Laverre

@Wombat It can be great business sense. Remember Baldurs Gate? It came out during a period where everyone was sure RPG's are dead and see what happened, the problem is if your game is less stellar + gets a rather unfair beating from some critics, you not only fail but fail quite expensively.

Hmm I can't say I'm really sad about it. Always thought AP was an in itself quite concluded storyline and game. I hope SEGA decision doesn't influence either the view about modern settings and especially the way the conversation system worked, so we don't get stuck on either fantasy forever or like Bioware does so well, well written storylines without any real consequences in the ingame world.

I don't know if Deus Ex really needed an excuse for being "bland and uninspired". I always felt it was intentional and part of the whole atmosphere of desperation in the world they tried to make you feel. Lush, colourful environments that make you watch for 10 minutes because they are just so pretty or artistic valuable wouldn't have fit the overall mood. I'm quite sure if they would have wanted to make it prettier they could have done it, because the unreal engine although aged even at that time was clearly capable of more beautiful surroundings. Oh and to be honest I don't see so much in common between the 2 games. Sure both use an underlying skillsystem to determine your ability to do certain thing, but apart from that? The leveldesign is quite different, the conversation system, the way to influence the outcome, the amount of info on your world.. nearly everything I loved in Deus Ex was done differently some things better some things worse. The most common factor (and it's an very admirable one) I can think of is the feeling that here is a developer that really tried to change the way we expect games to behave. Not just completely rehash an old formula with a new setting.

Hmm I would mainly improve on a) the amount of interaction with the other chars. AP managed (at least for me) to make every Char interesting in its own way, which was a rather mean move on their part, because after the game I felt there was so much more to find out about most of them and I just couldn't. b) take a long long inspired look at the way certain games had their levels designed. Hitman Blood Money was rather impressive in that area imo. I think the possibilities to make it a spy game away from the usual third person shooter thingemie aka "run from a to b and kill/knock out everyone on the way" was sadly underused and only hinted at.

Well if you don't mind a bit of fantasy and don't necessarily need an espionage setting, you could always try Vampire Bloodlines. Modern setting, many interesting characters and dialouges (especially as Malkavian) and at least imo a very good assortment of interesting places and quests.

Because slowly improving your character till he is near perfect in some areas, is a long honed tradition to achieve player satisfaction in rpgs. I think mainly because it makes it more your character and not like Sam Fisher some superhero typ everyone else got too. Like the absurd health system, the unrealistic huds and several other aspect games tend to have, it's not necessarily realistic or everyones favourite thing, but it's established and accepted. For the gameplay well you could argue, that slowly getting from bad and limited to very good helps to use your skills better, because they arn't that reliable at the beginning so you have to think more how to even the odds and it eases the learning curve slightly by slowly introducing new talents and abilites on top of the starting ones instead of dropping you into a pool of over the top talents. On a personal note, I'm especially glad they did it this way, because Splinter Cell always felt to easy. The combination of an absurd amount of "stealth" and quite extraordinary aiming, made the games way to easy for me. Sure I may have been a superagent, but I was mainly a rather bored one, because the challenge was near to nonexistent. Something I felt Alpha Protocol only became near the end with maxed abilites, especially due to shadow operator.