Alpha Protocol - Obsidian's action RPG

mothra on 9/6/2010 at 09:41

zyg, how did you turn marburg ? I had him on +10friendship and he never said anything, leland offered me a Halbech job that I turned down, Marburg offered me a VIC job I turned down. And how did you get to Scarlet ? I downloaded the PDA and got the message from deng. then I can only save mina. then I kick the shit out of parker and the underground level is done.....

and I did almost the same in my last playthrough as recruit and get Leland as Boss instead of Yancy...I can't remember what I did the first time to get him.

did anyone join halbech btw ?

steo on 9/6/2010 at 15:18

Very minor spoilers...

So I'm on my second run, this time on hard skill and recruit. I've invested all my points into stealth, plus two ranks in sabotage and martial arts. So far, the games been more challenging than last time, when I went pistols/tech/sabotage. The only problem with being pure stealth is that boss fights tend to be much harder. Where before I could take out most bosses with a chained shot or two, now I'm facing most boss fights with almost no combat skills.

I went to do the bugging missions in Rome, for all the blackmail money, then went to Moscow. The Sis fight was hard but manageable with the help of flashbangs + point blank shots to the face with a shotty. I had to give up on the SIE fight, because trying to kill a boss at long range with regenerating armour and respawning guards and no assault rifle at my disposal seemed impossible.

Anyway, now I'm at the end of the mission where you have to save Surkov. This time I thought I'd try swapping the shotty out for SMGs and blitzed through most of the level using stealth kills. It did feel slightly ridiculous that I was able to use shadow operative and knife five guards in quick succession without being detected, but I suppose it would have been equally easy to do using chain-shot. As you can probably guess, I'm now stuck at the end of the level where you have to protect Surkov. I can't even defeat the first wave of scumbags without me or Surkov dying. If I try using stealth, Surkov ends up dead, my weapons are no match for that number of commandos and can't throw out enough flashbangs/shock grenades quickly enough to immobilise all the enemies before one of the kills me/surkov.

So, anyone have any ideas other than go do some other missions and get more weapon skills?

mothra on 9/6/2010 at 15:39

you have to leave the buildng on the base level so you come out directly behind surkov. don't use the higher ground + sniper rifle (if you even got the option), then turn on shadow and run up to vehicle the VCI spawn from. if you position yourself to the side of the vehicle nearer to the embassy exit all VCI will spawn right in front of you and you can take down 5 guys during shadow-time. then shove in epinephrine spike and kick down the other guards. I used stealth/toughness/martial for my unarmed run. as long as you kill them in quick succession you won't be overwhelmed and the mission ends quick. if you take your time more and more will spawn until you finished off a certain amount of them. it also helps if you entered the embassy using conversation with the guards so they are not hostile and concentrate on protecting surkov instead of shooting you. and during shadow take down the ones nearer to surkov first when you run over to the vehicle or he will die immediately. once you decloaked the rest of VCI will concentrate on you.

PS: always take down from the front, never from the behind the enemy. takedowns are 2times quicker this way.

Sulphur on 9/6/2010 at 18:15

Okay, so I'm about two hours in and it's been interesting. The UI and control flaws are painfully obvious. Some cursory and perplexing things I noticed:

* Right click cancels out of miscellaneous screens like the skills/gadgets wheel but not Esc.
* Highlighting things with the mouse on that skills/gadgets wheel is a bit weird.
* The weapons shops take an annoying 3-4 seconds to load, and buying and selling stuff involves another two second delay for no apparent reason.
* The closed-in environments and lack of options to improvise thanks to the restrictive environmental 'hotspot' system, where you can leap onto a balcony two feet away only if the designers felt you should be able to.
* The inability to move past ankle high obstructions forcing me to, at one point, having to circle around and past a couple of cameras to a door instead of cutting straight through.
* Little loading stutters in the middle of a level while you're moving around, freezing for an instant and causing the game to do the herky-jerk dance for a second or two and then unspool all your mouse/keyboard input from just before the load, causing you to blunder into the enemy patrol you were just trying to avoid.
* Reloading checkpoints puts you in plain sight of people you were avoiding and probably sets off alarms for good measure. Somebody ought to rename the reload button to the 'insta-buttfuck' button for this game.

I'm still having fun though. The dialogue system is nice, stealth is hard but satisfying when you can pull it off, and the missions have been pretty interesting so far.

Also, I don't get the complaints about the graphics. Sure there's weird glitches here and there, and the animation's not the best in the world, but everything looks nice, if not exceptional. Things seem a little too anchored in place - looks like there aren't many environmental objects given any physics attributes. But still pretty enough to be slightly above average, IMO.

Also, is it my imagination or are the textures at a slightly higher resolution than average on the PC? Or maybe that's just overuse of a sharpen filter or something.

mothra on 9/6/2010 at 19:52

I don't have any complaints about the graphics either. but crouched mike could look a little better.

Jason Moyer on 9/6/2010 at 20:04

Uh, I like how there are subtle (well, and not so subtle) differences in certain scenes when playing as a Veteran. WTF is up with the hallucination part.

Zygoptera on 10/6/2010 at 07:11

Quote Posted by mothra

Marburg: you have to complete his dossier and pick the dossier conversation option as well as have the high rep- you get a bunch of XP and 5AP for it too. He doesn't actually help you at the end though, he just turned up after I iced Leland and says he won't fight you.

Scarlet: She's in the room directly across from where you get Deng's message or speak to Parker, behind a hackable door. If you look through the window you can see her sitting at a desk.

I just used the Sniper Rifle to protect Surkov (on hard), he had a couple of guards with him who provided enough meat shielding- it was basically bang x6, mission completed.

mothra on 10/6/2010 at 10:02

well, i think it's intentionally odd because you see the gelato guy from rome you did not even meet yet.

steo on 10/6/2010 at 12:27

I replayed the level with a shotgun and assault rifle and did it without too much difficulty. Still, with all my points in stealth and sabotage, every boss fight is a challenge. Quite the oversight on behalf of the developers.

mothra on 10/6/2010 at 12:43

if you know where brayko/marburg/deng appear or tend to seek cover you can lay traps there.
as a martial arts/stealth guy I lay 3 shocktraps and kick him one sequence (5 hits) and brayko/marburg is down in 30seconds on hard.

btw, you can kill brayko without using any skills. it's pretty easy, you just have to be patient. if you are near enough for melee attacks you have to time them right (never tap quickly, only use E once so you only hit him once). If you hit him the moment he starts to hit you/tries to stab you he will stop that animation and start again. If you manage to time it right you can just stand there and counter-kick without getting any damage, no respawning henchmen and no disco-blinding. It's boring but it works and is a sure win for any build.