Starwars

This is good, it seems like they had a good thing going on MotB. Aside from being generally awesome, it also seemed to be a well-managed project.

Will be really interesting to see what Mr Ziets and co has been up to. Hope they can talk about the project.

I think it might be dossier information that triggers it. Also, prior to the romance scene there's a conversation where you have the fourth option to "question". I think that also has something to do with it.

Well, that sure was boring to watch. Also, I know what's to be expected since the game runs on the same engine as F3 and all that, but it's still sorta depressing to see it... Ah well, here's hoping Beth will show some of the more interesting stuff (rather than 80 million ways to kill a super mutant) soon.

I like Madison but she is undoubtedly an outsider in the cast, being pretty... well, normal and fairly innocent. And she definitely feels like a "plot helper" (though to be fair, she can have strong repercussions down the line) and some of the scenes in Rome didn't quite make sense in how they played if you treat her bad. Mike still shows that remorse if she dies. I mean, it might be part of Mike's character (even though we can affect him, he *is* out on a hero mission so to speak) but it played a bit strangely. But I found the romance with her to be quite sweet and gave a nice touch of character to Mike as well. I liked the dialogue about Mike being so absorbed in his job and all that, just seemed to serve as a reminder that Mike has had a life outside the spy business also. Also, if you choose her as handler for the Marburg villa mission, she has a fun line on some of the statues in the place.

"I see you Heck." "... I see you too Mike." Speaking of Taipei, I was disappointed that Hong Shi couldn't be a more "constant" character. Any character voiced by James Hong needs to be used a lot, he did an awesome job.

Don't think it was Avellone who wrote him. funcroc showed up in some other topic and posted a quote which detailed who had written what. I think it was Travis Stout who's responsible for Taipei and its characters? And Matt Mclean wrote 95% of the e-mails.

The best guy ever, that's who.

I guess it will depend a lot on how it does sales-wise. And while the game did get slammed in some reviews, I hope SEGA has also read that European mags and sites have given it pretty good scores. It might also be a bit of a grower game. I'm not normally one to support sequels but I think an AP2 could be quite interesting. But only if OEI gets to do it.

For PC: - Fixing the mouse/stuttering issues - Making the hacking minigame control better (though I've pretty much gotten used to how it works now) - Some of the interface controls. There should always be a key to return to gameplay from any of the various screens (inventory or what have you) - Tweaking some of the bosses and try to have a more even difficulty. Especially on Hard. From what I've seen, I like the difficulty on the levels but some of the bosses' difficulty are just cheesy. - It appears that on some missions you get kills counted even if you didn't kill anyone (seems like it has to do with when there are factions fighting it out in the level?). - I'm not sure if anyone else has gotten this but some character models look bugged for me when viewed at a distance. It's very noticeable when you meet SIE. When the camera angle is farther away, her graphics look really strange, same with Mike. That's about it I think.

About to finish up my second playthrough of Alpha Protocol. This time as an aggressive Recruit with skills in Assault Rifles, Toughness and Technical Aptitude.

For anyone having trouble with subtitles and the dialogue timer, I would suggest at least trying to turn off the subtitles and see what happens. I'm not a native English speaker (though I consider myself to be fairly good at it) and I usually have subtitles on in games. But I found that when turning them off in Alpha Protocol it made me focus on the scene as a whole in a much better way rather than trying to read the subtitles as the conversation went on. Worth a try at least.

Well, after having the "romance" scene with SIE... I think all romances in all games from here on out will feel lackluster, haha.

One of my future playthroughs will be the Tech Specialist where I will just load up on grenades and everything else, should be fun. One of my pet peeves about the grenades though is that I find them a bit hard to manage. The fact that they show the path for the grenade is really nice, but I still find the controls here kinda wonky. I've gotten better at it though. One thing I kinda liked that I did was when I wanted to hack something in a room but there was a lotta enemies outside and the alarm was blaring. Didn't feel like going out and clearing everyone out so I stuck a fire grenade by the entrance to the room so I could hack in peace. Sure enough a guy went in there during my hacking and got set on fire by the grenade. Fun. But yeah, I think they are mostly for novelty really. Aside from the first aid kit I've never found myself relying on a gadget I think or thinking "god, I wish had <insert gadget here> right now!". Unfortunate, but they're pretty fun to play with.

I agree that one of the game's flaws is that you're forced to fight some bosses. At least the game should've been a bit more flexible in how it lets you handle them. There are parts of the game where the design annoys me a bit because it seems to want to push into an action scenario instead of emphasizing the choices of gameplay. AP is hardly alone in this (unfortunately) but it would've been nice in my opinion to have a choice in the matter at some of those points as well, even though it is an action-RPG.

SIE is freakin' hilarious. I treated her aggressively when I first met her at the trainstation, she loved that. Then when you meet up with her again, I attacked her. When the fight was over, we basically "made up". After that, I have SIE's kneepad sitting in my safehouse and I get an e-mail where she says that she's studying her naked body in the mirror, fascinated with the scars from the shootout. And then when you have her as a handler for the Embassy mission. I laughed when, in the middle of all the action and explosions, I hear SIE starting to hum Ride of the Valkyries excitedly in my earpiece, hahaha.

Pidesco has the right of it. They are similar in some regards, not at all similar in others. As to which I prefer, not sure yet. I like Deus Ex a fair bit but I've never been as crazy about it as some people are. For action-RPGs, System Shock 2 is king of the hill for me. But that's also a very different game than AP, hehe.

Yeah, I *loved* how you could critical hit people while staying in Cover. That was awesome.

Assault rifles are waaaay better at long range. Pistols really seem to be a stealth weapon mostly. Critical hits dish out a lot of damage but you need to be at fairly close range for the reticule to shrink (though that range grows a fair bit as you level up). Chain Shot is reaaaaally good when leveled up though. 6 Critical Hits in the head is enough to sink most opposition in the game. EDIT: I'm not sure how powerful they would be if you mod the pistol to be more damage dealing rather than silent. I used it as a stealth weapon.

If you select Operative, you get to choose which 3 skills you want to unlock yourself.

It's amusing that they had a joke about the "Thornton/Thorton" thing in game. And yep, Thorton is way better than Shepard (and I quite like Female Shepard).

If this *is* indeed true, then yeah... I mean, I think we can all relate to the fact that development hasn't been as smooth as it should have been. On the other hand, the comments about Parker sounds like a childish grudge if you read it. It might be the case that it is true, but judging from this post, this mysterious dev also doesn't sound like an employee I'd like working under me. So yeah, I'm sure there production problems (and I hope OEI will get better at managing that stuff, seriously). But the developers who've been a part of this should be proud of the game, because it rocks. It seems a lot of effort went into the choices and customizing the storyline and that is a step that the industry needs really badly with its crappy plots which you can't affect in any way whatsoever. While a lot of the story is still set, AP makes the player a really important part of how it's told. Sadly, I don't think a lot of people recognize this (or even acknowledge it as important).

I'm really enjoying it as well and could easily see it become my GOTY (though too early to tell with stuff like New Vegas coming). It doesn't have the same AAA polish as ME2 for example but I find pretty much everything else a lot better.

The examiner review is well worth a read, well written and level-headed.

Doing a Suave run was the most glorious thing ever, the writing was spot-on if you ask me. The right hand-side Professional choices are the most "normal" I'd guess.