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The lasting effects of your decisions will see your colleagues conversing about your traits in cutscenes or when you interact with them, (there are loads of NPCs to chat with) so expect to be blasted by your superiors when you go mental with the bullets. But your actions could lead you to a black market crook that can provide you with unique equipment, so even the ‘bad’ choices will often bear fruit. This is all part of Obsidian’s vision of allowing you to play through the game like one of the three JBs – James Bond (suave), Jason Bourne (technical), or 24’s Jack Bauer (ass-kicker), and it already adds a certain degree of replay value to Alpha Protocol.
No RPG would be complete if an upgrade system wasn’t in place, and Alpha Protocol delivers the goods. There are various ways to spend your experience points, in what’s known as your Personal Dossier. Here you can tune skills like sub-machine gun handling, Sabotage techniques and Martial Arts, among other things. You’ll earn points during missions, and you can spend these before your next one to unlock things like new gadgets and hacking equipment, larger clips and power for weapons, or new fighting moves to pummel anyone in your path. Again, these choices will determine how you’re referred to by your chums and your enemies, so they may refer to you as being very technically gifted or simply ‘crazy punchy-man’. Or something.
At this very early stage Alpha Protocol looks pretty hot. The presentation we were given still leaves a lot to the imagination and we would have liked to have seen more of the stealth sections or a few more fighting techniques explored, but this will all come to the fore in the next few months. For now – if Obsidian can maintain their current progress – then this could be a classic RPG that will shape the future of the genre.
Q&A with Darren Monahan, Executive Producer at Obsidian
What was your original goal when you set out to make AP?
We’re well known for doing medieval and sci-fi games so this time we wanted to do a brand new environment for the RPG game. We thought it’d be cool to do a modern day spy game.
Where do you think AP stands within the RPG market and what does it do differently?
I think the setting helps to ground you. The player doesn’t have to get to know all-new alien races because it’s set in a familiar universe. This is important to us as we didn’t want the gamers’ saying “Oh, God, what’s this game’s version of orcs?” I hate to say this, but we wanted to make it more action-orientated rather than pure RPG so that players get a sense of excitement throughout. EA have a lot of their sports games using RPG elements, so we’re trying to do that with the action genre.
What areas can we expect to travel to?
There’s a Middle Eastern setting, which isn’t nailed down yet, and there’ll be Rome and Saudia Arabia. We’ll have Europe in there, along with Russia and the Eastern Bloc, plus an Asian setting too. We’ve not settled on it yet, but there could be some American locations too. There’s already been a lot of talk on the forums [of their website] requesting we don’t make stereotypical enemies that make the whole game feel cheesy.
Are there any plans for DLC or online multiplayer?
We’ve been talking about it. The DLC will be similar to Oblivion and Mass Effect in that you can download packs for missions or weapons, but it’s not definite. But we’re not planning any online multi-player modes at all.
Tell us more about the gadgets in AP.
It depends on the character that you create. So if you put more skill points into the Technology stat then you’ll get much more elaborate devices. We have one gadget that is like a noise-generator that shoots a blue sonic beam, creating a ventriloquist effect that allows you to sneak up on them and whack ‘em in the back of the head. There’s a lot of different types that you have access to that will be tailored to your style.
Jul 7, 2008
