Disclosure Alert: Alpha Protocol: Episode 24: Russian to Rome

Before I begin the post for today's episode, anaphysik reminded me that I never told you guys exactly why this week's section was so late. Sure, a lot of that 4 weeks time could be blamed on Aldowyn's general laziness, but there was another, dumber reason.

You see, we had actually met with Ringwraith on Skype for two recording sessions. Why two, I hear my hypothetical inquisitive audience ask? Well, Aldowyn forgot to save at the end of our session with Irridium. This would normally be a non-issue, because the game auto-saves your progress. However, Aldowyn decided that he would play a little bit of Alpha Protocol on the side, accidentally overwriting the auto-save.

When we began the session with Ringwraith, we learned that we had to painstaking redo every friggin' mission in Moscow up to just before the embassy. Because we had to recreate the situation we ended off on with Irridium, we ended up having to reload a few times as well. It was a fun hour, but it meant we had to meet again next week to record the actual session. Coupled with a few communication issues (mostly my fault, admittedly), that meant this batch was fairly aggravating. With that said:



The reason we ended up replaying THIS boss fight is a combination of several factors. One, we were unsatisfied with the outcome in which we missed out the aftermath mission in Moscow that can occur if you get enough intel on Brayko and/or Surkov. This was when we discovered we screwed that up well before starting this session.

Second, Skype kicked all of us during Leland's interrogation as you saw previously. In order to avoid the auto-save screwing things up, anaphysik told Aldowyn to kill the process. Luckily, we only had to redo the boss fight because of some quick thinking. Still, compounded with the screw ups described above... I don't speak for the others, but I was getting pretty pissed off by this point. Hopefully, it doesn't show too much in the episode.

The mission we missed is a pretty critical one too. If you have enough dossier information, Brayko will tell you the Surkov screwed him over and is Halbech's primary contact in the area. From here, the player can meet up with him and confront him with this fact. In can result in many different scenarios depending on Mike's reputation with those involved, including an uneasy alliance with Surkov, execution of both him and his bodyguard at either your's or Brayko's, and grievous physical injury. Without that mission, this whole arc kinda feels incomplete.

(For your viewing pleasure: I have opted to include the Moscow ending we were going for immediately below this line:)


When you choose to make a deal with Brayko, he gives you a sound system that can only be played in the Moscow hub. This sucks because once you finish Moscow and move onto another hub, you can never return. I played on console and used it a few times. However, everyone I've spoken to who played on PC had a glitch where the sound system wouldn't play. I suspect that it has something to do with the port job, but can't confirm. Those of you watching this who choose to strike a deal with Brayko, can you please comment to tell me which system you played AP on and whether or not the sound system glitched on you so that I might have more data points?

And now we're at Rome: The last of the three hubs. I can't wait to show you out next batch of episodes. They were fun to record and we hope they are fun to watch. As for what I did when we touched down in Rome... I regret nothing.