You talking to the guy in the suit is the framing narrative - the chronological order is:
1. Jetliner shot down
2. Three months earlier than the conversation - you start here
3. 'Now' - talking to the guy in the suit.
So the events of the game are introduced as a conversation taking place at the end of the game, while your actions during the flashbacks alter the conversation, and your candour with the guy in the suit also plays into the conclusion. You'll get used to it, it's a load of fun.
Enjoying the game so far. I like how you have a limited amount of time in which to choose a dialogue option--it adds a sense of urgency to conversations. More like real life in that you have to think on the fly.
Thinking about picking this game up for the consoles (doubt it'll run on this PC), but I'm not so sure. The last time I played it the Pistol combat was terrible and the stealth wasn't all that great either.
Everyone here on GAF rants and raves about the game though, so I'm unsure.
Thinking about picking this game up for the consoles (doubt it'll run on this PC), but I'm not so sure. The last time I played it the Pistol combat was terrible and the stealth wasn't all that great either.
The stealth is simple and a bit easy once you've leveled up your abilities, but I still enjoyed it. Attempting to clear a level with no shots fired and no alarms was pretty darn fun, and your handler always comments on it once you've completed the mission, which is cool. You don't play AP for the combat, though, you play it for the choice and consequence system that blows away pretty much everything else on the market.
Thinking about picking this game up for the consoles (doubt it'll run on this PC), but I'm not so sure. The last time I played it the Pistol combat was terrible and the stealth wasn't all that great either.
Everyone here on GAF rants and raves about the game though, so I'm unsure.
Combat is hit or miss and you definitely need to invest in it (pistols and stealth are probably the winning/only combination) but the roleplaying elements are what make it stand out in a sea of Bioware transition games (i.e. transitioning from RPGs to action games with conversation dialogues)
Yes. Great game with a great non-linear storyline.
I've never played a game where your actions dictated the course of the game as much as in Alpha Protocol. In this regard Mass Effect is a joke compared to Alpha Protocol.
P.S.: Don't get me wrong. Mass Effect 1 is a perfect 10/10, one of my favorite games, while Alpha Protocol is more like an 8/10. I was speaking only of the non-linearity.
I am on my second play through this time not much stealth more gunplay.I have to say this game does an excellent job of making choices count alot of games claim to have this but in th end it doesn't change much but this game really does I am having a completely different experience this time through.
Gaming journalism am fail. This game is AWESOME ! The shooting is not that bad, it was just "harsh". I guess people don't like to deal with recoil anymore getting a headshot is actually satisfying here.
That crouch animation is just embarrassing though and I spend the majority of the time crouching, it looks.. painful :lol
Bit of an older post in this thread, and you likely already fixed that "stopped working" issue, but just in case...
...since you're on Windows 7, have you tried disabling the User Account Control prompt? I think there's a slider somewhere within Control Panel. I had the same exact problem with AP. Disabling UAC fixed it. For some reason, I guess the game (and Escape from Butcher Bay, no less) can't handle Windows prompts forcing their way into its space when it's loading.
So yes. Disable UAC. It might work for you, as well.
Stealth and pistols are the way to go. I think most of my fellow AP fans can agree that stealth is the best way to play, blasting everyone like a maniac just isn't as satisfying as clearing a room without making a peep. Pistols are nice because of the chain shot skill and tranquilizer ammo, which is a big help if you're aiming for no kills. I put a few points in assault rifles as well, since there are a few sections (like boss fights) that aren't applicable for stealth so it's nice to have a more potent weapon in addition to the pistol.
Stealth and pistols are the way to go. I think most of my fellow AP fans can agree that stealth is the best way to play, blasting everyone like a maniac just isn't as satisfying as clearing a room without making a peep. Pistols are nice because of the chain shot skill and tranquilizer ammo, which is a big help if you're aiming for no kills. I put a few points in assault rifles as well, just because there are a few sections (like boss fights) that aren't applicable for stealth so it's nice to have a more potent weapon for those cases.
Stealth and pistols are the way to go. I think most of my fellow AP fans can agree that stealth is the best way to play, blasting everyone like a maniac just isn't as satisfying as clearing a room without making a peep. Pistols are nice because of the chain shot skill and tranquilizer ammo, which is a big help if you're aiming for no kills. I put a few points in assault rifles as well, since there are a few sections (like boss fights) that aren't applicable for stealth so it's nice to have a more potent weapon in addition to the pistol.
Full running around invisible for a minute + maximum chain shot + brilliance to reset cooldown meters right away so you can do it all over again = everyone including bosses on the ground is dead.
Ive been debating picking this game up for awhile now, however after watching my friend play through the diptastic and buggy KOTOR 2 and then hearing all of the horror stories about Fallout NV, I cant help but be a bit biased towards Obsidian. Is this game really that good and worth the 20 bucks?
Ive been debating picking this game up for awhile now, however after watching my friend play through the diptastic and buggy KOTOR 2 and then hearing all of the horror stories about Fallout NV, I cant help but be a bit biased towards Obsidian. Is this game really that good and worth the 20 bucks?
Ive been debating picking this game up for awhile now, however after watching my friend play through the diptastic and buggy KOTOR 2 and then hearing all of the horror stories about Fallout NV, I cant help but be a bit biased towards Obsidian. Is this game really that good and worth the 20 bucks?
Never ran into any major issues with the game on my playthrough other than the usual stuttering issues with vanilla Unreal engine console ports, but some .ini tweaks will solve that.
Ive been debating picking this game up for awhile now, however after watching my friend play through the diptastic and buggy KOTOR 2 and then hearing all of the horror stories about Fallout NV, I cant help but be a bit biased towards Obsidian. Is this game really that good and worth the 20 bucks?
I'm biased against Obsidian as well, and the only game of theirs I've played to completion is Alpha Protocol.
I didn't have any bugs or issues with the 360 version that I can remember, in case that's what's holding you back. I just didn't feel that AP's strengths outweighed its faults.
Didn't encounter any bugs while playing the game. Really the game wasn't as bad a critics said. I'm on my 3rd playthrough now, cleaning up some achievements. The story is solid and the voice acting is good enough to back it up.
Really this game just needed a bit more polish. There's some texture popping, some that are extremely slow to load in and some janky death animations. But I didn't find any game breaking bugs in all the time I've played.
Bought this back around Christmas and got around to finishing it a month or so ago. Despite its quirks, I loved the hell out of it. At first I wasn't so hot on the "timed" conversations, but I wound up liking how fast they made you think - the toughest one for me was
choosing to save Sung or the civilians.
Got what I considered a pretty good ending:
punched the shit out of Leland, screwed over Halbech, ground Alpha Protocol into dust, rode off into the sunset with Mina.
I'd planned to go with Scarlet at first but I wound up accidentally romancing Madison and decided to just say "to hell with it" and go after every girl. Get dat AP bonus.
Thanks to this thread, I just bought a copy. I wanted to jump in sooner, but had too big of a backlog. Looks like I will try out pistols/stealth as stated here.
***WARNING some huge spoilers ahead - they will be marked, but tread carefully***
I am absolutely LTTP. I feel like I should write a personal letter of apology to the devs at Obsidian, and an angry letter to SEGA for butchering the release of this titles in Australia (and worldwide? I remember there being some cock up there... delaying it to avoid some AAA title was it?)
I played this (on 360) when it first launched, and enjoyed it, but I wasn't in a time or place where I could fully invest in games like it. I didn't care to listen to the story lines, the dialogue choices - I just wanted to run and gun. Which doesn't work quite right when you're mind is set like that. I finished maybe the first Saudi mission, and then never played it again.
This piece of backloggery had always annoyed me - I have a soft spot for Obsidian, and I remember at the time selling it to people (in my previous job) by referring to it as a spiritual successor to Deus Ex, one of my top 3 PC games of all time. And yet at the time, I couldn't bring myself to give it the proper go it deserved.
So a week or two ago, I picked it up for the PS3 (which has had a rebirth in the living room after some minor adjustments were made to the layout of said living room), and decided I would give it a 'proper go'.
I made a conscious decision to play as a professional, mission-before-everyone-else kinda guy (so pressing O during 90% of conversations and not kill anyone if there was a choice at the time), and mained the pistols, the assault rifles and stealth, wear a beret and have a goatee.
I finished it last night ***spoiler about end-game, and handlers***
finishing with Heck as my handler, as Mina died in the mission leading up to it, despite having a 9 or 10 like rating with her, she was my main contact throughout the game - this is my only real decision that I have reflected on since finishing. I did not hesitate in making my decision to save the museum or save Madison - I saved the museum. But I genuinely felt bad after deserting Mina, even though I'm sure she would have agreed with my principle in making the decision
. As stated above, I had managed to not kill main storyline NPCs
the Saudi guy, Oden, Scarlett, or any of the other main storyline characters you encounter
. They were instead taken into custody or I befriended them for convenience.
I had an inkling ***huge goddamn end-game storyline spoiler, do not highlight if you haven't finished***
that Scarlett had been working contrary to me by about the mission where you first meet Oden to save Sung. Despite that, when she blasted me away in the end cut scene I was taken aback
.
I found that having stealth maxed out was the bees knees, as I did all of the missions in Rome without being seen. Between auto-evasion, the quiet movement perk and the stealth ability on short cooldowns and long uptimes, I was able to just run around with impunity for the length of those missions taking dudes out like nobodies business. I also gave up on the pistol early on, purely because I bought some sweet armour and really nice AR sometime early on in Moscow,
I think after I dealt with the drug addict, and he tipped me $100,000 or whatever it was
both of which made me like a tank. And once you combine the subsonic round with the AR, things are pretty sweet.
The comparisons to Deus Ex are very very apt. The game is broken down into neat consumable sections, you have a safe house that you return to post missions, you have shady allies and the dialogue choices are clever, well thought out and for the most part, very well scripted. The
flashback
conversations between Halbech and Mike in between major missions were also very awesome, as they accomplished 2 things; 1 being they gave an overview of how you just handled Rome/Moscow/Saudi Arabi/Taipei and 2, they often gave ominous insight towards the next set of missions
such as the discussion about 'how Mike handled the Madison' situation, even though there had been no situation by that point
. Also similar to Deus Ex is the levelling up system of your abilities - I remember struggling around Liberty Island trying to shoot people with that rocket launcher while having no points in heavy weapons, and it was full of suck. Same here - shooting at people with a weapon you're not invested in is nigh on impotent. Pump 8 or 12 points into it though and add some mods and suddenly it's a different game.
So that's wrap on the main game and story as I experienced it. All in all, 9/10 for those who like metrics. I fucking loved the storyline, the dialogue, the characters in the story, the areas they take place in, though the start to Saudi Arabia is definitely the weakest link in them all. But only the very start - by the end of Saudi Arabia I was well and truly hooked. And once you've invested even just a handful of points into your chosen weapon, the gun play (especially the Assault Rifles) is particularly satisfying. As is the CQC once you've got a few points into it (and/or armour modifications).
Technically, it's a bit of a mess on PS3. Textures forget to load, the framerate is occasionally awful and the rest of the time 30fps at best. But you all knew that already. At no point did I find these deficiencies detracting from my enjoyment, beyond mild annoyance.
There was the odd spike in difficulty that drove me to tears ***Taipei storyline spoiler***
the mission where I had to save the US ambassador in Taipei, once you have run outside into the snowy courtyard and an enemy APC arrives
.
Somewhere along the line, I missed why Halbech became so important and I wasn't feeling the same anger that Mike was, but tonight I will reload my last save and reread all the dossiers closely ***huge end-game spoiler***
and maybe join them in during the endgame scenario to see what happens
- don't spoil it for me if you know!
After that, I'll be giving it a break to play:
which are 2 other games that suffered the exact same fates I mentioned in the third paragraph (and I have F:NV coming soon now too, thanks to the enjoyment I derived out of this). But I intend to replay Alpha Protocol, and choose the sarcastic, bombastic, shoot-first-ask-questions-later (so [] and <| (square and triangle) style gameplay) kind of guy, with shotguns and SMG's.
In short, I fucking loved AP. I think I might even double dip on the steam sale, to enjoy some AA and higher FPS when I get a newlaptop after tax returns are done. It is easily one of my favourite games of the generation, a tier or two below Demon's Souls perhaps, maybe on the same tier as Red Dead Redemption if pure enjoyment is the deciding factor (the polish on RDR probably bumps it ahead by a notch) but damn I enjoyed myself.
You might be correct, it may not have been Taipei. ***description of mysterious mission***
The mission involved sneaking into the embassy - I talked my way in - then meeting with a hesitant chap. The building was immediately besieged by a number of different forces and almost destroyed.
After working my way down in the building, my mission was to meet up with this chap again and exit. Upon existing into the snowy courtyard, a vehicle of some description was there waiting, and many armoured personnel attacked us in the open. Time and time again the idiot chap I was supposed to be protecting kept eating bullets/eating pineapples/was drop kicked in the throat and died. I didn't have the firepower (or the frame rate lol) to accurately suppress the attack and save him
.
Eventually I threw every incendiary grenade I had to block off one area while I dealt with the other area and had great success.
I got this game in the Steam sale and am on the first mission in Saudi Arabia, infilitrating some arms dealers compound. I know this is considered to be a stealth game, but I am in a room now with a big tank and a few surface to air missile case things, and I have no idea how to do this without just killing everybody with the terrible shooting. I heeded everybody's call and put my first like 21 skill points all in pistols and got 1 'unit' of stealth, but up until now I have had to resort to killing everybody in every room. There is nothing like in MGS4 to indicate if you are hidden, if that even works in this game, or if sound matters when your walking around. Is most of the stealth just staying outside of enemies invisible sight lines and working your way somehow across a room?
The premise seems really cool but everything else about it is so clunky and all around kinda 'ehhhhh'.
^ Going stealth felt a lot like Splinter Cell to me, only more basic. I always knock everyone out or kill them, depending on the situation (in either game), so I don't know if you can actually sneak past everyone. Generally though you are on the right track. Stay out of sight, be silent, the obvious stuff. Put more points into Stealth for the Awareness ability. It gives you a enemy radar; put enough points into Stealth and Awareness is always on. Helps a lot. Generally, put more points into Stealth and use the abilities it grants you: http://alphaprotocol.wikia.com/wiki/Stealth
Also, armour has a sound attribute, some make more noise than others.
hemtae said:
I don't think I remember that mission. Are you sure it wasn't Moscow and even then I don't remember the
I think one comes through the gate carrying soldiers, but I seem to remember that happens as soon as you're out the building. Has to be Moscow though, I don't remember anything of the sort in Taipei. There might be a mission that plays out differently, I guess, but I don't see where it would fit in.
Dealing with Deng, which you inevitably do one way or another will prevent the president's assassination no matter what.
. There is nothing like in MGS4 to indicate if you are hidden, if that even works in this game, or if sound matters when your walking around. Is most of the stealth just staying outside of enemies invisible sight lines and working your way somehow across a room?
A few more ranks in stealth will give you "awareness", which puts an indicator over enemies' heads to show if they're normal, cautious, or on alert like in MGS. That'll help you get a feel for what does and doesn't work with stealth.
I got this game in the Steam sale and am on the first mission in Saudi Arabia, infilitrating some arms dealers compound. I know this is considered to be a stealth game, but I am in a room now with a big tank and a few surface to air missile case things, and I have no idea how to do this without just killing everybody with the terrible shooting. I heeded everybody's call and put my first like 21 skill points all in pistols and got 1 'unit' of stealth, but up until now I have had to resort to killing everybody in every room. There is nothing like in MGS4 to indicate if you are hidden, if that even works in this game, or if sound matters when your walking around. Is most of the stealth just staying outside of enemies invisible sight lines and working your way somehow across a room?
The premise seems really cool but everything else about it is so clunky and all around kinda 'ehhhhh'.
If you put a few points of stealth you get the awareness skill which shows you where enemies are facing an their alert status. Stealth points will also later give you ability that cloaks your character for a few seconds when spotted, that gives you the MGS type warning as well.
If you bought all the intel a lot of areas may have a "stealth route" plotted on the map(press tab), usually these involve going around the perimeter of a room not through the middle.
If I am thinking of the right room in Nasari's compound you can go to the right when you enter and hug that wall until you get to a door that opens.
I got this game in the Steam sale and am on the first mission in Saudi Arabia, infilitrating some arms dealers compound. I know this is considered to be a stealth game, but I am in a room now with a big tank and a few surface to air missile case things, and I have no idea how to do this without just killing everybody with the terrible shooting. I heeded everybody's call and put my first like 21 skill points all in pistols and got 1 'unit' of stealth, but up until now I have had to resort to killing everybody in every room. There is nothing like in MGS4 to indicate if you are hidden, if that even works in this game, or if sound matters when your walking around. Is most of the stealth just staying outside of enemies invisible sight lines and working your way somehow across a room?
The premise seems really cool but everything else about it is so clunky and all around kinda 'ehhhhh'.
Wow ok thanks guys, putting more into stealth seems to be the unanimous choice. I have that awareness skill right now, the 1st rank which is active for like 45seconds then has a 60sec cooldown or so.
Wow ok thanks guys, putting more into stealth seems to be the unanimous choice. I have that awareness skill right now, the 1st rank which is active for like 45seconds then has a 60sec cooldown or so.
Wow ok thanks guys, putting more into stealth seems to be the unanimous choice. I have that awareness skill right now, the 1st rank which is active for like 45seconds then has a 60sec cooldown or so.
Have a read of my lengthy post above. I found Stealth to be such a wonderful ability by about the midway point of the game , adapted my gameplay style, and at the end game I was literally running around doing as I pleased where I pleased. Cannot recommend stealth enough
Skin tone, hair, facial hair, eye colour, glasses, hats. About five choices in each category, I think. You don't get to customize the structure of Thornton's face.
getting a headshot is actually satisfying here.
