Alpha Protocol E3 Previews
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GamingExcellence:
While you will be stuck playing Michael and there's no gender customization, pretty much every single other aspect of the game is entirely up to the player, leaving you truly in control of your game world. Your Michael Thornton will be entirely unique and your actions will cause your game world to evolve in totally different directions.
Players will be able to customize almost every aspect of their unique main character from basic customization, such as his face, hair or accessories, but there is plenty to be said for the actual gameplay mechanics of your character.
GayGamer:
While it plays like a shooter, Alpha Protocol has deep RPG roots - as you'd expect from an Obsidian game. Two elements comprise the RPG aspect of the game: character progression in the form of 9 skills to advance (proficiency with different types of guns, technology, ye olde D&D standby 'Toughness' and sabotage, a crucial element in the game). RPG-ness also appears in the inventory system, where weapon and armor stats (lessening recoil from a shotgun, for instance) can be altered by mods.
RPGFan:
Gameplay "proper" takes places in short missions that send you to various shady locales. In the demo shown to us by Matt Rorie, Michael Thorton heads to Moscow to meet a female Russian operative who, apparently, likes it rough. Before demonstrating combat, we saw how the dialogue system works in Alpha Protocol. When it's your chance to talk, up to four dialogue options appear. They can be represented as a portion of your full statement, or as a generic description of how you'll react. The reaction statements are assigned to different buttons. The trick to this dialogue system, that makes it stand apart from Mass Effect (and other BioWare titles) is that these dialogue sequences are like quick-time events. You have a time limit (and a fairly short one at that) to determine your reaction. Doing your homework is key: in the menu, your dossier gives you background information on nearly every character you meet. Thus, if you read up on the people you may encounter, you know how to properly control their reactions. In the demo we watched, Thorton chose to be aggressive with the Russian operative. As a result, she and her faction helped you take on some "bad guys" (I use the term loosely) while you complete your own objective. After the mission was complete, however, Rorie took the aggression too far, and the operative decided to fight you in a mini-boss-battle sequence.
RandomNPC:
The demo also showed off the skill tree. It works similarly to the one in Mass Effect. New skills are clearly marked, and skills can be upgraded in any order. Much like with Mass Effect, one must choose skill upgrades carefully; though you can max out several skills, you can't get everything before the level cap.
