>>3886275
>But who was the ALPHA in ALPHA PROTOCOL?
You, the player.

Peak Obsidian.

>>3886275
I think that Alpha Protocol is actually the best RPG ever made. Name one other game where you have so much freedom to choose, you can choose to ally with the jihadi against the american government

>>3886288
Age of decadence

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Alpha Protocol had the worst romance options in history of RPGs.
>ugly feminist chink
>grrrlppower super-assassin/reporter who probably had sex with lots and lots of men, not even that good looking she just shows a lot of cleavage
>some whore with a cringy german accent who completely breaks immersion that only appeals to betas and omegas

Sis was the only cute girl in the entire game, and even she got probably raped by her pedo-daddy Albatross. S m h

>>3886299
Sis was a transgirl

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>>3886299
>Romancing in a spy game
Seduction is merely a tool in your arsenal.

>>3886343
Does SIE die if I don't save her in the Brayko mission? I fucked up and didn't go shoot her (I shot all her cucks who helped me throughout the mission) because I wanted to be ruthless.

>>3886346
If you don't free her she's dead, but I'm not 100% on that since I haven't played AP in a long time.

Just came back to this and did a melee only run and man does this game get overrated. It's pretty fucking lousy. Neat gimmick and good ideas, but like all Obsidian games, it's not finished and has no polish.

>>3886299
>wahh
lmao the hot chicks in the game scare you? And the only girl you were attracted to was the child? lmao kill yourself.

>>3886355
Fuck but I missed out on a cheevo for killin' the roastie, I reckon.

>>3886275
How is this an RPG? Did we play the same game?? It's a shooter, and sometimes you get to shoot after waiting 90-120 sec for your invisibility to recharge.

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>>3886343
Yea man I don't know I hate using "soulless" to describe products but the one thing I know for sure is that you can describe graphics as that ever since the early PS3 games where games looked like... that. Without any artistic or gamedev background and without being sure what ray-tracing or "shaders" even are, I've managed to sort of accurately observe and describe techniques and styles which enhance a game. Stuff like there being no shadows in Postal to make the whole game feel more eerie and unwelcoming- something similar happens in Dark Souls 2. That said, I couldn't pinpoint to what exactly makes Alpha Protocol look like the equivalent of its day to Perfect World MMO, or to take it further, UE5 today- in terms of graphics, but it's there. Maybe it's a specific plastic look that was common those days and prior to them, but with enough fidelity to make it noticeable and to bother you It's not the lack of animations (though maybe it is- the close up of the girl reminds me of Half Life 2), but the texture of the skin and the way light reflects on it.
Funnily enough, make it look more plasticky and it's better. I've noticed that in SVR2009 on the PS3 as opposed to the one on the PS2, and in Tekken 6 as opposed to 7. (6 looked better)
It's autism, I know

Hi guys I am this poster's >>3886391 mom. He didn't want to shower and clean his room so I am here to embarrass him. Adrian (that's his name) has the games Mass Effect & Mass Effect 3 in his top 5 RPGs list and Elden Ring is his favorite.

>momposting again
Your gimmick sucks.

>>3886505
>the anti-AP shitposter got FELTED by me in another thread already
What a retard, why would you admit that?

>anti-AP shitposter
Citation needed.

Pure stealth is the only proper way to play this

Why are shotguns so weak? They should be instant kill close up max charge, and yet they don't even kill low tier enemies on easy in one shot.

>>3890603
I remember thinking shotgun was fine as my main weapon for the whole game (I think I'd also use a less invested AR for long range stuff). But that was early on back when everyone whined that everything but the pistol was shit, rather than the pistol was just massively overpowered.

>>3886535
Nah, full combat outside of one or two missions that are obviously ghosting focused, and don't overinvest in the stealth tree either. I remember the advice used to be to play the whole game in plain clothes for extra stealth or some shit instead of wearing any armor and it just played miserably.

>>3886282

Very true, in the that the gameplay is utter jank but the writing and replayability are top-tier

>>3886275
Is it true that getting ranks in the Sabotage skill actually increases the difficulty of the minigames you find in the levels?
Like a sort of dynamic scaling or rank system for mission difficulty.
Some forum posts indicated this counter-intuitive design.

>>3890639
No, it's just that different locks/hacks in the same level can have different degrees of difficulty (ie more complex locks for more secured areas) and minigame difficulty scales with game difficulty, which isn't immediately obvious. So if you're not aware of that and you're putting some points into Sabotage it can feel like the game is making things harder because of your point investment, when it's just that you're not investing enough to keep up with how quickly the minigame difficulty is increasing as you progress.
Playing on Hard with no investment in Sabotage and without using any armor mods to reduce minigame difficulty and you can actually see a couple of the hardest difficulty rank (12-pin circuits, maximum tumbler locks) while you're still in Saudi Arabia.

>>3890617
>I remember the advice used to be to play the whole game in plain clothes for extra stealth or some shit instead of wearing any armor and it just played miserably.
It's more that if you want to play stealthily the beginner stealth armour is strictly worse than plain clothes, since it lowers your stealth rating while not providing much of an appreciable benefit, and it's because it's right at the start of the game you won't have the skills to offset the stealth malus yet.
It is fun to play through the whole game without using armour, but it's definitely a playstyle choice rather than actual advice for new players.

I just wish the re-release on GOG came with a patch that made all the minigames optional. Like you can just turn them off in the options.

Is it still possible to piss off Heck if I killed Sis in Moscow and killed SIE when "saving" her? I know it's not possible to piss him off if you go to Taiwan first even if you're -10 Hatred, because he's the "failsafe" handler for the final mission. But I remember you can also get Albatross to save you in the final mission so "he will get a chance to kill you later", but maybe not if I ignored his offer for the embassy/Brayko.

>>3890881
You should be fine as long as you meet the conditions for triggering Albatross as your 'rescuer', which is killing Sis and having a low enough reputation. Whether or not you used him as your handler for the rest of Moscow shouldn't matter unless you were trying to get him as an ally for the final mission.
You'll be able to tell when you get the epilogue for Taipei, if Steve sells you out in the final conversation you've successfully alienated him.

For all this games many flaws it's still the only actual secret agent / espionage game I can think of besides the Mission Impossible N64 game.

>>3890960
No One Lives Forever
No One Lives Forever 2
Deus Ex
Morrowind
RTCW

>>3890960
Spycraft: The Great Game
Guess the main character's name.

>>3890639
>>3890645
The difficulty of minigames actually scales with your total amount of skill points. I learned that the hard way the one time I used Cheat Engine to max out all 4 of the weapon skills

>>3891062
>he doesn't use Cheat Engine to freeze the timer as well
Psh. Amateur.

>>3891062
Yeah, the game scales based on your total AP instead of checking your level or experience directly. From what I understand every particular lock/hack has a set difficulty rating (easy/medium/hard) which is then adjusted by your AP and game difficulty to give you the final minigame difficulty you have to solve.
I like it as an approach, it means you can't screw yourself over by missing out on free AP from perks and you get a consistent difficulty curve even if you keep switching between hubs for missions. Though it does also mean you can't hoard unspent skill points to make the game easier.

>>3886275
I should replay this game. The first time I completed it as a stealth pacifist, kinda boring considering how fun the evil/trickster run can potentially be. Any recommendations for my evil playthrough?

>>3891433
Not sure if you mean gameplay recommendations or choice recommendations. For the latter, it's really hard to get all the good stuff in one playthrough.
>triggering Marburg to stay and fight to death in Italy
Probably the peak "trickster" thing you can do.
>pissing off everyone
This is what I'm working on right now, but I'm worried that Steve still won't sell me out, even tho >>3890938 says I can still get pissed off Albatross as my handler. Fingers crossed, I hate Heck. Includes killing every civilian possible, your background NPC allies and especially women (prostitutes in Moscow). That will teach them for not having sex with me.
>this >>3886343
And it's especially fun if you romance the Chink first, not sure if Scarlet does anything special. SIE is easy to get one way or another.

And of course there's the Halbech ending, I hope I can get that with my aforementioned run, because Leland was happy when I told him I don't care about killing American soldiers. But I think I had to figure out Surkov in Moscow instead of just shooting him or not killing Shaheed.

>>3886299
>muh romances
kys faggot

I dunno man. Dialogue consisted mostly of "I see you've picked the [skill] option!" Gameplay was meh. It wasn't grabbing me at all, to be honest. Dropped upon arriving at whatever Arab country it was.

>>3891583
>Dropped upon finishing the tutorial
Gen Z stimming skibidi toilet for real unc? ong

>>3886275
Is it true that GOG version is more stable then og ?

>>3891594
no

>>3891591
More like I'm getting old and have less patience with vidya in general.

>>3891596
Years of porn abuse and doom scrolling take their toll, huh?

>>3891598
I think it's just a general getting old thing. You tend to gain a better understanding of what you like at the cost of being less open to new and/or seemingly unappealing things.

>>3891601
I'm 45 and play new games all the time. I love learning in general and get bored when I know something completely. I do, however, not engage with fotm and the mainstream, because I don't care about playing the hot new thing like a younger person does.

>>3891602
Fair enough. I love learning too, but for me it's more about the depth of knowledge rather than the breadth. I'd rather replay a game for the 50th time and hope to discover something new in it, than play a game that's completely new to me. Your openness to experience trait must be higher than mine - admittedly, not a high bar to clear.

>>3891605
I just enjoy "playing" with things to understand them, was put in a Montessori school before formal schooling as a kid, problem with me is that I have a really good memory, to the point where I can't enjoy things I've fully grokked, because as soon as a I start playing them I remember everything about them and lose interest. There are only a few games I come back to over and over and most aren't RPGs at all.

Game would be much better if it didn't have all the retarded mooks everywhere. You should literally cut the enemy count by 90% in most missions.

I hate the aiming reticle so much
>shoot from one side of cover
>you are in cover and you can shoot at enemy
>other side of cover
>you cannot because ???

Alpha Protocol is, to this day, the only game that dared to have proper roleplay rewards for """bad choices""". It is the most roleplay heavy action RPG.

>>3899014
>roleplay heavy
CYOA heavy

Fuck, I pissed off Heck for nothing. I should've trusted my instinct, even if you max out his dislike, he won't betray you UNLESS you did the Assault Brayko mission AND saved your handler there. I killed SIE hoping I can get Albatross as my handler even though he hates me, but that doesn't work because you need to convince him to be your handler. Heck is such a piece of shit.

>>3886299
damn that bitch ugly, whom does this appeal to???

>>3886275
Why did they rerelease this on GoG if they haven't fixed anything? The mouse is pure torture during hacking and sniping.

>>3900634
Bro, GOG doesn't ever fix anything, they just apply community made patches.

Holy fuck, the final mission was so tense. [spoilers]Because I only had SIE available as my handler, because I reloaded >>3899390 and saved her just so that I could tell Heck to fuck off. Albatross was greyed out even though I tried to provoke him to find me. I was so worried that she would try to steal my geneseed becaues she was the only character in the game who liked me, other than Leland. Thank god, she didn't even try fucking me.[/spoiler]

Sad that there are no real perks for picking G22, the only good perks are unlocked by SIE (one way or another) or Heck (as a necessity, the game doesn't let you pick any other handlers if you kill everyone).

>>3886275
my friend just bought this for me for christmas, whats a fun build to run?

>>3900825
I remember pistol being the best, but I haven't played it since it came out. The other weapons are for variety on subsequent playthroughs.

>>3900825
Shotgun + SMG + fuck cover, but only on Easy

Pistol is indeed the most overpowered, as >>3900827 says, but only because of its overpowered skill, it's not particularly good in regular gunplay. I recommend using Pistol only on your stealth/no kills playthrough, with Tranq Shots only. To balance things out.

For regular gunplay, Shotguns have almost no stopping power (they knock down but do almost no damage), unless you use Phosphorous Slugs, so you should use Assault Rifles (the only reliable long range damage) + SMGs for close range, as the game suggests with the Commando prebuild.

Martial Arts is not worth it. Maybe with Toughness it's possible to do a Martial Arts only or Shotguns only ...but no the endgame mission still requires long range damage at least for one boss fight. Technical Aptitude is super useful with Stealth+Pistols because it has a skill that refreshes your other skills, and Stealth+Pistols has the two best skills. Sabotage depends on your enjoyment of the minigames. I recommend the first point (which lets you use EMPs to skip hacking minigames, as long as you still have some) for everyone. I tried a run without using any EMPs and it was suffering, the hacking minigame is easily the worst minigame in all of action RPGs.

>>3886275
Mass effect is better in every way. I recently finished alpha protocol and while it was decent spy story, its clearly over praised by those who managed to beat it.
Despite everything that this game does well, in glad it's not on sale anymore, because I call manage, but it's barely playable.

>>3901037
>Mass effect is better in every way.
Let's see
>writing
think I won.

>>3901037
>not on sale anymore
You're happy the game can't be bought on Steam? You can still buy it on GOG...

If the game was moddable like FNV, the modders would've turned it into the New Vegas of popamole over the shoulder shooters with RPG elements

The sniper mission is insane, is it supposed to be good control for consoles??

I found the game to be horrible in every sense of the world, from the aesthetic, to the dialogue and especially the gameplay. I lasted few hours each time I (re)tried to get into it. It's to Metal Gear what Deadly Premonition is to Resident Evil, only without a shred of whimsicality or interesting characters. I also want to say that I hate Obsidian and that they're the worst thing that ever happened to western RPG games, from Fallout 2 days onwards. They are the focal point of every millenial trope, even with gen x fags starting to bowdlerize great franchises.

>>3886275
That reminds me that I need to finish this game. It was fun I was just a bit lost on what was happening

>>3886275
We need more spy games

Something I appreciated about this game was the fact that you can perform like 95% of the stealth sequences without investing in the invisibility skill tree and just doing the guaranteed baked in unarmed takedown. The game would have been insufferable if it actually required one to put the scant amount of skill points given into stealth. The most memorable drawback was the sheer amount of 1 way points of no return in a game that rewarded thorough exploration for intel.

>>3904841
I recommend a bullet to the head.

I liked the game, maybe even loved it. It reminded me Mass Effect a lot, but it had a 00s GWOT plot where the US are not the explicit good guys, which is always nice.

You can witness the feature creep though. Like they make a big deal of "noo you mustn't get too close to your handlers!!!11! you can compromise the mission if you do!!!" with some lines within the first dialogues you hear, but they ran out of money+time and just went with stat buffs (were there even any negatives?)

>>3886275
I don't know why there aren't more games like this. Linear games with dynamic dialogs and impacting choices that are not too long (around 20-30 hours). I feel like it's the perfect duration.

>>3906358
>I don't know why there aren't more games like this.
Too hard to make. Nu-devs know that most players don’t finish a game once, let alone multiple times.

>>3906361
>Too hard to make
Not the reason. The reason is that they require AA or AAA budgets which means publishers or investors need to get involved and why would they spend money on that over trying to chase that next honeypot. Now it's AI slop and extraction shooters.

>>3906361
Players don't finish a game when it's boring as shit yes.
>>3906362
Was the budget for Alpha Protocol even big back then? I doubt it. Since the game is linear, you could even "easily" make one like that with UE5 without any performance issue. That would sell better than the shitty Awoved or Outer Worlds.

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>>3906365
>Was the budget for Alpha Protocol even big back then?
It's too big to be indie now. If you're trying to pitch a new game that will make money, would you pitch
>it's like alpha protocol, that game that flopped and only a few people remember
or
>it's like mass effect
This is why we have games like Exodus greenlit and not a variant on Alpha Protocol.

>>3906233
i read this as
>GYAT plot

>>3906358
>I don't know why there aren't more games like this.
Unironically, the game has a massive amount of expensive content that the player never gets to see in a single playthrough and that drives producer-sans mad.

>>3906191
>Something I appreciated about this game was the fact that you can perform like 95% of the stealth sequences without investing in the invisibility skill tree
That's like 90% of action RPGs with "crouch to stealth"

I am the Alpha of Alpha Protocol

>>3886275
i came from splinter cell conviction and mgsv so this game felt awful to play. it is not like deus ex where the combat gets bearable the more you level up, it felt bad from start to finish

>>3906367
Odds this will be good?

>>3890747
>just wish the re-release on GOG came with a patch that made all the minigames optional. Like you can just turn them off in the options.

You can use cheat engine to disable the timers I guess