At our SEGA meeting today we got to meet a couple of developers from Obsidian Entertainment. They showed off an early build of what looks like a very promising game: Alpha Protocol. Alpha Protocol is an open world espionage game that combines action, RPG, and adventure elements. Players have a tremendous amount of control over how their player looks, behaves, and levels up in various fields from stealth, martial arts ability, weapon accuracy, and so forth.
The demo we saw was one of the missions from Moscow. What really struck me was how varied players’ paths could be. How you dressed, what skills you had, and how you talk to NPCs all effect how your character ‘works’ in the game world. One example we were shown had the protagonist conversing with the leader of a small army in a trainyard in Moscow. During the conversation, you have to respond in one of four different manners to guide how the conversation goes. Basically, these four options run the gamut from being neutral to hostile, and the NPCs react accordingly. In the demo presentation we saw, we were friendly with Sie, the leader of a small army. With that alliance formed, none of her soldiers would attack us unless we attacked them. I asked them how the NPCs would handle betrayal by your character, be it intentional or not. The response was (and you can hear the entire event here) that the AI, which is still very much under development, reacts depending on how intentional the infraction was seen to be. Basically, if you hit someone with a bit of splash damage from a shotgun or grenade in the middle of a firefight with a common enemy, it isn’t likely that your ally will turn on you. Obviously, the game is still early in development so things in this department are a bit gray and may change.
Speaking of change, you can change your relationship with NPCs in different ways. Besides fighting against them, you can also change relations through mistreating friends of theirs, and by conversation, too. In the demo, after teaming up with Sie’s forces, she and the protagonist had another conversation. This time, in our choice of responses, we chose a negative response that instigated a boss fight with her. Once this character is dead, they cannot be resurrected. However, similar to Heavy Rain, the game is designed to keep the player going, rather than have them be stuck replaying sequences over and over.
Another portion of the demo we saw was much less about action, and more about the dialogue system. I should mention also that for dialogue, during player responses, there is a default answer and a timer bar that pops up that lasts about five seconds. Once the bar expires, the default answer will be used, but players can of course just press the corresponding face button to the response they want to say right away (and not have to wait). So for this second sequence we were shown, our protagonist is talking to an old man in a bar. This old man has vital information and even has the ability to sell you weapons too, if you’re nice enough. We were shown two paths for this particular sequence: the negative path, which had our player slamming the old man’s head against the bar, and the lighter path where you simply talked nicely. The former path got reactions from the other NPCs in the game and even a phone call from a contact of the old man, who tells you that she is not pleased that you mistreated him. You actually lose some reputation with her if you do it this way. However, if you play it nice, the old man contacts you with a weapons offer and can even sway what you do at the end of the earlier Moscow trainyard mission I was talking about. Additionally, the game changes if you decide to talk to the old man before going to the trainyard.
Alpha Protocol has a lot going for it. This early Alpha build was impressive, but understandably unpolished. I just hope the team isn’t pressured to an early release, although no release date has been set yet. My honest prediction for a bug free release would be sometime in 2010.
