E3 2009: Alpha Protocol

Nowadays, games are all about offering freedom to the players; freedom to look and behave however you want, as well as play in whatever style most befits your personal preferences. Oftentimes, the results are quite shallow, merely changing your character’s appearance slightly or giving you a different ending. But what if there was a game where basically every decision you made had a major impact on nearly every aspect of the experience? How would players feel about a game where they honestly never have the same experience twice? Well that question might not be rhetorical for much longer, as Alpha Protocol is setting out to rewrite all the rules, and the results have the potential to be downright overwhelming.

Our demo took us through a Moscow train station on the hunt for a weapons shipment. Our standing orders were to find the gun cache and destroy it, but depending on when you’ve arrived at the depot in your playthrough (mission structure isn’t linear, you always have the choice to go to a bunch of different places) you may also have the option to reroute the weapons to an arms dealer for a tidy profit and a discount on future purchases. Of course, disobeying your handlers will piss off the folks back at HQ, and since they’re the ones ultimately footing the bill for your escapades it’s dangerous to get on their bad side.

This delicate balancing act continues throughout the game, and it’s one of the first issues to crop up in the demo level. Immediately after arriving in the stage you run into Sie, a Russian mercenary with a gun and a personality you definitely don’t want to mess with. As conversation with Sie unfolds dialogue options appear, and you’re given a limited amount of time to decide how you want to react to her statements. Rather than presenting you with specific lines of response, Alpha Protocol follows Mass Effect’s lead and gives you broad emotional responses so there’s no ambiguity in your attitude. In our experience we found that Sie actually prefers the aggressive, somewhat dangerous dialogue options, and if you please her enough she’ll offer to ally with you as you fight your way through the level.

This is the heart of Alpha Protocol’s gameplay, alliances and betrayals, and how you treat the various factions all vying for power in this tangled web of espionage and intrigue. Later in that same level you meet up with Sie again, and while you can continue trying to stay in her good graces, you can also simply attack her and initiate a boss battle. Interestingly enough, the developers explained to us that nearly all boss fights in the game are optional, and are based largely on your standing with the various factions. If a group likes you enough, their leader won’t try and take you down even if you’re ultimately working against their goals. Take the path of the rogue though, and your road will be filled with angry goons moving hell and earth in order to stop you.

When you do fight bosses at the end of most fights you have the option to either attempt to regain their trust, antagonize them some more or simply execute them outright and remove them from play for the remainder of the game. Executing a character means that individual is now permanently removed from the story and later missions may change based on your actions. This simple mechanic alone makes the game exceptionally replayable, creating incentive to go back through the game multiple times killing different people in an attempt to see how things change every time.

While Alpha Protocol plays out largely as an action title, it’s an RPG at heart. There are several screens devoted to upgrading active and passive attributes, as well as new weapon and armor upgrades to keep you at the top of your game. One interesting bit is that while the game features perks like pretty much every other shooter out there, the perks are largely reactive rather than proactive, reinforcing your play style. What that means is that if you like to get up close and personal with CQC combat then as you take out baddies you may gain a passive perk that permanently increases your striking power. By contrast, if you play more of a sniper role then continued headshots could lead to a perk that steadies your aim or allows you to do more damage with ranged weapons. Rather than forcing you to choose one play style and backing you into that corner, Alpha Protocol lets you play how you want and then rewards you based on the tactics you seem to most prefer.

Weapon upgrades are also more than your traditional “dump in points for increased damage” models. You can choose to outfit your gun with a silencer, but that increased stealth factor may reduce damage. On the other hand, you can add parts to kick the damage level up a notch, but you’ll do so at the expense of accuracy. Thus weapon upgrades and customization are quite in-depth undertakings, but thankfully there are a plethora of new parts available for purchase so pretty much any player should be able to figure out exactly what they want.

Alpha Protocol has stuck me as one of those games you can literally play for months and still not see all there is to offer. There are so many points where the paths diverge that it seems as though trying to hunt down every single possibility could take hundreds of hours. Granted, some changes from scenario-to-scenario are small, merely a couple changed lines of dialogue, but the title is chock full of fundamentally game-changing moments, and even though there are plenty of options, each time you play you only get to choose one. So if you’re the type of gamer who really looks to get a big bang for your buck every time you buy then keep this game on your radar screen come October, it’s going to hold your attention for a very, very long time.