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Alright, thanks for the heads-up It just seems too tempting to make everybody trust you, so apart from telling one or two Designated Bad Guys to go gently caress themselves, I'm keen to see how this comes back to bite me in the rear end. So having done Taipei and moved onto Moscow, I spared Omen Deng because I'd already cut myself off from one potentially useful contact by refusing to deal with Albatross and basically got poo poo all in exchange. The game pretty much telegraphed THAT WAS A REALLY BAD IDEA DUMBASS immediately but I'd just spent a repeatedly-reloaded mission getting shot at by his wallhacking cybergoons, so I wasn't really in the mood for it in the one second it gave me to make up my mind. Hope you guys get a hearty chuckle from my blind run so far.
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Oct 13, 2012 23:08
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| # ? Jun 5, 2024 02:42 |
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Are there any times when sparing someone is a bad idea?
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Oct 13, 2012 23:33
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El Tortuga posted:DO NOT GO STRAIGHT. Check both doors on your sides before continuing. If you go straight, you will not be able to go back and you'll miss some closer for two big characters. It's super easy to miss, and most of us here made that mistake the first time. I've been reading through this thread from the beginning for the last few days and this should really be the thread title, as clever as the current one is. It comes up every third page.
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Oct 13, 2012 23:36
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edit: Heh. Didn't see that yet ^^^. Either would be a good choice.Sam. posted:Are there any times when sparing someone is a bad idea? I'm not being an rear end in a top hat by saying this, trust me, but the title of this thread should be "There are no bad choices, only results". There's something to be gained or lost by sparing or killing anyone. No matter what your choice is, there's some dialogue you won't see, or equipment you won't get.
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Oct 13, 2012 23:38
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Sam. posted:Are there any times when sparing someone is a bad idea? That depends if you enjoy the song 'Turn up the Radio' by Autograph.
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Oct 13, 2012 23:40
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El Tortuga posted:edit: Heh. Didn't see that yet ^^^. Either would be a good choice. Alpha Protocol: The only bad choice is going straight in the last mission
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Oct 13, 2012 23:44
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El Tortuga posted:edit: Heh. Didn't see that yet ^^^. Either would be a good choice. I know, but it seems like sparing people always unlocks more options than executing them. Are there any times when that isn't the case?
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Oct 14, 2012 03:54
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Sam. posted:I know, but it seems like sparing people always unlocks more options than executing them. Are there any times when that isn't the case? Hmm, I know choosing to kill most of the bosses will get you golden weapons, which aren't too special in themselves. I guess it all depends on what you wanna experience. Sparing people will net you more equipments. But other than that, it's all relative. Some people respond positively to a person being killed, some don't.
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Oct 14, 2012 07:22
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Plus, of course, killing someone might drastically change the dialog of another character, so you might cut off an option later with that character, but severely alter your relationship (and thus experience) with another. Also, I have never in my life felt like a bigger rear end in a top hat in a video game than when I killed ****Sis*****. The game absolutely treated me accordingly as well. Mistikman fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Oct 14, 2012 |
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Oct 14, 2012 15:34
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Mistikman posted:Also, I have never in my life felt like a bigger rear end in a top hat in a video game than when I killed ****Sis*****. The game absolutely treated me accordingly as well. There's nothing quite like doing that and then taunting Albatross about it. It's honestly the biggest dick move I've ever seen in a game that actually presented nuanced choices and not "murder these kittens or save that orphanage".
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Oct 14, 2012 17:36
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Mistikman posted:Plus, of course, killing someone might drastically change the dialog of another character, so you might cut off an option later with that character, but severely alter your relationship (and thus experience) with another. You're a horrible person  That's probably only second to (Moscow) asking Albatross to assault Brayko's mansion, then executing him after he gets captured and slashed up by Brayko. I can't believe that was an option, at that moment he's probably the most pitiful character in the game. Suffice it to say I didn't choose that... Endgame I made sure to search left and right before going forward at That Point, thanks for the heads-up. On that note I'd have liked to have Albatross as my handler, this guy seemed to be more my style with his emphasis on stealth and tech manipulation. Heck was a loving blowhard who appeared for one scene at the start and then never did or said anything again, and Ms Combat Bra can gently caress right off. Actually, speakiing of whom I was rather hoping they'd make more of JS22 being my "ace in the hole" since you were clearly set up to tip your hand during a Leyland scene... he said something about you romancing women with a large age difference and the dialogue options were set up to make you blunder into assuming he was talking about Sis and therefore unintentially reveal your alliance with them. Anyway, finished it off, glad it had a reasonably straightforward ending and didn't go all ~artistic vision~ on me in the final scene. Looking forward to having another playthrough!
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Oct 14, 2012 17:48
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If you go through all the hoops to unlock the option then killing Marburg is a really good idea. It opens a few things up in the final part of the game, I think.
Blastedhellscape fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Oct 14, 2012 |
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Oct 14, 2012 17:58
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Heck has a pretty great scene if you buy fire support from him in the subway mission although you've said that stealth is more of your style, so that's probably why you never saw it.
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Oct 14, 2012 18:01
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e: that thread has reminded me why this would be a poor idea Captain Walker fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Oct 14, 2012 |
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Oct 14, 2012 18:58
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UnknownMercenary posted:Heck has a pretty great scene if you buy fire support from him in the subway mission although you've said that stealth is more of your style, so that's probably why you never saw it. oh no I got that part. Well, I never actually saw it because I was too busy bolting for the door trying not to get shot at in the ensuing fracas. The debrief made me wish I'd looked to the right at the time, though. Despite the thread's advice I held up just fine with zero points in Toughness, although this was on Normal. In fact, I didn't even carry any medkits after the start of the game, although at the very end I rather wish I did. Anyway, if Wasteland 2 does well then maybe there will be an opportunity to Kickstart an AP2. I'd certainly be willing to throw in a bit of cash, hopefully they won't phone it in on the PC port this time. EDIT: Blastedhellscape posted:If you go through all the hoops to unlock the option then killing Marburg is a really good idea. It opens a few things up in the final part of the game, I think. I guess I accidentally went through the hoops then. That was certainly an interesting mission, though, those guys were sufficiently evil assholes that they made me decide to stop using tranq rounds. Sapozhnik fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Oct 14, 2012 |
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Oct 14, 2012 19:42
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Mr Dog posted:Anyway, if Wasteland 2 does well then maybe there will be an opportunity to Kickstart an AP2. I'd certainly be willing to throw in a bit of cash, hopefully they won't phone it in on the PC port this time. From what I hear this is unlikely because Sega owns the IP rights to Alpha Protocol, not Obsidian, and the game didn't do well enough for Sega to be interested in making a sequel. I imagine Obsidian might be interested in making a similar game, but it's very unlikely we'll ever get a for-real Alpha Protocol 2.
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Oct 14, 2012 22:32
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Mr Dog posted:hopefully they won't phone it in on the PC port this time. People have been saying things like this all throughout the thread... what are y'all talking about? What bugs did I miss? Is it just the keyboard and mouse controls? Guess I dodged a bullet using my Xbox 360 controller then. I didn't notice any bugs or graphical problems otherwise. I think the biggest bug I saw my whole first play through was when I clicked the Individual dossier menu and it gave me the Factions instead. That's it.
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Oct 14, 2012 22:41
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Mr Dog posted:oh no I got that part. Well, I never actually saw it because I was too busy bolting for the door trying not to get shot at in the ensuing fracas. The debrief made me wish I'd looked to the right at the time, though. If you actually did kill the dude he's talking about on your first playthrough then well done - it's really, really easy to lock yourself out of getting to shoot his face in.
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Oct 14, 2012 22:49
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The menus are just really lovely to operate, and the mouse acts more like an analog stick than a mouse. Crazy non-linearity from small movements, and the slew speed maxes out very quickly for big movements. Sometimes the game freezes up for a moment while I'm rapidly shifting perspective and then it literally takes me several seconds to figure out which random direction I ended up facing in. Bugs, nothing major after I started pressing Quit each time I got killed prior to reloading. Before I started doing that, there was one really obnoxious thing in the Moscow rail yard where my current objective got rewound to a now-inaccessible area much further back in the map. It even corrupted my save file so that the issue persisted across reloads. I had to start the mission again from scratch after running in circles for like half an hour trying to figure out what to do next, AND the area in question is an absolute swine to clear stealthily. So that was really annoying. ^^^ Is there a checklist other than constantly trash talk him that I need to be aware of in order to avoid locking myself out in the future? I'm still trying to avoid further spoilers because there were clearly some huge things I missed, and they were hinted at in the finale where (HUGE SPOILER) Scarlet turns out to be the assassin hired to take out Ronald Sung, and the epilogue suggests that Yancy has a role beyond just being in the tutorial, given that he has so much stuff in his file and the epilogue specifically mentions that he's mysteriously MIA. So I'd like to try and chase down those threads in more detail. Anyway, second time through and I'm kicking considerably more rear end as a green Recruit who isn't so hot at hand-to-hand but still goes for non-violent stealth takedowns whenever possible. Looking forward to shuffling the hubs around and befriending different people and seeing what happens~ Sapozhnik fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Oct 15, 2012 |
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Oct 15, 2012 00:22
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I don't believe it's actually been 100% nailed down just what is needed to be able to do it but you will have to have chosen the Suave path of conversation for the majority of the game. I'm not sure if there's a counter or what. There is a perk (at least one) that unlocks but I'm pretty sure that I was unable to do it on one of my playthroughs even with that perk. So I'm inclined to believe it's a counter.
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Oct 15, 2012 00:27
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aah well that could be a problem then, I'm like 100% Professional so far, although I'm only at Saudi Arabia right now, given who I'm interacting with at that stage of the game and all. I could switch it up later. My first playthrough was Taipei-Moscow-Rome, my current plan is to go Moscow-Rome-Taipei so I'll see what happens, I guess. Moscow feels like the longest episode by far, so maybe that'll give me time to swing the balance.
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Oct 15, 2012 00:36
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I'm currently most of the way through Saudi Arabia with a recruit run and gun all aggressive all the time dude with a hobo beard, mirrored shades and big rear end hat. He's shooting every person in the face and creating an army of orphans. My play through after this will be a veteran sneaky dude who will get the ending I want most. Gonna be rad.
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Oct 15, 2012 00:49
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Yeah, mostly suave, him hating you, and a lot of intel on him seem to be the factors.
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Oct 15, 2012 01:00
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mastajake posted:Yeah, mostly suave, him hating you, and a lot of intel on him seem to be the factors. And to get him to hate you enough, you have to gently caress up a lot of things in Rome. Otherwise he seems to get too much plusses from me staying under the radar and calls me on my persona being a bluff to get under his skin. It's all in or nothing.
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Oct 15, 2012 01:24
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So I feel sad to say that I listened to the critics about this one a long time ago, and I had never bought it even after I heard that it was actually a pretty great game. I'm sorry I didn't support you Obsidian, but at least I bought your game for 5 dollars today at a used book store. 
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Oct 15, 2012 01:31
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Warmachine posted:And to get him to hate you enough, you have to gently caress up a lot of things in Rome. Otherwise he seems to get too much plusses from me staying under the radar and calls me on my persona being a bluff to get under his skin. It's all in or nothing. You can actually keep things quiet in Rome and still do it. It's being suave that's the main factor in whether or not you can kill him (he only calls your bluff if you go mostly professional/aggressive before switching to suave when you speak with him). You'll get more than enough negative rep just by using suave responses in conversations with him.
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Oct 15, 2012 01:32
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Warmachine posted:And to get him to hate you enough, you have to gently caress up a lot of things in Rome. Otherwise he seems to get too much plusses from me staying under the radar and calls me on my persona being a bluff to get under his skin. It's all in or nothing. I think he only calls your bluff if you weren't suave enough before.
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Oct 15, 2012 01:34
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One last question about the ending. Bear with because I'm a little bit dense, but I don't really understand how Mina betrayed you, exactly. She and every other AP handler knew exactly where you were in Saudi while intercepting Shaheed, so she can't tell the agency anything it doesn't know already, and who else would she tell? She exfiltrates you from Saudi and then is instrumental in foiling AP and Halbech at every turn, so if she was actually helping AP hunt you down then she wasn't doing a particularly good job. Then when you give yourself up to AP at the end of the game it's your call to do so. So uh, what, instead of hiding out she goes back to AP and tells them you're actually executing some cunning plan? gee... ya think, Mina? Seriously, how exactly did she screw me over here. I don't remember the specifics of the conversation, I think she says something about the Saudi operation and just says "I sold you out, I'm sorry" and I'm just like "uhh.... wtf are you talking about"
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Oct 15, 2012 12:35
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Endgame spoilers that you should probably find out for yourself on another playthough  : Mina works for another agency, probably NSA. She's trying to shut down AP and arranged for the missile strike so you'd be on the run and looking for revenge on them.
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Oct 15, 2012 12:48
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Endgame spoilers that you should probably find out for yourself on another playthough My interpretation was Mina put out a burn notice on you so you would have to go on rogue and look for revenge but it was Halbech and Alpha Protocol who launched the missile strike because they just wanted you dead. It's why you were on the mission rather than Darcy. You were expendable and he wasn't due to his family connections.
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Oct 15, 2012 12:55
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Aah. drat, shouldn't have moused over that. I probably should have mentioned that I had less intel on Mina than every single other character in the game. EDIT: You know, the more I read back through this thread the more I think I came as close to my ideal of a "perfect" run first time as is possible in this game, even going in mostly blind. The only thing I'd have done differently is befriend Albatross in Taipei and dig up more info on Mina. OK and actually remembering to use the intel I purchased on that secret door in Marburg's villa. On the one hand I feel  as gently caress, on the other that kinda puts a damper on my subsequent runs because I feel like I've got to deliberately gently caress up now.
Sapozhnik fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Oct 15, 2012 |
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Oct 15, 2012 12:57
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Hank Morgan posted:My interpretation was Mina put out a burn notice on you so you would have to go on rogue and look for revenge but it was Halbech and Alpha Protocol who launched the missile strike because they just wanted you dead. It's why you were on the mission rather than Darcy. You were expendable and he wasn't due to his family connections. Pretty sure that's what happened although I missed her in the base
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Oct 15, 2012 13:09
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Mr Dog posted:I feel like I've got to deliberately gently caress up now. No such thing. There is no right or optimal path in terms of your decisions; all are equally "right".
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Oct 15, 2012 14:53
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hectorgrey posted:No such thing. There is no right or optimal path in terms of your decisions; all are equally "right". I'm going through this game for the first time, and I am so stuck in the mindset every other RPG out there that there's always a "best" option that this game is both a wonderful breath of fresh air and an chance for my mind to shake off that mindset. Too bad I'm sure it'll end up ruining other RPGs for me. For my first run my strategy is to try to have as many people stay alive as possible and ally with as many people as possible. The only people I got killed were Madison and the one Al-Samad guy you can shoot with a sniper rifle. I wonder what kind of hilarity will ensue by the end.
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Oct 15, 2012 17:05
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LordZoric posted:For my first run my strategy is to try to have as many people stay alive as possible and ally with as many people as possible. The only people I got killed were Madison and the one Al-Samad guy you can shoot with a sniper rifle. I wonder what kind of hilarity will ensue by the end. This can lead to one of the most satisfying endings in the game if you (BIG ENDGAME SPOILERS) join Leland and then betray him. Thorton will list off his enormous list of allies and watch Leland slowly realize he's in way over his head, and that Thorton has been playing him all along. Conversely, one of the most hilarious ways to end the game is doing the opposite. If you piss off everyone, kill as many people as possible, and then do the same ending path again (SERIOUSLY THESE ARE GIANT ENDGAME SPOILERS) when Thorton betrays Leland he starts listing his allies and basically only comes up with Heck. He's all "I don't need you and Halbech, I've got my bro Stephen Heck. Just the two of us against the world." And then you can read Leland's crestfallen expression as him being like 'I got beat by this guy? Seriously?' instead of 'Oh shiiiiiit'. Either way it's great.
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Oct 15, 2012 17:36
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vyelkin posted:This can lead to one of the most satisfying endings in the game if you (BIG ENDGAME SPOILERS) join Leland and then betray him. Thorton will list off his enormous list of allies and watch Leland slowly realize he's in way over his head, and that Thorton has been playing him all along. Conversely, one of the most hilarious ways to end the game is doing the opposite. If you piss off everyone, kill as many people as possible, and then do the same ending path again (SERIOUSLY THESE ARE GIANT ENDGAME SPOILERS) when Thorton betrays Leland he starts listing his allies and basically only comes up with Heck. He's all "I don't need you and Halbech, I've got my bro Stephen Heck. Just the two of us against the world." And then you can read Leland's crestfallen expression as him being like 'I got beat by this guy? Seriously?' instead of 'Oh shiiiiiit'. Either way it's great. Oh and of course on the topic of Heck: (seriously don't read this unless you have beaten the game a few times with different approaches) I am still amazed that if you really boil down everything you learn out of all your different playthroughs, it turns out that you aren't the best spy in the game. You aren't even in Heck's loving league. You are out there playing tee-ball while heck is smashing out grand slams in the big leagues. It's one of the few facts in the game that is never specifically laid out in front of you, but way earlier in the thread some enterprising goons did some looking at everything, and Heck pretty much knows everything all the time, he works for basically everyone, and manages to get no one to take him particularly seriously because he acts like a goddamned crazy person.
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Oct 15, 2012 19:28
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Sam. posted:Are there any times when sparing someone is a bad idea? Unless you prefer to turn off the sound during end credits, I would advise against letting Nasri walk away.
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Oct 16, 2012 10:50
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Mistikman posted:Oh and of course on the topic of Heck: (seriously don't read this unless you have beaten the game a few times with different approaches) I am still amazed that if you really boil down everything you learn out of all your different playthroughs, it turns out that you aren't the best spy in the game. You aren't even in Heck's loving league. You are out there playing tee-ball while heck is smashing out grand slams in the big leagues. It's one of the few facts in the game that is never specifically laid out in front of you, but way earlier in the thread some enterprising goons did some looking at everything, and Heck pretty much knows everything all the time, he works for basically everyone, and manages to get no one to take him particularly seriously because he acts like a goddamned crazy person. Even if you accept the narrative that Heck is a crazy person for whom the stars have aligned to constantly allow him to succeed in spite of himself, instead of being an amazing super-spy. Thorton still isn't even really the biggest fish. You're really only upgrading from "pawn" to "player," even if you've got allies and respect. There's still people with a lot more resources who've been in the game longer than you have.
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Oct 16, 2012 11:17
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I'll still stick with the theory that One day, Heck just went "Man, wouldn't it be awesome if I was a super secret agent?" and then did it
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Oct 16, 2012 13:49
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So, I'm just now starting to see that playing this game on Hard was a very, very bad idea. These hacking minigames...  I'm going to have to blow a lot of money on EMPs now aren't I.
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Oct 16, 2012 16:48
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