Alpha Protocol Interview

Hooked Gamers recently grilled Obsidian’s Matt MacLean and Matthew Rorie about Alpha Protocol, focusing on such topics as the game’s stealth mechanics, the tough decisions we’ll have to make, the character progression system, and more.

Hooked Gamers: Videogames that excel at stealth gameplay have normally come up short in the run’n’gun department and vice-versa. How have you made sure that the levels are enjoyable regardless of what style the player prefers?

Matt MacLean: Our approach to AP was to build all of our levels with the idea that the player could solve a given mission multiple ways. So from concepting, to review meetings, to production, to bug-fixing, we were always asking “How well would Sneaky MacThorton do this level?” or “What would Punchy von Thorton” do in this level?” or “So what happens if Sociopathorton decides to announce his presence in this allegedly covert mission by raining down hot lead on everyone?” This took years off our lives but I imagine living forever would be as awful as that Highlander movie so it’s probably okay in the end.

Part of getting this to work meant being very strict about fail states – you should arrive at a game-over screen because you failed to survive, not because you got spotted when you were told not to give away your presence, or left alive a person you were ordered to kill. This in turn meant the plot had to roll with these choices. This took years off Chris Avellone’s life but he’s a cyborg, so it’s probably okay in the end.

So when it came time to really dig into our levels, we’d have people play each level with all kinds of playstyles and builds. Our intrepid QA progression team would have sneak playthroughs, commando playthroughs, coward playthroughs, trap-heavy playthroughs, pacificistic playthroughs, and so on. This took years off the lives of our amazing QA members, but they’re generally younger that the rest of the crew and will live to see the day when they can upload their brains into a state of digital senteince, so it’s probably okay in the end.