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Missed this. There's no way it's true - that would mean Obsidian designed a third person shooter with dialogue. Without Stealth half of the gadgets don't make sense (it would just be 'grenades'), the whole Stealth skill + a ton of Sabotage and Technical Aptitude are removed (leaving basically just weapon skills) and why would a publisher of all things demand Stealth? They're usually the ones saying "can you shoot shit? good".
And them just directly giving weapons to al-Qaeda is the kind of retarded shit that I would expect in a story written by a 15-year old who just read his first Noam Chomsky book.
That explains a lot. Half the levels seem like they were made without stealth in mind. But if Obsidian intended it to just be a shooter, then why didn't they do a better job with the shooting part?
All of them were actually. They botched the gameplay because they had no clue what they were doing and different groups had different and contradictory beliefs about what it should have been. Iit was a terribly managed project. Sawyer once slyly referred to it as "truly dysfunctional."
Missed this. There's no way it's true - that would mean Obsidian designed a third person shooter with dialogue. Without Stealth half of the gadgets don't make sense (it would just be 'grenades'), the whole Stealth skill + a ton of Sabotage and Technical Aptitude are removed (leaving basically just weapon skills) and why would a publisher of all things demand Stealth? They're usually the ones saying "can you shoot shit? good".
Patrick Mills confirmed this was exactly the case in Something Awful's AP thread years ago. I've kept the highlights in a txt.
Confirming that most of the levels were not designed with stealth in mind. Stealth only got a design around the start of 2008 and didn't get its first major feature pass until fall of 2008. Most levels had been blocked out loooong before that.
..
FYI you can thank me for not having that scene where Marburg blows up a bus full of tourists. First thing I cut when I got Rome.
Also the scene where Mike cries like a baby. No, seriously, that was a thing.
...
I couldn't say what Marburg's motivation was in the old old version shown in the animatic. I didn't write it and I never understood it. I *think* that it was because Marburg is a bitter ex-agent and he wanted Mike to become bitter and angry too. But it never really made sense to me.
...
Saying this makes it sound like we didn't make big mistakes, and we absolutely did. Big ones. There was certainly a time that we were making the best game that we could, but there were other times that making the best game we could meant making certain choices; choices that didn't get made until well after they would have been effective.
I appreciate the nice words, though.
PS: Don't mistake what I'm saying as dissing my former employees and colleagues. I think everyone involved recognizes what I just said is true, and that it's also something we learned a lot from.
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I'm not talking about Mary-Sue in the character insertion sense. There was one of those but he got rewritten and I'm not saying who it was.
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There's like two missions in the whole game that were designed to be intentionally pure stealth. Many missions have sections that are stealth-friendly followed by sections that cannot be stealthed at all (Lazo's Yacht). I think offering what is essentially a gimmick run as one of the two viable "paths" you can take in a mission is really a mistake. (And frankly, making the game look a lot worse than it actually is.) Stealth was a relatively late addition to the game and many of the levels (like this last one) were built out before it was even considered an option. Stealth is just another player tool, it's not intended to be your only tool.*
*Pistols can be your only tool because they are grotesquely overpowered. But even they are not *intended* to be the only thing you ever use.
...
No one really talked about sequels because that was actually a big problem with the original draft of the script, you couldn't actually kill anyone because they were all being saved for a direct sequel. When that script was dumped there was literally zero sequel talk from that point forward.
Sega likely forced stealth because of what Zed said, the largely-held assumption that an espionage game would involve sneaking. Sega completely took over all gameplay decisions in 2008 because Obsidian had proven themselves to be utterly, utterly incompetent and no longer deserving of autonomy. They were also responsible for the shrinking reticle gameplay, another aspect you'd think a publisher wouldn't demand (Obsidian's early build was where that one infamous "Mass Effect felt more RPG" criticism came from). Chris A confirmed it:
Agonz: It’s a fact that the reviews about Alpha Protocol were quite hard, to say the least. How much of it do you think it was due to the fact that even though AP looks like a shooter, it is an action RPG?
CFA: You’ve summed it up in the last question, all that’s only a part of it. AP represents a disconnect between what it looks like on screen vs. how it plays out – as an example, one of our design mandates from SEGA was that your gun skill effects your targeting and spread, which is something our studio is very much against, and you can see the consequences of that discrepancy in a number of mandated system mechanics in the game. Players don’t want invisible numbers in the background modifying what they’re physically doing on screen – if you have your cursor lined up, you should shoot where the cursor is pointing. Design decisions like that add up.
-Was it easy working with SEGA during AP’s development? Were they very involved, influencing the project, or did they just “foot the bill”? Did that experience had anything to do with the cancelation of the Aliens RPG?
They were involved more heavily toward the 2nd half, and towards the end of production, they were calling the shots and the final, indisputable word on the game’s direction and especially the mechanics (targeting, especially, jumps to mind). They didn’t care so much about the story, however, which is pretty standard with most publishers we’ve worked with. Note that none of this absolves us of any of the choices we as a studio made up to that point, so if anyone had an issue with the game, we shared equal, if not more, responsibility for all the critiques folks had.
So Marburg shoots Madison @ museum and I tell him I'm gonna kill him and a lot of threats like "uh Marbug if I could I'd strap you to dis bomb I would cut your bawls off blablabla". Marbug dislikes me at -4 but juuuust not enough for him to not run away in the museum. I meet up with him in Alpha Protocol and tell him "oooh u gonna die son get ready mudafucka I'm never letting you go", basically the animosity on display from Thorton is bigger toward Marburg than any other character even Leland. So I kill everyone and the end scene after killing Leland has Marburg RANDOMLY APPEARING NEXT TO ME OUT THE BLUE AND WE'RE ALL "YO WADDUP BRO SO YE WE JUS' GONNA CALL IT EVEN NO HARM NO FOUL GOOD LUCK SIR"
What. The. Fuck?
I don't recall that happening in my original playthrough at all, so weird.
Besides that, game was better than I remembered it. Better than mediocre, at least. The core gameplay is pretty terrible as is the case with Bloodlines, but the way dialogue and C&C is pretty impressively handled. This game is probably the only time I felt like dialogue was a "game", and a fun one at that due to good animation, decent voice acting and outcomes that feel natural if you say the right things, fuck up or try to piss someone off on purpose. It feels like you're in control of the flow and that everything from little things to pretty big story branches hinge on your behaviour. Unfortunately the game gets repetitive sort of fast because areas are basically small boxes of shoot-em-ups (where pistol is fun to use I guess but also massively overpowered, rifle is sort-of-meh-whatever and submachinegun + shotgun are pure cancer) or stealth challenges. And speaking of PoE at launch, once you find a working strategy for the stealth you pretty much copy-paste those tactics ad infinitum. Once you get 12 sec invisibility everything becomes trivial. With Expert Chain Shot and above, even bosses on Hard are no problem.
You keep playing to see your choices cause ripples and shape your build, and that part is cool. But damn when it finished I sort of felt relieved that I didn't have to through more sneaking.
Also at one point I complained to Darth Roxor about the mandatory fight sequences (outside of boss battles), but then I figured out that you can fucking turn invisible mid combat and run around knocking enemies over even though they are looking right at you whacking their friends. Impressive coding, Obsidian.
The story is better than I remembered it (probably because when I first played it I was mad about the obvious "Halbech wants to cause a Cold War to sell weapons" plot which in hindsight was retarded of me because that's not really the plot but rather the setup for a lot of the characters acting out their own substories and hell Halbech didn't even plan for it to go down like it did so the story is actually more of a "shit went wrong now we're covering up but who is covering up and why") and there's some really cool spots, but the writing is also bizarrely on the nose sometimes; especially in e-mails people will straight up tell you what they feel and such. However I can't recall a dialogue scene I disliked, maybe except the Leland-interrogation flashbacks which are cool in theory but so-and-so in execution because there's not really any tension and the writer's are sort of stressing to make Leland's lines in those scenes make sense when the real objective of his words are to get you to respond with the badass stuff you've done. Considering the size of the character gallery they did an admirable job giving everyone a place in the web and the writing barely has any real juvenile shit which is a massive win for a video game.
Overall, better than I recalled, sad that modern RPGs went the way of Mass Effect instead of this in the C&C-department, but still, it won't ever make my favourites list.
Roguey said:
Stealth is just another player tool, it's not intended to be your only tool.*
See, Roguey, this is something I've ranted about alot on the subject of the new Deux Ex', Dishonored etc. I think what makes the original Deus Ex so awesome is that you just have a lot of stuff, and then you decide what you're gonna use step-by-step. There's rarely an incentive to do a "stealth run" or a "weapons run" or whatever, you just use the tool best for the situation. I really miss that style of game where you don't pidgeon-hole yourself down a particular path but instead switch tactics all the time and get rewarded when you identify proper tactics for the proper situation.
So in theory, I agree with Patrick Mills here, buuuut:
Roguey said:
There's like two missions in the whole game that were designed to be intentionally pure stealth. Many missions have sections that are stealth-friendly followed by sections that cannot be stealthed at all (Lazo's Yacht). I think offering what is essentially a gimmick run as one of the two viable "paths" you can take in a mission is really a mistake.
Even though the Stealth is gimmicky, it is DEFINITELY more enjoyable than the awful, gimped gunplay. So if Stealth is a poor gimmick, where does that leave the even worse gunplay?
And that's not mentioning the fact that in original Deus Ex, you have a lot of options available to you. Take away the stealth from AP, what do you have? Gadgets, for the most part, are just variations on grenades or what amounts to basic stealth options in any other game - like the sound throwing thing (which is actually often detrimental to use because it's often easier to take out non-alerted guards one by one).
So yeah, maybe a Stealth game isn't the thing, but surely not just a shooter either.
Also this is majorly fucking retarded for many reasons:
Agonz: It’s a fact that the reviews about Alpha Protocol were quite hard, to say the least. How much of it do you think it was due to the fact that even though AP looks like a shooter, it is an action RPG?
CFA: You’ve summed it up in the last question, all that’s only a part of it. AP represents a disconnect between what it looks like on screen vs. how it plays out – as an example, one of our design mandates from SEGA was that your gun skill effects your targeting and spread, which is something our studio is very much against, and you can see the consequences of that discrepancy in a number of mandated system mechanics in the game. Players don’t want invisible numbers in the background modifying what they’re physically doing on screen – if you have your cursor lined up, you should shoot where the cursor is pointing. Design decisions like that add up.
1) A publisher mandating skill affecting targeting and spread? What the actual fucking fuck? Is this 1992? Did a Codexer work for SEGA or sommat?
2) "Our game was bad because of skill affecting targeting and spread" yeah I know right Deus Ex sucks everybody says so.
Though I guess he is just ackknowledging that modern players seem to think so but fuck them. Reticule shrinkage is not why gunplay in AP sucks ass. Lack of kinaesthetic responsiveness, combat/gun balance, cover mechanics that don't work as intended half the time, awkward control and variety is.
Deus Ex was criticized for its gunplay and Invisible War and beyond went with mechanics that were more palatable, so the lessons were learned.
Sure AP has all those other problems too but Avellone's really not the type of guy to be able to articulate all that. I mean we've all seen him play Arcanum.
You might want to watch Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and many other James Bond films that do involve sneaking, disguise, infiltration, and sabotage. Bond doesn't simply run around guns blazing.
As for the other two, I have no familiarity with Jason Bourne, but Jack Bauer is a counter-terrorism agent stationed with a unit in Los Angeles (for most seasons) and thus not remotely comparable to either James Bond or Michael Thornton.
Jason Bourne also does some sneaking around, tho more like hiding in plain sight or out of sight. But yeah none of them awkwardly crouch around i.e sneaking
I tried to replay this a few months ago and for me it was actually much worse than I remembered. I think when it came out, I found the setting and the whole "C&C within a dialoge framework" thing fresh enough to enjoy the whole thing but when I replayed it I just gave up somewhere in the middle. It has its good points to be sure but it's just kinda shitty to play. And in terms of story, the tone of it just swings way too much.
Jack Bauer is a counter-terrorism agent stationed with a unit in Los Angeles (for most seasons) and thus not remotely comparable to either James Bond or Michael Thornton.
To be fair, Thorton's character was directly inspired by the "three JBs". The whole Professional/Suave/Aggressive trinity in dialogue was explicitly stated to correspond to Bourne/Bond/Bauer.
Also at one point I complained to Darth Roxor about the mandatory fight sequences (outside of boss battles), but then I figured out that you can fucking turn invisible mid combat and run around knocking enemies over even though they are looking right at you whacking their friends. Impressive coding, Obsidian.
Thinking about it, that decision was way too obvious. I mean, the game suddenly gives you the choice to spare an unknown enemy, so it hints you that it must be some benefit to that.
I wanted to shoot her. I mean, after all, she's a trained assassin who just tried to murder me for no reason and is likely to come after me again in the future. But it was obvious when they gave you the choice to spare her that you were supposed to. I mean after all, this is the game where...
...when you catch Osama bin-Laden, you're given three choices. One of them is "execute" and one of them is "trust". You're supposed to pick "trust".
FYI you can thank me for not having that scene where Marburg blows up a bus full of tourists. First thing I cut when I got Rome.
...
I couldn't say what Marburg's motivation was in the old old version shown in the animatic. I didn't write it and I never understood it. I *think* that it was because Marburg is a bitter ex-agent and he wanted Mike to become bitter and angry too. But it never really made sense to me.
Okay, good. I'm not the only one who thinks Marburg's action don't make any sense at all for his character. I'm guessing the writers' idea was that he used to be in the military so he must be totally cool with blowing up children for no reason. That would fit with the way that in the end...
...your former coworkers and troops from the US Army are totally fine with murdering you.
Maybe not anymore, but they were when the characters were first developed. Bond was doing more sneaking than big action scenes in the 1960s, Bourne spent most of the first movie traveling incognito with his fraulein, and Bauer hardly killed anyone until well into the first season of 24. They turn into generic action heroes later, when the writers run out of ideas and investors are pouring in money for special effects.
and, as we know, Invisible War was a megahit which everyone remembers as a worthy sequel.
(The awkward gunplay in Deus Ex ended up having a purpose, much like poor tank controls in RE - but again, the general public don't appreciate such things. What makes it different compared to AP is that AP doesn't really have a reason for all its gunplay problems.)
Also at one point I complained to Darth Roxor about the mandatory fight sequences (outside of boss battles), but then I figured out that you can fucking turn invisible mid combat and run around knocking enemies over even though they are looking right at you whacking their friends. Impressive coding, Obsidian.
Remember when Alpha Protocol's WTF-ness was thought of as a defining attribute of Obsidian? This classic Skyway post from 2011 is incomprehensible today:
And then Eidos will hire Obsidian to make a true to the original addon!
Thi4f: N4w Ag4. Carrying all the dumbing down from Thiaf plus stuffed with deep and original characters by Avellone!
Just imagine what a massive incline over Thiaf it will be:
The game starts with a main character awakening in a crypt. He is dressed in a checkered pants and a pink trenchcoat. He wears sunglasses - one glass is green the other one is red.
When character walks out of the cave he realizes that this cave is in a middle of a city populated by people dressed in a fullplate armour and thermal visors, carrying massive blasters.
These are the Special Operations Order led by a mysterious Commander Penguin - a blonde dude, with a blue eyeliner, fishnet pants and a short T-shirt barely covering the belly with a large rainbow drawn on it.
Immediately the Main Character realizes that he's hunted by Commander Penguin's right hand - Major Bro. It's a beefy cyan-haired tranny wearing sunglasses in a form of hearts, armored bikini stuffed with flashing neon lights and manly boxer shorts. His main weapon is a twin RPG-7 launcher twice his size.
Major Bro is mute and thus he has to give orders to Omega Protocol of Special Operations Order by blinking with his eyes. Blinking with the left eye means kill the enemy and blinking with the right eye means don't kill the enemy just yet, he has to have a lengthy, 5 to 10 minutes cinematic dialogue with me after which you are to run at him and die.
I wanted to shoot her. I mean, after all, she's a trained assassin who just tried to murder me for no reason and is likely to come after me again in the future. But it was obvious when they gave you the choice to spare her that you were supposed to.
There are no intended decisions, just options your character would do. If someone just tried to kill you, shooting them is a reasonable option for a vindictive Thorton.
Its problem was that it messed up things unrelated to gunplay (and also gunplay in a different manner with the kind of universal ammo where rocket launchers use the same resource as pistols)
Human Revolution was a hit though. When it was released, Mills said it was more like the game AP should have been.
BTW, in case anyone knows, because it's one of the things I've never found out about the game - what happens if, at the end of Taipei, you've pissed Heck off enough for him to give your name to the cops as the supposed assassin?
The combat of DX left a lot to be desired on several areas, but its targeting mechanics are still probably the best attempt at combining character skill with first-person shooting.
To be fair, Thorton's character was directly inspired by the "three JBs". The whole Professional/Suave/Aggressive trinity in dialogue was explicitly stated to correspond to Bourne/Bond/Bauer.
That's fair enough for dialogue choices, but Jack Bauer is generally working as part of a large counter-terrorism unit, often assisted by other law enforcement agencies with still larger numbers of personnel, and engaged in activities such as tracking a suspected terrorist via cameras/helicopters/satellite/whatever, surrounding the terrorist with a large number of agents to ensure the terrorist's capture, and then conducting an interrogation back at CTU. Very different from what James Bond usually engages in as a secret agent with minimal support, and likewise different from the sort of missions Michael Thorton conducts in Alpha Protocol.
Of course, in practice, Alpha Protocol consists almost entirely of linear corridors where the player engages in cover-based shooter gameplay, killing vast numbers of enemies in direct firefights, and with very little actual espionage. Michael Thorton is closer to Rambo than to James Bond.
BTW, in case anyone knows, because it's one of the things I've never found out about the game - what happens if, at the end of Taipei, you've pissed Heck off enough for him to give your name to the cops as the supposed assassin?
They botched the gameplay because they had no clue what they were doing and different groups had different and contradictory beliefs about what it should have been. Iit was a terribly managed project. Sawyer once slyly referred to it as "truly dysfunctional."
