Alpha Protocol E3 Previews
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Thankfully I've kept it together a little more than that. Though perhaps not enough! Because when I was showed Alpha Protocol, Obsidian Entertainment new action RPG set in the world of espionage, I was positive I was just being shown Mass Effect. Positive!Followed by GameSpy:
I guess it kind of makes sense, considering that Alpha Protocol has been built using the Mass Effect engine, but I can't help but hope they do more to differentiate the games. They did show a few different mechanics outside of the other major difference (the setting) such as up weapon skills so you're able to, say, line up head shots from cover or enter bullet time and also that you'll be able to dress up the main character, Mike Thornton (where do they get these names?) pretty much as you'd like. Though he looked incredibly lame in the baseball cap, goatee and sunglasses the Obsidian staffer picked out.
Conceptually Alpha Protocol isn't lame. There is a lot to be said for transporting Mass Effect's morality system to a world where your morality's flexibility would have obvious results. During the demo I was shown a mission where Mike was on the hunt for an arms dealer as his assigned mission from the CIA, but if you choose to allow him to escape (after being bribed, of course) he'll be available as a black market arms dealer later in the game.
In our case, our Obsidian demonstrator decided to talk before the guns came out, walked straight up to the U.S. Marine guarding the door, and tried to bluff his way into the embassy. The player's dialogue choices reflected what Obsidian calls the "three J.B." emotional paths through the game. The player can choose to speak in a clipped, professional manner (the "Jason Bourne"), a smooth operator (the "James Bond") or as an aggressive psycho (the "Jack Bauer"). The choices the player makes will determine quite a bit about the world in which the player operates, as the game is inhabited by various factions that have a memory and will long remember how the player treats them. Shooting the Marine guard will seriously alienate other Marines in the game, making them much less friendly and more prone to pull their guns on Thorne.
