New AP Gameplay Footage

[serch]

Looks rather good to me.

 

[made]

Looks rather good to me.

Everyone is gay for MCA.

 

[Jazper]

I'm looking forward to it. I hope it's more Bond than Bourne or Bauer though.

 

[serch]

Everyone is gay

Ready to go!

 

[Wyrmlord]

- graphics mostly look quite good

No way.

 

[inwoker]

Skyway negative energy is so high he can create antiparticles within his mindpower. FACT.

 

[Razz]

I'm surprised no one's bothered to mock the Gametrailers footage yet, there's so much juicy stuff in there. At one point Geoff Keighly (the host) actually says "Todd Howard better watch out, you've got VATS and you've got more" to Chris Parker. And the skill-up screen is a Mass Effect copy-pasta. I lolled.

That being said, the Gametrailers stuff seemed decent overall to me. Definitely going to try it out, seems like a pretty fun action game with a lot of different possible approaches, compared to all the other drivel coming out lately. Bioshock also used the presence of choice as its main marketing strength, and it failed to deliver anything but a shallow story, some relatively fun shooting mechanics and corridors (albeit in an interesting setting) filled with identical enemies. If AP can be a Bioshock which actually realises the CHOICE thing (not in a hardcore RPG sense of course), I'm going to enjoy it.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with Vaarna Aarne, Andyman Messiah, fastpunk, and Hummelgumpf?

Why do you guys live under this ridiculous delusion that Obsidian can do no wrong? Why do you have this absurd double standard that any dumbing down is okay when Obsidian does it?

Look at it for yourself. A lockpicking minigame. And you justify it by saying, "Preposterous, an action RPG that realizes it should do things like an action game." Are you out of your minds? I thought it was a bit wierd when you guys unanimously praise KotOR 2 and NWN2, but this?

I mean, everybody is entitled to their opinions, but when you say things like this, and then dismiss the opinions of people like skyway as mindless nerdraging, maybe you need to put things into perspective.

There is only one logical conclusion... We are all clones!

Or kingcomrade.

Anyhoo, I was talking about the combat and movement to clarify a bit. Particularly the hand-to-hand combat looks rather nice, and otherwise it looks like it leans more towards third person shooters in terms of gameplay than normal action RPGs. Sure, it's no Ninja Gaiden, but it looks way better than Bloodlines or Deus Ex combat.

Lockpicking on the other hand... Yes, it looks disappointing. But we saw it before already. And I'd rather want complete certainty whether or not time stops, since that's the major thing about it. Yea, it'd be bad if time didn't stop, since that'd make timing less important. If time doesn't stop and the system is such that you CAN'T try to pick a lock that's above your abilities, then it could be okay. Let's think it this way as a possibility... Would it be dumbing down, if rather than just have a ridiculous replacement for any character skill, the function is to rather be about how quickly you pick the lock, with the guards patrolling around as normal? Regardless, Anthony should answer this.

And I would like to defend myself and say I don't praise NWN2 OC beyond saying it's like BG2 with different emphasis. Since I never considered BG2 to be anything special in the first place (that's just nostalgia talking).

 

[MetalCraze]

I pretty much expect some over the top abilities in a game that cites these as influences.

Yes and Bourne, Bond and Bauer were running around, shooting stuff en masse with infinite bullets, stopping time and hiding in a plain sight? I guess you've mistaken those three for Neo.

I meant that no matter how low my gun skill was it was still easy to progress, even if I were taking a guns blazing path.

Somehow I doubt that you were putting "hordes of enemies" down without skills that's for sure.

Wait, so it's okay for Deus Ex, an FPS, to have poor gunplay, but not AP, an actionRPG?

Deus Ex was never meant to be a shoot'em up - the lots of ways to bypass combat, pretty low amount of health, frequent lack of ammo proves that.
AP on the other hand is the opposite - it is based on gunplay and console stuff influenced by the Matrix - so at least it should be fun. It isn't. I watch video from AP and then I watch video from Max Payne from 2001 - yes 8 years - and Max Payne still easily tears up primitive AP when it comes to gunplay.
Obsidian can't make shooters that's for sure.

Damage (also not ideal), rate of fire, unlocking moves, etc... are possible alternatives

Unlocking moves - hahaha

but, I find that trying to mix the player and character skill works worse than having one or the other, particularly for aiming.

So again - why add stats to a shooter then? As for aiming I doubt there is any stat for that - as the game has auto-aim.

The purpose of mini-games is to give the player some say in the success or failure of a character's actions.

And here I thought that the purpose of mini-games was to bore you to death with repetitive and twitchy "gameplay".
And it seems you agree.

But I still don't understand how exactly AP has a good and "fun' gunplay - everything that was shown so far is worse than 5+ years old shooters. And it is even worse than some of the modern day shooters. How a shooter with auto-targeting and ridiculously slow "gameplay" can be fun?
The only way someone can like a dull "gunplay" from a developer that never made any good combat (and even a single shooter) - is because his first game was Call of Duty4 or some other boring shit like that - or he didn't play shooters for years.

 

[Jasede]

Agreeing with everything skyway said on this matter.

 

[Dionysus]

Wait, so it's okay for Deus Ex, an FPS, to have poor gunplay, but not AP, an actionRPG?

That seems like a pretty stupid semantic distinction at this point. What is it that puts AP in a separate genre from Deus Ex? Is it the quick-time keyword dialog wheel or the lockpicking minigame?

Anyway, the skills are a little strange. I don’t like the fact that they have so many weapon skill categories for such a limited variety of weapons. I understand that there’s a difference between pistols, sub-machine guns, shotguns, and assault rifles, but using those as major divisions makes me think that the weaponry will be largely uninteresting, like Mass Effect. I am glad to hear about the grenades and gadgets, though. Also, I wonder if “toughness” or “infiltration” will come with extra speech options relating to intimidation or deception.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Tired.

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with Vaarna Aarne, Andyman Messiah, fastpunk, and Hummelgumpf?

We have a secret club? I dunno.

Why do you guys live under this ridiculous delusion that Obsidian can do no wrong? Why do you have this absurd double standard that any dumbing down is okay when Obsidian does it?

You're going to have to remind me what I said to get this thrown at me. I honestly don't know. I said the game looked kinda cool and that the graphics didn't bother me. Nothing else. I feel verbally attacked. Abused like a slinky. Everyone's pulling me and making me go up and down stairs. I didn't want to do Ace Ventura 2, man. But my feet weren't going to warm themselves! They needed shoes. DON'T TAZE ME, BRO!!

Seriously, man, what's up?

Look at it for yourself. A lockpicking minigame. And you justify it by saying, "Preposterous, an action RPG that realizes it should do things like an action game." Are you out of your minds? I thought it was a bit wierd when you guys unanimously praise KotOR 2 and NWN2, but this?

I haven't said anything about the lockpicking but I might as well since I've been included. Here goes: who cares? It's a lockpicking game. Maybe I'm getting older, twentythree is like the new eightythree, y'know, but stuff like that doesn't bother me. The lockpicking minigame didn't bother me in Oblivion either but I lacked the motivation to stand up for a lockpicking minigame everyone was getting internet angry on. I hate minigames, but it's certainly a minor inconvenience and I honestly don't care. I'll wait until the whole game is out before I start nitpicking.

I mean, everybody is entitled to their opinions, but when you say things like this, and then dismiss the opinions of people like skyway as mindless nerdraging, maybe you need to put things into perspective.

I was originally not going to answer this as I don't think it concerns me, but damn me for loving writing long stupid replies.

Basically, I look at Alpha Protocol and I see a normal third-person shooter with outdated (I guess?) graphics, a lockpicking minigame from Oblivion and a conversation system from Mass Effect. It looks like Mass Effect, but most of all it looks like the Jason Bourne movies, and those movies sucked. Loved the books, never got into the movies. I was too young still. Joke.

So! What the fuck do I find appealing about Alpha Protocol? Well, good design and writing does it for me. To me, guys like Sawyer, Avellone (that sexy, sexy hunk of a man) and all the other Black Isle, Troika and god knows what other studio employees they hired during their talent search, those guys still mean something. Hero worship, I suppose. Make what you want of it. I have a horse avatar, nothing will get me down. And Avellone can say whatever he want about PST. It's still the best writing we'll ever get in a computer game. Mask of the Betrayer is the follow-up. Both games had designers and writers that wrote the shit of the setting. And even though they might be one hit wonders, they're still way, way more talented than the rest. I'm sure Alpha Protocol will benefit from the same talent pool.

They're not entirely amazing, of course. I mostly share Vaarna's opinion about the NWN2OC for instance. And aside from the writing KOTOR2 wasn't great like Fallout or memorable like Brotherhood of Steel (I should review that, btw). I can think of more slightly-negatives to throw at them but right now and compared to the other two studios, Obsidian is fucking gold.

Btw, yes, you can hire me as your PR guy. My name is Pete.

Also:

Spoiler

I wish I could say all that with a straight face.

 

[Fat Dragon]

I've no problem myself with a lock picking minigame everyone is crying about as long as they're done well. The ones in Thief 3 and Fallout 3 weren't too bad. When done right it's certainly more interesting than just watching your guy jerk a lock pick around waiting for a bar to fill up.

 

[elander_]

Gametrailer demo is a lot better.

Pros:

Combat Variety - plenty of variety. There are grenades and even emp grenades besides the usual range of weapon types.

Skills - more than what i was expecting. Stealth, sub-machine, shotguns, assault rifles, sabotage, technical, toughness, martial arts, infiltration.

Hubs- apparently there are big areas with freedom of exploration.


Cons:

Mini-games - it will be annoying if we can't skip over this and let our skill decide.

Rule number 1 for mini-games in rpgs: always let the player skip that crap when he has some taste.


Undecided:

Timed one word dialogs - ultima 7 did this and it worked sort of ok but i would rather have normal dialogs. Still it might be interesting. Some words used in the demo when showing dialogs: impatient, sarcastic, acknowlegde, extort, shoot, arrest, defient, dismissive, detailed. Each word is assigned to the x y z buttons or the square triangle circle.

Remove rank - don't know what this is. It appears when xp is distributed. It looks like we can remove ranks (levels?) and redistribute xp.

 

[Longshanks]

Yes and Bourne, Bond and Bauer were running around, shooting stuff en masse with infinite bullets, stopping time and hiding in a plain sight? I guess you've mistaken those three for Neo.

Slowing or pausing time is entirely expected as a Bourne-like quick reflex ability.
I've already given my rationalisation of Bullet Storm - an ability which temporarily grants infinite bullets. Though, this one is less defensible than the other.

Don't understand where your "hiding in plain sight" comment comes from. Though, Deus Ex certainly had this problem.

I meant that no matter how low my gun skill was it was still easy to progress, even if I were taking a guns blazing path.

Somehow I doubt that you were putting "hordes of enemies" down without skills that's for sure.

Yes I was. Quite easily too. That's my point.

Wait, so it's okay for Deus Ex, an FPS, to have poor gunplay, but not AP, an actionRPG?

Deus Ex was never meant to be a shoot'em up - the lots of ways to bypass combat, pretty low amount of health, frequent lack of ammo proves that.
AP on the other hand is the opposite - it is based on gunplay and console stuff influenced by the Matrix - so at least it should be fun. It isn't.

This is according to you, based mostly on a couple of short gameplay videos. AP is claimed to have both a hacking and stealth path, much like Deus Ex did. At this stage we cannot be sure how viable they are.

Deus Ex may have allowed you to sneak past enemies, but unlike Thief (a true stealth game), guns blazing was always an option, and not a difficult one.

Damage (also not ideal), rate of fire, unlocking moves, etc... are possible alternatives

Unlocking moves - hahaha

Special abilities, whatever you like to call them. Standard in RPGs for decades.

but, I find that trying to mix the player and character skill works worse than having one or the other, particularly for aiming.

So again - why add stats to a shooter then? As for aiming I doubt there is any stat for that - as the game has auto-aim.

Already gave some examples where character skill can be better used in an actionRPG, not a shooter.

On why you'd add stats to a shooter? I don't know, maybe you should ask Warren Spector :wink:.

But I still don't understand how exactly AP has a good and "fun' gunplay - everything that was shown so far is worse than 5+ years old shooters. And it is even worse than some of the modern day shooters. How a shooter with auto-targeting and ridiculously slow "gameplay" can be fun?

Same way I enjoyed Deus Ex despite it's terrible gunplay and slow gameplay. Sum of its parts.

By the way, I've not said that AP has good and "fun" gamplay. I'm firmly on the fence, and have yet to see anything great or terrible from it.

Wait, so it's okay for Deus Ex, an FPS, to have poor gunplay, but not AP, an actionRPG?

That seems like a pretty stupid semantic distinction at this point. What is it that puts AP in a separate genre from Deus Ex? Is it the quick-time keyword dialog wheel or the lockpicking minigame?

We've been through this before in comparison to Bloodlines. It's the lack of roleplaying in Deus Ex, weakness of character creation and stats that make it a shooter, not an actionRPG. AP is being marketed as an actionRPG, and seems to have more of an RPG focus than Deus Ex. We'll soon see for ourselves.

 

[Forest Dweller]

There's more on gametrailers.

It'd be nice if that shit fucking worked.

Or am I the only one having problems with it?

Edit - Alright, got it to work.

At the end MCA hints at an interactive sex scene.

 

[elander_]

Most likely you don't have the right plugin or plugin version.

 

[fastpunk]

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with Vaarna Aarne, Andyman Messiah, fastpunk, and Hummelgumpf?

Why do you guys live under this ridiculous delusion that Obsidian can do no wrong? Why do you have this absurd double standard that any dumbing down is okay when Obsidian does it?

What the fuck? Dumbing down what? It's suppose to be a mainstream action RPG. It never pretended to be hardcore, or deep, or innovative. Sure, they throw around some buzzwords, but if you take everything that hype campaigns say at face value then you sir are a sucker. It's a game for the average joe to enjoy on his console or PC after a long day at work. I thought that was obvious from the get go. You, and a lot of other people, need to get your expectations straight.

Look at it for yourself. A lockpicking minigame. And you justify it by saying, "Preposterous, an action RPG that realizes it should do things like an action game." Are you out of your minds? I thought it was a bit wierd when you guys unanimously praise KotOR 2 and NWN2, but this?

Good sir, I have never stated that I like, or even that I am alright with the lockpicking minigame. And the words you quote most certainly aren't my own. But you can bet your balls that I'm not going to deem a game as 'fail' based on the fact that it has a lockpicking minigame, or a bullet storm 'power' that acts like FO3's VATS (which depending on the player's character advancement choices may or may not come up in gameplay too often, or at all).

I thought it was a bit wierd when you guys unanimously praise KotOR 2 and NWN2, but this?

Unanimously praised? I've defended KotOR2's story and characters, very true, but I've never praised it beyond that. And NWN2, at least the OC, you are very mistaken. I've said it a few times that it's a fun game if you can get past Act I. The highest 'praise' I ever gave NWN2 OC was saying that NWN2 as a whole is a good foundation for better campaigns to come. That was said before any expansion packs were released. And in retrospect, it seems I was right.

I mean, everybody is entitled to their opinions, but when you say things like this, and then dismiss the opinions of people like skyway as mindless nerdraging, maybe you need to put things into perspective.

Or maybe you need to research better before throwing around accusations. Ok pumpkin?

 

[Darth Roxor]

This game will be good.

R00fles!

 

[Zomg]

Gameplay shmameplay, lockpick shmockpick, but,

"In my experience, time is of the essence."
"So you're just chomping at the bit, ready to take on the world"

If that dialog isn't framed satirically in the game, whoever wrote it is a fucking incompetent. It is objectively terrible writing. Whoever is supervising the subordinate writers is therefore necessarily also a fucking incompetent for not firing whichever transparently worthless shit wrote it. Whoever chose that to be in the hype reel is doubly fucking incompetent, to be able to see how shitty the finished product is and not be embarrassed by it. That all of this happens at Obsidian, a company with the primary virtue of having about 50% of the horrendous writing of the industry average, AUGURS BADLY. TELL ME IT'S SATIRICAL.

 

[dragonfk]

- Voice of the main actor is irritating.
- Lip-un-sync
- Graphics are terribly plastic (UT3 engine :/ )

Meeeh...

 

[Dionysus]

We've been through this before in comparison to Bloodlines. It's the lack of roleplaying in Deus Ex, weakness of character creation and stats that make it a shooter, not an actionRPG. AP is being marketed as an actionRPG, and seems to have more of an RPG focus than Deus Ex. We'll soon see for ourselves.

Deus Ex was also marketed as an action RPG. Again, what makes you think that AP will be more of an RPG? From what I've seen of the game, and heard from the devs, stats probably won't have much more influence than they did in Deus Ex. There's certainly nothing like Bloodline's clans.

 

[MetalCraze]

Chris Parker said so

Love these old scans.
Oh the irony:

I think Feargus confused Obsidian with some other studio.

Also from the first page above it looks like there will be critical damage. Yay? No!
Obsidian 'tards decided that there is not enough console bullshit in their game so now to make a critical damage you will have to wait a few seconds until one circle will align with the other circle at the crosshair while you try to aim at the enemy (and even more - some weapons don't need the target to "preload critical damage") - and then when you will hit most RPG-ish button out there - fire - you will do a critical damage.
And they have a skill for that. I wonder what's the point and retarded logic behind this?
Having skill to play yet another fucking (targeting) mini-game?

Damn there is so much bullshit you can remember by just re-reading these old scans.
I like the tone of Obsidian when they talk about "three ways" playing the game - omg you can play like Jason Bourne and kill that guy, or you can play like James Bond and kill that guy and finally you can play like Jack Bauer and kill that guy. Wow what a 3 totally different ways of playing the game. Totally dumps Deus Ex.

http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o310 ... 4copia.jpg

 

[GMonkey]

So, Skyway are you just generically angry and like to vent on the internet, or do you ever have a reasoned point to make?

 

[MetalCraze]

No I think that Alpha Protocol is the best game ever and Deus Ex is worse - that's the point - and I just like bashing new games without arguments for no reason because of nostalgia.