Alpha Protocol Preview
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Nathan Davis, the game's design producer, opens it up to the assembled throng, cobbled together in a tiny room in SEGA's behind closed doors booth at E3 2008. It's obvious what the audience wants. Thornton coldly puts a bullet in the weapons dealer's head. Rekindling memories of Jason Bourne, Daniel Craig's Bond and Tom Cruise in the first, actually pretty decent Mission Impossible film, Thornton starts Alpha Protocol, Obsidian Entertainment's (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2) upcoming secret agent RPG, as a green but very capable agent who ends up embroiled in a world conspiracy after a mission goes horribly wrong. He's a secret agent on the edge, and he's very pissed off.
Having ended the life of the weapons dealer Thornton now has to explain himself to the CIA. "Sorry - radio was on the fizz." he lies. "Don't get too upset, I probably just saved 100 lives just then!"
While this plot set up implies plenty of action, Alpha Protocol is at its core an RPG, so you can expect plenty of dialogue and character customisation to accompany the explosions and cover-based combat. What Obsidian is keen to push though is its take on the now popular dialogue wheel conversation system. Played out in real time, it uses 'emotive stances' to allow the player to choose how Thornton is going to react in any given conversation. We see it in action in an earlier level. He has three options as he approaches a marine who's guarding the US embassy in Moscow, a building he's charged with infiltrating: go around the side and sneak in; blast his way in, tearing through the marines and anyone else who gets in his way; or bluff his way in. Nathan decides to take the third option.
