Introduction
Obsidian Entertainment has been around a while making RPG sequels for developers who couldn't be bothered to do so themselves (Knights of the Old Republic 2, Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout: New Vegas). KOTOR2 and NWN2 were both fun games but were deeply flawed and were not the games they should have been.
Enter Alpha Protocol. This is Obsidian's first original IP based game, all of their own making. In the near-ish future, you play as Michael Thornton, an agent with Alpha Protocol, a generic intelligence agency designed to give deniability to the US government. Tuurrists done shot down a passenger airliner, setting you off investigating a conspiracy involving weapons trading, assassination, and art defamation. The big idea behind the game is that you have real choice beyond the obvious good/evil paradigm that most previous RPGs have done. Obsidian put a lot of work into the web of interconnection created by having your choices have real impact on the game. The game itself is played from the third person perspective, and allows you to play it stealthily or as actiony as you prefer, though as I will go into later doesn't work as well as it could or should.
Gameplay
You control Michael Thornton from a typical third person perspective, something that should be familiar to most people. You can play the game in run and gun mode, trying to dish out the pain, or you can try to go the sneaky route, taking your time crouch-walking from bad guy to bad guy to KO or kill with ease. As an RPG, your performance in combat is linked to your skills. Shooting accuracy depends a lot on your skill level and the stats of the weapon you're using. When you have low skill, you can be frustrated at how hard it can be to hit people consistently. Patience is rewarded though, as if you hold your aim, you get critical hits, which can kill with headshots. While it is a bit frustrating to miss through no fault of your own, other than you didn't put tons of points into assault rifles, it can make you angry, but this works OK generally for me. Enemies aren't particularly accurate either much of the time so it sort of evens out. There is an emphasis on cover-based shooting, as is becoming the norm today. You hit space to lock in to cover, though this doesn't always work, leading to you scrambling to get behind something while people pump you full of bullets. Just as a note, if you want to avoid frustration, go with the stealth based pistol wielding approach. Putting points into pistols will let you get criticals and kill people without having to pop out of cover to shoot, basically making combat much easier. Also if you can sneak up on people, you can either kill or knock out people with ease, which is also really great.
Thornton can carry two weapons from four categories: pistols, SMGs, shotguns, and assault rifles. You can also customize Thornton's armor. All of the gear has slots for mods that affect the stats and such, making your gun more accurate but more susceptible to recoil, or improving damage reduction at the expense of making you more noisy. You can buy and sell weapons, armor, and mods at the clearinghouse, where you can also buy intel for the missions you go on. The intel could be dossier info, maps of security systems, tips on hidden loot, or other similar useful bits. This all works like you'd expect.
One of the main focuses in the game is dialog. The game has a system similar to Mass Effect with a few choices to choose from, but in Alpha Protocol, instead of a clear, mostly word for word response to pick from, you have a few stances to choose from, such as Aggressive, Professional, Suave, Dismissive, etc. These stances are different for each response prompt, so dialog can take interesting paths, since you don't know exactly what Thornton is going to say. Also, a big part is figuring out how people are going to react to you. Since characters are not all simple stereotypes, your choices can have unintended consequences, and even have consequences with people far down the road. You can try guessing and going off previous responses, but getting intel on the other person will help immensely on judging how someone is going to react to you. Thus, building dossiers can be really useful if you want to get the most from conversations. Voice acting is generally good, with some great parts and some rough parts to deal with, but it never really bugged me much.
The biggest problem by far are the clunky controls. Mouse sensitivity is seemingly random, with mini-games being far more sensitive than you would expect based on the camera control sensitivity, and when the mouse cursor appears for dialog choices it's also a different level of sensitivity. This makes doing anything with precision incredibly difficult. Need to pick a lock before that guard comes around the corner? You're much better off taking the guy out somehow first.
Speaking of minigames, there are 3 different kinds: Lockpicking, Alarm/Keypad bypassing, and Computer hacking. Lockpicking is piss easy, just line up the pin and click, repeat for as many pins as are there (3-6 pins). The keypad bypassing minigame is more difficult, but essentially is just a follow-the-path game where you have to clip 4-8 circuits to open the door or shut off the alarm. The worst though, at least for mouse users, is the computer hacking game. You get a big grid of characters that are constantly changing except for two strings of 4-7 characters. The point is to match the two strings you're given on the grid. To add some complexity however, halfway through the timer the position of the string in the grid will move on you so if you had spotted it and were moving for it, you might get screwed over by it moving somewhere and then you have to find it again. The problem for mouse users is that the string you move with the mouse goes all over the place. It's ridiculously sensitive to movement, and even if you have it lined up it can jump around and make you miss. It's ridiculous and dumb. I hear that it's not as bad with dual analog sticks, and it seems like it was probably designed for them but for mice it's horrible.
Sights and Sounds
Graphically, this game is a mixed bag. Overall, it looks like an Xbox 360 game from a couple years ago. It's good enough that people don't look like caricatures, but not so good that you are amazed. The textures are generally pretty good as are the particle effects. They get the job done, but you won't be impressed either.
Similarly, the sound is decent. The effects are all of a decent quality and work well, but it never really grabs you and impresses you. The gunfire can be a bit anemic and you can't use it for detecting positions all that well. The soundtrack is good, aside from the lame dubstep menu music. There is a dynamic soundtrack and it works fairly well.
Overall, neither graphics nor sound will wow you but they probably won't distract you either.
Stuff that sucks
Aside from the controls, there are a few more complaints to voice.
As far as the storyline, there are a couple of times where Thornton willingly gives up his guns and goes straight to the enemy. This is just dumb as hell and I don't know why they don't give you a choice to attempt infiltration at all. It seems like an odd omission.
There are some graphical glitches in the game, with some really odd effects. During one conversation both Thornton and the other person both had bizarre glitches when seen from far away. Thornton's torso would appear from under the armor and the other person's face did some crazy things.
Another thing that was stupid is the mouse sensitivity control is not in the mouse options, it's under gameplay. Why? What possible reason is there to not put the mouse sensitivity under the mouse options? It's dumb.
Conclusion
I was really hoping that this game would be Obsidian's time to shine. With an original IP they weren't as beholden to third parties to ship on a set date like they were with KOTOR2 and NWN2, which were a big part of why those games weren't as good as they should have been. Alpha Protocol has an interesting premise, good story, and great character interaction, but is let down by clunky controls. It at least doesn't feel like the last 15-20% of the game wasn't cut out to ship it on time, and there are no showstopping bugs so that is a step up, but ultimately it just isn't as good as it should have been, and because of that I can't help but be disappointed. I did have fun though, and if you can stomach the subpar combat you'll be rewarded with a good story.
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