Junior Adventurer's Guild - April: Alpha Protocol

[logincrash]

Finished it again.

Just because it's a very fun game.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

@logincrash is weapons beside pistols are at least usable?

[logincrash]

@logincrash is weapons beside pistols are at least usable?

Assault rifles and shotguns are pretty good. SMGs are absolutely worthless.
The pistols are the best in pretty much any situation. Their special skill, Chain Shot, can down the hardest boss in two uses.
The rifles are good for mid-to-long ranges. The shotguns are fun to clear out rooms with, but they're lousy against bosses and suffer the same fate most shotguns do in vidya; the shots do literally nothing 10 feet out.
The SMG's are the worst weapon in the game. They're the only fully automatic weapons, but won't hit anything unless you fire in tiniest of bursts. So, you end up going through ammo crazy quickly.

[Tangerine]

Here's another one for the lovely month of December. Time was about 20 hours. Took a bit longer since I did a lot of mission restarts doing a no alarms run.

► Show Spoiler

Proof.

20241217194913_1.jpg

My build.

20241217193310_1.jpg

Sailing off into the sunset.

20241217194807_1.jpg

Here are some bits of writing that modern Obsidian would not have the balls to do today. They'd never do a rape joke, for one.

20241216195755_1.jpg

Nor would they use gay in a negative manner. That's problemophobic.

20241217185238_1.jpg

Of course, the rot was there even back then. What do they really mean by rich white guys?

20241217123921_1.jpg

@DagothGeas5 I'm going to do Shard of Spring next.

[DagothGeas5]

Here's another one for the lovely month of December. Time was about 20 hours. Took a bit longer since I did a lot of mission restarts doing a no alarms run.

► Show Spoiler

Proof.


My build.


Sailing off into the sunset.



Here are some bits of writing that modern Obsidian would not have the balls to do today. They'd never do a rape joke, for one.


Nor would they use gay in a negative manner. That's problemophobic.



Of course, the rot was there even back then. What do they really mean by rich white guys?

@DagothGeas5 I'm going to do Shard of Spring next.

Thank you Best of luck for your run!

[logincrash]

Remember when video games were actually made for the demographic that played them?

There are 5-6 named female characters in the game. 4 are romanceable, the 5th is making eyes at the PC, and the last one is a news anchor on TV.
The rest are manly men doing cool action/spy thriller **** the entire game.

[logincrash]

I'm a third of the way through my third playthrough. Alpha Protocol is just way too good when it comes to reactivity. Doing a "hated by everybody veteran exterminator total genocide" run right now, after the previous "everybody loves Thorton pacifist" run.
Also, there was some glitch with the Halbech data sale email that gave me $450mil. Had to use Cheat Engine just to set it back to 80-something thousand I had before.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

I'm a third of the way through my third playthrough. Alpha Protocol is just way too good when it comes to reactivity. Doing a "hated by everybody veteran exterminator total genocide" run right now, after the previous "everybody loves Thorton pacifist" run.
Also, there was some glitch with the Halbech data sale email that gave me $450mil. Had to use Cheat Engine just to set it back to 80-something thousand I had before.

Explain what do you mean by reactivity, please. Or if you have some video, please share.

[logincrash]

Explain what do you mean by reactivity, please. Or if you have some video, please share.

The way the game (characters, story) reacts to your actions.
Getting spotted or raising alarms on some missions means some characters lose respect for you because you're sloppy. Killing instead of being non-lethal also leads to some characters disliking you. Gathering dossiers on people can change their attitudes towards you and gives you more dialogue options. Even the order in which you do missions can change stuff.
The best and most reactive example is Grigori, a Russian intel broker in Moscow. If you go to him first thing after you finish the prologue, he doesn't know you and has no opinion of you. If you go to him after you've done a couple of missions in other places (Rome or Taipei), he's heard of you and knows your general reputation (Suave, Aggressive or Professional) and will react accordingly. And the way you behave with him also affects your future missions in Moscow. If you're aggressive or just outright beat his ***, he rats you out to everyone who will listen and future missions will have more dangerous guards. If you're professional and stiff, he only tells your target about you, who in turn has a higher opinion of you because of your professionalism. If you're suave and chill, he tells nobody about your presence and gives you access to black market dealers for free. Oh, and your target becomes unaware of your presence and this means you can fail a mission because said target doesn't trust you.
Basically, you can play the game two times and those two times can be completely different from each other.

Here's a very spoilery video about the game, how it was made, it's incredible highs and depressing lows:

The link is timestamped at the Choices and Consequences section. Don't watch if you care about being spoiled, obviously.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

Explain what do you mean by reactivity, please. Or if you have some video, please share.

The way the game (characters, story) reacts to your actions.
Getting spotted or raising alarms on some missions means some characters lose respect for you because you're sloppy. Killing instead of being non-lethal also leads to some characters disliking you. Gathering dossiers on people can change their attitudes towards you and gives you more dialogue options. Even the order in which you do missions can change stuff.
The best and most reactive example is Grigori, a Russian intel broker in Moscow. If you go to him first thing after you finish the prologue, he doesn't know you and has no opinion of you. If you go to him after you've done a couple of missions in other places (Rome or Taipei), he's heard of you and knows your general reputation (Suave, Aggressive or Professional) and will react accordingly. And the way you behave with him also affects your future missions in Moscow. If you're aggressive or just outright beat his ***, he rats you out to everyone who will listen and future missions will have more dangerous guards. If you're professional and stiff, he only tells your target about you, who in turn has a higher opinion of you because of your professionalism. If you're suave and chill, he tells nobody about your presence and gives you access to black market dealers for free. Oh, and your target becomes unaware of your presence and this means you can fail a mission because said target doesn't trust you.
Basically, you can play the game two times and those two times can be completely different from each other.

Here's a very spoilery video about the game, how it was made, it's incredible highs and depressing lows:

The link is timestamped at the Choices and Consequences section. Don't watch if you care about being spoiled, obviously.

Thank you for warning. Is russians are the one who is guilty in every problem in the world in this story?

[logincrash]

Explain what do you mean by reactivity, please. Or if you have some video, please share.

The way the game (characters, story) reacts to your actions.
Getting spotted or raising alarms on some missions means some characters lose respect for you because you're sloppy. Killing instead of being non-lethal also leads to some characters disliking you. Gathering dossiers on people can change their attitudes towards you and gives you more dialogue options. Even the order in which you do missions can change stuff.
The best and most reactive example is Grigori, a Russian intel broker in Moscow. If you go to him first thing after you finish the prologue, he doesn't know you and has no opinion of you. If you go to him after you've done a couple of missions in other places (Rome or Taipei), he's heard of you and knows your general reputation (Suave, Aggressive or Professional) and will react accordingly. And the way you behave with him also affects your future missions in Moscow. If you're aggressive or just outright beat his ***, he rats you out to everyone who will listen and future missions will have more dangerous guards. If you're professional and stiff, he only tells your target about you, who in turn has a higher opinion of you because of your professionalism. If you're suave and chill, he tells nobody about your presence and gives you access to black market dealers for free. Oh, and your target becomes unaware of your presence and this means you can fail a mission because said target doesn't trust you.
Basically, you can play the game two times and those two times can be completely different from each other.

Here's a very spoilery video about the game, how it was made, it's incredible highs and depressing lows:

The link is timestamped at the Choices and Consequences section. Don't watch if you care about being spoiled, obviously.

Thank you for warning. Is russians are the one who is guilty in every problem in the world in this story?

No, the Russians are barely involved in the overarching story. Moscow is just a distribution center for the Big Bad's weapon smuggling.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

The way the game (characters, story) reacts to your actions.
Getting spotted or raising alarms on some missions means some characters lose respect for you because you're sloppy. Killing instead of being non-lethal also leads to some characters disliking you. Gathering dossiers on people can change their attitudes towards you and gives you more dialogue options. Even the order in which you do missions can change stuff.
The best and most reactive example is Grigori, a Russian intel broker in Moscow. If you go to him first thing after you finish the prologue, he doesn't know you and has no opinion of you. If you go to him after you've done a couple of missions in other places (Rome or Taipei), he's heard of you and knows your general reputation (Suave, Aggressive or Professional) and will react accordingly. And the way you behave with him also affects your future missions in Moscow. If you're aggressive or just outright beat his ***, he rats you out to everyone who will listen and future missions will have more dangerous guards. If you're professional and stiff, he only tells your target about you, who in turn has a higher opinion of you because of your professionalism. If you're suave and chill, he tells nobody about your presence and gives you access to black market dealers for free. Oh, and your target becomes unaware of your presence and this means you can fail a mission because said target doesn't trust you.
Basically, you can play the game two times and those two times can be completely different from each other.

Here's a very spoilery video about the game, how it was made, it's incredible highs and depressing lows:

The link is timestamped at the Choices and Consequences section. Don't watch if you care about being spoiled, obviously.

Thank you for warning. Is russians are the one who is guilty in every problem in the world in this story?

No, the Russians are barely involved in the overarching story. Moscow is just a distribution center for the Big Bad's weapon smuggling.

That is very nice to hear. Now I definitely play this game.

[Tweed]

I WIN!

► Show Spoiler

spies.png

Now gibs badge!

[logincrash]

Okay, I think I'm finally done with Alpha Protocol for a while.

► Show Spoiler

TOTAL WESTRIDGE DEATH


Smoking a Cuban with Henry.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

Did anyone but me have the game shaking like that?

[rusty_shackleford]

Did anyone but me have the game shaking like that?

I don't know if you can, but try disabling motion blur?

[Faceless_Sentinel]

Did anyone but me have the game shaking like that?

I don't know if you can, but try disabling motion blur?

Turns out the settings from the game menu do not affect anything and I went to the configs, and there I found this(i have gog installer, during installation i choose russian language; putting russian "no" near MotionBlur= doesnt helped):

image.png

[logincrash]

Did anyone but me have the game shaking like that?

I don't know if you can, but try disabling motion blur?

Turns out the settings from the game menu do not affect anything and I went to the configs, and there I found this(i have gog installer, during installation i choose russian language; putting russian "no" near MotionBlur= doesnt helped):

It's not really apparent what's wrong with your game from the video but replace every "Да" with "True" and every "Нет" with "False" for starters.
If you're talking about Mike's walking/running animations being weird and snappy, that's just how he is. If you're talking about occasional micro-stutters, then that's just the game loading up the next chunk of the map. It happens nearly every time you're approaching a level transition, like the little corridor with the guard saying "No weapons past this point." between the screen room and the next hall
If your camera feels like it's shaking every time you move your mouse, try setting the "bSmoothFrameRate=FALSE" line back to "bSmoothFrameRate=TRUE" in the APEngine.ini file. It's located in "Documents\Alpha Protocol\APGame\Config" folder.

Unless, of course, your problem is with the motion blur. Then just do the True/False replacement and then set the "MotionBlur=false" line. Oh, and if the game rewrites the .ini file back to "Да/Нет," set the file to Read-only in the Properties.

[rusty_shackleford]

It's not really apparent what's wrong with your game from the video but replace every "Да" with "True" and every "Нет" with "False" for starters.

I just quickly glanced at the image and didn't even notice this

[logincrash]

It's not really apparent what's wrong with your game from the video but replace every "Да" with "True" and every "Нет" with "False" for starters.

I just quickly glanced at the image and didn't even notice this

I know, right? That's ******* weird.

[J1M]

@logincrash can you suggest an interesting build/self-imposed limitation for a second playthrough?

The first time I played this, I limited myself to "no guns".

[logincrash]

@logincrash can you suggest an interesting build/self-imposed limitation for a second playthrough?

The first time I played this, I limited myself to "no guns".

Try "gadgets only/stealth otherwise" build? Or you could try a "SMG only" run. That'd be quite a limitation to self-impose on yourself. Trying to kill every single person you meet is much more fun, as it requires some finagling and gathering all the dossiers you can. Or trying to bang every woman you meet. Or trying to go rogue and set up your own Alpha Protocol.
Frankly, the game is not that impressive when it comes to the day-to-day gameplay, so to speak. It shines when it comes to reactivity, but the actual gameplay isn't that great, especially by now.

[logincrash]

Okay, I think I'm finally done with Alpha Protocol for a while.

I lied.
Just finished it for the fourth time.

► Show Spoiler

LMAO

[Faceless_Sentinel]

Is killing or neutralizing enemies during missions affects anything at all? Im finished Saudi Arabia and Taiwan and nobody seems to care if i kill everybody or sneack and neutralize all enemies or shoot everybody with tranquilizer.

[Tangerine]

Is killing or neutralizing enemies during missions affects anything at all? Im finished Saudi Arabia and Taiwan and nobody seems to care if i kill everybody or sneack and neutralize all enemies or shoot everybody with tranquilizer.

Sometimes. Some characters, like SEI, will acknowledge that you went on a killing spree/didn't kill anyone, but others seem to ignore it. There's an early mission with the weapon's dealer where he'll accuse you of killing all his men, even if you do non-lethal takedowns on everyone.

[logincrash]

Is killing or neutralizing enemies during missions affects anything at all? Im finished Saudi Arabia and Taiwan and nobody seems to care if i kill everybody or sneack and neutralize all enemies or shoot everybody with tranquilizer.

Mina hates it when you kill civilians or US agents. Henry Leland keeps score and can mention it in some very specific circumstances. The Rome missions can change a couple of characters' opinion of you quite a bit. SIE loves it when you kill everything in your path. Albatross prefers you ghosting through missions completely. Steven Heck doesn't like being ordered not to kill people.
There are several cutscenes that show you killing people, but those don't count towards your Killed Total score.
Also, ghosting through missions gives the most XP but only at the end of a mission. Knocking out people (CQC or Tranq darts) gives a little less. Killing people gives the least XP.

[J1M]

Pretty interesting how different things can play out. First time through I didn't use guns at all. This time I went in loud. Had different allies, different voice lines, and a different final boss. The final fight was a lot more interesting when I limited myself to no guns though. A full Chain Shot plus a couple of follow-ups ended that fight in just a few seconds.

Everyone is probably aware of how powerful Chain Shot is, but I noticed if you hold back one of the shots it also acts as a heal in addition to eliminating multiple enemies since the real time elapsed counts for Thorton's armor regen.

[pol_345polex]

@rusty_shackleford Hope this type can suffice.

[rusty_shackleford]

@rusty_shackleford Hope this type can suffice.

@Oyster Sauce can this suffice?

[pol_345polex]

@rusty_shackleford Hope this type can suffice.

@Oyster Sauce can this suffice?

I'll wait to post the others then.