1. Summary
2. Background
3. Hype

Alpha Protocol has been hyped as a massively customizable RPG set within a framework of spy fiction that only offers shades of moral grey, rather than good or bad absolutes. This is a lot to promise, and developers like BioWare have been claiming it this way and doing it another way for years. So maybe it's a little soon to proclaim the story superiority of Alpha Protocol, and the gameplay can't be that far behind.

The aforementioned choice of moral consequence is one of the most hyped aspects of the game. The developers expressly state in a developer video that they are aiming for the shades of grey where your character must perform questionable actions to achieve greater goals. While this is all good on paper, in reality it normally ends up being something much more along the lines of the traditional good and evil axis. BioShock was supposed to be a game of moral greys, but ended up judging your character at the very end based solely on the criteria of harvesting or saving Little Sisters. The excellent Jade Empire was intended to eschew the traditional good and evil motif for a passive versus aggressive theme, but the paths end up being something along the lines of saving someone's daughter or beating the snot out of her instead. When given the option, developers seem to follow this simple axis, and it's still unknown as to whether or not Alpha Protocol will manage to leap past this.

Alpha Protocol's gameplay hubs are argued to provide the game with a large amount of non-linearity. The same thing has been said about countless games over the years, and it's doubtful whether or not the game will truly be non-linear or rather just a bunch of side quests tacked on to a linear progression. A nice thing to have would be things like randomized missions or the capability to go anywhere to further multiple stories, but as of yet, nothing on this has been revealed. What a shame, too.

The customization and choice features are highly touted, but the game seems to offer little in the way of real or drastic changes. For example, you can be suave, inquisitive, aggressive, or downright violent in most NPC encounters, and these are all part of the spectrum of what I like to call "bad-ass responses." The game wants to make you seem like a hardcore spy, and only offers options to do so. Consequently, where is your support network, your list of operatives, or your safety net? Nowhere to be found in the current information on the game, that's for sure. We don't mean your handlers, we mean the security guard who you meet every Thursday for poker, or the buddy inside another intelligence agency which will help keep you under the radar. It's also unknown how robust that character creation will be, given that the videos always shows you as a white, shaved-head paramilitary operative.

The web of intrigue regarding the factions will undoubtedly be highly interesting, but we fear that it won't live up to the clout that the developer is giving it. It is being said that each faction is unique and influences your standing with all the other factions, but it is unclear as to whether or not this will have a significant effect on the gameplay or story. Sure, your handler tells you to go a different way, but you can essentially go wherever you want, and the factions (at least the revealed ones) seems to similar and homogenized to one another. This can be good, as it breeds familiarity, or bad, as it confuses players and leads to tedium. It's all in how the game is handled.

In short, Alpha Protocol is a game with a lot of potential. The developer diaries and gameplay videos are very intriguing, even if they smack heavily of "spy-based Mass Effect." It promises a lot, and will no doubt deliver on a few of those promises, but given the ups and downs of Obsidian in the past, it's a shot in the dark as to whether Alpha Protocol will be a truly amazing game or just average.