Alpha Protocol Preview

It’s Eurogamer’s turn to dive into the world of Alpha Protocol after receiving a hands-on demonstration of the spy-themed RPG.

Alpha Protocol’s theme helps, of course – you’re not Sir Amnesiapants, with a fixed destiny to save the entire world, even if you are a tad prone to biting the heads off children en route. You’re a spy. Spies do bad stuff as part of a grander plan to achieve their mission. In a sense, your morality is already fixed by the character you play as – you’re always going to be Michael Thorton, Super-Spy, with a remit to bring down threats to civilisation (though there are strong hints you’ll be deciding which threats are ultimately greatest). You can choose to give Michael a silly beard or a bald head, but while that makes the cut-scenes funnier, it doesn’t change their outcome. He’s a man with a job to do, and he’ll achieve it by whatever means he and therefore you deem necessary. “We try and make it so there’s no bad choices,” says programming producer Nathan Davis. “We want to reward you for playing in the style that you want.”

This includes the combat as well as the conversation: the pow as well as the pow-wow, if you will. While superficially the action and the levelling up/abilities system is reminiscent of Mass Effect, it’s a lot more integral to the game as a whole, as opposed to an extra lump stuck on the side. There isn’t, it appears, much in the way of wandering around hub locations picking up quests and making idle chat-chat: the conversations happen during missions, and then shape the directions those missions go in, and where you go next. On the one hand, this promises a tight flow and a naturalistic narrative, rather than the strange, ancient RPG hangover that sees guys delay saving the entire world to go find someone’s lost teddy bear in the hope of earning a few coins and a pat on the head. On the other, it could severely limit the sense of world and place, in favour of a series of arenas with cut-scenes in between.