Alpha Protocol

[Modron]

Also if you get a black screen you can't minimize just windows key-tab,create a new desktop, and open task manager there instead.

 

[Grunker]

This is why I feel like abandoning my current run, sometimes reloading checkpoint removes enemies, other times it can just give me black screen forcing me to kill the process or restart PC when I can't even minimize the damn thing. Fucking annoying.

You're supposed to load from the load menu, not the quick menu

yeah, idiot, you think they implemented those functions for use or what

 

[Tigranes]

Re. the loading bug, it gets mitigated by loading from the load menu. When it doesn't, you can try restarting game and loading (not 'Resume'); at worst, restarting the mission from safehouse is an annoying but 100% way to fix the problem. I usually never have it except in the Saudi Arabia airport mission, which I believe is the most common area it occurs.

Sadly Sega pulled the plug due to poor sales, so the game never really got patched very much.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Re. the loading bug, it gets mitigated by loading from the load menu. When it doesn't, you can try restarting game and loading (not 'Resume'); at worst, restarting the mission from safehouse is an annoying but 100% way to fix the problem. I usually never have it except in the Saudi Arabia airport mission, which I believe is the most common area it occurs.

Sadly Sega pulled the plug due to poor sales, so the game never really got patched very much.

Also encountered it in Rome (warehouse) and in the final mission.

Replayed the game yesteday and liked it, but stealth still feels iffy and it's safer to just quietly headshot your way through areas and bosses and use tranquilizer bullets whenever you want to avoid civilian casualties.

Thinking of a veteran psychopath playthrough at a later date just for shits and giggles.

 

[fantadomat]

Re. the loading bug, it gets mitigated by loading from the load menu. When it doesn't, you can try restarting game and loading (not 'Resume'); at worst, restarting the mission from safehouse is an annoying but 100% way to fix the problem. I usually never have it except in the Saudi Arabia airport mission, which I believe is the most common area it occurs.

Sadly Sega pulled the plug due to poor sales, so the game never really got patched very much.

Also encountered it in Rome (warehouse) and in the final mission.

Replayed the game yesteday and liked it, but stealth still feels iffy and it's safer to just quietly headshot your way through areas and bosses and use tranquilizer bullets whenever you want to avoid civilian casualties.

Thinking of a veteran psychopath playthrough at a later date just for shits and giggles.

I found that the best way is to pump up melee and go punch people in the face! Also always kill your alahus....cia agents!

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Re. the loading bug, it gets mitigated by loading from the load menu. When it doesn't, you can try restarting game and loading (not 'Resume'); at worst, restarting the mission from safehouse is an annoying but 100% way to fix the problem. I usually never have it except in the Saudi Arabia airport mission, which I believe is the most common area it occurs.

Sadly Sega pulled the plug due to poor sales, so the game never really got patched very much.

Also encountered it in Rome (warehouse) and in the final mission.

Replayed the game yesteday and liked it, but stealth still feels iffy and it's safer to just quietly headshot your way through areas and bosses and use tranquilizer bullets whenever you want to avoid civilian casualties.

Thinking of a veteran psychopath playthrough at a later date just for shits and giggles.

I found that the best way is to pump up melee and go punch people in the face! Also always kill your alahus....cia agents!

The good thing about melee is that you can easily switch between punching and shooting from the point blank range whenever the enemy starts blocking your attacks.
The only drawback is that the enemies tend to do it too.

 

[Tigranes]

AP isn't a particularly difficult game, you can pick any combination of shit you want to pull and get by fine. It's just a question of what method you enjoy in the moment.

If you're stealthing, I'd say it's actually more fun to not use the pistol superpower that lets you bullet-time everybody to death. (Yes, this is a sad indictment of how retarded the game design was around those special abilities.)

Melee's drawback is that, well, you just mash the Awesome Button and you win. It would have been cool to integrate more acrobatic moves, like the ability to throw people over the ledge, trip them up, push them off, etc., though I'd guess it'd start to get pretty unrealistic.

But, having played this game like 3 million times, I'd say nothing beats sneaking up on some dudes, hurling an incendiary grenade to set them on fire, standing in the open until they rush you still on fire, and then detonate the remote-controlled mine in their face as they pass through the doorway (sometimes getting their flaming corpse to tumble down to the floor below, alerting the next poor fellow to come up).

 

[fantadomat]

Re. the loading bug, it gets mitigated by loading from the load menu. When it doesn't, you can try restarting game and loading (not 'Resume'); at worst, restarting the mission from safehouse is an annoying but 100% way to fix the problem. I usually never have it except in the Saudi Arabia airport mission, which I believe is the most common area it occurs.

Sadly Sega pulled the plug due to poor sales, so the game never really got patched very much.

Also encountered it in Rome (warehouse) and in the final mission.

Replayed the game yesteday and liked it, but stealth still feels iffy and it's safer to just quietly headshot your way through areas and bosses and use tranquilizer bullets whenever you want to avoid civilian casualties.

Thinking of a veteran psychopath playthrough at a later date just for shits and giggles.

I found that the best way is to pump up melee and go punch people in the face! Also always kill your alahus....cia agents!

The good thing about melee is that you can easily switch between punching and shooting from the point blank range whenever the enemy starts blocking your attacks.
The only drawback is that the enemies tend to do it too.

When you become a master,nothing could stand in front of you . Now i remember that in the embassy mission in Moscow there was a really stupid thing that counted destroyed turrets as dead soldiers.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Re. the loading bug, it gets mitigated by loading from the load menu. When it doesn't, you can try restarting game and loading (not 'Resume'); at worst, restarting the mission from safehouse is an annoying but 100% way to fix the problem. I usually never have it except in the Saudi Arabia airport mission, which I believe is the most common area it occurs.

Sadly Sega pulled the plug due to poor sales, so the game never really got patched very much.

Also encountered it in Rome (warehouse) and in the final mission.

Replayed the game yesteday and liked it, but stealth still feels iffy and it's safer to just quietly headshot your way through areas and bosses and use tranquilizer bullets whenever you want to avoid civilian casualties.

Thinking of a veteran psychopath playthrough at a later date just for shits and giggles.

I found that the best way is to pump up melee and go punch people in the face! Also always kill your alahus....cia agents!

The good thing about melee is that you can easily switch between punching and shooting from the point blank range whenever the enemy starts blocking your attacks.
The only drawback is that the enemies tend to do it too.

When you become a master,nothing could stand in front of you . Now i remember that in the embassy mission in Moscow there was a really stupid thing that counted destroyed turrets as dead soldiers.

#turretlivesmatter

 

[Tigranes]

fantadomat of course. You can pump up melee and just awesome-button everybody to death. Or you can just get the pistol superpower and instakill everybody. That's one of the key problems with AP, that the skills were designed stupidly to trivialise the combat and actually make the combat feel worse. At the same time, it's definitely satisfying in a weird way to sneak around, then sprint up to a bunch of heavily armed dudes and smack them down.

At one point I tried editing the .ini files to make enemies about 10-20% more sensitive; it's very easy to modify how much noise different types of gunshots, walking, walking on different types of terrain, opening doors, etc. make, so with a bit of trial and error you can really turn AP into a more punishing ghosting simulator. Gives a lot more tension when you know opening that door might make the guard behind it look around questioningly.

 

[Baker]

I never minded the shitty game mechanics that AP offered since it more than made up for it with the versatility of the story to the point that you could change how things would develop even at the last minute. It could always be worse and being serviceable is the best you're going to get from that era of Obsidian.

 

[ultra loser]

Just finished it. I usually play stealth games 100% non lethal but here I decided to kill if I don't like someone so basically I killed all terrorists, mafia guys and other people who would shoot me if they saw me. I think I left only Taipei police alive. The beginning was pretty boring, stealth is bad in this game and those levels weren't too interesting either. Using silent running, invisibility and chain shot at the beginning was pretty cool but then you get better at pistol and you can aim at people without getting out of the cover so it's easier and faster to just play it like a literal popamole. But why the hell can't you cancel quickshot? When upgraded you have six shots but what if you want to kill only two people? You need to wait half a minute or waste ammo. This game has a lot of small irritating shit like this.
What kept me playing was the conversations, I enjoyed the choices. I used to play games as a lawful good angel because usually when you do bad stuff in games and off people instead of sparing them you get less experience and if you are not nice to someone you lose quest opportunities and so on, but here I felt like even if I will be an asshole then it will just make the outcome different but not necessarily worse. I enjoyed how you could be a giant asshole and tell e.g. (((Marburg))) to fuck off, in any other game you'd get choices like "Yes I agree" and -5 renegade "I don't agree with you kind sir".
I went Rome -> Moscow -> Taipei. All locations were better than Arabia but Taipei missions are my favourite.
Shooting is hitscan so it's pretty funny because you can kill people from positions where it would be physically impossible.
Bugs that affected me - if you die then you can't load, you will get a black screen. You have to quit to main menu first and then load. Also the embassy mission in Russia said that I killed guards even though I didn't. Same with some other mission.

From what I remember of my decisions:

Spoiler

Spared sheik
Avenged the death of Terry Davis and killed all CIA niggers in that one Rome mission
Was an asshole to Marburg, he ran away after his bossfight. Picked going after him instead of going for the girl so she died.
Killed Sis, is it even explained why does that edgy tumblrina decide to have a duel with you instead of killing you from behind earlier?
Was an asshole to Albatros, -9 in the end and couldn't pick him as a handler for the last mission
Killed that crazy russian mafia dude
Didn't delete Heck's records but he didn't sell me out I guess I still had too high reputation with him
Used the option to punch Leland, these options are pure
Didn't save Mina, didn't know how I missed her so I checked a guide on gamefags and it was when that piece of shit game hid door open prompt when Leland was blabbering and the door that led to her were closed until the dialogue finished so I went with the door in the middle when dialogues ended because why would I check closed door again I also missed Scarlet but I don't know how.
That helicopter boss was horrible, you can barely outrun the missiles. I died more times trying to destroy it than during the whole game.
In the end I executed both Westridge and Leland, Marburg showed up again but the game didn't let me kill him

So yeah it had a lot of shit I didn't like but at the same time apart from the beginning I wasn't bored, I played like four hours straight now, from the last four Taipei missions to the end. This game is for me in the same category as Deadly Premonition. I mean it's not even close to being a technical trainwreck DP is, but it's unique, I don't know any other game with that many choices that influence what's happening and it's worth playing for that alone.

 

[Nutria]

Of the stuff that pissed you off, I experienced about 90% of that too. I guess it shows that they needed more time to test and fix obvious problems, because it seems like everyone's got the same complaints.

 

[ultra loser]

Forgot to mention that opening inventory or map takes five seconds or more, that's really annoying and I don't see a reason, it's just some menu, not another level to load.

 

[a Goat]

It's a shit game, simply put. I've written review of it, it can be seen(It has to be seen to understand it, quoting won't help) here:
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...es-anal-sex-slaves.104877/page-7#post-4251088

It's a bad stealth game, bad action game, bad RPG. I don't know why people cream all over themselves when talking about it.

edit: I've also made 2nd thread about it discussing the deeper nature of thhe game, this one I can quote:

Oh boy. You know your thread is off to a bad start when the OP compares the dullest RPG of all time to something of modest quality. Each attempt Avellone makes to create their own universe rather than simply deconstruct a setting made by others, has been more disastrous than the last. Aside from the outdated gameplay and lifeless cities, Alpha Protocol only consistency has been its lack of excitement and ineffective use of combat mechanics, all to make magic unmagical, to make action seem inert.

Perhaps the die was cast when Avellone vetoed the idea of making anything at all innovative or original; he made sure the game would never be mistaken for a work of art that meant anything to anybody, just ridiculously profitable nostalgia pandering to ageing KotOR fans.

>a-at least the writing was good though

"No!"

The writing is dreadful; the narrative was terrible. As I played, I noticed that every time I engaged in dialogue with an NPC the game presented me with a deviantarty style pulp instead of anything resembling actual human conversation.

I began marking on the back of an envelope every time this was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Avellone's mind is so governed by obsession with tumblresque edgy quips that he has no other style of writing.

Later I read a lavish, loving review of Alpha Protocol by the same David Gaider. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kiddies are playing Obsidian games at 17 or 18, then when they get older they will go on to enjoy Dragon Age II." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you play "Alpha Protocol" you are, in fact, trained to shill for Bioware.

 

[TheChickenKing]

I loved Alpha Protocol so I could probably break it down pretty easily: Yeah, it's a mess. But I strongly disagree that the writing is bad or that the narrative was terrible, and throwing out the word "tumbleresque" qualifies as genuine critique the same way that fucking a sheep qualifies as having sex with a beautiful woman. Sure, the gameplay has issue after issue, but the choices and consequences therein are fantastic, spy games are few and far between, and also fuck you.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

So yeah it had a lot of shit I didn't like but at the same time apart from the beginning I wasn't bored

That's AP, crappy shit that still manages to be a fun experience. You don't get those a lot.

 

[Nutria]

Avellone said that he came on late in the project to fix it when it was in trouble and I believe him. The story just does not have a lot in common with his work. It's very fixated on world events in the 2000s as they were understood at the time by ignorant and lazy people, whereas he usually is interested in themes that are more timeless and universal. So I wouldn't give him credit for the good parts or blame for the bad.

 

[Nano]

Avellone said that he came on late in the project to fix it when it was in trouble and I believe him. The story just does not have a lot in common with his work. It's very fixated on world events in the 2000s as they were understood at the time by ignorant and lazy people, whereas he usually is interested in themes that are more timeless and universal. So I wouldn't give him credit for the good parts or blame for the bad.

He was the lead writer on AP for more than a year and a half. Certainly a longer time than KOTOR2.

Also, nah, AP's story is fine.

 

[Roguey]

Avellone was responsible for making it less political. Originally the tone was Syriana, Chris made it Kill Bill. He inherited the concept so there was only so much he could do (a game about spies that takes place in a contemporary setting can't just ignore our own world).

 

[Grunker]

crappy shit that still manages to be a fun experience

That's the definition of a Codex hit right there

 

[Falksi]

This game is for me in the same category as Deadly Premonition. I mean it's not even close to being a technical trainwreck DP is, but it's unique, I don't know any other game with that many choices that influence what's happening and it's worth playing for that alone.

Great little summary that. Both games really show how far a bit of individuality & uniqueness can take a game.

It's be great to see technically polished sequels to both.

 

[DalekFlay]

I played as a stealthy pistol god, same as Deus Ex, and while the gameplay is obviously incredibly flawed and very tainted by consoles I thought it was passable. I had some fun silently slaughtering everyone with my god pistol. Stealth and aiming are both heavily stat-based so with max stealth I remember being able to basically walk in front of dudes and silent headshot them while whispering hello. There's a certain charm to it. And yeah the story and such was great, and spy RPGs are like the rarest breed, so I recommend it overall.

 

[Grunker]

^ keep in mind you played the best possible version of AP's gameplay (pistol). That puts the problems in perspective IMO

 

[Nano]

^ keep in mind you played the best possible version of AP's gameplay (pistol).

Nonsense, melee is the most fun way to play the game.