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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Game Informer reveals Obsidian RPG: Alpha Protocol (PC/360/PS3)

Legend11 on 10 March 2008

Source: NeoGAF

Alpha Protocol

(1 player action/RPG)

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Platform: PS3/360/PC
Publisher: Sega
Release: Spring 2009

"A modern day espionage focused action/RPG that takes you on a suspenseful ride in the vein of James Bond, Jack Bauer, and Jason Bourne. Take a wet-behind-the-ears greenhorn agent up through the ranks to become a bona-fide super spy."

-Main character is Michael Thorton, a fully trained but inexperienced young operative who has the world turned upside down when a mission goes wrong.

-Title "Alpha Protocol" is a phrase that is used when operatives go underground to work off the grid. Usually reserved for senior agents.

-Battle system is similar to Mass Effect but have more in common with Uncharted. It revolves around real time combat with an emphasis on gun play and high tech gadgets.

-Third person perspective, action orientated gameplay

-Close quarters combat can be a last resort or primary method of fighting depending on how you spend skill points you have earned.

-Skill system is based most closely on Fallout. It's classless, you have 10 skills and 10 ranks in each skill. Skills don't simply improve things like accuracy, they improve the way your character will perceive situations.

-The game will suit all play styles from the run and gunner to the stealth assassin.

-Extremely in depth dialog system that is a mix of Mass Effect and Indigo Prophecy. Once conversations happen, that's it, no revisiting the NPC to try to talk again and again. System is named the Dialog Stance System. You dictate your characters tone in a conversation by pressing a corresponding face button. Options can be cool and suave others can be brash/impatient.

-You can have multiple active missions in different countries and travel freely between them.

-Lots of girls and romance subplots. You'll meet tons of different girls on missions and yes you can bag them all.

-Current control scheme for selecting powers and weapons is similar to Bioshock.



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Garcian Smith on 10 March 2008

Sounds a lot like Goldeneye: The RPG. I thoroughly approve. Plus it's being developed by Obsidian, and say what you will, but I'm REALLY impressed by KotOR 2 thus far.



"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."

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DMeisterJ on 10 March 2008

Didn't Obsidian make KOTOR 2?

Think that I'll pass.



Darc Requiem on 10 March 2008
Garcian Smith said:
Sounds a lot like Goldeneye: The RPG. I thoroughly approve. Plus it's being developed by Obsidian, and say what you will, but I'm REALLY impressed by KotOR 2 thus far.

Obsidian did an excellent job with KotOR 2. Its too bad Lucasarts hamstrung with 10 months of development time, which caused to game to have bugs, inconsistent frame rates, and worst of all they had to nix a lot of side quest content. I was always hoping that the PC version would have the missing content but Lucas Arts just...well sucks. I wanted to do that HK-47 side quest so bad....



DMeisterJ on 10 March 2008
Darc Requiem said:
Garcian Smith said:
Sounds a lot like Goldeneye: The RPG. I thoroughly approve. Plus it's being developed by Obsidian, and say what you will, but I'm REALLY impressed by KotOR 2 thus far.

Obsidian did an excellent job with KotOR 2. Its too bad Lucasarts hamstrung with 10 months of development time, which caused to game to have bugs, inconsistent frame rates, and worst of all they had to nix a lot of side quest content. I was always hoping that the PC version would have the missing content but Lucas Arts just...well sucks. I wanted to do that HK-47 side quest so bad....


 But there really wasn't much for them to do with KotOR 2.  They basically used the same engine as one, just slightly modified.  It didn't look much better.  And did a lot of things worse, like you mentioned, *cough* frame-rate *cough*.  How can you mess up an already good game?  Obsidian gets a huge minus in my book for messing up a game that was fine.  



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akuma587 on 10 March 2008

Kind of reminds me of what the Agency is trying to do. This definitely looks interesting, and it is good to see some originality. I wish their were some screens.



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson

SeriousWB on 10 March 2008

I've never had a framerate problem with KotoR II..



Darc Requiem on 10 March 2008
DMeisterJ said:
Darc Requiem said:
Garcian Smith said:
Sounds a lot like Goldeneye: The RPG. I thoroughly approve. Plus it's being developed by Obsidian, and say what you will, but I'm REALLY impressed by KotOR 2 thus far.

Obsidian did an excellent job with KotOR 2. Its too bad Lucasarts hamstrung with 10 months of development time, which caused to game to have bugs, inconsistent frame rates, and worst of all they had to nix a lot of side quest content. I was always hoping that the PC version would have the missing content but Lucas Arts just...well sucks. I wanted to do that HK-47 side quest so bad....


But there really wasn't much for them to do with KotOR 2. They basically used the same engine as one, just slightly modified. It didn't look much better. And did a lot of things worse, like you mentioned, *cough* frame-rate *cough*. How can you mess up an already good game? Obsidian gets a huge minus in my book for messing up a game that was fine.


 You are joking right. They had 10 months to conceptualize an entire game. That means that had to create a story, characters, right a script for that story, storyboard and plan out the games screnarios, etc. They maybe at best has 6 or 7 months to code what they had planned. Not to mentioned the gameplay change and additional particle effects added to the game which bogged down its frame rate due to a lack of optimation time. It doesn't matter if you have the engine already in existence. How many of the Unreal 3 based games were churned out in less than ten months time. I mean they already had a pre-made engine handy right?



Legend11 on 10 March 2008

I really liked Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer that they made and the only problem I have with them is the amount of bugs in their games. This game has about a 3 year development cycle so hopefully it's enough time that they're able to get a game out without any problems.



Yakuzaice on 10 March 2008

Sounds somewhat interesting.  Will wait for some gameplay footage and more information to get excited though.