Raithe

That's nails. What sort of stud thinks scoped rifles are for girls? Using a scope meant raising his head up... putting a more visible outline on view of the soviets.. by using the iron sights he got to keep his head down and stay more concealed... Plus the possibility of sunlight reflecting on the lens and such like.. That's the reason he gave.. We are talking 1939 - 1940 for that old White Death...

Hm, for some reason I thought they made mention of not using Steams drm in the FAQ about AP's drm.. So even if you buy it from Steam, it only uses the Uniloc drm.. not a double-whammy. Now I'll have to chase the linky down... Not that I'm getting the digital version, but now I'm curious as to how faulty my memory is.. Edit: Here we are : http://forums.sega.com/showthread.php?p=5788545#post5788545

Certain types of stories require there to be some method of shooting in them.. What's a sci-fi / space opera without some action sequences with laser / energy weapons blasting away down some narrow corridor and someone in dark armor striding menacingly about? And again, with spy genres, after all the James Bond, Jason Bourne, and even Jack Bauer elements... you had a fair few moments of fire-fights, ducking behind cover and having to deal with enemy goons... The care has to be taken in structuring those action-oriented elements in a way that works with the rpg side.... and in computer games, pushing the engine in more of a first person shooter way does seem to be a sensible way to handle it. (as long as the rp elements fit in appropriately.) Deus Ex showed how it could blend together so well. So now we just wait a month and then we'll actually be able to see how AP handles it. The key trouble of trailer shots and such, is that they're normally chosen to show off the action elements in a game..... The wow-pizzazz factor of attracting attention.

On the surface, any rpg with a shooter style, over-the-shoulder, watch-the-butt perspective is going to be classed as "Mass Effect Like" these days... It's when you look under the surface at the rest of the game that you see what it's really about...

Just close your eyes and think of Chuck. Wait.. that didn't come out right...

Cyborgs don't have blood. He didn't say it was his blood he sacrificed...

The heavens were praised....

Hm.. interesting on the First Aid.. use too much, too quickly, and it can induce fatal blood clots.. That's definitely going to be a twist on the usual healing techniques..

The news report that started this thread was the monster distance.. which while it was probably helped by a dose of luck, the sniper made a point of saying that it was one of those perfect days condition wise with non-existant wind and such... What impressed me on it , was that with consecutive shots he hit #1 taliban, #2 taliban, and then hit the machine gun they were trying to use... A single shot can get put down to pure fluke. But a second follow-up shot to a guy stood next to the first target.. and then a third to the weapon.. That has to be much more of a combination of skill and luck.

Yes , but it's more James Bond style romances.. so you get to woo a few femme fatales, possibly an innocent caught up in it, and then have the careful fade out before anything serious happens. So there shouldn't be the "oh my god, that's a hint of alien boob!!" type of action that caused a storm with Mass Effect...

Appreciation for the skills of a craftsman (or woman) under dangerous circumstances... People quote baseball stats, soccer scores, all sorts of sports related trivia... and there's that old saying about sport being practice for war... What's interesting is that a lot of those "high score snipers" when asked years later how they felt about the number of people they killed in their military careers.. they all tend to have some variation of "it was a job they told me to do, so I did it to the best of my ability."

I haven't time to read the piece right now, but the preferred density of troops in WW2 was something like a division to a few miles of front. That's what? 20,000 men to choose from? Well, the Soviets invaded Finland with around 450,000 men in 21 divisions... So yes, roughly around 21,000 men a division. Soviet military commander Kirill Meretskov reported at the start of the hostilities: "The terrain of coming operations is split by lakes, rivers, swamps, and is almost entirely covered by forests... The proper use of our forces will be difficult." Throw in the fact that they invaded just after Stalin had done one of his "officer purges", and the Soviet forces weren't exactly hopping with experienced officers.. Weather conditions hit record lows of around -43 C... and the Soviets tried using blitzkrieg tactics on countryside where there were few to no roads, and an abundance of bad terrain... and troops outfitted with regular khaki uniforms, so I'm guessing they kind of stood out... Now the White Death served at the Battle of Kollaa which lasted from around December '39 to March '40 , and Kollaa is a stream surrounded by lots of ridges, and the Soviets had no skis and had trouble going cross-country so were stuck to using the limited number of actual roads in the area.... So I'm guessing a good sniper working in those conditions....

I quite liked the

A British Army sniper has earned a place in military history by killing two taliban machine gunners from more then a mile and a half away. The record breaking shots felled the insurgents with consecutive bullets - even though they were 3,200 feet beyond the official range of the rifle.... Each bullet took approximately 3 seconds to reach their target. Super Sniper

There was something along the lines of about 12 hours of cinematic type footage in the game, and in any single playthrough, you'll see about 3 or 4 hours of it.. So it would take about 3 fairly different playthrough attempts to see all of that..

That's just sad. You don't get to carry one around or stock one in your safe house armory.. Just have to make do with an assault rifle with scope and such for any long distance potting.... But wasn't there some mention that you might have some specialized missions where you get access to a sniper rifle for specific point/s in those missions?

I did like Brown's first speech after his visit to the queen.. in which he made a point of saying why should people risk a change of government now... Risk? Where's the risk? The economy is in the crapper, trust in the government is fairly non-existant, and they've parcelled a lot of power out to un-elected qwongocrats and consultants.... Maybe I'm a bit cynical after 13 years of "New Labour" but I really can't see how anyone else could make it worse.

To me, that's just the set-up to the story... the hook that starts you off, not the plot and twisty routes you might go through.. But then, maybe I'm just warped. Or read waay too many spy stories...

Hm, you mean the whole ? I kind of thought that was something mentioned as the whole start off for the plot back when they started talking about AP... It is kind of the central spy trope that's been around for James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Jack Bauer. It was up there in the first trailer over a year ago. And why there were a fair few jokes about similarities with the tv series Burn Notice The whole.. "burned spy called Michael..."

Kicked back for a lazy sunday afternoon.. and went nostalgic since the dvd set of Parker Lewis Can't Lose turned up.. It's just so.. 90's influenced by the 80's. And beyond the whole humourous look back at the styles... it's still actually quite funny.

Ah hah! Buried in the depths I hadn't found yet..

One thought that struck me (as I can't actually remember hearing about it one way or the other in any of the interviews) but does anyone know how saved games are handled in AP? Is it just a checkpoint system that's not going to give you much control of reloading previous saves if you want to see what key changes happen some hours later if you handle things differently? Is it the "standard" rpg save anywhere and many, many times approach? Or is it some combination of both? Checkpoints within missions, but "proper" saves when you're in a Safehouse? I could see why limited save options might work to add a level of intensity and push you to replay from the start to see how things turn out.. (after all, it did add to the challenge in Hitman games to see if you could finish missions without making any saves) Which made me wonder if they've done this, or are letting you save whenever.. So how do people hope / prefer their saves to be handled for what they expect from AP?

Oh the best bit was when he was in an interview just shortly afterwards.. He was trying to play it down, and they did a "and we have the clip here to play" ... Brown's body language and expression just.. schlumped. It was quite amusing in that manner.

As was mentioned elsewhere... if Brown loses, just how much power will Mandelson end up with?

I have a hard time playing evil as well i couldnt do it in kotor ill try and play evil in alpha protocol in my third or fourth playthrough. It's probably because you think "yeah, I'll try evil this time" and then as you play most games, the "evil" choices are usually really psychotic stupid choices rather then evil so you end up not using them.......