|
I notice that in a lot of these games, you end up sounding like a psychopath. Take Mass Effect. The conversations don't change when you are holding a gun in someone's face and threatening to paint the wall with their brains, it simply gets a reaction and then it continues in its normal tenor. Also, it just sounds really weird when half of Shepard's lines are "Tell me about x."
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 13:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 11:32 |
|
|
Cemetry Gator posted:I notice that in a lot of these games, you end up sounding like a psychopath. Take Mass Effect. The conversations don't change when you are holding a gun in someone's face and threatening to paint the wall with their brains, it simply gets a reaction and then it continues in its normal tenor.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 13:26
|
|
|
Exercu posted:Obviously the game was terrible. There was no Push A for Awesome, nor any deep characterisation where you can ask people about their entire life stories while you chill out in their spaceship, and you can't just push A for perfect solution to everything. What hacks would ever make a game where you can't solve everything to everyone's satisfaction? I want my power fantasy where I save everything, thank you very much. Solution. Alpha Protocol 2: The Chronicles of Stephen Heck. Every button you push leads to awesome. This time, he didn't forget the bleach  Spotted the 360 version for only €6 in HMV and remembered the threads recommendation. Having an absolute blast so far and nearly at the final part of the game.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 13:37
|
|
|
Mass effect: press the any key for exposition
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 14:35
|
|
|
Sex Vicar posted:Solution. Alpha Protocol 2: The Chronicles of Stephen Heck. Every button you push leads to awesome. Steven Heck. No one calls him Stephen unless they value their fingers. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 14:49
|
|
|
Sex Vicar posted:This time, he didn't forget the bleach
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 15:09
|
|
|
Cemetry Gator posted:I notice that in a lot of these games, you end up sounding like a psychopath. Take Mass Effect. The conversations don't change when you are holding a gun in someone's face and threatening to paint the wall with their brains, it simply gets a reaction and then it continues in its normal tenor. Deus Ex handled this pretty well IMO; if you'd walk into certain areas (like the clinic in Hells Kitchen) with your weapon drawn people would freak out, sort of like what I'd imagine people would do if some random dude was walking around with a weapon out front in public.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 15:47
|
|
|
Just finished this for the first time. Went with my usual good guy, professional playthrough. I'll definitely be replaying through as an rear end hole. The game only took about 10 hours, too, but I pretty much rushed through all the combat with Pistols and Stealth.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 16:18
|
|
|
Exercu posted:Obviously the game was terrible. There was no Push A for Awesome, nor any deep characterisation where you can ask people about their entire life stories while you chill out in their spaceship, and you can't just push A for perfect solution to everything. What hacks would ever make a game where you can't solve everything to everyone's satisfaction? I want my power fantasy where I save everything, thank you very much. I heard a slightly rephrased version of this as criticism for AP  Apparently the guy thought that games should be like Call of Duty, and that AP's choices made it too complicated 
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 17:08
|
|
|
I think a lot of the complaints do have some merit, actually. A lot of it has to do with preconceived notions, but still: It's an RPG, but you don't really play that character. It's not playing a role, it's more like directing a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode. You choose suave, and Mike throws out a ridiculously (and obviously) lame line that pisses someone off, when you wanted your character to actually say something suave and useful. You choose Aggressive, and your character might be a little tough, or might threaten the hell out of someone. It's a game where you're expecting to play a super-awesome secret agent, but your character can't actually make much of a difference on the game world. Almost every location has some dichotomy where Mike cannot win. Watch a James Bond or Jason Bourne movie. How often does JB win? (Admittedly, 24 is a little bleaker.) Compare that to Mike. It's an over the shoulder camera game with insane amounts of inventory customization and a bunch of weapons, but they matter so much less than which of the 4 weapon skills you've chose to work with. You can carry 2 weapons at once, but if you try to be good at both of them, you gimp yourself (unless you're a veteran, which means you've already beaten the game at least once.) These are all design choices which I understand (the last one, a little less, but I think someone posted that Sega insisted on the skill over inventory thing) and I appreciate the fact that one man cannot always change the world, but it's hard to be surprised that people feel like the rug was pulled out from underneath them.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 17:58
|
|
|
Propaganda Panda posted:Mass effect: press the any key for exposition Pick Red/Blue to automatically win any conversation in the game.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 17:58
|
|
|
PFlats posted:I think a lot of the complaints do have some merit, actually. A lot of it has to do with preconceived notions, but still: How often do Jack Bauer and James Bond outright win without innocents dying? The difference is that in James Bond and 24, plenty of people can die without it being literally highlighted. Rome Finale spoilers ahead The Rome Finale shows it pretty clearly. How often has a love interest of James Bond bit it? I think it's roughly a fourth of them altogether. The difference is that often it's just considered to be a bit sad when a woman Bond has been with dies, and then we return to the campy spy action. It's pretty much because Alpha Protocol, unlike most hollywood action movies and series, calls you out on allowing innocents to die.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 19:09
|
|
|
Thorton is definitely more Timothy Dalton than Roger Moore in terms of tone. Although some of the suave lines are just as bad as Moore's time.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 19:12
|
|
|
PFlats posted:It's a game where you're expecting to play a super-awesome secret agent, but your character can't actually make much of a difference on the game world. Almost every location has some dichotomy where Mike cannot win. Watch a James Bond or Jason Bourne movie. How often does JB win? (Admittedly, 24 is a little bleaker.) Compare that to Mike. I can't help but feel that "this game isn't black-and-white enough" isn't really a very good complaint, particularly given that it's a game whose main hook is that it's all about a huge range of choices and consequences.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 19:15
|
|
|
Cemetry Gator posted:Also, it just sounds really weird when half of Shepard's lines are "Tell me about x."
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 20:06
|
|
|
PFlats posted:It's a game where you're expecting to play a super-awesome secret agent, but your character can't actually make much of a difference on the game world. Almost every location has some dichotomy where Mike cannot win. Watch a James Bond or Jason Bourne movie. How often does JB win? (Admittedly, 24 is a little bleaker.) Compare that to Mike. AP is an origin story. The world is changed a whole lot more than it is in, say, Casino Royale. You can lose all day and still win in the end, proving you are the cool hero. It's worth going along with Leland just once, so you get that great exchange at the end: "So, what happens now?" "Everything."
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 20:31
|
|
|
PFlats posted:I think a lot of the complaints do have some merit, actually. Conversely, when the leadoff to the complaints is "it should have more choices with consequence and believable dialogue, like Mass Effect", it becomes hard to react to anything following that with anything but derisive laughter.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 20:40
|
|
|
ToxicFrog posted:Conversely, when the leadoff to the complaints is "it should have more choices with consequence and believable dialogue, like Mass Effect", it becomes hard to react to anything following that with anything but derisive laughter. It'd be cool if somebody who's less lazy than me could map out a conversation in AP and a conversation in Mass Effect along the lines of what was done for a level in Deus Ex; it'd highlight the desparity even more.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 21:36
|
|
|
epitaph posted:It'd be cool if somebody who's less lazy than me could map out a conversation in AP and a conversation in Mass Effect along the lines of what was done for a level in Deus Ex; it'd highlight the desparity even more. That's pretty trivial for ME but (without delving into the code) impossibly difficult for AP.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 21:40
|
|
|
epitaph posted:It'd be cool if somebody who's less lazy than me could map out a conversation in AP and a conversation in Mass Effect along the lines of what was done for a level in Deus Ex; it'd highlight the desparity even more. I doubt it's feasible to map the cafe conversation, though it would be the best for illustrative purposes.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 21:42
|
|
|
MrL_JaKiri posted:That's pretty trivial for ME but (without delving into the code) impossibly difficult for AP. I don't think it would be too hard to map a single conversation for a single Thorton, although it would be extremely tedious. The problem is that the course of the conversation is determined not just by what you say in it, but also your standing with whoever you're talking to (and possibly other people as well), your overall reputation, which missions you've accomplished and how, what you're wearing, what skills you have tagged, and so forth. So making a comprehensive map of most conversations becomes a nightmarish task.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 21:45
|
|
|
Red_Fred posted:Yeah I think AP has some great voice acting, it's not often I find myself laughing at game dialogue like I do with this game. My favorite line is right at the start, when Mina asks if you remember her name. If you pick the wrong option, the delivery is just so good. "Of course I remember, Tina, how could I forget?". Or something like that. He delivers with just the right swaggering confidence in his wrong choice to make it hilarious.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 21:59
|
|
|
ToxicFrog posted:I don't think it would be too hard to map a single conversation for a single Thorton, although it would be extremely tedious. And even if it isn't - though I think it is - the game at least casts the illusion of significance well enough to make me think everything matters. This is the only game I remember playing where the type of character I was playing developed with the game, rather than an archetype being established beforehand and running through it as RENEGADE or BUSINESSMAN, or whatever. I picked <<angry eyes>> when I legitimately felt wronged and that Mike was getting screwed by the situation.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2011 22:22
|
|
|
epitaph posted:It'd be cool if somebody who's less lazy than me could map out a conversation in AP and a conversation in Mass Effect along the lines of what was done for a level in Deus Ex; it'd highlight the desparity even more. They showed a slide like that at the PAX 2010 talk, the part where they talk about the level design starts at 29:30 or so. This was the reactivity tree for the Moscow train depot: 
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2011 00:30
|
|
|
The one time that I felt the game didn't understand what I was trying to do was when I chose to defuse the bombs in Rome instead of saving Madison. I really didn't care about Madison. She was just someone who had a pretty face who stepped in deep poo poo. Thorton slept with her because he could and finding out that she was Parker's daughter, the same Parker who "analyzed" him out of Alpha Protocol and into being a rogue (as far as my Thorton knew at the time - he hadn't gotten the truth from Mina) was just a bonus. He let her die to hurt Parker. Yet I still had the same head hanging scene after Leland called me out on caring about her. No, not really. I did not care and I was fully aware of my choice.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2011 00:35
|
|
|
StarkRavingMad posted:My favorite line is right at the start, when Mina asks if you remember her name. If you pick the wrong option, the delivery is just so good. "Of course I remember, Tina, how could I forget?". Or something like that. He delivers with just the right swaggering confidence in his wrong choice to make it hilarious. Even better is the aggressive choice, where Mike is like "Whatever Maria. Now how 'bout rustling me up a drink while we wait for the firearms instructor to arrive?" Aggressive Thorton is the biggest rear end in gaming. Crappy Jack fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Jul 29, 2011 |
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2011 00:56
|
|
|
Scorchy posted:They showed a slide like that at the PAX 2010 talk, the part where they talk about the level design starts at 29:30 or so. I wonder if high-res versions of the slides are available anywhere, you can't make out anything in the video and the blip.tv player is kind of lovely.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2011 03:32
|
|
|
Crappy Jack posted:Even better is the aggressive choice, where Mike is like "Whatever Maria. Now how 'bout rustling me up a drink while we wait for the firearms instructor to arrive?" On my Recruit run, I had a rule, I had to pick (in order of priority): Execute or violent action if available -> "Recruit" choice if available -> Aggressive if available -> whatever choice was likely to be the most rear end in a top hat-ish if none of the above. It was actually really hard for me to stick to it because Mike ends up being such a colossal rear end to everyone. This was the same run I went no stealth/all assault rifle and just gunned down everyone, so Mina completely despised me by the end. The only people who ended up liking me were Heck and Sie. It was also very informative to see how much poo poo you are capable of missing in the game. That Mike at the end had missed so much stuff that I found out on my initial run.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2011 07:03
|
|
|
Looking at Kismet (Unreal's scripting system) as a gauge of how reactive something is isn't really appropriate. Some things that are very complex can be made to look very simple by adding a hard-coded widget. Some things that are very simple can be made to look very complex simply based on a large number of variables. An example would be the sniper mission in rome. It's one of the least reactive missions in the game, with essentially three or four outcomes that for the most part don't react with the rest of the game that much. But the original script for that level was so complicated that the guy who took over the level after I left threw it all out and started over because he didn't understand it. (And despite what he may have claimed afterwards, it was not complex because I'm a bad scripter, but because I'm actually pretty decent at it and my script did about 10 more things than his did and had probably 5x the number of variables to account for that.) All that said, the conversations in AP are really complex.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2011 14:58
|
|
|
Game is five bucks on Direct2Drive, so once again it is the ideal time to try to convince other people about it. http://www.direct2drive.com/8420/product/Buy-Alpha-Protocol-Download
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2011 19:16
|
|
|
Comte de Saint-Germain posted:Looking at Kismet (Unreal's scripting system) as a gauge of how reactive something is isn't really appropriate. Some things that are very complex can be made to look very simple by adding a hard-coded widget. Some things that are very simple can be made to look very complex simply based on a large number of variables. You... you worked on AP?  Tell us more!
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2011 05:22
|
|
|
Red_Fred posted:You... you worked on AP? He was in charge of the Rome hub, doesn't know what "honeycomb" refers to, left before completion, didn't get a copy from Sega when it was finished and not a lot of people know that. I think that covers most of it, details can be filled in by ?ing him in this thread or the other thread which may or may not be in the archives by now.
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2011 05:29
|
|
|
I asked for Heck's assistance in some subway mission in Taipei, and when I got overrun he drove buy on a subway with a minigun and cleared everything for me. I didn't really get the love for him until just now.
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2011 09:43
|
|
|
gently caress game reviewers forever, as the quote in the second post says. this game is amazing. just did the obligatory stealth-pistols-suave run, now i am bearded arsehole thorton and having so much fun.
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2011 11:46
|
|
|
MrL_JaKiri posted:He was in charge of the Rome hub, doesn't know what "honeycomb" refers to, left before completion, didn't get a copy from Sega when it was finished and not a lot of people know that. I got my copies from my friend Matt who was one of the writers and chief systems designer. Also I found out what honeycomb refers to, it's meaningless.
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2011 17:04
|
|
|
niff posted:gently caress game reviewers forever, as the quote in the second post says. this game is amazing. just did the obligatory stealth-pistols-suave run, now i am bearded arsehole thorton and having so much fun. Between this and DA2's reviews, I learned that game reviewing is a crock of poo poo. These days I just use gaming sites as release date announcers, nothing more.
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2011 17:25
|
|
|
CommissarMega posted:Between this and DA2's reviews, I learned that game reviewing is a crock of poo poo. These days I just use gaming sites as release date announcers, nothing more. I can't be the only one that bases the vast majority of their game decisions based on goon feedback. You guys have saved me a lot of money!
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2011 01:20
|
|
|
CommissarMega posted:Between this and DA2's reviews, I learned that game reviewing is a crock of poo poo. These days I just use gaming sites as release date announcers, nothing more. As bad as DA2 was, it still sold twice as many copies as this game 
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2011 01:25
|
|
|
Scorchy posted:As bad as DA2 was, it still sold twice as many copies as this game Just twice? Given the sort of reputation this game has elsewhere on the internet, I expect it's closer to something like four times as many.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2011 01:47
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 11:32 |
|
|
Nice Shirt posted:Just twice? Given the sort of reputation this game has elsewhere on the internet, I expect it's closer to something like four times as many. Well EA said DA2 sold 2 million. AP sold 700k after a month; I'd imagine after a year and various sales they would have reached 1 million by now. So contrary to popular belief this game didn't completely bomb or anything. Of course, Sega execs publicly threw this game under the bus just after it was released, but I'd think it was partly due to the long development and costs, and not just entirely because of gross incompetence.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2011 02:36
|
|