Alpha Protocol at E3 2008

[Wrath of Dagon]

I'm a bit skeptical of some of the features. Sounds a bit too good to be true, and very hard to implement. May be some examples are in order.

 

Edit: Some similar claims were made about ME in their marketing campaign, and turned out to be highly misleading. Obsidian does seem to be quite a bit more forthcoming than Bioware, but still I'm wary.

 

What seems too good to be true?

 

The bolded portions:

[Xard]

Umm, neither of those are nothing new.

 

Fallouts did this ages ago. Same with Planescape Torment...And then there's Mask of the Betrayer...

[Wrath of Dagon]

If MotB did that, these claims would be more credible, but I haven't gotten to that part yet. From the Gamespot preview, it sounds like they're talking about factions and a reputation system, though perhaps there's more to it.

[Xard]

Again what's the big deal?

 

Choices & Consequences have always been central to BIS/OE

[SteveThaiBinh]

The fact that it's not the first game to do it doesn't matter. This is still an important element of an RPG that fans really value, and Obsidian is absolutely right to promote it.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Again what's the big deal?

 

Choices & Consequences have always been central to BIS/OE

Their 2 games that I completed, KOTOR2 and NWN2 didn't have that much of either, so I'm yet to be convinced.

[Xard]

Again what's the big deal?

 

Choices & Consequences have always been central to BIS/OE

Their 2 games that I completed, KOTOR2 and NWN2 didn't have that much of either, so I'm yet to be convinced.

 

KotOR 2 had A LOT more roleplaying than first one. AND consequences for your choices though they were destroyed due to all the cut content.

 

NWN2... well yeah, c&c was lacking in OC

 

MotB on the other hand... One of my all time favourite games and only expansion pack to get on that list with its own merits too

 

Besides, it is MCA at helm in whose design philosophy C&C takes the central role. What could go wrong now that they have great publisher (Sega) backing them with BIG BUCKS instead LA or on-brink-of-destruction publisher (Atari)?

[Xard]

minus infinite ammo that is

Edited July 16, 2008 by Xard

[Wrath of Dagon]

Sega is a great publisher? Only compared to Atari. K2 a lot more roleplaying than K1? You mean like who shows up at the end to help you on Telos? I must've missed everything else.

[Joseph Bulock]

Sega is a great publisher? Only compared to Atari. K2 a lot more roleplaying than K1? You mean like who shows up at the end to help you on Telos? I must've missed everything else.

 

Did you ever talk to your companions?

[Xard]

Sega is a great publisher? Only compared to Atari. K2 a lot more roleplaying than K1? You mean like who shows up at the end to help you on Telos? I must've missed everything else.

 

Compared to any other publisher currently in the playfield

 

And like JB said: ever talked to your companions? The two rivalling merchants at Nar Shaddaa? The slavers? Differing party members based on aligment? Whole Onderron situation? Killing or saving jedi masters... (in K1 you just searched Star Maps and that was it)

 

This is excluding full-out party civil war, HK factory, the crazed jedi disciple in Dantooine and all other cut content

Edited July 16, 2008 by Xard

[Wrath of Dagon]

Sega is a great publisher? Only compared to Atari. K2 a lot more roleplaying than K1? You mean like who shows up at the end to help you on Telos? I must've missed everything else.

 

Did you ever talk to your companions?

The influence system was a poor substitute for C&C. All it did was force you to kiss your party members' asses to unlock content necessary to fully understand the story. It actually undermined roleplaying by making you behave contrary to how you'd normally want to, and provided no alternative reward. Plus it was pretty broken, especially in Mandalore's case.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Compared to any other publisher currently in the playfield

What was the last great game Sega published?

 

The two rivalling merchants at Nar Shaddaa? The slavers?

How's that different from other quests? There was a merchant on Yavin station.

Differing party members based on aligment? Whole Onderron situation? Killing or saving jedi masters... (in K1 you just searched Star Maps and that was it)

In K1 you could kill Juhani, side with either gang on Taris, side with one or neither of the Sith masters on Korriban, kill most of your companions. None of this stuff is world changing, just the usual RPG quests with localized consequences. Actually K1 did have something world changing, you could poison the shark on Manaan and make health packs rare and expensive. But this small stuff is not really C&C, let alone living, breathing world you're influencing.

[random n00b]

The influence system was a poor substitute for C&C. All it did was force you to kiss your party members' asses to unlock content necessary to fully understand the story. It actually undermined roleplaying by making you behave contrary to how you'd normally want to, and provided no alternative reward. Plus it was pretty broken, especially in Mandalore's case.

Wrong, actually. You needed to be *consistent*, not sycophantic, as extremely low influence scores yielded the same results as extremely high. Of course, some people's skin crawls when anything suggests a less than optimal result in a game, and just reload (OMG NOES! influence lost!). That's not the devs fault.

[Wrath of Dagon]

To gain influence with Kreia, you had to accept her "lessons", which meant you had to agree with her cynicism, even when playing lightside. To gain influence with G0-T0, you had to get him early in the game, and then take him on a lot of missions, even though he was fairly useless in combat and had blackmailed his way into your party. If you didn't get enough influence with him, you'd never understand what that stuff on Nar Shadaa was all about.

Edited July 16, 2008 by Wrath of Dagon

[Xard]

Sega is a great publisher? Only compared to Atari. K2 a lot more roleplaying than K1? You mean like who shows up at the end to help you on Telos? I must've missed everything else.

 

Did you ever talk to your companions?

The influence system was a poor substitute for C&C. All it did was force you to kiss your party members' asses to unlock content necessary to fully understand the story. It actually undermined roleplaying by making you behave contrary to how you'd normally want to, and provided no alternative reward. Plus it was pretty broken, especially in Mandalore's case.

 

It wasn't substitute. Reason for its existence was to replace the Bioware's standard, moronic "oh you gained new level. You know I have no reason to trust you at all but let me tell you my deepest traumas and darkest secrets so you can unlock my special mission later in game".

 

And it was broken only on Mandalore's case - and that's due to the cut content

 

That is just silly criticism. It isn't criticism at all. You ROLEPLAY your character. If you get out of character to kiss some character's ass then you're simply metagaming/whatever to get "all teh goodies". Then again if you're roleplaying manipulative character fawning and stroking your companion's egos etc. would be way to go. Or just roleplay different character that agrees with different party members on your next playthrough.

 

Maybe your LS paladin of mighty justice with lightsaber doesn't do well with HK-47. Well, you can try to infuriate him to point he just doesn't care about telling his secrets out (like random_n00b said. It works with everyone) or maybe you just shrug it off and gain points and benefits with another party member.

 

Next time play badass sith who just loves HK-47. Cue to all the bonuses and stuff from him, but character like Disciple or Handmaiden would propably hate you. No "goodies" from them then, boohoo

 

If your (natural) INT score is good enough you can also intuivitely guess stuff about Kreia for example.

 

Way you could reflect and define Exile in superbly written dialogues is on entirely different level compared to any Bioware game, namely K1.

 

 

Compared to any other publisher currently in the playfield

What was the last great game Sega published?

 

Sega has numerous awesome titles under its belt currently (and I used to be one dissing Sega). For example the much beloved Total War series

 

 

The two rivalling merchants at Nar Shaddaa? The slavers?

How's that different from other quests?

There was a merchant on Yavin station.

 

Slave deal isn't that big. But if you make deal with slavers you can come and get your share of profit every once in a while. There was some cut content related to it too.

 

The merchants... other one has a lot better inventory, other one has weak and not as good rewards. However if you choose to aid the weak one later in game after stabilizig Onderon and other planets you get some of the best stuff in the whole game from the merchant who has now made trade deals with people on those planets.

 

Differing party members based on aligment? Whole Onderron situation? Killing or saving jedi masters... (in K1 you just searched Star Maps and that was it)

In K1 you could kill Juhani, side with either gang on Taris, side with one or neither of the Sith masters on Korriban, kill most of your companions. None of this stuff is world changing, just the usual RPG quests with localized consequences. Actually K1 did have something world changing, you could poison the shark on Manaan and make health packs rare and expensive. But this small stuff is not really C&C, let alone living, breathing world you're influencing.

 

There's only one decision in Kotor 1 that really, really matters. Killing your companions and such are directly tied to it. Well, minus Juhani. That's some good C&C you're right about that. Sith deal on Korriban too somewhat. Then again in K2 you can get 4 different party members depending on your gender and aligment. And cause death of Visas on Telos. There was a lot choices around Nihilus fight. Too bad cut content and way too easy Kotor combat system ruined that. Well, TSLRP should take care of that...

 

Poisoning the shark didn't make medpacks rare, it only made them more pricey (100 creds or so IIRC). Of course in the end of the game you were drowning in the cash so it didn't matter.

 

 

And those are small scale C&C. KotOR 2 would've had some additional really major ones - namely the whole ending sequence in which all your deeds mattered. HK Factory stuff defines (which you couldn't know forehand) fate of Malachor V, your standing with the companions define what kind of conflicts happen... You could also choose to abandon your companions and not resuce single one of them. In battle of Telos (in early drafts) you could also end up joining Nihilus and/or go blow up Republic's command ship, Sojourn (bye bye Carth!)

 

Oh, and you also would've been able to destroy Citadel Station.

 

 

Then again Kotors aren't paragons of roleplaying. However Black Isle's Fallouts and Planescape Torment ARE. And Obsidian Entertainment's design philosophies and core people have worked on those very titles. Heck, MCA was lead designer of Torment and all by himself wrote HALF of the humongous amounts of written text in the game. OE also has people of Troika's people on board (and both Bloodlines and Arcanum contained a lot of roleplaying and C&C. Esp. Arcanum which might be only title capable of challenging Fallout when it comes to C&C), namely Brian Mitsoda.

 

 

Really, I just don't see where your disbelief come from. There's no basis for it, remembering the people and design philosophies involved here

Edited July 16, 2008 by Xard

[SirPetrakus]

Sega is a great publisher? Only compared to Atari. K2 a lot more roleplaying than K1? You mean like who shows up at the end to help you on Telos? I must've missed everything else.

 

Did you ever talk to your companions?

The influence system was a poor substitute for C&C. All it did was force you to kiss your party members' asses to unlock content necessary to fully understand the story. It actually undermined roleplaying by making you behave contrary to how you'd normally want to, and provided no alternative reward. Plus it was pretty broken, especially in Mandalore's case.

 

It wasn't substitute. Reason for its existence was to replace the Bioware's standard, moronic "oh you gained new level. You know I have no reason to trust you at all but let me tell you my deepest traumas and darkest secrets so you can unlock my special mission later in game".

 

And it was broken only on Mandalore's case - and that's due to the cut content

 

That is just silly criticism. It isn't criticism at all. You ROLEPLAY your character. If you get out of character to kiss some character's ass then you're simply metagaming/whatever to get "all teh goodies". Then again if you're roleplaying manipulative character fawning and stroking your companion's egos etc. would be way to go. Or just roleplay different character that agrees with different party members on your next playthrough.

 

Maybe your LS paladin of mighty justice with lightsaber doesn't do well with HK-47. Well, you can try to infuriate him to point he just doesn't care about telling his secrets out (like random_n00b said. It works with everyone) or maybe you just shrug it off and gain points and benefits with another party member.

 

Next time play badass sith who just loves HK-47. Cue to all the bonuses and stuff from him, but character like Disciple or Handmaiden would propably hate you. No "goodies" from them then, boohoo

 

If your (natural) INT score is good enough you can also intuivitely guess stuff about Kreia for example.

 

Way you could reflect and define Exile in superbly written dialogues is on entirely different level compared to any Bioware game, namely K1.

 

 

Compared to any other publisher currently in the playfield

What was the last great game Sega published?

 

Sega has numerous awesome titles under its belt currently (and I used to be one dissing Sega). For example the much beloved Total War series

 

 

The two rivalling merchants at Nar Shaddaa? The slavers?

How's that different from other quests?

There was a merchant on Yavin station.

 

Slave deal isn't that big. But if you make deal with slavers you can come and get your share of profit every once in a while. There was some cut content related to it too.

 

The merchants... other one has a lot better inventory, other one has weak and not as good rewards. However if you choose to aid the weak one later in game after stabilizig Onderon and other planets you get some of the best stuff in the whole game from the merchant who has now made trade deals with people on those planets.

 

Differing party members based on aligment? Whole Onderron situation? Killing or saving jedi masters... (in K1 you just searched Star Maps and that was it)

In K1 you could kill Juhani, side with either gang on Taris, side with one or neither of the Sith masters on Korriban, kill most of your companions. None of this stuff is world changing, just the usual RPG quests with localized consequences. Actually K1 did have something world changing, you could poison the shark on Manaan and make health packs rare and expensive. But this small stuff is not really C&C, let alone living, breathing world you're influencing.

 

There's only one decision in Kotor 1 that really, really matters. Killing your companions and such are directly tied to it. Well, minus Juhani. That's some good C&C you're right about that. Sith deal on Korriban too somewhat. Then again in K2 you can get 4 different party members depending on your gender and aligment. And cause death of Visas on Telos. There was a lot choices around Nihilus fight. Too bad cut content and way too easy Kotor combat system ruined that. Well, TSLRP should take care of that...

 

Poisoning the shark didn't make medpacks rare, it only made them more pricey (100 creds or so IIRC). Of course in the end of the game you were drowning in the cash so it didn't matter.

 

 

And those are small scale C&C. KotOR 2 would've had some additional really major ones - namely the whole ending sequence in which all your deeds mattered. HK Factory stuff defines (which you couldn't know forehand) fate of Malachor V, your standing with the companions define what kind of conflicts happen... You could also choose to abandon your companions and not resuce single one of them. In battle of Telos (in early drafts) you could also end up joining Nihilus and/or go blow up Republic's command ship, Sojourn (bye bye Carth!)

 

Oh, and you also would've been able to destroy Citadel Station.

 

 

Then again Kotors aren't paragons of roleplaying. However Black Isle's Fallouts and Planescape Torment ARE. And Obsidian Entertainment's design philosophies and core people have worked on those very titles. Heck, MCA was lead designer of Torment and all by himself wrote HALF of the humongous amounts of written text in the game. OE also has people of Troika's people on board (and both Bloodlines and Arcanum contained a lot of roleplaying and C&C. Esp. Arcanum which might be only title capable of challenging Fallout when it comes to C&C), namely Brian Mitsoda.

 

 

Really, I just don't see where your disbelief come from. There's no basis for it, remembering the people and design philosophies involved here

 

Wow, and I thought I was the only person making huge posts like that. Bravo.

[Xard]

that's not even what I call big

[mkreku]

What's even more impressive is that he writes those posts despite being Finnish. (Being Finnish means you use 20% less words than everyone else because of their weird ass language.)

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

What's even more impressive is that he writes those posts despite being Finnish. (Being Finnish means you use 20% less words than everyone else because of their weird ass language.)

 

French-canadians also have that symptom. Even the French (from France) don't understand us.

 

Seriously, you should see how Qu

[Laozi]

Qu

[Meshugger]

Hay guise!

 

Are there any developer walkthroughs available or any similar media?

[Wrath of Dagon]

Really, I just don't see where your disbelief come from. There's no basis for it, remembering the people and design philosophies involved here

I didn't say I didn't believe them, I said I was skeptical, which isn't quite the same thing. The two of their games I had played didn't fit the statements I bolded. Also I recently had my fanboy heart broken by ME, which made similar grandiose statements in their marketing. All I said was I'd like some clarification and examples. Now that they showed a mission, I can understand one of the things they meant was they had a faction and reputation system, which sounds less vague and grand than a "a living world which responds to you".

[Pop]

Hay guise!

 

Are there any developer walkthroughs available or any similar media?

I don't know if we ought to expect a public demonstration. Just about every game that's gotten a developer walkthrough at E3 is due well before the end of the year. Obsidz is a few months behind.

[Zoma]

What was the last great game Sega published?

 

Medieval 2: Total War.

 

And Empires: Total War iz comin' to rox your PC boxers off.