Alpha Protocol Previews

More hands-on impressions of Obsidian Entertainment’s Alpha Protocol have hit the web, courtesy of SEGA Nerds and GotGame. Here’s an excerpt from the former:

Similar to Heavy Rain, the player can choose one of several responses from different emotional spectrums, ranging from (joking) to (aggressive.) Unlike Mass-Effect, Alpha Protocol makes no suggestion to a clear cut (good) or (bad) response, making the focus on human relationships seem far more realistic and dynamic. For example, when acting tough and harsh to Mina, a blip popped onscreen showing that we had gained a (-2) relationship status with her. Clearly Michael was handling the situation the wrong way if he wanted to win Mina over.

This isn’t to suggest acting the same way in all situations would always improve certain relationships! Tim strongly emphasized the importance of a (gray area), where decisions aren’t necessarily split to one or two story arcs. Players’ relationships with other characters are truly the key of the plot and even effect missions, available equipment, etc. Instead of following set paths, Tim emphasized that can be seen as true, role-playing humans, each with their own motivation and personality who will react to your choices accordingly.

And a snip from the latter:

In this day and age, multiple endings of a game are a given Alpha Protocol seems to be out to make multiple far-reaching progressions and plottings in the game as well. You’ll be presented with open hub cities to visit and missions you can complete in any order. But the order you do decided on will affect how certain NPCs interact with you and how the story progresses as well.

The third-person perspective combat I saw during the short demo was fast and exciting, and you will be able to acquire and level-up skills to make you deadlier or even stealthier. In the demo, Thorton sneaked up behind an enemy to snap his neck, picked up a firearm from the field, activated a temporary accuracy boost skill and then picked off other guards from afar all in surprisingly very fast and smooth moves. Interestingly enough, the Obsidian folks made a point to say that the game could be completed without firing a single shot as well. On the otherhand, you could even kill innocent bystanders but like any other action in the game, the game itself and how other NPCs will respond to and feel about you will be different from each other.