Matthew Rorie

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.

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.

I confess I've never really understood the need for fancy gaming keyboards. Sure, they have some neat stuff on them, but they usually wind up taking a boatload of desktop space and wind up marginally superior to the five dollar keyboards you can pick up in Best Buy. With that said, if I was looking for a new keyboard, I would probably look into the daskeyboard: http://www.daskeyboard.com/ They're pricier than you want, but they do allow 12 key inputs to be registered at once, and have some nice clicks when you type. They're noisy, though, if you have a roommate or something similar.

Yep, she's a mute, and no, she's not a romantic option. Sorry!

We used to have the ability to let Mike walk around without guns, but it was removed some time ago. We saved a pretty substantial amount of memory by doing so, so it was more of a performance issue than an aesthetic one.

Just the extra weapons from the two retailers I can no longer remember - and they seem to be just U.S. specific. I think there might be something for Euro customers as well but that info will likely be coming from Sega.

While there are missions where you can get through without being detected or needing to interact with anyone, there are still missions where you're going to need to engage in fisticuffs or tranq people to get through. So Alvin may have been overstating things a bit.

It's not Albatross. I'm not sure we've talked much about him...there should be some more character bios on the website soon, though.

I'm pretty sure Feargus has stated our desire to use Onyx in the future. Obviously there are some cases where that might not be possible, but we built it and it's pretty awesome, so we'll probably stick with what we know.

It wasn't my intention to "own" anyone, just sharing information. Sometimes it's hard to remember that very few people outside the office have gone hands-on with the game yet. The loot system is not automatic; enemies drop loot where they die and you have to reach it and pick it up.

The Perks screen is on the Service Record screen. You tab between the Skills screen (where you upgrade skills), the Perks screen (which is what's in the screenshot), and the Stats screen (which shows you how many people you've killed with a shotgun, etc.). The Add/Remove Rank buttons are only applicable to the Skills screen, so they're grayed out when you go to the Perks or Skills screen.

The crosshairs will get smaller as you increase in skill. They are also pretty big when Mike moves around; it's easier to get precise shots when you get behind cover and stop moving. Attempting to run and fire at the same time is going to decrease your accuracy. Enemies will get tougher as you progress through the game. A lot of the promo videos have been recorded with cheats on just to make capturing them easier - you'll note Mike also doesn't take much damage during them. Enemies with armor are also going to be tougher to take down. Healthbars fade in and out depending on whether you're aiming at an enemy or not. These are somewhat necessary to ensure that Mike can tell if an enemy is armored or not. The radar effect that shows you where enemies are located is called Awareness. This is an activated ability, so if you don't like it, you don't have to use it. It only becomes always-on if you add a fair number of points into stealth. Blood effects have been getting refined lately. Most enemies that are killed will leave behind blood pools, and you get some nice arterial spray when you cut people's throats. This isn't Prototype, though; people aren't going to explode in showers of gore.

It's less binary than that (I did edit that paragraph for clarity, though). There's nothing to prevent you from getting both SIE and Albatross to like you, reputation wise (this will probably make more sense when some GamesCom previews come out, which explain a bit more about Albatross). Attempting to get on SIE's good side won't, in the end, make it impossible to ally with Albatross; you might just have a little more work to do to get there. This is mostly to do with the way that SIE and Albatross relate to Mike; being aggressive and shoot-em-uppy will naturally lend SIE to like you more, whereas she will think less favorably of Mike if he plays through a level stealthily and shows a lack of willingness to kill. I don't want to spoil too much about Albatross, but he has other priorities. You can definitely attempt to curry favor with each character as you like, and it's not impossible to get both of them to think of Mike favorably. Things get more complicated in Moscow after you've met everyone, of course, but again, I don't want to spoil anything.

That would only hold true if SIE were not a very kinky girl. Being aggressive, even to the point of attacking her, turns her on and encourages her to help you out. Being stealthy and not killing anyone turns her off and makes her less likely to be intrigued by Mike.

Space Siege is kind of a spiritual successor to Dungeon Siege, made by Gas Powered Games. You play only one character, but you have a robot helper who can be upgraded. I played it through to the end earlier this year and had a good time with it.

Alpha Protocol is now available for pre-order on Steam, and if you pre-order it, it'll come with a free copy of Space Siege that you can play right away! http://store.steampowered.com/news/2745/

Check it out. http://blogs.ign.com/Blogs/BlogPage.aspx?blog=Alpha.Protocol It's been an epic journey of laughter and friendship to get this thing online, oddly enough, but now that it is we're hoping to update it fairly frequently. We've already got some more entries planned, so bookmark it! (Or I'll probably just link to new posts in this thread when they go live.)

Nice work! I just put this on our twitter feed; I'll throw it on our Facebook page as well.

I would ask Jim Rivers for more advice the next time you see him! He's always happy to help, since he's from AI himself. And I think he goes back to AI every once in a while to talk, as well. Apart from that, yes, networking is really important. Jim has a lot of expertise here and I've asked him for anything he has written up. I'll post it when he provides it to me.

There are multiple difficulty levels beyond just recruit/veteran.

Sis is still in. You'll hear more about her when the GamesCom previews hit, I imagine...

That's a character named Uli Booi. The concept art pops up in various places from time to time, but unfortunately she's no longer in the game. I believe she was removed sometime in the middle of 2008.

Oddly enough, dry cleaning detergent does play a key role in one of Alpha Protocol's scenes. Poor Wen...

There's no conversation skill. And yes, I believe he's confusing Veteran mode with newgame+ (unless I'm woefully misinformed about something, which is always possible).

You can kill almost anyone, really. Not always the first time you meet them, though.