The demo gave us a glimpse of one of the missions as Thorton has to deal with some Russian weapons shipments. However, first you have to encounter a rather large and armed Russian lady spy who your character clearly has had a previous . . . association with.

The game's dialog menu will give players general actions rather than specific things to say. You can choose to cooperate with the "cougar" or attack. In our E3 demo the choice was made to cooperate with our "friends". The combat system is fairly standard third person action stuff but there are some cool things to do with the perks. One that was demoed in front of us was Fury mode, which added more hand-to-hand combat advantages.
Naturally you can choose to double cross your "friends" at some point in the mission but that can change the entire mission. Suddenly the "cougar" and her pals fire attacks on your character before retreating to fight another day. In between missions Thorton might hang out at his place to gather more intel and to change clothes. In another part of the demo we got to see how a different attitude towards interrogation (nice guy versus brutality) will get different information from an informant.

Oh, and we were promised that the sexual aspects of Alpha Protocol will still be a part of the game with the promise of three or four women who you might . . get along with to get information. If you play the game right your character might even become part of a threesome . .. no kidding.

Unlike other spy action games that have a lot of action and not much else, Alpha Protocol's RPG-based gameplay looks like it will give players a lot of extra dimension and choices. This is still high on our list of 2009 games and we hope the final product turns out to match our expectations.