Alpha Protocol, a flawed classic This review contains spoilers. Tl;dr: Espionage role-playing game from Obsidian. You assume the role of Mike Thorton, a member of Alpha Protocol. Choices and deep story make for a fun game, if you can look through its numerous flaws and bugs. Recommended Platforms tested Windows desktop Steam Deck Pros Story Choices are more than changing the colour of the ending. The Story Setting Cons Doesn’t have all the latest improvements on Steam Still quite buggy Checkpoint system can make you lose progress if you don’t pay attention to it. Things to know? Doesn’t have all the latest improvements on Steam This is an old version, which has broken gamepad support. What is Alpha Protocol? Alpha Protocol was originally released in 2010 for the PS3, X360 and PC. Developed by Obsidian Entertainment, the game is a third-person shooter where the players control Mike Thorton, an agent for the titular Alpha Protocol. Released in a quite broken state, it has since gathered a following, where many fans claim that it is one of the best Obsidian RPGs around. It was briefly delisted from Steam in 2019 but returned in 2024. Overview of the Story and Gameplay In Alpha Protocol, you take the role of Michael “Mike” Thorton who serves as an operative in the titular Alpha Protocol. After Thorton is abandoned by his government, he sets out to find the people responsible and to save the world. Alpha Protocol is a third-person Role Playing game and a cover shooter. The game is divided into different hubs where you set out on different type of missions. The missions usually are combat missions where you infiltrate a set location to steal data, assassinate or do other things. How you approach these missions is up to you. You can either go guns blazing or take the stealthier approach or a mix of both. Your approach to your missions can affect greatly both follow up missions as well as how other characters view you. Sometimes you have more compact missions, where the only objective is to talk. Speaking of talking, your choices matter and can change the story and affect other missions quite a lot. During dialogue, you can take one of three approaches with your choices. You can be aggressive, suave or professional. Different characters prefer different type of approaches, and you can gain or lose reputation points based on your answers, which in turn affects your future interactions with said characters and even with other characters. In between missions you can find yourself in one of the safe houses, replying to emails, checking intel and trading and equipping equipment. You can also change your character appearance freely from set options, such as beard or glasses. As Mike gains more experience, your character will level up and can gain new skills and further specialize in different aspects of operative life. The skill tree offers both passive and active skills. The Tech Alpha Protocol is from 2010, and it’s made by Obsidian. As such, one should expect plenty of bugs in the game such as mechanics not working correctly, characters getting stuck or enemies not spawning at all. There are also few glitches on modern computers where the graphic effects are not working correctly, and one will notice those effects having issues immediately. The game runs on Unreal Engine 3 and thus offers possibilities for modding and extending support for some features, like ultra-wide support. The game caps the frame rate to 60 or to 62 without modifying configuration files. The graphical options are okay, allowing players to customize settings such as SpeedTree quality (controls detail levels of trees) and motion blur. The game supports variety of resolutions and allows players to choose windowed mode if preferred. The motion blur is horrible, and I highly recommend disabling it. In control options, you can enable or disable control options. If controller is not enabled here, it won’t work. As many games of this era, you may need to restart the game if you turned on your controller after launching the game or if you need to reconnect your controller. The game supports other than XInput controllers only on GOG version. The audio is 2.0 and you need to use a workaround to get surround sound working. The game sound settings offer customization, and dialogue can usually be heard just fine. The game offers subtitle settings but subtitles do not work for all cutscenes, namely for the introduction movie and the ending. Few typos are still present after all these years. Miscellaneous DLC: The game has no DLC on PC, it had preorder DLC on consoles. Achievements: The game has no Achievements on Steam, it does have them on consoles and on GOG. My opinions Alpha Protocol isn’t the easiest game to review. On one hand, the story, setting and writing really are at outstanding level. On the other hand, the numerous technical issues and bugs can make playing the game at times a very frustrating experience. To give some context, you can try to be stealthy and suddenly the alarm rings because enemy saw you through the walls or spawned right on top of you. These frustrations can become even more issue with how the game saves using a checkpoint system. There are no ways to save between checkpoints. If you make a mistake in some of the missions, you may have to replay quite a long part of the game or if you make a mistake you want to remedy and the checkpoint saves, you’re stuck with your choice or mistake if you didn’t make a manual save of the checkpoint earlier. However, the story and setting really stand out. The writers offer no ways to save everyone and everything and make you think about your choices. The game does not offer options to pause during the dialogues so sometimes you may impulsively condemn a group of people to death, even without meaning to. The story has multiple endings, which means you can play it again and again to check different approaches and story elements. Apart from its technical issues and outdated design choices and technical constraints, Alpha Protocol is truly a great game and refreshing experience. I highly recommend giving it a try.
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