Since the game's 5 months or so away, and the E3 thread's pretty much done for, so I'm making this thread for those of you who are interested. These new pics are from Leipzig.
12345678So basically, for those not in the know (and given Sega's promo performance, that's most if not all of you) Alpha Protocol is an espionage-themed Action RPG from Obsidian Entertainment slated for release in February (man, that spelling annoys me). It's made by the same dudes who, in the past, have made Neverwinter Nights 2, Knights of the Old Republic 2, Planescape: Torment, Fallout 2 and the Icewind Dale games. Specifically this is being designed by the guy who did KOTOR2 and PS:T.
Basically, the gist is thus - you are Michael Thorton (no N like Billy Bob), a trained CIA operative who goes on a mission that, of course, must go haywire. You are framed for something or other and you go Alpha Protocol (off the grid and on the run to complete a mission) while you are the only person who is aware of a global conspiracy with malevolent intentions, and you alone have to stop it. You have a list of informants and safehouses spread across the globe, and you go about trying to find out what's what.
Before these screenies were released
the game looked a lot like Mass Effect, and it still sort of does, mainly due to both of them using UE3, but it's slowly setting itself apart. The character models are less shiny, and there's actual CQC (the dev in charge of melee fighting says it's American Kenpo) that looks very promising (certainly my first playthrough) The primary inspiration for animation and combat is Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, which I've heard very good things about but haven't played because boo hiss Sony.
The dialogue system is
like ME, but it's even simpler. It's much more like Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit for you euros) your responses are timed, and you're given a very simple summation of the actions you can perform. "Draw gun" "smooth talk" "bribe" "threaten", etc. It should lead to fewer "but I didn't want to shoot the guy!" moments like the sort you got from ME. In general there will be 3 different "conversation paths" you can take. There's suave (Bond), brutal (Bauer) and professional (Bourne), more or less. You can choose one of these "paths" and put the controller down as the timer ticks down and automatically chooses responses indicative of the path, or you can switch at a whim. The devs have promised that once you've gone through a dialogue tree, you can't go back through it. So you have to be sure of what you're doing.
One thing about the game that people are skeptical of at this juncture is that it looks like the game will have unlimited ammo. You're likely going to be made to choose your weapons and mods at the beginning of a mission (like Hitman) but you won't be able to retrieve enemy weapons. Among the strategy enthusiasts this doesn't sit very well. You'll have to reload your guns, but you'll have infinite clips and can thus go full Rambo for an entire mission if you wanted to. The tone of the game is sort of hard to pin down. There are camp elements, given that they're drawing somewhat from the Bond legacy, but they're also trying to ground the game in the real world, even if that world is exaggerated (CQC, for example, is an absolute last resort for any real soldier or fighter)
Here's a more recently released preview from E3.
