Echoic

Maybe I'm tripping, but IIRC, it was a dev. Dunno about the headset. haha I knew it! Well my hat is off to him then. It guess it is really unlikely that it was an actual headset mic but that would definitely make a better story.

Yeah I don't know about that, It seems more likely to me that the game will at least break even, in terms of sales vs production costs. Even if they don't, the developers (Obsidian) have probably already been paid, like.. by SEGA, in advance. I agree that marketing the game as a AAA title despite the poor production values seems a bit risky. Alpha Protocol will hurt the Obsidian brand a bit, that seems certain... but I don't think that this is Obsidian's death knell, I mean: - It's doubtful that Alpha Protocol will discourage anyone from buying New Vegas. - Squeenix just announced that they'll be getting Obsidian to develop a Dungeon Seige sequel. - possibly some other unnannounced project which is "looking good" (according to anon dev blogger). - I don't think that we can assume that Alpha Protocol wasn't profitable. Would be really interesting to find out though. This isn't a great claim to fame considering the track record. I'll never forget the ending cutscene of NWN2, first you see some blurry screenshots of the in-game characters and then the narrator chimes in: (he sounds like one of the dev team talking into a headset mic). "And so, the final blow was struck and our Heroes were victorious! Suddenly, the roof collapsed on top of them all" THE END In terms of bugs, yeah I didn't encounter many problems with the PC version. I never really got the camera to behave itself properly though, despite troubleshooting /disabling mouse smoothing etc. Other than that I only had a couple of crashes which is pretty good. Maybe when reviewers talk about bugs they're referring to the AI, problems with the cover mechanic, etc.

Ummm this game doesn't compare favourably to Deus Ex. It might be better than Deus Ex II though..

to OP: Alpha is sounding pretty buggy and lacking polish, maybe you should wait for the Beta! Myself I've just purchased the game on faith (waiting for it to download), I haven't been disappointed with an Obsidian game yet. Kotor II was almost a classic game... well it was kind of like a half developed, stunted foetus of a classic game that Obsidian pumped out and dropped straight on its head before moving right on to its next project, NWN2... Both games were very impressive in terms of their complexity and the sheer volume of content. But, both games seemed to run out of whatever it was that they needed to keep developing .. whether it was money, time, brains or motivation. Whatever 'unrealised potential' that these games had, they both still represented an above average standard of value for money in games. So as soon as I saw that this had been released I was pretty much reaching for my wallet ._. Maybe this game will suck eggs but maybe now that they're developing their own IP they can start making enough money to actually finish one of their games and that would really be something to see!