I dunno. I quit FO3 out of disgust for the reasons you mentioned, but also that killing things meant hitting them 100 times since stats had such a huge stupid effect on damage.
Nevermind. I can't really compare both because I never dared to try Oblivion with guns without mods that improve its FPS mechanics. Modded FO3 is better, so if AP was moddable and got enough commercial appeal and a new Drog or Wesp appeared to fix part it... Unreal Engine was once second only to Half-Life SDK in the mapping and modding community.
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Exploring the ruins of good gameplay. Cheese!
Thorton heads for the ruins in Rome, to investigate what was happening there. He informed Shaheed about it, so any Al-Samad personell in the ruins will ignore Thorton presence instead of shooting him.
The place is under reformations and closed to the public, fortunately because this game is totally unable to handle the social stealth seem in movies like Bourne and in games like Hitman, and if it did, it would look like something incredibly stupid. Anyway, it thus begins.
Now lo and behold! The only sizable consequence from your choices that has relevance for gameplay in the entire game besides shortening the length of this game by skipping missions!
Something laughable enough to imply my opinion on the fact that, besides a couple of e-mails so far, the only other consequence of sparing Shaheed was this. Four less moles to pop, a fraction of the number of enemies in this level.
Marburg's men are in these ruins, what the hell are they doing there?
Diplomacy doesn't work in this game unless it is forced through cutscenes, so there is no point in asking.
I missed a cache of weapons here, to the left. Tthere was no consequence from missing it, I am disappoint.
And thus, Thorton begins to do his thing, that is, knocking out Desu Vult goons and, when necessary, killing them.
I was a bit harsh about the evasion thing though, because even Thief had a "Wait, did I see something?", except it lasted fractions of seconds instead of that long, and that if you ran against the enemy to do a laughable "sneak attack", you'd immediately give away your position. And shadows and the type of floor being stepped on were relevant. It is possible to play AP without any of those shit special abilities regarding "stealth". They will make the game truly fucking easy.
It just requires more patience, thinking, and sometimes luck, because there won't be retarded arrows pointing out where all enemies are, and the camera is horrible for trying to spot them, and you can't hide in the shadows to observe things... or use a camera orb like in Thief 2. That or any kind of disposable spy camera would be a gadget that would make sense and replace dumbed down "awareness", and I really missed something like that.
Meanwhile, more knockouts.
Travelling through several houses among the ruins, Thorton managed to surprise all enemies so far. There is always, however, that point when the developers assumed the played would have to use "Shadow Operative" popmaole or be a masochist to sneak through unnoticed, like those many points in Marburg's Mansion.
However, I think this may be enough ranting for a single update, it's just that there is not much to point about it besides using picture dumps.
After this one, Thorton got spotted. And like always.
Wait a minute, what the hell is Thorton holding?
Bros don't really need guns to kill people, or even their hand-to-hand combat, because like a true Bro, Thorton has managed to kill that man with a Cheese milked out of consoletards who pay DLCs for horse armor, and also, to make it even more epic and testosterone-filled for dudebros, it is a
gold-plated cheese.
Do you have any questions now about the awesomeness of Thorton? I suppose he didn't fuck anyone yet, and that he is no protagonist of a perverted an degenerate H-game, but that doesn't mean anything, because 14-years old need to play games that glorify their doubtful manhood and that ensure nothing will ever come out of their closets.
And after killing a Desu Vult agent with cheese, Thorton gets down through a ladder, reaching what seems to be some catacombs. Seriously, even the Paris Catacombs in Deus Ex had a significantly nonlinear level design compared to this. But you can't kill people with cheese in Deus Ex, bonus point for AP due to this feature.
[Sarcasm]
[Intelligence]Try to make a sensible, even if linear script for the Roman ruins level in Alpha Protocol.
[Fail] You end with the idea of putting catacombs next to a bathhouse heating system, forgetting to remember that the Romans were more hygienic than people during the Middle Ages.
Besides the curse of the decline of gaming, of course.
And thus,
After looting the place, Thorton was EXTREME enough to do something totally not needed but EXTREME:
When seeing the guard, he tore off, using his bare hands, one of the hands of the goon! And he realized the goon was a robot because there was no blood coming from the stump that remained!
And of course, he alerted nobody doing so.
Two birds with one stone.
Thorton missed some XP by not spotting one of these, but it's not much of a big deal. Time to loot the place before going down through those platforms.
Because otherwise, it would be necessary to do everything else again because of these stupid checkpoints. At least in Resident Evil 3 and in its predecessors the save points allowed you to use them at any time and they recorded everything that happened prior to you visiting them, and it was possible to return to them at any time is most situations before a new one appeared.
In that array lies the key to understanding what Marburg is planning to do.
[Intelligence]Those art pieces in the warehouse have something to do with it.
The place was full of goons. This time, stealth was forsaken. Shooting them from a distance sounds more sane than trying to get closer and risk getting shot. And now, the array. Just hack it, and the mission is over, correct?
WRONG AND THIS WAS THE THIRD WORST MISSION OF THE GAME, SEE WHY IN THE NEXT UPDATE AND I BECAME ANGRY ENOUGH TO TYPE LIKE A BRO
Verdict of this update: I wish I could have had the luck of taking more screenshots with glitches. I have nothing to say that deviates from what I posted before about this game. If I wanted to actually review throughly all levels in this game, a massive rant would be necessary and I can't bother wasting time with it.
Also, the fact that the only noticeable consequence, gameplay-wise, of siding with Shaheed was that... I think skyway may be right after all on this one. Except that apparently my definition of "mediocre" is equivalent to skyway's definition of "shit".