WO: Personally, what are your feelings on how it was received? Anything you would have done differently?
MCA: The game wasn't received well on release, and as a developer, that's never something you want when you've spent a good number of years and hours on a title. Once the price dropped, though, people seemed mostly fine with it - well, at least on Twitter. Without the Twitter feeds and user reviews, I would have thought no one enjoyed it at all, but enough folks did for me to feel good about that. As expected, all the feedback we got was being incorporated into sequel plans, although it turned out SEGA didn't want to pursue it.
In terms of internal changes we could have done, hindsight's 20-20. A lot of the changes we realized had to be done were included in the 2nd round of Alpha Protocol's development cycle (the overhaul occurred about halfway through development, and carried on until the end of the game). We broke up the story to allow for more game mechanic inclusion and reputation mechanics, allowed for more optional progression per mission and within the narrative, made sure the stealth and pacifist paths were a viable path, and overhauled the AI and inventory management.
I never liked the cinematic feel of the game, but that was the request and one of the pillars, so we did that. I would rather all the animation budget have been spent on combat, stealth, or other game mechanics rather than cinematic conversations, and I felt anything we did would be a negative comparison to current RPG titles from studios who already had a lot more experience and pipelines for delivering that cinematic experience - our animators and designers did a great job, but we definitely didn't have the same resources and budget as other developers.
Also, I'd have dropped one romance, at least. I hate them normally, and having 4 in one game, all of which I had to write, was a pain in the ass. I lobbied for killing the Scarlet romance (spoiler, though probably not a shock if you've played past the first mission) and successfully got a 5th romance kicked from the game, but the others remained like a taint. Still, it's part of the spy fantasy and it was part of the mandate, so it was time to roll up the sleeves and get to the romancin'. I confess that I enjoyed writing the "hate" sides of the romances better, between Madison losing her temper, Mina's final judgment, and... well, I always liked SIE, no matter which direction.
One aspect that we did want to include for AP2 was a system proposed by our Systems Designer, Matt MacLean - I've heard it called "honeycomb" mission structure, but that makes me think of cereal, so I'll just describe it instead (note that I'm quoting my answer in Vince Weller's Iron Tower interview below):
--------------------------------------------------------------
Honeycomb Mission Structure: It applies to a mission design where the player is given an overarching objective (to put it in Fallout New Vegas terms: "force the New California Republic to sign the treaty with the Jacobstown super mutants") and then given about 5-6 "satellite quests" orbiting the main quest, all of which can affect the set-up or success of the central mission. The player can choose which of those 5-6 missions he wants to undertake, and they all react to each other and cause a reaction in the central objective as well.
We did this to an extent in AP (optional missions, missions affecting other missions for each hub), but a lot more we could have done with this system, and all other things being equal, it's my goal that it be a focus for at least one of our titles in the future, as it's a really interesting idea.
The disadvantage is it can get extremely complex if done improperly (special casing events), the advantage is that it's a better means of giving the player reactivity without a linear quest progression... and more importantly, it gives the player choices in how they want to complete the objective. They wouldn't need to do all 5-6 missions at all, and they could accomplish these satellite missions in any order they wanted. A speech character may simply target 3 missions that cater to diplomacy (say, sowing gossip or convincing soldiers or officers that the main capital is going to be attacked), and suddenly the garrison gets a high-level order to move its troops to the capital to defend the monarch.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Lastly, in terms of what we would have done differently, one thing that definitely impacted the reception was out of our control (release date) - first off, people expected more from the delay when there was never any plans to do anything more with the title during the delay. In addition, being released after Mass Effect 2 with clearly superior cinematic sequences nor after Splinter Cell which specializes in some of the best stealth mechanics to date didn't help, either. To explain the publisher reasoning, however, I do know that there was a drive to push the "buzz" of the project so players were aware of it, and it was felt that eight months would give that lead time enough for people to be aware that Alpha Protocol existed. That said, even with this lead time, the PR efforts still came on late, so I don't know how much that helped in the end, except pushing the game at least eight months out from a more favorable release time, at least in terms of features. If it had been released much earlier (and it's rare to say this), I think the reviews would have come from a different perspective... as it stood, it defeated expectations on a number of levels in the marketplace.
There are things I think we did do well in Alpha Protocol, and I'm proud of them. There's a lot of branching, there's a lot of consequences to your choices, you can outwit the bad guy just by being clever and doing your homework, you can persuade almost all your adversaries that you'd make a better boss, the fact we didn't use speech or dialogue skills in conversations as an "insta-win" button, the character had no moral barometer, but everyone's perception of him was different was good, and I liked the fact that having negative reputation gave bonuses, so if you felt like being a jackass, the game recognized you were in a role-playing game and playing a role and didn't cut you off from content to punish you, it gave you different content and abilities. I like that I could pick and choose the personality of the weapons, Matt MacLean wrote great emails, and I did like the fact that there was a pacifistic path... and having the voice actor who did Winnie the Pooh be one of our major adversaries was a nice, bizarre little touch.
