Matthew Rorie

Well, I'm certainly sorry you feel that way, but we appreciate your feedback.

I don't know that we've ever promoted the sex/romance in the game as an explicit selling point. We've talked about when asked about it, sure, but we're not exactly going around yelling "LIVE NUDE GIRLS" or anything. If press wants to talk about it, I'm sure they will - it creates good traffic. But I would take issue with the characterization that Obsidian is pushing our game as some kind of journey of erotic discovery. When we deal with the press, we almost exclusively talk about our RPG systems and our story as the selling points and why people should get excited about Alpha Protocol.

I appreciate your concerns, but just keep in mind that people who get their hands on the game (as opposed to watching old videos of it) dig the hell out of Alpha Protocol. I just spent three and a half hours talking to GameStop managers and watching them play it and they were really enthusiastic about it. So, in my opinion, I think we're doing something right here... Not everyone's going to like the game, of course, but thus far something like 95% of the people that I've demoed the game for or seen play it have seemed to sincerely enjoy it. And the demos last night were all gunplay stuff, we didn't even get into the dialogue sequences very much.

If you preorder on Steam, you get a free game. http://store.steampowered.com/news/2745/

So in case anyone wasn't aware of what I was asking for here, check out Sega's blog: http://blogs.sega.com/usa/2009/08/31/sega-...ny-arcade-expo/ Some people might get a chance to go hands-on with the game at PAX.

For what it's worth, here are two other previews that were written by people who saw the game at the same time and in the same session as the Play magazine author: http://www.gameon.co.uk./game/preview/xbox...om-2009-preview http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2009/08/...-2009-day-two/2 "This is, by far, the game that we most want from GamesCom 2009 so far. It simply looks fantastic and, if Sega and Obsidian manage to pull it off, this could be a decent spiritual successor to Deus Ex" So...yeah.

Personally I found it easiest to just map the knife and grenade chucking to the two buttons on the left side of my mouse, where my thumb lies. This is especially required in COD multiplayer, where being able to knife someone before they knife you will wind up netting you a few hundred kills over the course of a multiplayer career. But yeah, finding that V key is a pain.

We've been showing off the PS3 builds to people at GamesCom and elsewhere, so we haven't been hiding it or anything. In terms of video, we have an external company that handles our video editing. They generally prefer to work with the 360 when capturing (mostly because downloading two builds and transferring them over to capture machines takes a fair amount of time for them). I'm sure we'll be recording some PS3-specific footage before the game comes out, though.

Last year's PAX was pretty light on booth babes. Seattle is really awesome place to have a con though. Especially considering this damn heat at the moment. Will be good to get out of the 100 degree heat.

I believe we are going to support it.

Some characters respond pretty well to a certain overall stance, sure, but others are less predictable. And, of course, you might not always want someone to like you, in which case you'll have to find the stance choices that are most likely to piss them off. Getting people to hate you can have some interesting (and not necessarily "bad") consequences. And the dossiers are not necessarily trivial to complete, either.

Nice. Almost everyone who saw the game at GamesCom came away impressed with it, or so I hear.

Was fun to do that one. I used to work at GameSpot before I worked at Obsidian.

Just curious...let me know if you plan on attending.

Avellone's actually writing it, so there's that. I haven't posted it yet because I've been waiting for it to get a few posts up there. But yeah, hopefully it will get updated every day between now and launch. Hope you guys find it enjoyable.

Stephanie also recommended Game Development Essentials. Not necessarily scenario specific, but there's some good information in there.

I have heard some rumors of European pre-order stuff, but it is indeed in the hands of Sega to determine what form it will take and when it will be announced. Sorry.

Yeah, there are dozens of weapons of each type, even if you don't pre-order. If you do pre-order, you'll get a couple of free weapons at the beginning of the game (in addition to what you normally start with), along with some extra ammo and weapon mods. But even if you don't pre-order, you'll come across a lot of different weapons of each class to play around with.

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...we'll be talking more about achievements before the game comes out, probably in a blog post. In the meantime, I'll show you the icon for it. We just got all these in, and they're pretty rad.

There are dialogue-only missions.

Ship models look nice. Not sure how they'll handle ground missions, though. Doesn't make much sense to have missions where there are 20 captains all running around with phasers, but I guess no one wants to play a redshirt in the end.

You get XP for killing people and/or slipping past them undetected. I think you actually get a bit more XP for leaving people alive than you do for killing them. You also get XP for picking locks, hacking, finishing missions and side objectives, etc. It's pretty standard.

Nathan Davis wrote this up, check it out. http://blogs.ign.com/Alpha.Protocol/2009/08/21/127277/

Well, there are plenty of people with severe carpal tunnel syndrome who are always looking for new ways to interact with their computers. There are even some mice that can be used with your feet. From what I can see, that keyboard would be pretty useful for physically impaired people who might not have the manual dexterity to type a bunch of keys quickly. Although it does cost 400 dollars. Of course, but that doesnt make it any less stupid looking. My boss used to use this: and it was a real hoot to watch him type. The little mirrors on the sides are obviously so you can see the keys but they even took the extra step of printing the letters backwards on the keyboard so they would show up correctly in the mirrors. why does he use that instead of a regular keyboard, G1? It's another ergonomic keyboard, designed to keep your arms and wrists in a more natural position than a regular keyboard would. Like, if you stand up and put your arms by your sides, the wrists and palms face inward towards your body. That style of keyboard lets you keep your palms facing inward and reduces stress on your wrists. Technically, normal keyboards apply a low-level but constant twist on your wrists all day long. For some people this causes severe irritation.