In 46 hours I will be seeing this game

[Pop]

No NDA, either, so I'll see if I can't take some notes and convey some wisdom.

 

I'm guessing the demo will rate somewhere between

 

 

and

 

[Beast]

Haha, that's hilarious.

 

Have fun seeing the game, dude!

[Raithe]

And I think I can speak for many of us (especially those of us on the wrong side of the Atlantic to catch the fun demo events...)

who won't get to see the game for another couple of months...

 

Git

 

[Pop]

Conversely it could be like

[Tigranes]

Find out what difficulty (and with what possible demo-mods) you're playing on, then gauge how easy/hard it is and how smart the enemies feel, will you?

 

It's finally a chance to get a reliable word on that, possibly.

[Pop]

At this point I'm not sure if I'm going to be playing the demo, or if it will be played for me. We'll see. I'll try and get some thoughts down regardless.

[Gorth]

I turn all green with envy

 

Looking forward to hear your experiences

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Lucky you. I envy you so goddamn much.

[Beast]

I turn all green with envy

 

Looking forward to hear your experiences

You look a little more like you're gonna throw up!

*hands bucket*

[kirottu]

Check the AI plz.

[Syraxis]

Check the AI plz.

[Starwars]

I'm not expecting much from the AI. Granted, I'd like to not see people charging right onto an armed Mike like in that gameplay clip a while back. But I think in terms of stealth and all that, we'll see something "stylized" like MGS where soldiers have a very strict cone of vision (which will vary depending on how high Mike's stealth is).

 

We'll see though. Please report back with your findings.

[Baeus]

Jealous! Bah!

[Humodour]

Jesus saves!

[Pidesco]

Gretzky scores!

[Pop]

So the private demo. First off we were shown two sequences from after a Rome mission, with an as-yet-unidentified love interest, ones that we've heard described before. First one, Thorton has done good and he has a conversation that ends in a romantic interlude (reaches over to kiss, screen fades to black). Second one, Thorton is beaten about the head and neck by the same woman with a lamp. Thorton says "You're trying to knock me out with a lamp? That's movie stuff!" and she says "I know" and hits him with a shock trap. Thorton warns the woman that some guy (I won't divulge the name but I only remember it because he's got the same name as the Ebola virus) will kill her, she leaves, he says "I hate this city".

 

The second part of the demo was almost

for the first half. It was more or less a repetition of the dev walkthrough from GDC. The only difference was the initial approach - Thorton took out the tower guards first and used ziplines to get between them. However it went a little bit past that where the walkthrough left off. (IF YOU LACK A BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF ALPHA PROTOCOL FROM TRAILERS AND SUCH GO NO FURTHER) You get the Halbech guy saying "blah blah why you did why you did next". Then it flashes back to the scene with Shaheed. You interrogate him about the stolen missiles and Shaheed says that *gasp* they were not stolen but given by Halbech. You're given a choice to execute him or spare him. The guy playing the demo chose to execute him, so Thorton cuts off Shaheed's speech with a "yeah that's interesting" (or thereabouts) and throws him off a bridge. Then the handler calls but gets cut off by Mina Tang who says that Halbech is sending cruise missiles to your location (and that the only way they'd know where you are is through a mole in the Alpha Protocol organization) thus you enact AP and go rogue.

 

MCA, Matt MacLean, and another Obsidz dude (Framerate? I think his name was Dan) were on hand for the demo and they were all good people, answering questions and the like (I asked if the DSS could be used in future Obsidz games, MCA said "depends on the genre")

 

The Obsidz panel was more like

They were expecting 50 or so attendants so they collected a large amount of alchohol and made a drinking game out of the use of the word "choice". The panel ended up packed and by the time Joseph Bulock took the mic he was audibly slurring his words. Lots of good cheer, good punchlines, etc. Matt McLean and his considerable beard went over the incredible complexity in systems that goes into providing choices. Talked a bit more with Matt and MCA. Too tired to remember stuff.

 

Pics coming at some point. As far as the gameplay AI goes - I can't make any determination, any more than you could from the GDC video. It looked better, I think - going up through the guard tower made more sense, and the guards seem to react to dead bodies pretty sensibly.

 

To be perfectly honest, the facial animation still looks fairly rough at times, but the script elicited several laugh-out-loud moments in the scenes we were shown. Combat looks pretty fun. It looks good.

Edited March 28, 2010 by Pop

[Gorth]

Yay for Pop!

 

Thanks for sharing

 

Not lets get this thing in the stores already so the rest of us can watch it dammit.

[WorstUsernameEver]

Sounds interesting. Did they give you any info about the difficulty they were playing?

I also read the MCA comment on the DSS as 'We'll only use it again for another heavily cinematic game without exploration'.

[Pop]

Also we were there to see this guy needling MacLean.

[Jokerman89]

Also we were there to see this guy needling MacLean.

 

 

I sort of guessed we would be able to go gay in alpha protocol, who was the chick with the guns? Hop we get to romance her.

[kirottu]

They were expecting 50 or so attendants so they collected a large amount of alchohol and made a drinking game out of the use of the word "choice".

 

This could be the coolest thing I

[Oner]

Also we were there to see this guy needling MacLean.

 

I sort of guessed we would be able to go gay in alpha protocol, who was the chick with the guns? Hop we get to romance her.

Sis, daughter of Albatross. She's 16, so no romance.

 

They were expecting 50 or so attendants so they collected a large amount of alchohol and made a drinking game out of the use of the word "choice".

 

This could be the coolest thing I

Edited March 28, 2010 by Oner

[Sannom]

Sis, daughter of Albatross. She's 16, so no romance.

 

Do you have "inside" knowledge about the daughter thing ? Because I don't remember Sis being described as Albatross' daughter in the previews and interviews I read, just that she was his bodyguard... but still, putting teenagers on the battlefield is still something I find really reprehensible, I wonder what's Albatross' take on morality and what are his motivations.

 

And thanks for the report, by the way!

Edited March 28, 2010 by Sannom

[Oner]

Sis, daughter of Albatross. She's 16, so no romance.

 

Do you have "inside" knowledge about the daughter thing ? Because I don't remember Sis being described as Albatross' daughter in the previews and interviews I read, just that she was his bodyguard... but still, putting teenagers on the battlefield is still something I find really reprehensible, I wonder what's Albatross' take on morality and what are his motivations.

Why can't people ask these kinds of questions when the information is still fresh in my mind?

 

*gnrfan228 summoning call*

Edited March 28, 2010 by Oner

[Raithe]

Always good to hear someones take on it all.. I just want to get my own hands on a copy