Alpha Protocol Previews

Previews of Obsidian Entertainment’s Alpha Protocol continue to appear following the close of last week’s Game Developers Conference, with two more showing up overnight.

Eurogamer starts us off:

These conversational responses are broadly grouped into Suave, Aggressive or Professional; lady characters might respond well to a suave approach, whereas politicians prefer professionalism.

There are two main problems with this at the moment: first, choosing wildly differing responses makes Thorton come across as a mentalist, and second, almost everything that Thorton says makes you want to either roll your eyes or punch him in the teeth. He’s an arrogant smartarse, and his delivery often falls well wide of the intended Jack Bauer or James Bond mark.

It’s also impossible to tell, at this stage, what effect your choices have in these conversations. Taking different approaches each time we played the hands-on missions changed the other character’s immediate response dialogue, but we still ended up playing the same levels afterwards.

And then we head over to Mercury News:

In the demo, Obsidian played Michael Thorton as a stealth character. He is after a suspected terrorist named Al-Shaheed. After sneaking into the Al-Shaheed’s compound, Thorton activates a stealth mode and he runs around invisible. Thorton spots some enemies and switches to the Chain Shot special move, which works almost like Splinter Cell: Conviction’s mark and execute. Eventually, he switches to his rifle, which also has a Focus Aim, a move that homes in on a target. He takes out more guards in sniper’s nests.

The thing that bothers me about this interface is that players will be constantly switching to a menu and going out of the action. It’s not really smooth. Players can’t use their upgraded spy abilities on the fly. As Thorton blasts and wreaks havoc on the base, an 1980s-style action movie soundtrack pumps through the speakers. Somehow I’m reminded of Commando or Terminator. It rocks.