Alpha Protocol Review
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You're stone cold brilliant, you are, I swear, you really are.So we've seen things Alpha Protocol does well, but what about the things it does better than most? There are a few things Alpha Protocol does that are either truly novel or exceptionally well executed (or a combination of both).
It starts with intel, an extension of the character writing. During Thorton's travels you gather intel on different characters and factions, by picking up files, hacking into computers or discovering tidbits in conversation. Some of these files have a fairly predictable result, such as giving a damage bonus in boss fights, or the faction intel giving some tips on what kind of enemy you're facing (heavily armored or not, using gadgets or not).
It becomes more interesting when you dig up specific facts that are less than public, which you can then use in dialogue in a variety of ways, for example to impress a character or to blackmail him or her. This is often a (dossier) option, but often you'll have to read the dossier itself carefully. For instance, early on when infiltrating an arm's dealer's base, you'll learn from his dossier that he's a no-nonsense kind of guy, who expects strict discipline from his guards. So when you have to fast-talk your way through the gate, you know trying to crack jokes with the guard is probably a bad idea. Perhaps most impressive is how proper dossier knowledge and dialogue choices can impact two of the final bossfights, in either removing them or making them much easier.
The intel system intermixes with the favor system, a scale from -10 to 10 which defines how much key NPCs like or dislike you. This plays a huge part in the game's overall progress. Even when dialogue choices or in-mission approaches don't result directly in a new path opening up or closing, the attitude of NPCs towards you can bring them to contact you to add new options, or to turn against you instead. Even before you meet someone, he may have heard of your approach to certain missions, and will make mention of it as approving or disapproving of your style, with a fitting impact to your standing.
The writing can be particularly evocative here. There is some good fun to be had carefully telling someone what they want to hear, but the (Hate) status dialogue is interesting, and at points it can open up knowledge you otherwise would not have. Balancing it so dislike isn't just a punishment was obviously important to Obsidian, and while they do not always succeed, one nice touch is that your (handler bonus) (a temporary perk giving during a mission) changes if your handler doesn't like you, but it is still a boost to your abilities.
The different characters' motivations in taking a dislike or like to your style are usually easy to understand. And because each has his own set of guidelines, it's pretty hard if not impossible to be every man's friend. Nor does the game want you to, it wants you to make your choices and stick with them.
And that's where I feel Alpha Protocol shines more than any game before it. It is a game with a lot of different consequences to a massive amount of choices, and those consequences are always logical but not always obvious. I suspect that looking at the flowchart of this game alone would give me a headache. The changes are often small: shifts in someone's liking to you, the ability to unlock some extra support in a mission, small meeting missions unlocking or disappearing. But focusing on the lack of huge, sweeping consequences would be ignoring how much all these small changes stack and impact the game. I've been reading through some short writeups of people's playthroughs, and it's fairly impressive how different each person's story is, though the differences are again more in a stack of small details than in completely different areas unlocking. Many of the choices you make will tweak the final area, making it very unlikely it'll play out exactly the same each time. Roughly speaking, one could say Alpha Protocol has a massive amount of choice and consequence, but it is not a game with a branching narrative.
What makes it unique is that there are no wrong choices. We've seen this before, for instance in the Witcher, where choosing between Templars or Squirrels was never wrong or right. Alpha Protocol does this to a much greater level, giving many more choices that are not so binary in nature. However, the problem with applying choice & consequence to this level in a mainstream game the reason BioWare always avoided doing it with linear narratives and Bethesda with a fully open, fairly consequence-free world is primarily that it's difficult to create. But another problem is that it doesn't appeal to the OCD crowd the industry at large is trying to foster. The (big thing) is achievements that encourage obsessively exploring every nook and cranny, not a game that Frith save us actually tells the player he failed at something.
Alpha Protocol faces this problem in two ways. First, it doesn't really tell you when you (missed something), if your information on a character isn't full, sometimes they'll just disappear and you won't find out you missed something important unless you read up on it online. You can see how full a dossier is, but you won't know how important the info is you're missing, even the (secret facts) rank from the plot-changing to fairly irrelevant. The game will never really push your lack of information in your face, and if you choose to execute someone rather than listen to him, that's fine too. The story is tweaked to always flow naturally, and feel like a complete narrative no matter what you miss.
A lot of decisions in game design are head-scratchers until you put it in this light. A checkpoint based saved system seems anachronistic, until you figure it encourages players to go through each area in one go, no matter what kind of mistakes they make. The timer in conversations is included not just to encourage snap decisions, but also to reinforce this concept of there being a natural flow of decisions, of none of them being wrong, of never needing to feel like you should go back and correct yourself. Similarly, the three-pronged dialogue system, is not one that has obvious right and obvious wrong choices, it's not a choice between being good or evil, or competent or incompetent, rather it's just a question of style, of pushing the right buttons on people to get what you want.
Does it work in a broad sense? Hard to tell. There's so much wrong with the game that it kind of stops one from being able to just focus on this gameplay element alone. Any public discussion on the game will focus more on its big flaws than one the big experiment. So it's hard to tell if this is a design approach worth pursuing for developers. But can it work for individual players? Hell yes. This is absolutely the core strength of the game, and gamers tired of the same old bland rote of false choices and fake consequences should enjoy the heck out of this game.
So?
Honestly, I get the reviewers who totally rip this game to shreds. I think it's a too simple a take on the game, but I get it: this game has major flaws in core gameplay elements. That's not something you can just shrug off. It'll bother many players. For quite a few, it'll simply make the game unplayable. To exacerbate this, the opening area is somewhat poorly designed, focusing purely on the game's mediocre combat and stealth gameplay, as if encouraging players to put it down before they get to the good part.
And this isn't all stuff we can hope to be patched out eventually. Maybe somewhat like Troika's Arcanum or Bloodlines, it's not just bugs and glitches, but it's just that the combat and other core gameplay elements aren't very good, and it'll never be very good. It's not yet clear how much support we can even expect from SEGA on this game, but even fully patched it'll be a significantly flawed game.
Still, this is a game that has all the potential to become a cult classic. It's kind of a shame that it'll be hard to tell how well the experiment in game structure and flow in choice and consequence will work, simply because many will never get to that point, beyond all its flaws.
No one can pretend the flaws don't exist, but it's also a mistake to focus on them alone. I can't guarantee they won't turn you off the game completely, but I can say that even with its flaws Alpha Protocol was one of the more satisfying RPG experiences I've had in years. It doesn't play it safe with the predictable blandness that has become the industry standard, instead daring to throw more choices your way than any game in recent memory. Actually challenging the player, rather than insulting his intelligence. If this sounds like something you can identify with, I would give it a shot to try and get past the game's flaws, it's definitely worth it.
