decoyplatypus
Member
Reading the praise for Alpha Protocol in kswiston’s Essential RPGs thread inspired me to try out Obsidian’s 2010 espionage RPG. I can now see why the game has such a passionate (if small) fanbase. The world of international conspiracies is a rich one for role-playing. It lends itself to choices and consequences on a variety of scales: Whom should I trust? Is an enemy’s information worth the risk of leaving him or her alive? Do I save the hostages or finish the mission? Alpha Protocol forces difficult decisions on the player and backs its dilemmas up with interesting gameplay and narrative deviations.
Alpha Protocol’s dialogue system is probably its most widely-praised feature. The player can choose suave, aggressive, or professional approaches. This neatly avoids the Bioware dialogue-wheel problem where the flavor-text for a given dialogue choice is not always indicative of the actual tone of the speech. It is also a necessary shorthand given that every dialogue choice in Alpha Protocol is on a countdown timer. There’s no deliberate measuring of the possibilities. You pick whatever approach intuition and experience recommend, and you live with the consequences. It’s a nice way of making a high-pressure game of conversations. And Obsidian puts the system to good use in dialogue-only missions. I do wish, however, that Obsidian had expanded a few of these missions to include multiple conversations with a definite objective. For example, the player could attend a party and have to (a) make contact with an agent who could identify the target, (b) bluff his/her way into the same room as the target, then (c) bully or trick the target into revealing the mission-objective information. In the game, these sorts of sequences DO exist, but they tend to be spread out over multiple missions.
Compared to the dialogue system, Alpha Protocol’s action gameplay has a bad reputation. I understand that certain builds can make the game a real slog. Happily, I went with the stealth and pistols build everyone recommends. Most missions were resolved with basic sneaking and the occasional chain shot. Simple enough.
It actually wasn’t the gameplay that frustrated me in Alpha Protocol: it was the writing. Dialogue is functional but rarely memorable.* Thorton’s anger and humor alike have the flavor of toast.** Most of the jokes fall flat. But the bigger problem is the story.
actions are the kind of ludicrous, Saturday-morning cartoon stuff that Obsidian usually avoids. It’s so broad that the writers can’t find a single interesting thing for
to say about it. This might not be a problem except that (a) almost every subplot or alternate organization ends up circling back to
(this becomes laughable at a certain point) and (b)
.
Secrets, conspiracy, and betrayal are supposed to be the driving force of Alpha Protocol’s story, but the player learns almost everything there is to know about
in the first five hours. Subsequent developments and secret dossiers add a tiny bit of detail but don’t change the bigger picture. They mostly reinforce what the player already knows.
The betrayals that do happen in the game tend not to have much impact because the plot arcs are so small and the twists come so frequently. It’s hard to get worked up about
The writers would have done better to focus on fewer and more significant lies.
Notwithstanding my disappointment with the writing, I had a good time with Alpha Protocol. I am glad GAF talked me into it. I hope Obsidian gets a chance to try something like it again.
*Granted, functional is better than what you get in most videogames, but the standard has to be higher for a game that puts story and dialogue at the center of the experience.
**Thorton’s VA shares the blame here. There are worse performances out there, but I don’t know if I’ve seen one that did more damage to a game. The wooden delivery takes a lot of fun out of selecting different dialogue responses and undermines the dialogue countdown’s ability to create natural-sounding conversations.
Alpha Protocol’s dialogue system is probably its most widely-praised feature. The player can choose suave, aggressive, or professional approaches. This neatly avoids the Bioware dialogue-wheel problem where the flavor-text for a given dialogue choice is not always indicative of the actual tone of the speech. It is also a necessary shorthand given that every dialogue choice in Alpha Protocol is on a countdown timer. There’s no deliberate measuring of the possibilities. You pick whatever approach intuition and experience recommend, and you live with the consequences. It’s a nice way of making a high-pressure game of conversations. And Obsidian puts the system to good use in dialogue-only missions. I do wish, however, that Obsidian had expanded a few of these missions to include multiple conversations with a definite objective. For example, the player could attend a party and have to (a) make contact with an agent who could identify the target, (b) bluff his/her way into the same room as the target, then (c) bully or trick the target into revealing the mission-objective information. In the game, these sorts of sequences DO exist, but they tend to be spread out over multiple missions.
Compared to the dialogue system, Alpha Protocol’s action gameplay has a bad reputation. I understand that certain builds can make the game a real slog. Happily, I went with the stealth and pistols build everyone recommends. Most missions were resolved with basic sneaking and the occasional chain shot. Simple enough.
It actually wasn’t the gameplay that frustrated me in Alpha Protocol: it was the writing. Dialogue is functional but rarely memorable.* Thorton’s anger and humor alike have the flavor of toast.** Most of the jokes fall flat. But the bigger problem is the story.
Halbech’s
Leland
Halbech
the game’s poorly-considered framing device requires the player to sit through frequent, boring conversations with Leland
Secrets, conspiracy, and betrayal are supposed to be the driving force of Alpha Protocol’s story, but the player learns almost everything there is to know about
Halbech
The betrayals that do happen in the game tend not to have much impact because the plot arcs are so small and the twists come so frequently. It’s hard to get worked up about
Scarlet’s secret identity when you have pretty limited dealings with her cover identity. And I say this as someone who gave her all the Halbech data files, completed her dossier, and chose to romance her.
Notwithstanding my disappointment with the writing, I had a good time with Alpha Protocol. I am glad GAF talked me into it. I hope Obsidian gets a chance to try something like it again.
*Granted, functional is better than what you get in most videogames, but the standard has to be higher for a game that puts story and dialogue at the center of the experience.
**Thorton’s VA shares the blame here. There are worse performances out there, but I don’t know if I’ve seen one that did more damage to a game. The wooden delivery takes a lot of fun out of selecting different dialogue responses and undermines the dialogue countdown’s ability to create natural-sounding conversations.