Starwars

Nathaniel Chapman seems like a pretty cool dude. I'm pretty sure there are some hilarious quotes from him in the NWN2 irc chat when the SoZ dev team came to chat. Surely this is something to be respected!

Yep, nice video. So ready to play this game now.

I'm not 100% sure how the leveling up will work, but there is a skill system where you choose to put points into the various skills such as Shotguns, Assault Rifles, Stealth, Technical aptitude, Martial Arts and so forth. Every skill level will bring a bonus, and then certain skill levels will grant you special abilities that you can make use of (Chain Shot is a pistol ability for example that will allow you to pick shots in slow mo, sorta similar to VATS in Fallout 3). We know that your skills will play a huge role in how the game plays out. If you want to play the game using Assault Rifles, you better raise that skill. A lot of focus is on replayability, so that one playthrough will feel completely different from another. No co-op. I'm not really sure how to describe the game. It sounds like a sort of mix between Mass Effect, Splinter Cell and maybe Metal Gear Solid. Resident Evil 5? Well... maybe it'll feel slightly like that when shooting stuff, I'm not sure. But again, there is a fair amount of depth and choice in how you'll play the game.

Hey there. Obviously we won't truly know until the game is finally released! The game has been worked on for a long time, though I'm not really sure now when the development started. What appeals to me personally about the game is that it's A) a RPG set in present time and B) that they have a lot of focus on choices. When you first look at the gameplay, it looks similar to Mass Effect. But the gameplay seem to have a few noticeable differences, such as you can stealth through large parts of the game, you can use spy gadgets, you can knock people out instead of just killing them (and the game/story will react to this). It depends on what choices you make and what skills you decide to level up. There are some gameplay differences from many other RPGs. You play as a guy called Mike Thorton, and you can't change that (though you decide on choices and his appearance). It's not "freeroaming", it's mission based with you returning to a safehouse in between missions. I have it pre-ordered. It looks like a great game to me, and I'm just really happy that they decided to try on a new setting for RPGs.

Like Jokerman said, they claimed right from the start that the delay was due to PR reasons as far as I can remember. I didn't agree with it back then but I can see it now. Going up against a Bioware title (whether DA or ME2) wouldn't have been too wise. It's true that the delay will likely draw on some comparisons with ME2 now (especially since I think ME2 uses a newer version of Unreal engine) but I think AP will have a better chance to carve out some form of niche of its own with no other big RPGs around its release. There's also the fact that SEGA changed PR firms sometime this year. I don't know if it's the work of them or not, but at least now the game seems to be making its way back onto the radar of people, whereas towards the end of last year and the beginning of this year it was deadly silent. I don't think AP will gain great reviews because of what Slowtrain mentions. Graphics (even though I don't see it myself) and any bugs will get the game fairly slammed because, hey, it's Obsidian and they released those buggy games. But I do think the game has a better chance to sell decently now, especially for a new title coming from a company that is not a mainstream favorite.

The interview is up here: http://www.gamersguidetolife.com/2010/04/e...w-obsidian.html

Good to see they liked it.

They should totally have Matt Maclean and his beard doing a thumbs-up as the cover art.

I think the voiceactors themselves seem fairly competent actually, but it feels like they've gotten little to no direction. It often seems like the actors have not gotten information on the nature of the conversations, it often feels very disjointed like the actors don't have a clue what they're acting against so to speak. That and the clunky writing/translation makes the conversations have a pretty bad flow to them.

Great changes on paper, hope they are up to the task to implementing them in a good way.

I'm not expecting much from the AI. Granted, I'd like to not see people charging right onto an armed Mike like in that gameplay clip a while back. But I think in terms of stealth and all that, we'll see something "stylized" like MGS where soldiers have a very strict cone of vision (which will vary depending on how high Mike's stealth is). We'll see though. Please report back with your findings.

I do hope they improve as much as they claim here (though with all the claims on awards and how amazing the Witcher is from CD Projekt you'd think there isn't much to improve). Aside from a wonderfully realized setting (and I do mean that, the atmosphere was amazing), there was not much I liked about the Witcher. Most of the things had a lot of promise and potential but ended up falling short.

And another preview: http://news.gotgame.com/alpha-protocol-impressions/39454/

Cool stuff. I gotta say, I can't imagine how the hell that last guy will fit into the game, but they've got lots of character for sure. Also, "Frito Bandito".

As far as I know, it's been mentioned before that a more jack-of-all-trades character is viable. Can't remember where though and it was a long time ago, so maybe it was changed. Personally, I tend to prefer specialized characters so I hope it feels like there is a very tangible reward to maxing out skills. One thing I also kinda fear about the preview is that it seems like a run-and-gun character is easy to play. While I think it's good that the choice exists to offer different ways to play through the game, like one of the quotes that I responded to in a sarcastic manner earlier, it'd suck if making a combat character is the easy way and making a stealth character is the hard way. It's never gonna be completely balanced of course, but I really hope the combat character isn't just the "easy way". I

It's still a pretty weird complaint since this is a feature that is present in most RPGs. Most of them do showcase all dialogue options for the player, and allow the player to choose from them regardless of his previous choices in dialogues. I can see it being a bit more emphasized in AP since everything is voiceacted also, but it's still a pretty stupid complaint. It allows the player the choices to handle things as he sees fit, as it should be. EDIT: From that above preview... It never occurred to whoever was playing to not dive into all that stuff if they didn't have any skills in it? Why bother shooting your way to victory if you can creep through a mission silently? Weird logic here. Er, yeah. We're certainly spoiled by all the thought-proving plots and characters in gaming. Thank the stars we have such story masterpieces like Call of Duty, Mass Effect and Final Fantasy. Stupid stuff aside, it's good to see confirmation that different skill sets will really define how you play the game.

Most of the stuff they mention in the preview is great news to me, but it's a shame that the tone of the preview overall seems to be negative. The stuff mentioned about the player specializing and thus making the other skills (which have not been leveled up) useless is exactly what I want in a RPG. I also wonder a bit about the alarms. They say here that many times, it's an insta-death if the alarm gets turned on. But I wonder if it really *is* an insta-death (as in a Game Over because you weren't supposed to alert people) or an insta-death in the sense that it's gonna be really damn hard to get yourself out of that situation. I really hope it's the latter, that'd be great.

If SEGA can keep up the flow of info, then I think it'll be in a better place. Even though the trailers and whatnot are being met with mixed reactions, people are seeing that the game exists at least. Even though Splinter Cell may be closer in some respects, I think the game would've suffered a lot more if it was released around the time of Dragon Age (which was the original plan). If SEGA can crunch up a nice PR blitz, keeping the attention up through April and May, then I think AP can be in a pretty good place.

They *want* it to become a franchise. Anyways, it's good that they show confidence in the game. If it turns out to become a reality, I hope OEI will be the ones developing the sequel.

I assume this is the same location that was showcased in the that cam video, and I do agree. As the music revved up, there is a really nice feeling of "let's kick some ass". Stuff like that doesn't succeed often for me in games, but that little snippet was quite awesome. Interesting bit about the interface, it's nice to see some critique that isn't just whining about graphics or Mass Effect. I could see that critique as valid, though I think the action still looks pretty smooth judging from the cam video. Hope there'll be a good hotkey system to solve some of that.

I lol'd. Nice interview!

Nice little interview, it's good to see some stuff airing about the game. Even if the mainstream (speaking generally) is a bit lukewarm on the game, letting people know that this game is out there and what it is is a good move. I like that they say that it's very hard to go through as a non-lethal martial artist. Completely how it should be. Also, was watching that cam video again. Love the kick-ass music that comes in after Mike throat-chops the miniboss guy.

This. That was what I meant. It's a good thing that we still have to pay attention when playing stealthily, that it's not basically "turn on stealth mode" and then walk through the level. As far as the level itself, I agree that it's linear. I don't think most levels will be more than a few alternate paths here and there though, I definitely don't think they'll be "sprawling" so to speak. As far as difficulty goes, meh. I think I've learned not to judge that kinda thing in preview videos. We have no clue on what difficulty level it is, the skill of the guy playing the game, if the demo is "tweaked" to make it easier to preview. What I do like is that there seems to be basically "oh sh*t" moments where you can get cornered by enemies. Hopefully those will be difficult situations, at least on higher difficulties.

OK, I thought that was a really great video. The action looked pretty intense there which is great, and it also showed that even though you invest in Stealth, you won't magically be sliding through a level. The game looks like a lot of fun judging from that clip. The cutscene/dialogue segments flow very well also, the acting is great.

Eva Cassidy - Somewhere over the rainbow So... damn... beautiful.