Over the summer break I spent some time playing a few of the older games in my collection. I’ve already written a few words about Binary Domain and I thought I’d follow that up with another game published by Sega. Alpha Protocol was released in 2010 and developed by Obsidian Entertainment. Obsidian are responsible for games like Knights of the Old Republic II, Fallout: New Vegas and most recently Pillars of Eternity.
Alpha Protocol follows the trials of one Michael Thornton, an ex special services operative who is recruited by a secret government agency (Alpha Protocol), and on his first mission cast out by them as an expendable asset. Fortunately for the player, Mr Thornton has a strong survival instinct, not to mention what could be called an overdeveloped sense of vengeance as he sets out to find out who tried to get rid of him and why.
Alpha Protocol is a couple of years older than Binary Domain and this does show in some of the animation sequences, but the story builds nicely as you interact with a variety of characters from the UAE, Rome, Moscow and Taipei. Your interactions with these characters are handled through response selections during conversations. The wrinkle that Obsidian threw in here is that you only have a short amount of time to choose your desired response. These responses may be professional, suave, flirty, etc, and it’s up to the player to decide how they want the tone of conversation to go. As with many games that have player conversations, the NPC response may be favourable, neutral or negative. This impacts the player on not only how the conversation actually goes, but also on whether NPC’s may be recruited as allies and even handlers for later missions.
Players will have access to a safe house in each of the game's locations. Within the safe house they may restock ammunition, purchase weapon and suit upgrades and sell off surplus items. They will also have access to email which will periodically provide the player with some opportunities. The majority of these will be related to intel you receive and what you choose to do with it. You can either sell it on the black market, blackmail the company involved or hand it over to a reporter NPC for her to use (and obtain some small payment). All of this tries to help the player feel like they have some control over what’s happening, and overall it achieves this goal.
There are a number of “boss battles” that take place through the game, and it seems here it’s where Obsidian let the ball drop. The difficulty curve you encounter when you face the boss fights is off the charts in comparison to what you have been experiencing, and once the battle is over things go back to the level they were at. I had trouble with a couple of fights, namely the nutcase that is Konstantin Brayko. This narcotic snorting, dual gun wielding madman was initially the toughest opponent I faced. Let him get to close and he cuts you up with his knife, and while he’s high on whatever it is he’s snorting, he’s damn near bulletproof. But Brayko pales into insignificance when you confront the final boss, one of your fellow Alpha Protocol operatives and a previous handler, Darcy. Seems that Darcy has the best arm and biggest hands of anyone alive as not only can he throw multiple grenades at the same time, he can throw them with great accuracy and further than you can shoot with an assault rifle!
This final battle was probably the most disappointing part of this game for me. I’d enjoyed the narrative with its twists and turns. I’d accepted the choices I’d made along the way and how those choices had shaped my version of Michael Thornton. But all of that felt like it was wasted when it came to the final battle. It’s a real pity, I enjoyed everything up to that point but frustration with the final battle almost got the better of me. I’d like to see Obsidian revisit some of the ideas from Alpha Protocol in the future, particularly the timed conversation responses, those gave a sense of urgency, of thinking quickly and dealing with the consequences of your actions, even of those consequences don’t show up right away.
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