Disclosure Alert: Alpha Protocol: Episode 9: Shaheed Saudi Writing on the Wall

And now, Saudi Arabia comes to an end. Thank goodness for that, because the game becomes more interesting AND more fun once we get to the core of it.

I think the confrontation with the Al-Samad Lieutenant was a pretty well done section of game. It's short, yet the scene is set up in such a way that there are a couple of different routes you can take to finish it. It allows for either combat or stealth characters to do what they enjoy doing most, whether it's getting the drop on somebody or abandoning discretion in favor of mass violence. As an interesting side note, the Al-Samad Lieutenant is one of the few characters in the game that you actually have to kill. Aside from him and Darcy, the game allows players to choose exactly how murderous they want to be.

I'm significantly less charitable about the fight against the tank. On at least 2 of my playthroughs, the fight against the tank went very much the way Varewulf described it. I had run out of missiles to defeat the tank with, so I was left using the Pistol and my backup Assault Rifle to fell a TANK. I was surprised to see that the Halbech missile launchers didn't respawn. And like Aldowyn, I remember having a few mishaps where it looked like I had a clean shot, but something in the environment got in the way, making me either miss the tank or blow myself up. This game does have the problem Deus Ex: Human Revolution had where the bosses feel entirely out of place. As we progress through the game, you'll learn what I mean by that. (And as an aside, Aldowyn has a huge problem with not using First Aid when he really should. So much so that we almost made that his title in the credits.)

I said this in one of the earlier episodes, but I really like the idea of using the interrogation as a framing device. In the scene that plays after the Graybox is finished, players are initially led to believe that Thorton is the one interrogating Leland. Now that we've finished Saudi Arabia and as we head to other hubs in the game, we then realize that Leland is the one whose interrogating Thorton. It's a really subtle plot twist that I thought was really well done and had me hooked. All throughout my first playthrough I was wondering "How did Thorton get captured by Halbech and thrown into the Graybox?" And, as anaphysik notes, the dialog between Thorton and Leland is really well written and there's a lot of subtext behind it.

The conversation with Shaheed represents a very big turning point in the game. This is the point where Michael Thorton stops being a tool for Alpha Protocol and starts to really think and plan for himself. This is where the game starts offering choices and consequences that reach farther than the hub they are made in. Choosing whether or not to kill Shaheed is a very morally gray decision. On one hand, he is being set up just as much as Thorton is, another tool for Halbech to use and dispose of. Also, he is a man of his word and keeps all of his promises. On the other hand, he is NOT a nice man. He is very much a terrorist and openly admits to planning further attacks, promising to do more harm to innocent people. It's not an easy choice to make and players can justify making either decision.

So this is where we get into the game's main premise. Alpha Protocol has been infiltrated by Halbech and hijacked for their own ends. As a result, we are now a rogue operative. However, thanks to all the secrecy and the "Yellow-Brick-Road" policy that Alpha Protocol maintains, where operatives must find their own resources, safehouses, and funding, we can utilize Alpha Protocol as well, finding safehouses and gathering weapons or intel relatively easily. There are three leads we can choose to follow: A Halbech connection selling missiles in Moscow, an Al-Samad sleeper cell being activated in Rome, and the impending assassination of the President of Taiwan. As Aldowyn stated, this is the usual Bioware MO of making you go through a tutorial mission and then opening up, giving you the freedom to choose the order you take things on yourself and dividing the game into small mini-stories than culminate in the finale. It's a style I enjoy and appreciate.

As anaphysik said, the first meeting with Scarlet Lake seems WAY too convenient. Right after you find out the Halbech's get-rich quick scheme to start a Cold War will end up causing World War 3, you meet a reporter who's clearly trying to use you to get a scoop because her journalistic instincts tip her off to you. The real reason she needs to meet you at that point is because of something we'll talk about in the Taipei mission. I have more to say about her, but right now you're lacking the context, so I'll save it for when we post the first half of Taipei.

I really like the Taipei safehouse. It feels ripped right out of a spy movie, very fitting for a game like Alpha Protocol. And like anaphysik, I enjoyed the news channel you can watch throughout the game. They offer not only a nice source of humor, but also a way to gauge how laymen in the world are reacting to your actions. It's a nice little touch that I can appreciate, much like the dingy apartment we only see in one brief scene.

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See! I told you this post more be more substantial!

Disclosure Alert: Alpha Protocol: Episode 8: Rouge Agent

We had planned to only do four episodes in Saudi Arabia. However, this hub ran longer than anticipated, so we had to stretch into 5 episodes. The next one SHOULD be posted either by the end of the day tomorrow.

This is one of those episodes where nothing worth commenting on happens. It's basically just us talking with Aldowyn playing in the background. Sorry, but sometimes that happens.

But rather than leave this space nearly blank, I'm going to instead talk a little about the save system of Alpha Protocol, mainly because it isn't particularly good. For context, before we record a particular segment of the game, Aldowyn usually performs a practice run, streaming it to whichever one of us wishes to watch. (It's usually anaphysik, since I am often busy doing one of the following: College coursework, writing articles for PSTD, or playing whatever game-of-the-week interests me.) When he went to start his practice save to begin our next hub world (which I'll talk more about next episode), he had difficulty finding the correct save. This is because of a couple of problems with Alpha Protocol's save system. First, it only saves checkpoints and while you can manually save, you can only save progress up to the last checkpoint. Second, unlike other games like Mass Effect (Yes, I know. Shut up!), game saves aren't neatly divided into careers for your convenience. They are all in one list. These two facts in combination combine to great irritation. If you're like Aldowyn and have multiple saves in the same spot, it can be trouble when trying to find a particular save (which you would almost always want to do whenever loading a game). You can't rename saves either, so best of luck to you if you have 5 saves all at "Saudi Arabia Safehouse."

I have to wonder if this is a fault with the engine or with Obsidian's programming. Honestly, by now saving systems should've been perfected years ago. We should not have to put up with bad save systems in the modern day. I had a similar problem with Hitman: Absolution and its god-forsaken checkpoint system. Why am I seeing developers and game engine programmers so often screw up this part of the game? Save systems may say nothing regarding your game's mechanics, themes, or play, but done poorly they're tedious and annoying, which may cause players unnecessary frustration and agitation with the game.

Sorry for not having anything substantial to say about the game. Once shit hits the fan in tomorrow's episode, I'll have a much more interesting post to give you.

Disclosure Alert: Alpha Protocol: Episode 7: Mike Hates Sean Doorcy

In this episode, we piss off Darcy, break into a weapons stockpile, and have a brush with Glitch.

Let it be said that I really, really dislike Darcy. While he has an interesting backstory and character, it does ever go anywhere. And as previously stated, his relationship to Mike is one of the most static relationships in the game. Whether or not he likes or hates you, nothing really changes about him and how he reacts to you. In a game like this, that really stands out.

Anaphysik made a great point about the reputation system. That is: What Mike actually feels about any character in the game is left entirely up to the player. The game gives you the possible interpretation that you are just manipulating them to suit your whims, whatever those whims may be. It is also possible for players to make what Mike says what he genuinely feels. It's all left to interpretation. The game itself generally assumes nothing about the player and his/her attitudes, which is a point I want to elaborate more on when we get further into the game.

My question that I posed to you viewers still stands: Do you consider Alpha Protocol to be a "good" game? It's a difficult question because it really depends on what you are looking for in a game. Some people will be put of by the admittedly rather mediocre gameplay, some will adore the way the game handles choices, and even more will find the way the game handles dialog to be off-putting. None of these states are mutually exclusive either. While I personally enjoyed Alpha Protocol, there is no denying it is a flawed game. What do all of you guys think and why?

I have heard many stories in the past about Alpha Protocol being glitchy, but honestly this recording was the first time I've seen the glitchiness firsthand. It was actually quite amazing to me the amount of bugs we encountered. I can hypothesize that it has something to do with how FRAPS, the stream, and the game itself interact with each other because this is an oddity to me.

Confession: When I first played through the game (Recruit/Hard/Assault Rifles), I ALSO put very few points into either Sabotage or Martial Arts. I didn't think I would need either of these skills. Because of that, I became all too familiar with the 8-12 numbers keypads and super difficult hacks/lock-picks because I put no points into Sabotage. I learned from my first playthrough, and I can only hope that those who watch this and decide to play Alpha Protocol learn from my mistakes.

Did I seriously call him "Mikey" at the end of this episode? Good lord!

(As a side note: Whenever Aldowyn stomps on a guard, I think of this clip from LA Noire.)

Disclosure Alert: Alpha Protocol: Episode 6: Ha Ha, Finally, Some VIOLENCE!

In this episode we bond with Mina over romantic dinners, a sense of honor, and killing waves and waves of terrorists.

As the game goes on, Thorton will get various trophies from characters in the form of items scattered about the safehouses. When you approach one and examine it, Mike will make a quip regarding the gift or its giver. Some of these trophies and quips change depending on your reputation with the person that is represented by them. It's a nice way to remind the player of notable events that have happened in their career while fleshing out the characters of the game. In particular, the certificates only come up if you score 100 or more on the orientations in the Greybox (1 for each of the 3).

Mina serves as the game's primary moral compass. If you kill an innocent person during a mission, she is the only person that will lower their opinion of you. If you're role-playing, this means that you have a way of knowing when you're doing collateral damage. However, mix/maxers may wish to consider pissing her off to get the -5/10% cooldown bonus as her handler perk. Either way, since Mina the character you'll be dealing with most, getting her reputation up or down is fairly trivial. I should apologize for talking about people we'll meet in the future, if only vaguely, but this game is very hard to talk about without referencing past and future events because of how involved everything tends to be with everything else.

Several times during this episode, I demand that Aldowyn cut his microphone. During the recording session, Aldowyn's roommates were particularly loud and irritating. Because Aldowyn doesn't have a good headset yet, we hear a lot of what goes on in his room during recording sessions. This can reach the point where literally none of us can hear him or even ourselves over that background noise on his mic. We're still trying to find an adequate workaround, though Skype's push-to-talk and Aldowyn's masterful(?) editing should help to mitigate the problem.

I am curious as to why Obsidian chose to make the Sniper Rifle a static object in the world as opposed to a gun that you can carry with you like an Assault Rifle or a Pistol. I understand that it is a very powerful piece of equipment, but really players should be able to carry it with them. The easiest way I could see to remedy the situation would be to very tightly control the Sniper Rifle's ammo supply. If anyone here has any thoughts about the decision making behind the Sniper Rifle, feel free to leave them here.

I will never tire of telling this story, but playing on Recruit on Hard with Assault Rifles really gave me a negative opinion of the game when I first played. Like I said in the recording, I almost refused to touch the game ever again after that. Fortunately I changed my mind and DID playthrough again... and again... and again. This just goes to show how you need to know what difficulty is right for you. I misjudged the game and paid for it. If not for the fact that I was already at the Moscow boss before I realized my mistake, I would've restarted the whole game. This is why I recommend playing on Easy and with Stealth/Pistols. The gameplay is just not worth doing otherwise. Your experience will suffer for it.

Disclosure Alert: Alpha Protocol: Episode 5: Canadian Christmas Trees

I apologize in advance for the quality of the recordings this week. Our mission in Saudi Arabia was fraught with peril. And by that, I mean Aldowyn's roommates wouldn't shut up, the Skype call went down a few times, and the game glitched on us more than once. Fun stuff!

Intel is really one of the best investments of your cash in Alpha Protocol. They give you so many useful bonuses to help you on your missions at a very cheap price compared to any decent piece of equipment. Each piece of intel confers a passive bonus in the mission that it was purchased for (with the exception of dossiers, as they just unlock the next section in a given character/faction's dossier). You can use them to get Sniper Rifle drop offs, lowered guard presence, maps detailing the ideal routes through areas, and occasionally they can even give you side-objectives you otherwise wouldn't have access to.

The whole conversation with Canadians and Christmas Trees really does highly how mind-numbingly dumb many of the Suave quips can sound. Part of the problem (or humor, depending on your viewpoint) is how deadpan Micheal Thorton delivers any of his lines. The voice actor, Josh Gilman, doesn't exactly have an extensive record. Aside from this role, his most notable credit is Angeal from Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. Other than that he is mostly known for "Additional Voices." Maybe once he gets some more notable roles under his belt, he will become a bit better with regards to VA work. On the other hand, it could also be attributed to writing or voice direction. Sometimes it is hard to tell.

In this episode, anaphysik says "I would rather have a game like Mass Effect or Alpha Protocol where I enjoy everything but the controls than a game where the controls are perfect and it is just pointless and dumb otherwise." This is ultimately what will make or break one's enjoyment of Alpha Protocol. If one is willing to overlook the mediocre gameplay that we have so prominently put on display, then there's a very solid RPG here that focuses on player/character interaction. Also, I get to gloat to anaphysik and Aldowyn right now because special guest Varewulf and I were right, Awareness is a skill unlocked by default that becomes a permanent boost once you get enough ranks in Stealth. (As a side note: Firing that missile with the computer terminal is one of my favorite moments of the game. It's hilarious in its own special way.)

At the end, the game glitched at the end of the mission. Since Aldowyn bought an specific intel before the mission, we should have been able to alter the shipping labels of one of his crates to our safehouses address, essentially stealing his supply and netting us a boost in cash. It's nothing important, but it still sucks.

And we end with the confrontation with Nasri. This very early event in the game highlights how choice and consequence work. People who Killed or Arrested him get the benefit of having guards arm themselves with inferior equipment in exchange for losing access to his inventory in the Clearinghouse. Arresting him and Extorting him also offer cash rewards, though Arresting him nets you a larger cash bounty (since Nasri is a wanted man). This is all on top of the perk a player would get (there is one for each choice).