Amentep

The approch ME2 took with Armor and Shields is noteworthy here. Though it was still very flawed and didn't make too much sense in that way. To hold up gameplay is you know an important part in games. If we made games all "realistical" people would way way waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more rage. I have yet to see a game that handled gun/sword play in some way realistically. Sorry. And in some way, thats a good thing. I think realism and games don't always go well together. I find it funny that there's complaints about HP but I haven't read complaints about Mike's regenerating body armor. Or in fact that Mike can take 3 or 4 headshots in the right armor (despite the fact that he doesn't wear any armor on his head) before it starts effecting his HP, stand in a grenade explosion and so forth and not be killed or maimed. HP is an abstraction to allow combat to happen in a satisfying game way. Workarounds could be created - give characters static HP but have an ever increasing "fatigue" limit so that any attack that hits and bypasses armor is "dodged" expending some of the fatigue. But its essentially only adding a new coat of paint to the old HP system. But I'm not sure I want to play a *game* where I can be dropped in one shot and I certainly don't want to play an emergency room/surgery/physical therapy simulator for 6 in-game months every time my character gets shot...

Except that Alpha Protocol, being a game set in a realistic modern day setting (and using that as a selling point nonetheless!) can't really use that kind of explanations. As for your Jason Bourne/Jack Bauer examples, they are both in the realm of verisimilitude. Are they plausible? Not much. But they're not impossible. A punk chick taking 8 headshots to die is, and that, I fear, creates a disconnect between the player and the game, the setting and the mechanics. You may disagree, but Obsidian should probably take note of this kind of opinions, since it's not just mine, and since it seems to be one of the point that kinda killed Alpha Protocol in some reviews. Note that I'm not a member of the 'let's take out stats' crowd. On the contrary, I feel that the challenge the designer face in this kind of hybrid is to make stats important while not creating this kind of disconnect. Is it hard? A lot. But if they want to pursue the action-rpg road they must be prepared to accept this kind of challenge. The problem is that unless a game wants to design around the possibility of an instant kill at any time, RPGs are going to use a hitpoint system and as long as there are hitpoints there are going to be strange abstractions in combat. Just as its silly to take 8 head shots to kill in a game, its just as silly to take 70 slashes with a sword, or 100 arrows to the chest. Its part an partial with the game being a game. How frustrating would it be to have Mike Thorton dropped by 1 shot every time he got into a firefight? Mind you this could be avoidable if "HP" were handled a bit differently.

I will say that at least for me I found the level design while fairly straightforward to also mostly allow for stealth at least until you got to a point in which stealth wasn't really possible anymore (like walking into a wide open area with loads of enemy - they the only way to stealth would be to use the fantastical stealth skills). That's actually another element of bad design IMO. Time and time again I would try to stealth through a level only to have a firefight forced upon me. Not because I got caught, but because the game decided to do so. That made me feel like all my time and effort sneaking was wasted. What's the point of sneaking around in the first place if you're still gonna have to shoot everything that moves at some point? I guess I see it a bit differently in that I see it as outside elements forcing my hand. I understand where you're coming from, just ultimately have accepted that the game has these moments where stuff outside of my control happens. Another limitation of stat based design. If Thorton was made by default to be good at both combat and sneaking (like a superspy really ought to be) then you could have levels that focused on combat and ones that focused on sneaking, without trying to accomodate both and as a result being good at neither. If he was good at both, though, it'd nullify the players choice in how they wanted to define Thorton, which is what I think they're going for.

Bond is clearly sci-fi as well so a lot of the super-tech fits that style of movie spy. I guess the problem with defining stealth in AP with a gadget would be that it would put stealth in the realm of gadgets and not the stealth skill (which would probably unbalance the skills). I think it was a deliberate design choice and I for one understand it.

Authorities in Peru say he confessed to killing Stephany Flores there, AFAIK.

Clarke's Law! I actually don't think this would be an issue (and for me its not an issue) if there was something in Thorton's suit that allowed the camouflage skill to work. I think though - and its a fair complaint - a guy suddenly being invisible based on his own skills just because he's skilled could be seen as a bit much. This is where I think you can only really counter by saying that the game was designed so that each path could be seen as valid. Just as run-and-gunners would be upset if the game was a corridor crawl full of sneaking, the stealthers would be upset if there was no way to get past melee points. An "invisibility" skill allows the stealther to keep the game moving within their game style. And if, understanding this, the player still feels it "breaks" the game, well that's all there is at that point.

One thing that I wish had happened (and this isn't a complaint, but something I'd have thought would have been cool but probably a gazillion times difficult to implement) is if you could study the maps you buy from Intel before you go into the mission, perhaps even being able to map a "potential path" through the mission (one thing with the map now is that I have trouble telling which floor is which).

For the IE games, "Hide in Shadows" became a total abstraction of what the intent was in the P&P version. In the P&P game you actually needed shadows, for example, to hide in. Not standing in the middle of Kuldahar. At noon. In some respect, what we see in AP is an abstraction as well in terms of all aspects of the game. I guess the question is whether the abstraction works for the player - which in Dan's case it doesn't.

I'm not really sure what to say. RIP Michael.

I'm still working on my 1st...

I will say that at least for me I found the level design while fairly straightforward to also mostly allow for stealth at least until you got to a point in which stealth wasn't really possible anymore (like walking into a wide open area with loads of enemy - they the only way to stealth would be to use the fantastical stealth skills). I've been playing as mostly stealth/martial arts, but I've found several instances where I've had to resort to gunfighting. I suppose if you were looking to being totally stealthy those areas that have those wide open spaces would be a bit off-putting given the lack of alternate paths. I guess I don't have a problem with it because I never expected to be able to stealth every level, but I can see where that kind of choice might bug others.

Sorry, I have an irrational hate for PvP. But then I also almost universally play single player games anyhow so my opinion is probably easy to discount.

All computer based games are going to involve targeting of some kind (otherwise you could swing a sword in front of you and hit the guy behind you). I don't see why that's an issue with AP in relation to its calculation of hits. What I've found - and I'm doing stealth/martial artist with pistols in a pinch at the moment - is that the pistol tends to work best in certain conditions. Its harder to shoot the guy across the warehouse with than if you're a few feet away. (There's also an assumption that people can't miss at point blank range when, as far as I know, they can).

Had a weird checkpoint issue - not inventory related. In the level where you're trying to stop Deng and the Assassination plot, there's a checkpoint when you enter the Chinese garden. I got killed and reloaded. I was back at the Chinese garden entrance; I turned around and the doors were open but there was no level behind me (black space and a city horizon in the background). Naturally I couldn't leave well enough alone and walked through the door and fell off the level into blackspace. Had to hard reboot the game, reloaded and the doors were still open as before (but this time I just went on through the door going forward).

I concur with this assessment of the situation.

The problem with a learn by doing system is that they typically allow you to abuse the system by "doing" something repetitively (this in particular favors spamming healing or buffs but can also devolve into whack-a-mole for melee characters as well). Not sure how to solve this problem and still have it be learn-by doing unless their is some form of "law of diminishing returns" built into the system.

I've not seen it confirmed so I think the jury is still out.

My guess is: Get the press excited → press gets the gamers excited → gamers clamor for more information → game company waits until fever pitch is reached → game company releases information to gamers → gamers divide into categories ("I'll wait and see" "Looks great, day 1 buy" "Dungeon Siege in Name Only!" etc).

Why do you say that? Because that's what the trailer looked like? Ah, I didn't get that from the trailer. What made you, in the trailer, think "2005"?

I wanted to be a part of the supernate.

Ahhh, that could be it. I thought I only had 6 ranks in Sabotage, but I might have 7 now.

Eh? I just went through a level sneaky last night and it took me two tries (first aborted, second did it). No alarms.

I wondered if the goo level was the most complete stuff they had. Dunno, but you make a fair point.

I'm not taking Diablo clone as an insult - I actually like Diablo and Diablo 2 pretty well (and someday i might actually finish Diablo 2's expansion). But Diablo is neither the beginning or ending of games (I can think of earlier isometric hack and slash games - Arcus Odyssey on the Genesis, for example, from 1991; random loot drops are par for the course with roguelikes in my experience) and I think it limits discussion to put games in the "Diablo clone" box as if they have nothing to offer that Diablo doesn't have.

Why do you say that?