get one word descriptions for the dialogue options. Also maybe I've got a different dictionary, but "suave" didn't mean "asshole" last time I checked.
 
S

Stallion Free

Cock Encumbered
ChoklitReign said:
Can I add martial arts or would that be too unbalanced?
Click to expand...
Martial arts ends up making bosses really difficult until you actually have it at a high level. If you go with martial arts, make sure you have a back up skill because I went with stealth/martial arts and I got fucked a lot.
 
B

Basileus777

Member
Martial arts don't really help much with stealth because you're sneaking you'll be using takedowns that the martial arts skill doesn't affect anyway.
 
S

SRG01

Member
I just wanted to vent my rage here. The PC version for me is unplayable because of all the crashes. It's totally random and I have no idea what causes it.
 
G

Grayman

Member
I got this on the steam sale and finished my first game tonight. I loved the feeling that the game could actually diverge in different ways. I usually played it professional and went for arrests or diplomatic solutions. If I play the same mood of character again I have a few things I would do different.

I think I am going to play an angry asshole who maims or kills everyone he meets now. I want to try shotguns(never used one) but am worried about some of the boss fights. Pistols were a god weapon halfway through the game.
 
B

butsomuch

Member
Chris Avellone E3 2010 Interview at GameBanshee
GB: Based on the reception the game (Alpha Protocol) has received, is there anything you would have done differently if you could go back?

Chris: If I could go back and start on the project from the outset? Sure, absolutely - and don't take anything I say as this would somehow magically be a better game, it would just be different, and most likely have other things people hated about it. Anyway, I'd make a spy version of Kill Bill (if it had to be a spy game at all and not just a real world RPG title, which would be great), change the main character to not be a set character, screw the realism and focus on the fantastic, add more mission reactivity between missions and between cities, change the mission structure to the honeycomb mission structure our Systems Designer proposed 2 years in (and what our Exec Producer originally wanted), remove cinematic conversations, screw trying to compete with other stealth or shooter games that have already mastered those areas and look for ways to make the player feel like spies in other ways - again, assuming a spy game is what you'd want to do with a real-world RPG at all.

But that's all fantasy and wishful thinking, and again, it's easy to say that, and it would have most likely resulted in something else that people liked and disliked for different reasons. If I could go back to when I started mid-way through the project and was in the same situation? No, for logistical reasons. I'm sure the other leads felt the same way and so did our Project Director (who became Project Director at this time), and our Project Director who took on the role at this time saved this game from cancellation - or worse. We had a team that was low on morale, that felt like they didn't own the work they were doing (if you keep trading areas and design elements every other month, you can't focus on carrying something to completion), who were on the tides of iteration, and being able to go in there, give people ownership of interface, systems, an area, a Hub, make decisions, add more RPG elements, add more reactivity, restore focus and get rid of the blockages that were keeping people from moving ahead with work was satisfying. It took a while, and it was tough, and some of the decisions weren't ideal, but you can't always be in a perfect situation with development, so you do what you can. We had little to no time to redo anims, redo character models, redo locations from previous iterations, so we did what we could with what he had, and it made sense to us for the time frame (even when the time frame kept changing, we had no clue the release date would be what it became, and we didn't work toward that release date).

I'm proud of what we did during that time to help get the project going, organize the design staff, kill a lot of problems, and try to use what assets, locations, and story elements we had to work with to make a game that worked and took RPG elements in a new direction.
Click to expand...
 
V

vitaminwateryum

corporate swill
So...finally got this from Gamefly way earlier today and just finished it after one long ass session. I tried to go with a pistol build at first but then realized that the shooting in this game felt so janky that martial arts was the only way to go. Running up to dudes and kneeing them, stomping 'em, popping fury and beating the shit out of three other dudes is so ridiculously entertaining. It really feels like the decisions you make have a huge impact on the game and I could easily see my self replaying this just to go back and do the opposite of everything I did just to see how far apart the story can get from my first play through.
 
B

butsomuch

Member
Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart E3 interview
GB: At this point, how many separate teams do you have at Obsidian now?

Feargus: We really have about 2½ teams - how it worked is that in early 2009 we had to lay a number of people off from the Aliens team, but then a lot of the Aliens team went on to do Fallout. And so we shifted about forty people immediately onto that. At that same time, we were already starting to ramp down the Alpha Protocol team which was the impetus for the growth of the Dungeon Siege team. As we stopped working on Alpha Protocol in late summer of last year everybody transferred over either to a private internal product we’re making right now - which I want to talk to you about soon - or they went to Dungeon Siege III.


GB: Looking forward to hearing what the internal project is all about. On a similar note, what’s happening with The Wheel of Time?

Feargus: So the arrangement there, which is kind of explained in the press release, is that Red Eagle Games wants to do it. They have the license to do it, and we’ll be the developer if it all comes about. What they’re doing is they want to actually be the publisher of it, not just the guys holding the license.

So, what they’re doing right now is, in essence, putting together a whole business around The Wheel of Time games. Not just one game, but multiple games. And they are talking to people about creative ways to fund all of these, and then distribute them through a publisher.


GB: So you haven’t actually went into full scale development with anything yet?

Feargus: No, we haven’t at all yet. What we’re doing right now is just continuing to talk to them about the game and kind of figure out what we’re going to do, and then as soon as they’re able to get funding, we can start moving forward with development.
Click to expand...

So, Obsidian is currently working on three projects - Fallout: New Vegas, Dungeon Siege 3, and an unannounced project which is not the Wheel of Time title.
 
B

Bebpo

Banned
Good info. Really excited about all their projects.

So the Fallout NV team is ~40 people? Kind of crazy small when something like Brutal Legend has 75 person team. The scale in Obsidian rpgs is quite a bit bigger.

Also AP being mainly finished a year ago with the majority of the staff moving to other projects and then finally coming out now is :\ It really seems more like Sega didn't know what to do with the game than the game was being polished for a year.
 
S

SuperSonic1305

Member
So I get a new computer, decide I might as well buy AP for PC since PC versions are usually better and all and this game is glitchy as hell. UI is glitching frequently where I will click on something multiple times and it won't work and then the highlight will show up when my mouse pointer is nowhere near the selection. Then to fix the horrible camera stuttering I have to gimp the game with the level streaming fix and enemies keep disappearing because of it. Not a good start to master race membership.
 
J

Jerk

Banned
Purkake4 said:
Fortress? Anyway, we had a thread about the Wheel of Time game's announcement.
Click to expand...

Final Fantasy 12 sequel originally tasked to GRIN by Square Enix. It was supposedly given to another developer and Obsidian seems to be a perfect fit for such a project.
 
N

Nickiepoo

Member
SuperSonic1305 said:
So I get a new computer, decide I might as well buy AP for PC since PC versions are usually better and all and this game is glitchy as hell. UI is glitching frequently where I will click on something multiple times and it won't work and then the highlight will show up when my mouse pointer is nowhere near the selection. Then to fix the horrible camera stuttering I have to gimp the game with the level streaming fix and enemies keep disappearing because of it. Not a good start to master race membership.
Click to expand...

A gamepad solves a number of the control/UI issues but that may not be ideal.
 
M

Melhisedek

Member
Any advice on what skills to take for a stealthy approach (and guns blazing when stealth doesn't work) ?
How many skills can you max out?
 
N

Nickiepoo

Member
At max level, around three. You can only tag three skills to be maxed anyway, so that works out nicely.

For myself, I found that Assault Rifles did well when I needed to fight (bosses and forced firefights) and that stealth was fine the rest of the time. Some people swear by chainshot though, so Pistols might suit you. I then added toughness on top of that.
All the rest I had between zero and three points, depending.
 
N

Nickiepoo

Member
Crimson-Legend said:
Is this game worth the full price of admission?
Click to expand...

Yes, if you go in knowing exactly what its real strengths are while being able to ignore its weaknesses.

At what it does well it's once of the very best in its genre, but the things it does badly are only just passable.
 
C

Crimson-Legend

Banned
Nickiepoo said:
Yes, if you go in knowing exactly what its real strengths are while being able to ignore its weaknesses.

At what it does well it's once of the very best in its genre, but the things it does badly are only just passable.
Click to expand...

Im aware of the strengths and weaknesses but heres the question PS3 or 360 which version is better?
 
V

Vyse The Legend

Member
Des0lar said:
Ok so wtf,
Omen Deng
is unbeatable to me. How can this happen, that certain skillsets are impossible to play with. I did Taipei first, so all I have are Shadow Operative and the first Chain Shot available. I can't defeat him for the love of god. His Shotgun outmatches my poor assault rifle skills, and I suck at meleeing his ass.
Can't get past his recharging shield. So basically I'm fucked and have to do Rome or Moscow first, till I'm good enough for him?
Fuck that, I really liked the game, but something like that just blows.
Click to expand...

I went to Tai-pei first, and I had no trouble with him.

Steel-core bullets + 5-shot Chainshot, ftw.
 
H

harriet the spy

Member
A bit LTTP, but I impulse-bought this game last week end, and finished it today. Really enjoyed it, and I am a bit sad that it didn't do better (presuming the 40 bucks price drop was due to poor sales). Sure, it's flawed (I played it on ps3, pretty ludicrous loading times and texture loading, but besides that it was fine), but it has a lot of 'heart', and does many things so much better than the majority of RPGs i have played this gen (including ME/ME2, which I liked a lot but handle their 'decisions affect the world' in such a poorer way than Alpha protocol).

In terms of choices - I wish some were less of the sadistic choices type, especially when it's a bit forced
choice between madison and the bomb didn't make sense in the context of the game, there was no reason Marburg would have wanted that
. Very good voice acting overall, and I felt that the whole romance business (ala Bioware) works better in this game, since it's pretty much a trope of spy movies (Madison works great in that regard).

Ending was a bit meh, but that was ok.
 
H

harriet the spy

Member
Melhisedek said:
Any advice on what skills to take for a stealthy approach (and guns blazing when stealth doesn't work) ?
How many skills can you max out?
Click to expand...

I have played with a character that was leaning towards guns/shotguns/martial arts, and guns trump all- I wouldn't be surprised if they were by far the most powerful weapon. Shotgun seemed like a very weak weapon. So for your guns blazing approach, don't pick shotgun - maybe rifle (that way you have some long range when needed).
 
B

Bebpo

Banned
Vyse The Legend said:
I went to Tai-pei first, and I had no trouble with him.

Steel-core bullets + 5-shot Chainshot, ftw.
Click to expand...

I did Tai-pei first and only had 3-shot chainshot and after many deaths I won. Key is when he runs at you to do a punch combo, you do a counter punch combo to stop him. Run back and repeat everytime he runs at you. Use stealth and chain shot to get rid of the guards that show up.
 
C

Chrysalis

Member
Just finished...enjoyed it, though I wish Obsidian would stop taking cues from Bio-Ware in regards to narrative structure. The Intro-3 Interchangeable Missions-Conclusion formula is wearing pretty darn thin.

Here's the WEIRD thing, though. I realized about halfway through the game that I was playing the game WITHOUT the game disc. I had gone to install something else and never put the AP disc back in. Anybody able to shed some light on this? After Ubi's newest draconian DRM, this oversight isn't something I expected to see anywhere.
 
Hari Seldon

Hari Seldon

Member
Just starting playing it on PC. My god this needs patched. Playing it with a mouse the view keeps jumping around very annoyingly. Is it better with a controller on PC? I'm more of a mouse guy.
 
V

Vyse The Legend

Member
water_wendi said:
Anyone know where people are buying this game for $40? Everywhere ive looked the game is selling for $60 console and $50 pc. ive read so much about how its gone total bomba via multiple different articles that cite Amazon and Gamestop but the prices are still normal there. im broke and would love to buy AP for cheap. Please help me.

GameBanshee - Alpha Protocol Price Drop, Reviews
RPG Watch - Alpha Protocol Reviews and Price Drop
Click to expand...

Gamestop had it for $33 with free shipping like a week ago. I made a thread about it.

It seems the deal is over, though.
 
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