Four years in development, Alpha Protocol is finally going to hit North American shelves on June 1. Though you haven't begun to unravel the game's conspiracies, Sega and developer Obsidian have certainly already thought about what's next.
"We have a lot of plans for where we want to take it," producer Tim Ernst tells me during a demo during Game Developers Conference, speaking on the future of the series. "Being a new IP and everything else, we're not going to jump out with a new one in six months. We're going to take our time, and we also want to analyse how everyone kind of plays it through."
Alpha Protocol is a game about choices, choices which will not only affect the game's end, but many of the events leading up to its conclusion. It's not the first game in this style to do this; BioWare's popular Mass Effect comes to mind.
"We've been working on this game for four years," he tells me, "so even before Mass Effect came out we were talking about these kinds of issues. I think every game is taking choices in a different direction. What we try to do is we have conversations, and depending on the choices you're going to see your reputation change. It's not this grand 'good or bad' scale; you're going to see different reputations with each person."
"On top of that, we want to make it very clear when you have these penultimate moments of choices," he explains.
Take note that actions you take in Alpha Protocol will affect events in any potential sequels, so choose wisely.
"Any sequel will definitely play into how you played [the original] Alpha Protocol," he teases. "But we're going to keep that a little quiet for the moment. [This first game] doesn't have 'wait for the sequel' written in it."
Contest:
10:40 AM on 03.15.2010
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Also, what about gamers who don't play the first Alpha Protocol? How are they going to play the sequel? Are the devs going to let the players "create their own origin story" and then let them play Alpha Protocol 2 based on their starting selected choices?
To my knowledge, no other game sequel has carried over the multitude of historical player choices that ME to ME2 did. I read somewhere that there was close to 700 individual choices and their consquences carried onto the sequel.
Plus.... this game looks like an exact replica of Mass Effect. Still - not a bad game to rip off, that's for sure.
...and the more I look at that screenshot, the more funny it becomes.
Not saying anything about the game itself, it's just that the stills don't really impress me.
@all. Yes, the game kinda looks like ass, but looking a Mass Effect videos (barring the cutscene stuff) it is actually very comparable. I don't own a 360 so I don't have personal knowledge only what I've seen on the internet, but to my eyes Mass Effect is of similar quality to this, it's just that being the sci-fi genre gives it a lot of leeway compared to the more realistic visuals of this game.
Very excited about this game. Barring bad glaringly reviews, I'll definitely be picking it up.
Again, I still think the game will be alright and I'm going to buy it, but I guarantee you it will be rather subpar.
@Endstiem. World of Warcraft you port over everything you have ever done into the next expansion they let out. "
That is not the same thing at all. You openly have sort of effect on Characters and the way things might turn out in Mass Effect and it's story. World of Warcrafts story is set in stone and how you do a quest has absolutely no effect on how the story turns out.
And those are expansions, not a completely new game.
Surprised you didn't mention the whole "not enough like Mass Effect" delay-controversy. I mean, if there's ever a time to bring it up...
Seriously, though. That chick's not blue. This is not enough like Mass Effect.
I see what you did there.
...but he's got his 9mm automatic right there.
Putting more resources into one subtracts from the other, and I would much rather, for example, see my character visually getting better at martial arts as I spend more points in the skill, than have the character animations be outstanding but have point spending equate to more damage dealt.