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Here are some pictures. Matt MacLean and myself (Matt has sworn not to shave until AP ships) MCA and myself Matt MacLean and Joseph Bulock Beginning slide of the presentation MCA post-presentation Prepping for the panel. The guy standing and speaking with the guys is Dan (is that the right name? I can't remember) the programmer. He was going to speak but they cut him for time and because programming is boring. If you zoom in you can see the refreshments lined up.

Mostly just the stuff gleaned from the stuff not shown in public, which I described. But I'll try to remember... - At the demo, one of the SEGA presenters said that the "flashforward" mechanic would be used primarily to show the consequences of actions. - There are 12 hours or so of cinematics in the game. In a single playthrough, a player will see about 4 of them. - The biggest inspiration for AP was Way of the Samurai 1/2, both of which are very heavy on C&C, and very short. The goal was to make a 20+ hour spy version of Way of the Samurai. - The guys at the demo seemed to indicate that stealthing through certain missions is possible, but it is impossible to go throughout the entire game having never entered combat and neutralized enemies. - The first question asked to the panel discussion had to do with choice and boss fights, I think. It was mentioned that there will be plural bossfights, depending on game decisions. - After the presentation, I asked MCA what he would've done to improve the game and he said that he would've gotten the tone right with the first iteration of the story instead of the third and final one. The panel quickly covered the history of C&C in games, starting with Dragon's Quest (I think) and ending with Way of the Samurai. The name of the panel came from those notorious classic RPG "choices", specifically one from a game I can't remember (never played it) where you save a princess and you are asked if you love her. Giving the answer "No" yields a "but thou must" from the Princess, and you are asked the question again, ad nauseam, until you answer in the affirmative. A more recent example of bad choice was the seduction mechanic in Bloodlines, in which there's no reason other than laffs to choose a non-seduction dialogue option (one of the guys, MCA I think, admonished attendees to buy Bloodlines) During the presentation the guys showed a few C&C flowcharts that looked rather impressive. They were broken up into little nodes for choice, boxes that held possible incidental flags (whether you had done X or Y previously) and other indicators for cinematic stuff. We were shown the basic flowchart for the encounter with SIE at Moscow we've seen over and over. The flowchart had 5 possibilities I remember - entering the scene, the game checks whether you've killed one, both, or neither of two named characters. If you've killed them both, the path veers offscreen to a scenario that wasn't shown. There was also a flowchart shown for the entire game. I didn't quite grasp how to read the chart, but if I did it right then I think I saw at least 6 different endings. That's assuming what I thought were ending nodes were in fact ending nodes.

Good.

Also we were there to see this guy needling MacLean.

So the private demo. First off we were shown two sequences from after a Rome mission, with an as-yet-unidentified love interest, ones that we've heard described before. First one, Thorton has done good and he has a conversation that ends in a romantic interlude (reaches over to kiss, screen fades to black). Second one, Thorton is beaten about the head and neck by the same woman with a lamp. Thorton says "You're trying to knock me out with a lamp? That's movie stuff!" and she says "I know" and hits him with a shock trap. Thorton warns the woman that some guy (I won't divulge the name but I only remember it because he's got the same name as the Ebola virus) will kill her, she leaves, he says "I hate this city". The second part of the demo was almost for the first half. It was more or less a repetition of the dev walkthrough from GDC. The only difference was the initial approach - Thorton took out the tower guards first and used ziplines to get between them. However it went a little bit past that where the walkthrough left off. (IF YOU LACK A BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF ALPHA PROTOCOL FROM TRAILERS AND SUCH GO NO FURTHER) You get the Halbech guy saying "blah blah why you did why you did next". Then it flashes back to the scene with Shaheed. You interrogate him about the stolen missiles and Shaheed says that *gasp* they were not stolen but given by Halbech. You're given a choice to execute him or spare him. The guy playing the demo chose to execute him, so Thorton cuts off Shaheed's speech with a "yeah that's interesting" (or thereabouts) and throws him off a bridge. Then the handler calls but gets cut off by Mina Tang who says that Halbech is sending cruise missiles to your location (and that the only way they'd know where you are is through a mole in the Alpha Protocol organization) thus you enact AP and go rogue. MCA, Matt MacLean, and another Obsidz dude (Framerate? I think his name was Dan) were on hand for the demo and they were all good people, answering questions and the like (I asked if the DSS could be used in future Obsidz games, MCA said "depends on the genre") The Obsidz panel was more like They were expecting 50 or so attendants so they collected a large amount of alchohol and made a drinking game out of the use of the word "choice". The panel ended up packed and by the time Joseph Bulock took the mic he was audibly slurring his words. Lots of good cheer, good punchlines, etc. Matt McLean and his considerable beard went over the incredible complexity in systems that goes into providing choices. Talked a bit more with Matt and MCA. Too tired to remember stuff. Pics coming at some point. As far as the gameplay AI goes - I can't make any determination, any more than you could from the GDC video. It looked better, I think - going up through the guard tower made more sense, and the guards seem to react to dead bodies pretty sensibly. To be perfectly honest, the facial animation still looks fairly rough at times, but the script elicited several laugh-out-loud moments in the scenes we were shown. Combat looks pretty fun. It looks good.

I may or may not be able to hang around for that, we'll see.

On the contrary, teachers are often required to teach in line with their books, especially when state standardized tests are tailored around the textbook. Rookie teachers tend to do it even if they aren't required. And given that Texas buys its books in bulk for the entire state and is, as far as I know, the largest single purchaser of textbooks in the US market, what they require in their textbooks ends up the standard in textbooks all across the country. Which is why this is a big deal instead of just another example of Texas being retarded (see ex. 1 and 2.) Market forces at work, etc.

At this point I'm not sure if I'm going to be playing the demo, or if it will be played for me. We'll see. I'll try and get some thoughts down regardless.

Conversely it could be like

No NDA, either, so I'll see if I can't take some notes and convey some wisdom. I'm guessing the demo will rate somewhere between and

The basic plot is this - You are a nameless physics professor, whose experiment goes awry when his building is struck by lightning at exactly the wrong moment, sending him and his desk to another dimension, full of danger and strange vistas. This is an adventure game, the kind they made before point'n'click devoured the genre. Which is to say, this is a puzzle game, but it's made up of abstract puzzles in gameplay, which nest further puzzles. Take an early example - You need to pass a corridor behind a destructible wall, but down the corridor is a guard behind a door who will lay down an impassable wall of fire if you break down the wall to get to the corridor. In order to pass, you need to take an elevator down one floor and destroy the circuit that's keeping the guard's door unlocked, leaving you free to escape while he tries to break down his door. Several of these challenges are truly vexing, as you'll think you're doing the right thing until you realize you're missing another 10-15 minute sequence. There is no tutorial, but the game uses approximately 2 buttons aside from direction keys. Advanced tactics must be intuited. The game is made up of many puzzles like that, some of which are quite immense. This is an old-timey adventure game and as such you will die often, and there may be some backtracking involved. Which makes it all the more sweet when you figure out how to get past that ceiling shoggoth.

$10 for Another World. Buy it.

I don't know why people aren't pitching a fit over that exclusion. Kids were mad as **** that ME2 didn't go full nude. Witcher enjoys the fandom of even more shameless 'baters. Where's the outrage.

The knock against sex in games is rarely that it is nonsensical in the context of the gameworld. All the games I've played that have sex in them are the sorts of worlds where sex can reasonably happen. The knock is generally that relationships in games are poorly represented, and given the specific demands of gameplay, specifically that character interaction must be a minigame, not a central mechanic of gameplay, and that most games only last 20-30 hours with a small fraction of that being relegated to character interaction, games by nature of their design can only convey a simple sketch or a gross caricature of the relationships people are in that may (or may not) include a sexual element. So you either have awkward, rushed romantic relationships (usually with woobification, the Human Growth Hormone of drama) or Witcher-style magic sex fantasy. AP looks to be the latter.

So wait, is this a split thread or did somebody seriously start up a thread asking why a game that is pretty well established as a bad game is liked so much? Gaming forums are the second most tiring places on the internet (behind Youtube comments sections) precisely because threads dedicated to the discussion of how much things suck are common, open and accepted as part of the culture. Hell, they've got whole forums dedicated to this stuff.

The only thing I got from that demo was that unlimited point rendering is very, very gaudy.

Nice how he added a hair to the gelato cone.

Awkward! It's a Sega thing. Talk to the Rorrstor who will put you in touch. You might have some time left to RSVP.

The way I read it was that it's an insta-death if you've got a character specialized in stealth and unarmed combat. Being swarmed in that case can only reasonably lead to a dire situation. Also Gamesradar preview. They like that you have choice but don't understand the appeal of any choice beyond "shooter". Pretty negative.

I'm on for the private demo! I'm excited. Any Obsidz personnel gonna be there or is it an all-SEGA show? Also I'm going to be at the Obsidz panel and it is going to be gravy.

A Rorie gets his wings.

Sega West honcho sez AP will be a franchise.

"Multitude of choices" interview with Matt Hickman (again), with some new footage spliced in.

Bethsoft interview with Ferg. Of note - 120 people working at Obsidz again (am I remembering correctly or is that 20 more people than were at Obsidz pre-Aliens?) and he hasn't beaten Colonization yet.

Arcanum.