Wombat

I'm bit surprised by the screenshots and interviews, too. Some screenshots are not just eye-candies but their influences from Blade Runner (the apartment room of the protagonist and the mist effect in Shanghai full of neon) and Ghost in the Shell (I guess I saw the gun in Automated Capitalism, J.E. Sawyer) are quite obvious. As for the theme, the Renaissance - Detroit (an iconic place for American automobile industry) - Icarus concept appear interesting, somehow overshadowing the story. They may be intervening the Renaissance theme into the Sci-Fi world through the dream of the protagonist like the unicorn image in Blade Runner. Combining augmentations and skills seem to be a good idea both to make the change clear to the players and integrity...I guess. They seem to be trying to use the modern graphics both as eye-candies and artistic tool. Also, I used to think of the ideas about how to make RPG advancement systems fit to less mythic worlds and, in Sci-Fi worlds, they find their places in cybernetics/powered suites (To my surprise, Crysis 2 seems to be going to this direction, too). Of course, I'm staying cautious but at the moment, it is quite hard to find points out some things about which the development team is doing wrong.

This reminds me of what J.E. Sawyer used to have said of the screenshots of the Black Hound: According to him, they are often taken for screenshots of some other 2D games by those who saw them in desktop screens of their computers at their office.

@Hassat Hunter You haven't replied but I'd give it a wild shot while I have time to do that. In the world presented by the modern TPS view, it's quite odd to see a character can "hide" himself in the line of the sight of the enemies, for example. This may be acceptable for some people who are familiar with rogue game-play of D&D rule set but it is rather careless for the designers to expect the same line of thought to those who bought it as a third person stealth action game, who probably rely on what they see rather than imagining abstract rules behind it. In fact, nowadays, it is even hard to expect gamers to read manuals. It is very easy to disdain these people with rather irrational "geeky pride" but Obsidian have to sell their games with more wider ranges of the players. Personally, I'd rather like Obsidians to lower the hurdle to various types of players but keep the quality of the content for more than just mild entertainment. For, IMO, bigger game developers are good at offering polished game-plays but I don't think most of them are successful in the latter.

If you are addressing my post, could you be more specific?

To the OP. If you are accustomed to shooting and/or stealth action games, it would be suitable for you to read some reviews from different sources before buying the game. I feel the designers of Alpha Protocol seem to have forgotten about the fact that graphic/physics engines have already been there to play a role in dictating "the world". This ends up with, IMO, some gameplays being counterintuitive to the "shooter"/"stealth action" players, who are accustomed to gathering information from the graphics. This is just my "theory" but I think there might be a loose relationship with dominance of D&D rule-set. For I've gotten an impression that the dominance may be making some people less conscious of the fact, combined with content (data), the rules (ways to process the data) are designed to dictate imaginary worlds. Employing supernatural/magical powers in a modern graphic engine is like implementing two rules based on different design philosophies to one game...IMHO.

I didn't mean it's easy and even I can figure out what you wrote here. At least, IMO, the game-play must feel complete without making the players figure out how these abstract data works to sell it those who are not familiar with role-playing games. Bethesda relatively did well, at least, in this respect. If the engine is not available in the market, then, they need (human) resources such as Emil Pagliarulo, which I have mentioned in one of my ancient posts here. I wonder which is more realistic, though.

I wonder if people here like to see Obsidian go down to Troika's path? I'd write a different thing in boards of indie companies. So, I guess I'm trying to be slightly more realistic than some people here. In fact, I don't write anything at boards of bigger companies since it would be pretty unrealistic of me to expect them to listen to me. In some of my first posts here, I asked a question about whether they go for the path of modernizing 90's CRPG or that of weaving some role-playing game essences into modern action games. Either way, it would be O.K. for me. I asked this question since I thought they would fail if they were half-minded. Unfortunately, my fear seems to have been realized. As for "traditional RPG," I know BIS made their share of success in making 90's CRPG. However, definitely, they didn't make full use of RPG essences from PnP RPG in their games, which could be benefited by modern graphics rather than fighting against it. "Be water, my friend". This time around, I guess I advance further despite of my ignorance of game-development. Obsidian people here, how about pretending to make a stealth action game? For example, buy a game engine from a successful stealth action maker, and put dialogue systems and RPG GUI into it? There must be some meta-data which manifest various types of damages, armor and health. Then, these meta-data can be systematically organized by your good old CRPG mind into character advancement/modification systems. If the original engine is successful one, it can even work as an advantage in persuading potential publishers. So, why not make what you are good at and buy what you are not? After all, even back to BIS, you made use of engines by Bioware and even now, you are using that of Bethesda in Fallout:New Vegas (Well, good luck on taming that old hag embryo, though). If you keep making successful games, probably, you will be supplied with resources suitable to your course.

If you had noticed the fact that I even track down BIS/Troika developers to this company and Double Bear Productions, you must have spared your time on trying to explain the background information. In any case, what you wrote is far from my point. By the same mistake, I mainly meant this one from the list of the OP. NPCs still standing after getting a few headshots doesn't seem to be believable as well as the PC stopping the time while sneaking, for example. These mechanics doesn't seem to fit real world settings with modern graphics. There must be better points where shooter game-play and RPG system could be blended together. I think some developers in Obsidian are well aware of "the issue" but I believe some others are still obsessed by the formats of older CRPG although if their knowledge is used without the obsession, it could make another good resource for Obsidian (and hopefully, next-gen CRPG genre). Employing knowledge is one thing, and prejudiced by it is another. That said, don't misunderstand me. I'm familiar with quite a number of PnP RPG systems and I think there must be plenty of room for their essences combined with even the contemporary gaming. I'm not a programmer but, from what I have gathered so far, the bugg-ines seems to come from the deeper level, so, I guess they are right in doing this. In fact, I read some people who seem to be knowledgeable on programming equivocally wrote about the game: if rendering engine is not good, it will limit what the artists can do. They say, if the foundation itself is bad, there is no use in building anything on it. For me, it is a fixated view to CRPG mechanics but it seems the same thing can be applied to the engine.

Although she didn't name Chris Parker but Annie Carlson, who is now working at Double Bear Studio with Brian Mitsoda, complained of her superior in this project. Also, J.E. Sawyers seems to be a great fan of (almost sucker to) stealth action game and Nathaniel Champan is willing to combine modern stealth action game-play with character development systems. So, I couldn't believe that Obsidian repeated the same mistake with Bloodlines. Reading some reviews, there must be those who played too many RPG with strong magic elements rather than with more realistic approaches. Putting a finger on Chris Parker is ridiculous since the "sources" are just anonymous posts but I think there must be some people who need to take a distance to D&D type games when they are making RPG with real world settings. At least, I haven't read reviews which have many complaints on choices and consequences, to which Chris Avellone and his gangs are responsible. Alas, every developer who communicates on the net didn't complain of Aliens RPG, either, especially J.E. Sawyer seems to have been happy with the game-play of it although he shut his mouth when I asked of that of Alpha Protocol... I cannot but hope Obsidian will be able to make full use of their resources.

I haven't even touched the game and probably won't touch any game till I become less busy, at least, but Gamespot's score feels rather harsh. I don't know how much influence on the sales but a 60% score from a major game review site must be quite damaging... Reading the review, I guess my fear about the game-play and graphics turned out to be legitimate, unfortunately. The majority of the gamers who are accustomed to the quality of modern shooters are unforgiving to a game which has more or less similar main gameplays. The same thing happened to VtMB. I wish it could have made at least the same score as Vampire the Masquerade:Bloodlines did, though. Watching game-play on the net, besides the awkward presentation, there seem to be conflicts between character advancement systems and shooter game-play. I cannot feel but that Deus Ex scheme doesn't seem to work well with contemporary graphics...the stealth and headshot don't appear to be believable at all. It appears character advancement elements and shooter ones are fighting each other in front of the eyes of the players. Is it impossible to make something like original Splinter Cell, which dates back to 2002, with much more various choices on gadgets/weapons/armor and their modification to replace the character advancement system? I cannot understand why they needed to repeat the same/similar mistakes as some of them did in VtMB... Of course, VtMB has its virtues but the game-play was not one of them, IMHO.

Maybe, history part? I simply meant it's too early to react to such small pieces of info.

Can you be more specific about what you dislike about it? History repeats itself... All of the items on the list are not new info. I cannot remember remote control thing, though. Basically, it's just "water chip" with extended functions: Since the chosen one/destined child plot device doesn't work in FO, they made a factor which makes the decisions of the protagonist affect on the imaginary world. That said, I'm interested in how the plots of Alpha Protocol and Age of Decadence turn out. In any case, considering the lack of info, I don't think there are many things to be fussed about. I guess I've done organizing info so far, too. Ironically, though, the job's done mostly by just remembering...

Please read some of my comments in here. What you are suggesting is very near to what I was writing about possible implementation of science/repair skills in hardcore mode. That said, I think one of the problems with the SPECIAL in FO/FO2 was that the designers offered skills which are useless in early stages*. So, I have been suggesting that every single weapon type for each weapon skill should be available from early stage but, since some of them are very rare, they require special skills/abilities. IIRC, Van Buren draft was something like that, too. Some players complained of the change but, judging from their comments, I don't think they understood how things would work in a bigger picture. * Especially when there was already a skill tree system like GURPS, which rule-set was planned to be used in FO. I know little about how FO3 system works since I've never played it. However, Obsidian may be able to deal with the issue, at least, to some extent. For example, if Obsidian made high repair/science skills are necessary to maintain high-tech gears (the point of Stephen Amber and me) and/or recycle their "ammo" or resource (the point of you), then, it would be able to realize the most of what is suggested here. Well, console kiddie or not, if they like playing RPGs, they should be ready for the consequences, right? No geek elitism again. However, even if casual gamers may have to suffer the consequences of their choices especially when they don't even read the descriptions in the skills they are choosing, they can quit hardcore mode anytime, which may ease possible unwanted outcomes of some "wrong" decisions. That's more like..."How did the protagonist manage to gain the access to probably most politically important device in the region?"... Off Topic Honestly, I have never tried it but I wonder if I'm qualified as an idiot by that since, seeing that there are even repair mods, quite many of us seem not to notice it.

Ammuniton rarity, otoh, will always be a balancing factor, since no matter how powerful the weapon, without ammo, it's just a club or a walking stick. That's my only point really. That actual game balance for powerful weapons is more dependent on availability of ammo than the availability of the weapon itself. That's what Josh said too. Yea...logic here is, since energy weapons use totally different "ammo" from conventional firearms, if weapons themselves are scarce, their "ammo" should be so as well. Now I remember* it, for Van Buren, the designers seemed to be trying to make energy weapons require both weapon and science skills, doubling the skill points, which justifies the power to some extent. So, in my Vietnam War allegory, I guess the conventional firearms would be AK-47 while M-something (16?) would be energy weapons. I believe I've written this but, different from S.T.A.L.K.E.R., FO series are RPGs. As long as you invest on a proper skill, you'd be able to repair them. If your character doesn't have it, he needs to ask NPCs for the task probably with cost. Repeating myself is rather pointless, I guess, though. * J. E. Sawyer showed a rough sketch on skill designs. I cannot remember every single detail of it but I personally fond the design decent while martial arts skill did seem to be too effective in a world where guns are dominant. BTW, IIRC, in an interview about Alpha Protocol, the designers seem to make martial arts skill "cheaper" to acquire since it it is .

Indeed, the characterizing different game-experiences and balancing the content of these experiences must be time-consuming, which is probably why Bethesda went for more generic route. Again, to my eyes, it is the matter of balancing. As long as FONV team are able to make combat/stealth/speech paths unique each other without making the players feel "unfair", Personally, I don't mind how they design the details. Seriously, do we need a designer to say this? For NWN, I even suggested graying out some skills in character-making depending on the content of campaigns for which the characters are made. In PnP RPGs, human masters can deal with the balance by comparing their campaigns with the stats of the player characters but the story is different in PC campaigns where the content is fixed (Remember the pickpocket skill in Icewind Dale series?). And the story was about D&D class system, where skills are much less important. Honestly, I couldn't follow the discussion about the gimping, which is why I'm trying to interpret it as discussions about pacing/balanced characterizations.

In FO3, are they different? They worked as a device which made the three paths more distinct in the context of skill system. Now thinking of that, I think Bethesda is not good at mixing the factors of skill system and those of their class system counterpart... It is not totally pointless. In fact, it seems that hardcore mode basically shares the same philosophy at that it involves putting a certain limitation on available resources. That said, character advancement seems to be designed for casual gamers. Will Obsidian go for overhaul of the system or try to cover it with other aspects such as hardcore mode and re-balancing equipments including weapon modification and/or more detailed characterization of them? Considering fixed abilities of characters are founded on the stats of characters + those of equipments, the latter may work to some extent. However, ideally, both stats should be gradually updated, rather than one of them reaching quickly to its limit, forcing the other to balance the whole game-play. The problem is that this kind of overhauling involves pacing. Casual gamers tend to like spending less time on each game while serious gamers tend to spend more time on their favorite games, which would make the pacing issue difficult to balance since casual gamers like to see their "achievements" in short time. The problem for serious gamers is that casual gamers paying much more money than serious gamers on each game due to their number, which makes blaming casual gamers just rants in that it won't remove the root problem. Possible options for serious gamers are whether looking for indie companies and/or asking the designers/mods for making "annexes" comfortable for them. I've gotten an impression this annex is called "hardcore mode" in FONV.

Agreed. On the one hand, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, despite of the fact that some people still releasing unofficial patch, was generally regarded as a bad example of what would happen if RPG designers designed an FPS game-play and, on the other hand, I think Oblivion's stealth system was not bad but the depth of the setting was lost. The best of both worlds would be, indeed, gamers' dream. Looking Glass Studio was good at blending them together and wrapping the players in their imaginary worlds. When Obsidian went for FPS/TPS game-play style, I'd like them to "steal" some of the essences from games by LGS rather than just superficially imitating the game-plays of modern main-stream games, which would enhance their forte. In any case, if you think in that way, all I can say is good luck.

And I thought we were qualified as geeks when checking the designers' boards at this stage of the development. I'm allergic to elitism rather than geeks. Yes, it's just a(n) (over-)simplification. In actual game-plays, the players would mix these elements by choosing skills from these general categories just like in your example. However, I originally picked it up from the designers. The traditional Fallout character options could be divided into Combat/Stealth/Charisma(Speech) as you can see the three character templates but, for Van Buren, they were trying to add another path of Science. Personally, I don't think Obsidian is implementing the science specialist route in NV but they may use some of ideas from their lost project. That said, considering the years which some of them have spent on FO projects, I would be surprised if they hadn't have some good ideas but...well, I understand that they have legal obligations, too. Also, some of FO fans have this tendency of getting upset by any word from the designers, even when we don't have the whole picture. Logically, you are right. If you have played a game called Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, however, you may change your opinion but I think Slowtrain nailed it: As a game-play, your option feels wrong.

Yes. I've gotten an impression that your focus are on more short-term game-plays. I think this is more or less related with the complex development processes but I feel the designers began to see some parts rather than whole picture. Probably, the age of Fallout and Planescape:Torment, they probably had bigger pictures and more control on the whole projects. I see. Rules narrate/dictate game-play experience as simulations to some extent. Among them, character stats narrate/dictate the game-play experience, hands in hands with player's skills (quantitative)/personalities (qualitative). The rules about the world narrate/dictate the game-play experience as well. Economy, scavenging and dehydration give the feel of the world to the players. However, these tend to have more long term effects and often result in more of resource management compared with their short-term counterpart, or more pressing game-plays such as combat/stealth systems and thus can affect pacing. To some extent. Obviously RPGs (and some RPG-like action games!) tend to lay out pretty broad core gameplay options and we let players mix and match from within those options. But we're (and by we I mean the designers) still defining the core gameplay as the various combinations of the options we offer. And, on that point, I think that one way that RPGs actually risk being less satisfying as games than other genres is when we give the player many core gameplay options but do not make the truly "core options" equally deep and satisfying. The best example I can give is stealth gameplay. RPGs honestly have very little actual stealth gameplay - it's mostly just "hit the stealth button/click the stealth option and hope you don't roll low". Some RPGs have done a little better, but if you look at the depth and complexity of their combat systems and compare them to the depth and complexity of the stealth systems (especially compared against actual stealth focused games like Thief) the stealth gameplay does seem pretty anemic in comparison to the combat. I guess I understand your point. That said, this may bit digress from the topic about difficulty-adjustment but, again, when we are talking of depth, I think we have to separate short-term and long-term depths. For, I think the depth of role-playing games can be expressed in rather long-term manner. Generally speaking, it is experienced when a player made a different choice from his previous game. About character-development, for example, he may find it's interesting when sneak option opened up different aspect of the world such as NPC interactions and/or in-world secrets which were not spotted in his previous session as a combat expert. These things may feel trivial but they give the world/story/NPCs more characters and depth. I personally find that Obsidian game-designers tend to be good at designing these long term game-experience, or longevity, compared with other "RPG" designers. Of course, good at polishing short-term game-plays must be a definite plus, though.

You could say that to those who implemented Heart of Fury mode in an Icewind Dale expansion, although I'd rather leave them alone... Jokes aside, the story gets complex when the main game-play is not fixed to combat and Obsidian began to make such games. I had gotten your point. However, as I wrote in the post you quoted, I don't think things are so clear-cut especially in sandbox games. In fact, as I wrote in the FO thread, some FPS purist players appear to be unhappy with degrading/jammed weapons in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. while they seem to like the competent AI: They seem to find these things get in their ways. In FONV's case, too (or rather, the problem gets larger when it comes to RPG, where various game-plays are available), armor threshold may give certain tactical depth to combat game-play but some players may as well find the necessity of resource-management just distracting. Actually, someone has already suggested that the designers offer the players more detailed options than just hardcore mode so that they would be able to choose the rules of their liking. The designers may not like it since this may appear to be amateurishly avoiding their responsibility on balancing but this can be a practical solution since, inevitably, tastes differ. Even in this case, the designers could call the default set of rules of their recommendation hardcore mode. His idea of defining core game-play is interesting. However, in complex games such as RPG (not a tactical combat game with character advancement), I think the context of core-game-play depends on the players.

Well, the geek elitism aside, agreed. RPGs are chimeras, which can be separated into sets of game-plays, and, depending on the players, game-plays that they'd like to focus can be different. In fact, even here, it's quite tough for some players to insist on a new implementation about a certain game-play without stepping the foot of other players. It would be rather odd to see only two options between normal/hardcore while there are many implementations (skills, ability scores, and equipments) available for the players to customize their game-play experiences in the game, whether it is the job of mods or professional designers. That would make those unhappy who spent their points on repair skill (Repair doesn't sound like fun at all, though). That's why I suggested a possible system under which your Combat Boy should be able to deal with his enemies with lesser weapons which don't require (frequent) repairing while occasionally relying on less durable but effective weapons. His combat skills would be able to let these weapons survive (and himself) till he drops by a community where he could ask an NPC for the fix job. Now, a Science Boy wouldn't need to envy the combat expert since he should be able to keep good weapons fixed on the road, which would make up for his lesser combat skills. Of course, this is just a suggestion and, if the designers and/or someone else have better ideas, I'd like the designers to implement them to the game, though.

Agreed. The point would be to realize the survival feel without sacrificing game-plays of players' choice too much. The designers must have various solutions in their sleeves. That said, in any format, I personally think 2-3 main weapons and a spare armor would be a reasonable limit to keep the tension or survival feel, although this depends on how the real game-play goes, too. For, I think S.T.A.L.K.E.R. kept the tension by limiting the amount of load rather than available resources, since the latter option is risky especially in sandbox games. Also, considering the possible variety of the actual game-plays of FPS systems, I think three weapons of players' choice should be enough for each character build: Rather, it must be hard for the designers to characterize weapons in a way which the players feel their choices are meaningful in the given game-play format. As for armor, although there will be light and heavy armor*, the choice of appropriate armor tends to be dependent on the stats of characters who wear it: Even though there will be light/heavy armor, probably, the character-build will play the defining role in which type of armor the character should wear. So, I think a spare armor would be enough. Further personalization of these core equipments would be possible by mods and/or smaller gadgets. * The threshold system seems to be coming back, which is not a surprise, since J.E. Sawyer, the lead designer, is not a great fan of armor class system. I agree that it wastes the differentiation of ability scores such as agile characters focusing on their mobility while tough fighters relying on their power.

Do you mean, while keeping the weight limit, adding another limitation, where bulkiness is expressed through limited space of grid inventory*? If so, I remotely remember I suggested something like that about NWN...but the problem here is that I cannot imagine how the traditional grid inventory "Tetris" would work in mouse-less systems, or, console versions... As far as suggestions as players go, I agree that it's one of the purpose of the boards, I guess. What I meant is just that the final decisions, of course, depend on the "game masters" or the designers. * If I remember correctly, I didn't find such additional limitation in the grid inventory of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I can remember only the weight limit.

If you are talking of hardcore mode, I, personally, think it may shift to something like S.T.A.L.K.E.R, too. However, different from the shooter, there must be some problems related with a less forgiving inventory system and character development system. Personally, I picture something like below. A Combat Boy could deal with the tightened weight limitation by carrying durable weapons with other demerits which can be overcome by the combat specialists as I mentioned in this post of mine. A Charisma Boy would be able to assign loads to his "pack mule" NPCs although they will need extra water and foods for themselves. A Science Boy would be able to apart items into pieces in a blink or, at least, in a short time, and carry only wearing/important/rare parts. In theory, this should work but there are other ways to address the tightened weight limit issue. Also, from this blog entry. This is why they are pro but we may rely on armature or mod community as well.

Calling the others "noobs" can be done away with but, indeed, I felt the past trend of CRPG tends have made the players too rule conscious, which probably made them more or less gamist rather than role-players. Although this is not necessary a bad thing, even Planescape:Torment had "winning formula" such as putting as many points as possible to wisdom, otherwise, the players will lose many of good dialogues, which was the best part of this work. To make full use of the talents of Obsidian, I think this is a rational decision since they are more of story-tellers than action game makers. That said, I cannot but wonder if Alpha Protocol will be able to establish memorable game experience like PS:T since I don't think brain scanners can see the long term effects of long narrations/dialogues. In any case, the message seems to be: You don't need to be knowledgeable about any role-playing game rule-set to play this game. Just be you or play someone else in you, then you will have a customized story for your personality but, of course, if any of Bourne, Bond, and Bauer are your cup of tea, you shouldn't be playing this game.