Never thought I'd see the day where Alpha Protocol would escape rights hell and reemerge available to legally obtain once more. I already had an old Steam copy long before the delisting happened, but I was quick to double-dip on GOG to show my support once I heard the news and it also gave me a good reason to replay the game after my last one quite some time ago. AP still holds up for me as one of my favorite games, flaws and all, though said flaws definitely are rather over-exaggerated I feel; it really isn’t that especially janky or buggy when it comes to ambitious WRPGs.

When I first completed AP more than a decade ago I was a bit lukewarm on it, I enjoyed it enough but some of the fights frustrated me, having not fully understood how to best utilize the builds and how to break the combat. Replaying the game not long after transformed it into one of my favorite games, because through that replay I realized how genuinely reactive AP was and how unrivaled it was and still is in this regard, nearly fifteen years on. While Bioware at the time was touting how Mass Effect was going to take all your choices into account, which they would inevitably flounder on that promise in the end, Obsidian quietly fulfilled that promise in reactivity with AP. ME was obviously a much taller order, being a trilogy and all, but Obsidian did the smart thing of just having AP be a standalone game which allowed easier and greater reactivity; and boy does this game have layers. There's so much to uncover depending how much you explore and your relationships with the characters. Finding dossiers on characters and factions have real tangible effects on the game. This information could also lead to very different outcomes and even a unique mission or two. Alpha Protocol’s dialogue system is a more fleshed out expansion of Mass Effect’s Paragon/Renegade dialogue system with three personality styles based off popular spy characters; Professional (Jason Bourne, this one being the more heroic one on average, as much as a black ops fed agent can be anyway), Suave, (James Bond, though like the biggest dudebro version of Bond ever who has got all the smarm and verbal sexual harassment but none of the class) and Aggressive. (Jack Bauer, complete aggro asshole who shoots first and asks questions never) There is some more nuance to these personalities so they don’t always adhere to that mold strictly and characters respond differently to which approach you take with them and the game encourages a varied approach because of that. The dialogue system is also a precursor to the Telltale formula, as you are timed in your responses unlike in Bioware RPGs of the time. The dialogue system is the best part of the game mechanically, really mastering what Bioware was working on at the time. Being able to use information you gleaned from dossiers in dialogue is also real cool and characters will even compliment on how prepared you are.

The gameplay outside dialogue is kinda jank though, but honestly isn't notably so compared to other WRPGs of the era. Like the pre-EA buyout Bioware games of the 2000’s and Mass Effect 1 didn't have great combat either, for example. And if people can forgive the sheer mess of Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines (I'm among them) AP can be forgiven too. The biggest FYIs I'd give when it comes to the combat is that the game demands that you need to wait for the reticle of the guns to tighten up in order to consistently hit enemies and that stealth is primarily used as a combat option, a very good one as you level it up more, but not as a means to ghost through the game. You can avoid combat with stealth but the game still throws a bunch of fights at you that you can't avoid, namely the boss fights. Stealth in AP is more meant to be used to become an invisible punch-ghost who throat chops everyone in the room. Combat can be rather fun though, mainly in that most of the stat branches are busted once you start getting midway through the tree. Pistols are the biggest example as Chain Shot is an amazing ability that practically deletes every boss in the game with just the second upgrade of it. Martial Arts is also a fun ability as you can give enemies a flying knee to the face to knock them on their ass and finish them off with a stomp. Also you should put like two points into Sabotage so it makes the hacking mini-games easier or you can just bypass them with EMPs, they get rather rough as the game goes on, though hitting alarms isn’t that big of a deal as the only penalty is that enemies in the area are alerted to you, its not like MGS where they can spawn in.

Narratively, I do think the game is quite good with more depth than you would initially think. AP's tone is actually kind of all over the place, but I think it still works despite any hiccups; it actually ends up being this odd combination of genuine spy thriller that dabbles in some rather bold political themes for a mainstream video game, mainly it how the game has such as an utterly dim view of American empire and the military industrial complex, but it’s also essentially an almost parodic pastiche of the genre, letting you be a big juvenile power fantasy fairly straight most of the time where you can bang most of the female cast while making snarky one-liners and fight a Russian mobster and full time Tony Montana cosplayer who gets superpowers from snorting coke. The game can be quite funny too, manly with how Thorton is just such a big asshole; though it definitely falls into some cringe outdated 2000’s jokes at times, mainly when it comes to Suave Thorton being a creep. When it comes to the serious themes, in contrast, one example is how the Islamic terrorist leader set up as the initial antagonist is actually a man who honors his word; he has a whole bunch of innocent blood on his hands but he's still a lesser evil compared to, as well as being a mere pawn to, the grand web of global capital and American empire. American intelligence, the so called "good guys" are actually a den of sociopaths who number crunch death tolls to determine acceptable losses for American interests, dipshit nepo babies, and patriotic dupes unwittingly giving their service to a military industrial machine that will easy discard them without a second thought. The corporations are the actual masters of the American state and they use global politics as their playground just to make Number go up. Even though I really wouldn't call the game leftist, that's more for the Obsidian games Josh Sawyer directed, the game still has a rather keen awareness of American imperial megalomania for a 2010 video game and one of my favorite examples of this is a dossier that reveals that one of the previous names for Alpha Protocol was Deus Vult.

When it comes to the cast I think AP’s is neat. They aren’t as fleshed out as say, the Mass Effect crew, and they can be rather standard spy story clichés like SIE for example, who’s the big German femme fatale who likes violence and Thorton being aggro with her, but there’s always usually something more about them beneath the surface that you can uncover and figuring out what response they’d approve of is fun. You can also totally just piss them off too and the game even rewards you for it just like it would if they liked you. One of my favorites among the cast is Conrad Marburg, who I think is one of the best video game antagonists because he is still the only video game villain who actually takes into account how you've played the game up until the point you first meet him and he will know if you’re just trying to manipulate him by getting under his skin. Speaking of villains, AP also has my favorite evil ending in a game because you can just win over all the people working under the main villain and just take his place, to do so requires some thought and not going the standard stupid evil path of just killing everyone, though you can actually kill pretty much the entirety of the named cast if you want! That’s why this game’s the GOAT, it is truly is one of the most reactive games I have ever played.

In conclusion if you have any interest in game reactivity and player choice and don’t mind a bit of WRPG jank I really do recommend playing AP as it is still one of the shining stars, even over a decade later. It sucks we never got a sequel or spiritual successor that ironed out the game’s flaws but I’m just real glad people can experience this game again because it still holds up.

This game is total garbage and I really don't recommend it, it is too long with an uninteresting story accompanied by the longest and most boring dialogues that you are going to see in video games, and although the mechanics of the dialogues are the "only good" thing about This game does not change anything because it is preferable to overtake them and continue playing. Outside of this RPG side with its story and boring dialogues, we have the gameplay part, absolutely shit, it must be one of the worst shooters I have played because there are too many problems with sensitivity, the bullets scatter anywhere , the enemies are stupid and do nothing, the settings and graphics are ugly, and worst of all is that the game has too many, too many bugs. All this long shitty journey is repeated throughout the game, solving the same three puzzles being one very poorly designed (at least on PC) and exactly the same shootouts with the same "boss fights" does not change the entire game at all. , it's shit from the start.

Very glad this game is actually available again regardless of its quality, by any metric it's got a ton of interesting ideas, and nothing this innovative should be completely removed from digital storefronts because of, as far as I can tell, a rights issue regarding a single song that plays for like three minutes total. Everything you've heard about Alpha Protocol's narrative structure is absolutely true. I played through it once, making most of my choices instinctively without much of a plan, and it was already clear just how much you can do differently on repeat runs. You can miss out on entire characters and storylines based on your dialogue choices, actions taken halfway across the globe will come back to bite you or reward you hours later in a different country, you can befriend and join some of the main villains of the game and you can brutally murder some of the main side characters in the game and the narrative changes to suit any of the potential decisions you make. You can play as a complete psychopath asshole who everyone hates and still be rewarded, or play as a complete kissass who everyone loves and still get screwed over for it. Of course, Alpha Protocol's story completely buckles under its weight by the end, but there were plenty of games from its time with endings just as limp that didn't attempt even a quarter of the things AP does.

However... that's where the problems start to appear, and there are a lot of them. Take Deus Ex for example. Plenty of narrative complexity up to the final level, where it turns out the only choice that matters is one of three endings, all of which are available regardless of your actions up to that point. Sure, Deus Ex came out a decade earlier, so it isn't the most fair comparison, but that's actually worse for Alpha Protocol. Deus Ex doesn't quite stick the landing with its narrative freedom, but what's there in the gameplay is still leagues ahead of basically every major game trying to mimic it for the past two and a half decades. The level of freedom in Alpha Protocol's gameplay isn't bad, it just flat-out isn't there. More than the broken AI and the janky movement, this is the most blatantly rushed and unfinished aspect of the entire game. Like, it's meant to be an RPG. They put that on the cover art! But half of the possible stats to level up are just weapon proficiencies and another quarter are taken up by Toughness (how big your health bar is) and Stealth (this was probably meant to do something but enemies detect you no matter what so don't put anything in it, seriously). Another one is just faster healing, which means there's only one actual skill, Sabotage. In Deus Ex terms, that's Electronics, Computers, and Lockpicking all in one. So in that game you probably spec into one or two of those, and depending on which one you picked you will progress through any given level in a completely different way. The missions and objectives are largely the same, something Alpha Protocol somewhat eschews by making entire missions missable depending on how you play, but the moment-to-moment gameplay is completely different depending on your build. Lockpicking and various forms of hacking still appear to block off different paths in Alpha Protocol levels, but if you leveled that one aforementioned Sabotage skill you can breeze through all of them. Actually, you don't need to do that at all, since it's just minigames you can access regardless of what skills you choose! the only thing being tested is your hand-eye coordination, every single level is completely open to you from the start of the game to the end! how did this ever happen? why would you ever design a game like this? if everyone can brute force through the locks regardless of their character build why not just cut them entirely and accept it's just a third-person shooter and not an RPG? You'll notice this probably in the first real level and from there the entire game starts to fall apart. You could justify the inclusion of locks and computers and alarms to hack if there was at least a binary decision between stealth and shooting. But there's one stealth skill to five combat skills, and stealth is embarrassingly broken if not outright impossible in the game's design at multiple points. Beyond all of that, your skills don't affect your dialogue choices at all (although in the grand scheme of things, this is a good decision), so it just isn't an RPG, or even an immersive sim, at all.

But if you have to look at Alpha Protocol as a plain third-person shooter, it gets even worse. For one you have the meaningless tedium of the minigames to open doors, but worse than that are the Deus Ex/Mass Effect-style weapon proficiency stats. With any given weapon your reticles start out massive and you have to wait until you level your chosen skill way, way up to actually use it well. This works in Deus Ex because stealth works in Deus Ex. You can progress through a lot of the game slowly leveling up your chosen weapon skill(s) without having to deal with the weak low-level combat since A: hacking, electronics, and computers open up alternate paths in levels and give you more resources, B: you can avoid combat much easier in the main gameplay until later when you have probably leveled your weapon skill to a usable degree, and C: the game never forces you into a combat scenario (as far as I can remember) without giving you an alternate option. This extends beyond just boss fights, as well. Don't want to sneak past robots or mechs in the later levels? Well, you've probably picked up some explosives by now, and you don't need to aim at those things to get a kill. Or just use an EMP, or just hack them to fight for you. Don't want to fight the scary cyborg lady in UNATCO? just hack her computer and learn that if you call her a "flatlander woman" she’ll explode into red chunks like that guy in Scanners. While it isn't nearly as good of a game as Deus Ex, this sort of low accuracy and weak damage output works in Mass Effect too since you have teammates backing you up and probably a variety of space magic attacks as well to save you when you're out of ammo on your good weapons. In Alpha Protocol, you have to put up with shitty aiming for most of the game regardless of your level and you are constantly forced into unavoidable fights in and out of boss encounters. I played pistols only since I was deluded into thinking this might function as a stealth game (I mean, they put "espionage" on the cover as well...) so my only real option in boss fights was using the quick shot ability to instantly headshot them and avoid the awful fight entirely. It's not even that annoying but it obviously wasn't intended since like half the fights hard cut to an in-engine cutscene of my character punching the boss up close even though I was sniping them in bullet time from across the map a second ago. It's not even the difficult sort of bad since the broken AI makes every mission embarrassingly easy regardless of how unfun it is to actually play as a third-person shooter. I thought bumping the difficulty up to hard might make it a little more fun, despite the basic mechanical and structural issues that difficulty can't fix, but I went into the final level with no armor on accident and it really just made it more irritating. At least on normal you can appreciate the jank. Alpha Protocol doesn't even remotely function as an RPG or a stealth game, and is completely pointless as a third-person shooter, especially when you remember Uncharted 2 came out a year BEFORE this did.

Unfortunately, even the story can't save Alpha Protocol. For all its impactful narrative choices and structural freedom, the actual plot is incredibly weak and the characters are very hit-or-miss. You'll probably lose track of it among all the little regional subplots but from what I could gather the actual spy story here is just Tomorrow Never Dies but longer and more drawn out (and without Pierce Brosnan or Michelle Yeoh). Except it can't even manage "kind of bad version of the second best Brosnan Bond movie," it has to be "genuinely awful version of the second best Brosnan Bond movie" because they switch out the villain from a charismatic news mogul to a generic businessman with the same motivation, not understanding the fact that Elliot Carver just being a media mogul guy was what made him interesting, not that he wanted to start WW3. That's a fun spy movie plot! "Generic businessman is willing to start WW3 for profit" is barely one step removed from real life! It's not just the villain either, almost all of the side characters are one-note and boring. Most of them blend together completely. I finished this yesterday and I can remember maybe ten names out of its massive cast, fewer still if I'm just counting the characters I ever actually cared about while playing. Maybe I didn't get to see the actually cool stuff because of my playstyle, but that sort of narrative freedom is only really effective if all of the material is interesting. You shouldn't be able to lock yourself out of the good stuff if the characters you meet instead are all insufferable or forgettable. Omen Deng, who you meet in Taipei, is probably the coolest character in the entire game. He feels more like a character out of Metal Gear or Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex than someone who should be in a sub-Tom Clancy spy story like Alpha Protocol. Except... he's barely in the game and you'll see him even less if you accidentally kill him after his boss fight, a completely pointless option since it can only lock you out of content and killing him doesn't actually lead to anything unique. I've heard Conrad Marburg and Albatross are also some of the more interesting characters here but I made the mistake of pissing both of them off before even meeting them so I didn't get to see their stories through. If the gameplay was passable I could forgive stuff like that, but as fun as the potential story branches I missed could be I just can't convince myself to push through the awful combat for another 10 hours to see them. At least not anytime soon.

I can't tell because of the awful tiny box backloggd makes you write reviews in, but I think this might be the longest one I've ever written. Second place after Demon's Souls, at least. I didn't expect to write this much about Alpha Protocol, but there are so many angles from which I SHOULD love this game that I just don't. I love espionage/spy stories, but AP pales in comparison to even the weakest of Bond movies. At least those tend to have fun! Even the later Craig films, self-serious as they were, had competent visuals and direction. I like stealth games, but I don't think it's fair to even call this one in its released state. I've even got a sort of guilty pleasure appreciation for trashy WRPGs from around this time, but Mass Effect has an engaging story and fun characters, for all its weaknesses, something AP can't claim at all. Still, it is an incredibly interesting novelty, and there is a lot of fun to be had in seeing all the crazy directions the story can go in at your whim before it all crashes down in the final mission. It's absolutely a win for the preservation of games in general that this can come back on GOG fourteen years after it flopped critically and commercially, and it might be worth buying just to support this sort of thing happening more often. I think there are plenty of reasons someone might genuinely like this game, and similarly to something like the Shadow of Mordor games, I wish the innovative aspects of it were in a better game. But if you're considering playing Alpha Protocol for the first time because it's getting somewhat of a critical reappraisal now, I can't recommend it. If you're here for a stealth game, try the recent Hitman World of Assassination. Sure it costs like 130 CAD for the whole game, even if you own the other two already, but even on a light sale it's absolutely worth the price. You can play Freelancer mode alone for thousands of hours and never get bored. If you want a good spy videogame, you might be out of luck. I'd say just rewatch Casino Royale, which never gets old. However, speaking of IOI, I'm cautiously optimistic that they'll be the ones to finally make a decent spy video game with that Bond game they're working on.

Maybe I've been a little too harsh on this. It always feels worse to trash something blatantly unfinished like this than just outright bad games. The problems with Alpha Protocol are major and often game-breaking, but I doubt most of them are representative of Obsidian's original intent. The stuff they did focus on and implemented in a complete form is incredible. I know I just said I can't really recommend this game to anyone, but I can't help but appreciate anything that takes swings this big, even if it misses more than it hits. That's what makes this a two-star rather than a one. The gameplay isn't fun, but watching the game break down around you is very funny. The story isn't well written, but progressing through it in a completely unique way is very compelling in its own right. As a completed product this is not very good. But as an example of the sort of things Obsidian could have done in the canceled sequel, there was plenty of potential here. Again, it is fascinating as a novelty. Maybe even essential, because outside of 100+ hour games like Baldur's Gate 3, you'll never see something with impactful choices like this again. So if you're coming for the game, or the aesthetic, or the characters, or the plot, don't bother. However, if you want to play maybe the only game that lets you team up with an explicit Osama bin Laden stand-in just minutes after you were sent to murder him, and then somehow actually continue the story while taking that choice into account, then Alpha Protocol is for you.

I bought Alpha Protocol on Steam in 2011 for $2. I attempted to play it in 2016, but it didn't click with me. I only finished the Saudi Arabia section. Now, finally decided to give it another chance (coincidentally, I started the same day the game was relisted on GOG after being unavailable for nearly 5 years).

I am glad I did because this game is pretty good. The dialog mechanic is fantastic and slightly stress inducing. The characters are all compelling. The story is okay. The best part though is how everything matters in this game.

Nearly every decision (active and passive) gets referenced later on and affects relationships. I almost played it again just to make different decisions with a different play style. The conversation and characters are that great. Unfortunately, that would require playing the game again.

The combat (which is the bulk of the gameplay) at the best of times is repetitive. At the worst of times is a broken, buggy mess. Nearly every door requires the same annoying puzzle which makes replaying missions a bigger chore. My suggestion is to play on the easiest difficulty because the combat is not great.

Alpha Protocol reacts to nearly every player decision. The dialog and characters are top notch. The story is intriguing. These are reasons that make it a must play. However, it is held back by buggy, boring combat. I found it worthy of the $2 I spent on it thirteen years ago.

Shares a lot in common with New Vegas with its problems, outdated engine the devs clearly werent having a good time with, loose and somewhat useless perks and a story that closes in on itself and rips control away just as it's getting interesting.

But where new vegas offered freedom with a clear and succinct dialogue system (that even then could still confuse your intentions), this game goes the Mass Effect/LA Noire route and kills most of the interest you could have in the world in the crib. To be fair to it, it does more with this dialogue system than most seventh gen games, often times giving you a short time to respond when a question catches your character off guard, theres an intentional difficulty to communication and not paying attention can cost you. It does not change the fact that it is supremely fucking boring and annoying to try and approximate what you'll be saying, what any particular character will like and whether or not any given option will tie into gathered intel at the same time.

The gameplay is awful, both normal combat and stealth are like pulling teeth in the worst way and the game doesn't even respond to how you play correctly despite giving you a bunch of tools to encourage an mgs european extreme type playthrough. Often times I'd go through a whole level knocking everyone out and a character would still respond that I'd killed his guards.

All that said, even with all those problems, 7th gen obsidian had the juice to make basically anything compelling. The only way to make a premise like this work is to pull no punches and this game, even through its goofy tabletop OC spy bullshit, pulls absolutely no punches about what your actual role in geopolitics is. This would work great as an isometric rpg, or even just an attempt at the same script with an engine overhaul, but as it is it's at least a compelling game.

Alpha Protocol as a concept? Fantastic. Alpha Protocol as a game? Incredibly average.

Even in spite of that, though, it's still absolutely worth a playthrough.

I must give credit where it's due, however: Obsidian clearly had a vision for Alpha Protocol, and for the most part, it's been executed decently well here. However, the speedbump that many encounter when it comes to this game is its banal moment-to-moment gameplay and combat. That's not exactly ideal when that all takes up the majority of your playtime.

To clarify, it's not strictly bad, and for a studio with little-to-no experience in the third-person shooter genre, it's actually impressive that it gets by enough as it does. However, despite some of its mechanics having decent reasoning and motive behind them, it does manage to get in its own way with how frustrating they are in practice.

A key example of this is how shooting accuracy works in Alpha Protocol. Again, it's conceptually sound—to start with, all of your guns have massive reticules to denote your current proficiency (or lack thereof) with the weapon (much like the original version of Mass Effect 1). That's then supposed to incentivize you to invest in that weapon's respective skill tree and attachments to make the reticule smaller, thus making it easier to shoot.

It sounds fair enough in theory; however, even if you do so, it still doesn't look or feel satisfying enough to get by, especially with the pistol, the weapon you will likely be using the most if you're trying to be stealthy. To be fair, if you focus the reticule on an enemy, it will turn red and a crosshair will appear for you to take a 'critical hit'.

However, even taking all that into consideration, the gunplay still doesn't click as much as it should, especially given how many mandatory firefight sections you're thrown into throughout the campaign. Adding to that, the shoddy stealth mechanics make enemies spot you all too easily, pretty much ensuring the alarm goes off and even when it does, there are basically zero penalties for giving in and going loud once you've been spotted, rendering stealth effectively pointless much of the time.

So yes, in essence, Alpha Protocol's gameplay is an attempt at Splinter Cell-esque stealth shooter gameplay that never really feels satisfying at any point during its ~13-hour campaign and largely just feels like fodder to stretch out gameplay between the dialogue and story segments.

Speaking of which, Alpha Protocol's biggest highlight and by far what turned it into the cult classic that it is today are its dialogue trees and choice-and-consequences storyline. As a whole, Alpha Protocol's narrative is a pretty generic spy caper that doesn't really do anything new unless you've never encountered the works of Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum. However, the game's writing, characters, and the surprising depth of its storyline variables more than make up for this. It's perhaps not to the level of Detroit: Become Human in terms of how different the story can be when certain choices are made, but of course, since this came first, credit should be given where credit is due for how impressive its differing narrative branches can be.

The protagonist, Michael Thorton, is, again, a pretty generic spy guy, but that's mostly by design, as you can shape his personality much in the same way as in Dragon Age 2 and your conversational tone will greatly determine your standing with the game's revolving cast of friends and foes. The voice acting is also fairly decent, although some of Michael's line reads can be quite dry, which, once again, could be by design instead of an error in voice direction.

All in all, without sarcasm, I can declare that Alpha Protocol is one of the better 6/10 games money can buy. I acknowledge that proposition doesn't sound attractive on paper but there's no denying that AP's narrative ambitions surely exceed the faults of its gameplay, and it's for sure worth a look even in spite of them.

6/10

Although I found the gameplay mechanics a little clunky in the beginning, I got used to it very quickly. The character customization is a bit limited. The story is great and has important choices, some levels may change depending on what you choose, including in the dialogues - it even affects the way other characters look at you (romance, neutral, hate, friendship, etc.), some choices even might be about life and death where you have to choose your way and priorities.

It's been a long time since I played this game but I still remember most of it, I also have the physical version. This is an underrated SEGA gem.

I'm going to be so fucking harsh on this game, and rightfully. The premise is fucking great; a spy action rpg by Obsidian. Except that the game was so bad it stopped Chris Avellone to take the role of lead designer anymore.

-Let's get it over with the visuals fast and talk about the main things. The visuals are alright, not groundbreaking, but very good for 2010. I specially loved the faces of the characters.

-The gameplay is either the best or the worst.
The stealth parts are AMAZING. It's very very simple, just sneak up to people and take them out, but they managed to do this perfectly. Except that the game doesn't seem to enjoy it very much, since it sometimes forces you to go loud.
And when you go loud... It is "meh" at best. The cover system is good but the gunplay; specially with rifles, is just bad.
And at some parts of the game, it offers you a sniper rifle. A sniper rifle with one the worst handlings you will ever see in you life.
And the bossfights... HOLY SHIT is it bad... Some of the most boring, bland, annoying bossfights I have ever experienced. They are mostly the same; run, shoot, dodge, blah blah blah... It is executed so horribly, you just play to get it over with. That doesn't go only for the bossfights, but also the whole second half of the game. I was just playing it to finish it and put it on the fucking shelf.
The minigames are also average. The lockpicking one is terrible though. Easily one of the worst lockpicking minigames I have ever played. The others are just fine; the hacking one was probably the best one of the bunch.

- The story seemed interesting at first, but it just gets boring no matter how hard they try to make it seem interesting. It might be due to how bad the dialogue system is designed.
You choose the dialogues based on fucking EMOTIONS. I was stunned at first to see that, but then I though "OK, maybe the lines my character says are going to be straight forward". But no, they aren't. You choose based on a single word, and you character talks a whole paragraph; some of which you probably didn't want to say.
And by the way, all the dialogue choices have a short timer because all the characters have to pee and can't wait for me to fucking read the four words I am offered.

- The level design is really good. You don't get lost in the game; and I specially love the fact that they didn't try to make it an open world game. You, for most of the game, have a safehouse in which you can choose your mission and do other things. That was pretty neat.

-I don't remember anything about the music, but the voice acting was very good. Again, I lost my interest in the story; but the actors did a pretty nice job in delivering it.

Overall , this game is a fucking disappointment. I am giving it a 6/10 mostly because I really enjoyed the stealth part; there is basically nothing more in this game to enjoy. And for the stealth part, you can just play Splinter Cell or something...

Over the years, I've greatly enjoyed this one for the setting and nuanced (for video games) take on global affairs as well a structure that greatly valued dialogue to the point missions themselves might be dialogue alone. I've also always appreciated how important the dialogue options could be and how the timer for them worked out as well as it gave the conversations a sense of immediacy largely absent in other games that might let you make a more deliberate decision. The game isn't perfect though as it's easily breakable with stealth/pistols and some missions being performed out of order can make for confusing cutscenes. There's also a degree of jank that's balanced by the ambition of the game's design that makes the experience a bit more palatable than perhaps it should be.

DISCLAIMER: In order to avoid spoilers, I'll avoid speaking directly about any important events in the story, but sometimes just mentioning that "something" happened will already be a kind of minor spoiler. So read it at your own risk.

This is another case of me revisiting an older game and getting [a little] disappointed. I only played through this game once, in 2010, but I remember thinking at the time that it was one of the best games I've ever played. I do remember noticing some jank at the time, but it didn't bother me then and doesn't now. I kinda grew up playing plenty of janky games, and I think as long as the core of the game is solid, the jank doesn't really matter. My disappointment on this playthrough had to do with other issues. That being said, while playing through most of the game, my mental rating kept shifting between 5 and 4.5.

I largely attribute this to the fact that the core gameplay (which consists of combat, some stealth [I'll elaborate] and role-playing) is done very well. This game advertises itself as a stealth-action RPG, where you're supposed to be able to choose how much stealth you actually want in your game. And I'd say, if you choose a full stealth path, you're probably gonna have a miserable experience. Although the devs might've intended it to be a viable option, it's really the wrong way to play this game. Not only is the jankiness of stealth gonna make it very unreliable, there are sections of the game where you are practically forced to engage in open combat, and it's gonna be really tough for you unless you're a tank build.

That being said, if you treat this game more as a shooter with some stealth elements, it ends up being more nuanced than many exemplars of this genre. I would actually describe this as "infiltration action/RPG". Because infiltration is what you do for most of the game, and the term "infiltration" doesn't necessarily exclude combat. Think of this more as a Rambo game rather than Splinter Cell or Hitman. And as a Rambo game, it has a pretty decent ranged combat, kinda rudimentary (but upgradable) melee combat, great complex level design and a huge variety of approaches you can take to each mission. It reminds me a bit of Crysis and MGSV (which I've only played a little, so might be wrong). I think what really makes a difference here though is the leveling up. Unlike many similar Action-RPGs, here every upgrade to your stats/skills feels very substantial. This makes the progression very addictive. In general the level of complexity this game offers is kinda rare to see, and makes the whole experience quite unique.

In between the action, you get to role-play, mostly through dialogues, which is pretty fun, as it usually is in such games. However, this is kinda the last good thing I can say about the game. Now I'll proceed to my criticisms, and I'll start with this exact aspect.

While the dialogue are kinda fun, they're needlessly confusing. Mass Effect got a fair bit of criticism back in the day for providing only brief summaries of dialogue options instead of the exact words your character would say. Here, you're not even given that. Instead, it's usually one word describing either the tone or the topic of what your character is gonna say. Like "Aggressive" or "Halbech", forcing you to make almost blind choices in many situations. And to make things worse, there is a timer for some reason. This seems like they stole the idea from The Walking Dead, except The Walking Dead is a game about making difficult moral choices in extreme situations. Here, most of the dialogues happen in calm environment when there's no rush. Besides, this is an RPG, not an immersive adventure game. None of the other gameplay features are designed to immerse you in the story, unlike The Walking Dead which is entirely about merging gameplay and story. [EDIT: I forgot that The Walking Dead came out two years later. But I still stand by what I said]

Speaking of the story, the actual premise and "substance" of it is kinda boring. I used quotation marks for "substance" because it doesn't really have any. It's just about some rich assholes trying to pull off a scheme that would make them richer at the cost of many lives. I guess it's a typical James Bond plot? I have only seen like one James Bond movie, so I can't really say. There is a lot of discussion about who betrayed whom, what agency they work for or what they did in the past, and none of it really means anything. The character development is pretty good, but some of their arcs remain unfinished. Perhaps this is just in my ending, but that's not really an excuse. Every ending should be equally well-written.

Even before you reach the end, some of your decisions have completely nonsensical results. For example, there is one character whom you kinda kidnap/shelter from danger. I went into this playthrough remembering her fate if I act nice to her, so I intentionally was an asshole to prevent a certain villain from using her against me. As a result, the whole time we hated each other, and then she escaped (despite my warnings that she'd be killed) and ends up getting killed. My character had no feelings towards her, but for some reason the story treats her death as a huge tragedy regardless. Even making my character bring her up later when taking revenge on my enemies.

I already mentioned how you often don't know what you're choosing in dialogues. This also extends to gameplay sometimes. In the final mission you learn that one of your associates had betrayed you, and later there's a junction, where one of the villains says "you can either go after her or after us, make your choice". I went after her because I can't stand betrayal, but as I reached her, turns out they had tied her to a bomb and she would die if I DIDN'T come, and the only choice I have is to either save her or not. Which means, if I didn't want to save her, there's not even a resolution to our relationship. If I chose to go after the villain, she would just disappear from the story without any closure.

In fact, in that last mission you also learn of another character's secret role in something they'd not told you about. And you can either choose to escort her out or let her escape on her own. Again, not really a resolution. You don't even know whether she escaped or not, and you can't confront her about lying to you.

Speaking of the last mission, it's pretty terrible. You get to fight several bosses in it, and boss fights in general are pretty bad in this game, but these are extremely annoying. Especially the helicopter and the guy who spams you with grenades, both of which can one-hit-kill you. Honestly, it was the last mission combined with the terrible character arc resolutions and my dissatisfaction from some mistakenly (due to vagueness) chosen decisions that finally made me lower the rating to 4.

Before I wrap this up, I wanna comment on the presentation. The soundtrack is pretty forgettable, nothing to say here. But the graphics are really weird. They look quite pretty from a distance, but once you look closer, a lot of the textures have these weird distortions, almost like AI-generated images. In fact, there are some Soviet propaganda posters in this game that are real historical posters, except for some reason they're also distorted and the words on them are complete gibberish in the style that AI-generation produces. And I checked, all my graphics settings were set to max, but a lot of textures are really blurry and distorted. It's especially bad with backgrounds, like city panoramas you can see out the window, with very blurry textures on the buildings and very low-res skyboxes.

At the end of the day though, I still had a lot of fun with this game. It is extremely addictive, and out of my 11.7 hours with it, more than half was binged. Which is something I almost never do with any game. There is this loop that once you finish a mission, you want to check your emails, buy new gear, upgrade yourself, which in turn makes you wanna check out how that gear and upgrades are gonna perform, as well as see how other characters are gonna respond to your emails (which only happens between missions), so you end up jumping into another mission, and it repeats. I feel like I might still play through this game again at some point, but it definitely loses its spot on my top-100 list.

After just shy of 20 hours, I've finished my first run of Alpha Protocol and what can I say except this game is pure treasure. A welcome edition to my list of all time favorite RPGs. It's not a perfect game by any means but it's special - ambitious and bold and utterly unique.

To date, I don't know if there's been another rpg focused on the subject of espionage, let alone one that's so ready to immerse itself in the style and conventions of that genre without scoffing at them. Mike Thorton is Bond, Bourne, and Ethan Hunt all rolled into one, with lots of blank space left over to make him the kind of protagonist you prefer - from a no-nonsense pro to a goofy if nonetheless empathetic jokester to a loose cannon rogue agent who chews the rules up and spits them back into your face. The dialogue system, designed to have you pick from brief summaries in a short time window, ensures a sort of constant forward momentum in the story and action, keeping the player on their toes constantly while giving them precious little time to second guess their actions. I can see why a system like this would frustrate many players but I was super into it from the jump - the life of a secret agent from the movies is one of split-second decisions with monumental weight and this game dares to put you in that position in a way that I think most modern games never would.

The script is an absolute jewel in how well written it is despite having to account for so many dozens upon dozens of permutations of choice - I can't even begin to imagine just how many there are or just how many things they impact. Nevertheless, the story manages to establish the stakes of its conflict well while still leaving room for a bit of cheekiness. Just a bit though. The script leaves precious little breathing room for non player characters to get as much time to develop as you'd expect in most RPGs, but that both fits the pace of this story and is meant to encourage subsequent playthroughs. And indeed, this game is extremely replayable, as it's not very long and has a contained mission structure to keep you from having to worry about lengthy side quests and collect-athons.

The mechanics themselves are familiar to anyone who's played other cover shooters - very much the genre du jour around the time of this game's release. Both the flow of combat and the progression/leveling feel very reminiscent of Mass Effect 1, which is a system I quite enjoyed, and so I felt very at home in this game. That said, much like Mass Effect 1, this is very much an RPG before it is a shooter - your investment of exp is perhaps a greater determinant of your success in a firefight than raw skill alone. The game's combat also has a martial arts function that allows the player to engage in close quarters fighting seamlessly in a way that's both more interesting mechanically and visually than the sort of generic rifle butt bash that you see in most games. The ability to quickly engage and dispatch of enemies in the middle of a firefight with your bare hands keeps the forward momentum of the action, and by extension the plot, going effectively.

The game's stealth system might not be as robust as what we would expect today - MGSV this is not - but it's nevertheless comfortable and intuitive. It's not without a little jank and you'll probably have your share of "Oh come on, how did he see me?" moments early on but as you figure out the rules and particularities of how stealth functions in this game it becomes one of the most satisfying parts of this game's loop to engage with. Though crucially, stealth never stops being a challenge (at least it wasn't for me with my build) and the tension of sneaking around is preserved all the way through to the final mission.

All in all this is a game where every aspect of its design from its writing to its mechanics to its aesthetic are all in line with one another creating an experience that, though not long, is incredibly memorable. This game begs for a sequel, or some kind of spiritual successor. All props to the team behind it for being willing to tackle the hard subject matter of espionage while keeping the story interesting and relevant almost 15 years after the initial release. This game begs to be played, and with its recent re-release on GOG there is absolutely no excuse not to. If you love RPGS the way I do, you owe it to yourself as a lover of this genre to experience Alpha Protocol.

4/5

Played on Windows PC, on Xbox One Gamepad

I am so glad this got revived by GOG because it is truly a special RPG. The dialogue mechanics are some of the best in any game I've played and the degree to which the story responds to your actions is amazing, even in 2024. Obsidian GOATed. The major drawback is that the gameplay outside of dialogue and cutscenes is horrific. It felt bad at launch and it feels nearly unplayable today. Definitely a hidden gem worth experiencing for the story, with the caveat that you have to play the rest of the game too.

A spy game that has more to it than simply shooting people and sneaking around buildings, succeeding in knowing who’s your ally and who’s an enemy is even more vital than the aforementioned gameplay aspects, and serve to largely influence what happens in the plot as they help in various different ways, be it offering to spike the cocaine of a drug lord so when you have a boss fight with him you completely deny his second phase and he gets knocked out from the spiked coke, pulling the veil away from major plot twists before it’s too late and they bite you in the ass, or unveiling information you can use to your advantage. Speaking of that, information is truly key in this game as you can use whatever character secrets you acquired to influence, blackmail, taunt characters out of hiding and into their death and so on, this game is quite open in how it can be approached as I’m sure many of you have heard before and is easily its strongest feat, even the story missions can be played in different orders which alters some things that happens in them.

As for the shooting and sneaking itself, It is honestly quite over-hated, it’s essentially a more polished up version of Deus Ex in terms of how the RPG aspects intertwine with the shooting aspects but with good enemy feedback, I love the way they react to your bullets, sometimes they stumble over and fall, other times they panic and spray-fire all over the place, it does it’s job well. As for the accuracy, simply focus your points into one or two weapons (preferably pistol as its the best weapon in the game, AR is great too) and don’t spam-fire, wait for the reticle to recover from recoil and you’re good to go, although its best to focus the shots when it comes to pistol, you can fire faster and more accurately with AR, and I recommend having both on you as they suit different needs, you absolutely should stealth some missions and even go through them non-lethally since not every enemy you face can be killed without consequences (civilians, regular cops and other American agents for example). This is overall quite an immersive experience and I heavily recommend it to RPG or Espionage fans.

Took me a while to get the hang of this one (the third person combat is a bit tricky), but once I did I had a lot of fun. An espionage rpg is pretty accurate for its tagline, there's a slow skill progression tree, and a neat system where you find (or get through other means) money you can spend on the black market to get new weapons and gear. There's also an interesting story and the ability to interact with characters in ways that can improve or decrease what they think of you, which has implications in future missions. It all comes together in a neat package and definitely one to play if you are an action RPG fan. It's too bad the single 80's song music rights are keeping this one from modern platforms, hopefully the rumored remaster actually happens.