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DeveloperPosts: 8348 Alpha Protocol design interview with Chris Avellone & Co « on: April 08, 2010, 07:26:57 pm »



If you're an aspiring game developer, you might enjoy Chris Avellone's " Kitchen Sink Theory of Game Design and Gamer Perception " lecture and even learn a thing or two.



* * *

1. While most players tend to agree that hacking a goblin in an isometric dungeon with your trusty axe is definitely an RPG, shooting a mercenary in the face in a first or third person modern city produces mixed opinions, doubts, and confusion. So, what's the difference between a shooter with RPG elements and a first/third person RPG?



Chris Avellone: In Alpha Protocol, the genre defined the 3rd person player perspective and the amount of action/shooting/stealthing the game should have. The game is an espionage RPG, which means we present spy challenges, combat challenges, character progression, and attribute changes based on the genre conventions. So what does that mean for the RPG experience? Well:



- Being a spy conjures (excuse the irony) forth images of infiltrating an area undetected. So, you are rewarded for being stealthy and avoiding detection as much as if you'd killed someone in your path. 3rd person was the best way to communicate this aspect in the game.



- We wanted martial arts, which we felt was key to the Bourne experience - the ability to perform satisfying martial arts moves in 1st person is harder to do than in 3rd person. Much of the emotional payoff from hand to hand combat is being able to see exactly how your kicks and punches connect with the enemy, so again, we felt 3rd person was a good choice.



- We wanted the player to identify with Michael Thorton, which means we wanted him visible during the action.



There are other genre conventions as well, although they don't break down by camera perspective or shooter vs. 1st/3rd person RPGs. We wanted the player to use intel, hacking, and lockpicking and have these actions reward you with experience, information, and knowledge of an area or a subject and make you a better spy. We also wanted to make sure we gave the player options based on what actually transpires in the mission - if your superiors tell you not to kill or kill, avoid detection or be obvious, you can choose to accomplish it however you want based on your judgment and the circumstances.



The short answer is we wanted Alpha Protocol's RPG elements and camera perspective make sense within the genre, and that's what we were striving for.



2. When commenting on System Shock 2, which many consider an RPG, you said:



"System Shock 2 was almost a role-playing game. Almost. They had the character stuff down, the skill stuff down, but you never really made a choice, in my opinion. The ending was set; your path was set. If, at one point, there was a moment where you could've made one decision that changed the ending, that would've made it a barebones role-playing game, and a good one."



Bioshock gives you a few choices, yet it's a pale shadow of its glorious predecessor. Mass Effect 2 has much better choices than the first game, yet it's a shooter with choices (unless, of course, you disagree). Any thoughts?



Chris Avellone: Bioshock is a shooter with choices, it's the lack of character construction phase that prevents an RPG comparison. This is fine because Bioshock's not billed that way and I had a lot of fun (and fear) while playing it. I also don't mean the a set persona for the main character prevents the RPG experience, either, I'm talking about the choices in building that persona with different paths at the outset, which you had in System Shock 2 with the interactive career path options.



Regardless, I did not go into SS2 expecting an RPG. What I did get was a great game. There's a reason I continually cite System Shock 2 as a "design doc" game developers should play - it got so many things about the game experience right, it's a must-play title.



3. I'm sure that when you started working on Alpha Protocol you looked at many different designs - above mentioned SS2, Deus Ex, which was cited as an inspiration for AP, Bloodlines, the Thief games, Bioshock, Mass Effect, etc. What, in your opinions, are the best design decisions that any developer should pay attention to before attempting to design a similar game? Which mistakes should be avoided? Basically, when it comes to "first/third person RPG with guns", what works and what doesn't?



Chris Parker: The biggest problem we ran into was trying to balance the action game and maintain the things we think are important in RPGs. For example, you can't have a high action shooter with bad weapon mechanics - so when you are figuring out how you want your RPG system to work, you need to work against some of the typical RPG clichés like having your ability to-hit determined by skill. Instead you need to embrace all the great things about the first or third person shooter, and then figure out how to make your RPG without screwing those things up.



Matt MacLean: What worked for us is deciding how much we wanted the game to be player-skill-driven vs. character-skill-driven and stick to it. For instance - we were okay with making the player actually aim, shoot, and take cover via action controls and not a tactical menu were you select attack or defend - if you can't play an FPS, you probably can't play our game but to try and accommodate that level of action handicap would require making two different games.



From there, we knew we wanted the game to be theoretically beatable if you never used any RPG skills but were just ridiculously good at action gaming - not because we wanted the player to ignore the cool abilities we offer, but because giving the player the choice to put points anywhere means we can't make progression contingent on any one ability - so we were okay with skills you didn't invest in getting less useful vs. enemies rising in power as the game goes on - there's just never any obstacle that requires any one certain skill.



We also decided we wanted only a few vectors of randomness in the action - a bucking SMG fires in a cone (not directly down range in laser beam line) so that might be random, but the damage it causes is not and the bad guy doesn't have a random chance to dodge. When you upgrade your skills, weapons, etc. your weapons have a tighter cone, your shots do more damage, you suffer less inaccuracy running or sustaining fire, and you open up more ways to get super accurate shots - so upgrading Mike's skill acts as a way to improve your action gameplay, but even an un-skilled Mike could dispatch every enemy in the game with a savvy (and determined) player controlling him.



4. Why did you end up going with separate gun skills whereas everything else is rolled into single Sabotage or Technical Aptitude skills? I've heard theories that a single Firearms skill is better than "obsessive focus on combat skills" . Even the Deus Ex skillset was a lot longer, if memory serves me right.



Chris Avellone: Each weapon in Alpha Protocol has a personality - while playing, I found assault rifles and pistols suited me for my stealth/suave path, and I used each weapon in a noticeably different way in the environment: pistols were an excellent companion for stealth, for example, due to the silencers and the incredible precision shooting (the tradeoff is you have to get close enough to make it work) and assault rifles were sloppier but with an excellent range, allowing me to remotely target and dispatch enemies with subsonic rounds (which requires patient aim). I had initially intended to use the assault rifle solely as a backup weapon for enemies at a distance if I tripped an alarm, then I changed my use of it once I was able to contact weapons dealers to get the ammo I needed to make it more effective. Once I got subsonic rounds, I used those bullets sparingly to stealth kill opponents from a greater distance when I couldn't sneak in close enough. In general, I found the pistol's default silencer makes it better for stealth reliability.



On my aggressive playthrough, I decided I was going to arm myself as if I didn't care about the whole world knowing my presence no matter how many alarms were going off, so I fell back on shotguns for close-quarter ambushes (drawing enemy attention, then taking cover and lying in wait for them to run around the corner - or bust down the door - then blast them all at once). I also used submachine guns for clusters of enemies I took by surprise or reinforcements funneling from a common entry point. This had its own consequences in the game, but it was my decision to mow down anything that got in my path.



In any event, the weapon skills have sufficient personality and environment usages to make them merit their own skills on a par with Martial Arts, Stealth, and the tech line.



Matt MacLean: "Everything Else" isn't rolled into two skills - the play has 4 shooting skills plus Stealth, Toughness, Martial Arts, Technical Aptitude, and Sabotage. Guns are the most expedient and straight-forward way of dealing with enemies in Alpha Protocol - not necessarily the best way, but it certainly takes the least amount of mental effort to point and shoot. Rolling every weapon skill into one shooting skill would present something of a no-brainer - you'd be hard-pressed not to put all your points into it every time you play the game. Additionally, we have a ton of weapon abilities and if we wanted to roll all the cool things you can do with all the guns in the game, you'd need to make several dozen ranks of the skill to unlock all the abilities (not to mention the iterative steps of each ability from early-game dabbling version to end-game master edition) or we'd be overloading each rank with more information than we want the player to have to track - or the player would find that they're wading through several ranks of this one single skill collecting bonuses for weapons they never plan on using and that hashes the buzz of a good character building flow.



5. What are the advantages of the AP dialogue system? Why did you go with this setup instead of more traditional [for BIS/Obsidian folks] dialogue trees or a Mass Effect-like system where you get a brief outline of what you're about to say? Also, what does the timer add, in your opinion?



Chris Avellone: The goal was to create a cinematic spy experience with a sense of urgency, and the dialogue system accomplishes that. A timed dialogue system is more true to the genre (sense of pressure, commitment of your decisions, and spurring the player to make sure they've done their homework before going into a conversation they can't take back).



Like 24, we want you to feel tense and on edge, even during conversations. In focus tests we've done, it's certainly worked. During EmSense testing (a testing procedure that puts sensors on people's heads, then tracks their brainwaves during playtests) the amount of engagement the player had during a dialogue in Alpha Protocol was comparable to a combat sequence, something other RPGs hadn't exhibited before, and that's a good thing.



6. One couldn't help but notice that there are no dialogue skills. Can you comment on this design decision?



Chris Avellone: When you see a Speech skill in a role-playing game, it's usually the "correct" response. That's not much of a choice. So we made the "speech skill" based on actions you take in the game world including research, paying attention to cues in the dialogue, your attitude when speaking to someone, the amount of Intel you've gathered or purchased, and how you treat other people - not just the person you're talking to. We want you to act the way you want when choosing a stance or action, not have a skill point you to the "best" option.



In addition, dialogue in Alpha Protocol is complicated in that you don't always want to succeed in a conventional speech check against someone. In the spy feel of the game, there are many positive and negative repercussions to dealing with folks that pay off immediately (which is how players have been trained with Speech) but also longer-term counterbalancing positive and negative repercussions (which do undermine how Speech skills are perceived). By the end of the game, there isn't always a clear win when all's said and done - just reactivity.



In short, the payoffs for a response or behavior that would be typically defined by a short-term Speech skill success are often "too soon to tell," both immediately and in missions down the road.



7. The choices aspect has been mentioned quite often and supported by numerous, heart-warming examples. For example, you mentioned this weapon dealer in several interviews:



"The best examples we’ve talked about is, if you encounter this one weapons dealer, you have the choice to let him go, or to bring him in for questioning. And clearly bringing him in for questioning and cutting off all arms traffic in the region and the resulting destruction, is a good thing. But then it’s quite clear that if you do that, you’re going to lose your connection to the guy who’s a much bigger target. So then you say, “well crap, if I let this guy free, there’s a greater chance I’m going to find the big guy. But at the same time, if I let that guy go free, he’s going to cause a certain amount of damage."



Can you clarify a few things for me? First, what does "he's going to cause a certain amount of damage" mean gameplay-wise? Basically, how would letting the arm dealer go free affect my game? Second, what happens if I do the right thing [for my character] and bring in the small fish weapon dealer, thus losing the connection to the bigger target?



Chris Avellone: Without giving spoilers, the answer to your first question: the changes that take place from this trilemma are in boss reactivity, merchant availability, the armament (better or worse) for future adversaries in other optional and critical missions in the Op after the event takes place, availability of added caches, perks, bonus pay, additional intel options, and news reports (which aren't a game mechanic, per se, but they are designed to hit the player emotionally). It also affects reputation from your handler, and from the people you are fighting in your first Op. The answer to your second question: you lose a lot of resources and connections in the region, you lose access to better weapons, it causes changes in boss reactivity, loss of a vendor, and reputation changes in the NPCs involved with the Op.



The consequences aren't all bad, however, and the bonuses for arresting him have different (positive) consequences as well.



8. What are your thoughts on failing in games? i.e. "I played the game poorly, without really thinking about what I'm doing, and thus failed miserably." Is it possible to fail in Alpha Protocol? What happens if I keep disappointing my higher-ups at every step?



Chris Avellone: Just play the way you want to play. You get different rewards and consequences, and betraying or disobeying your superiors feels just as satisfying as carrying out their orders to the letter. We designed the interactions so that purposely disappointing your superiors with your attitude and approach also provided a feeling of satisfaction.



9. In a recent interview with Eurogamer you said:



"...we tried something different with it that I'm really happy about: we had less talking characters, which is a huge resource investment, and we just made them more reactive. I think the nice thing is that rather than just try and dump it into hundreds of different voice-acted parts, we chose a small selection of characters that you could more deeply interact with, and I know that from a narrative design standpoint, that ended up being far more satisfying to me."



This sounds like a very interesting design. Can you elaborate? By that I mean, tell us as much as possible about it as if you were teaching a class. Copy-pasting from design doc is allowed.



Chris Avellone: Class, my lecture and/or discussion is entitled the "kitchen sink theory of game design and gamer perception," and what I learned way back when at Black Isle (groans from class, followed by "not BIS again").



The lesson is this: you can achieve an equally compelling and I'd argue, more compelling story with fewer, deeper characters than a thousand shallow ones.



That, however, is only one of the points I learned and applied concerning a title I worked on back at Obsidian Entertainment before they rose to power and took control of the Western Seaboard (hushed fear from class).



The first point is making fewer characters that are deeper and more reactive creates a more quality experience. We didn't have 40 companions in Torment, we had less than expected for similar titles, and I worried about that decision at the time. In the end, the choice was the right one. It's not just that, though.



Way back in 2010, once upon a time at an IGDA forum panel on story, I was asked what makes a good game story. I argued that a good game story can be achieved with a lot of reactivity, however you choose to implement it. If the story has the player's actions in the game at the forefront, the positive feedback loop is much stronger than a passive story the player is subjected to. I firmly believe that. That was the goal in Alpha Protocol 1, and it delivered, as evidenced by the recent releases of Alpha Protocol 12, Alpha Protocol: Hidden Agenda: International Politics Simulator, and Alpha Protocol: Global Thermonuclear War.



The second point I want to make is something that's largely either given the finger ("what's that," someone whispers, "is that an old symbol of disrespect in the 21st century?"), viewed negatively, or else given a dismissive shrug by the gaming community when you explain why you haven't included a feature in the game.



For example, you may be tempted to ask why don't you include a thousand deep interactive characters? We're paying for this shit, after all, it's the least you can do.



So right you are, you are paying for a quality experience... you in the back, shut up for a second or I'll activate the educational restraint collar... in a blue sky world (back when the skies were blue), having thousands of characters in a game with thousands of ways to interact seems ideal. Great.



The realities of game production, however, give you bookends and force yourself to ask how can you develop the same emotional reward without a ten year development cycle and a two year testing cycle? The unfortunate reality is you have X years, X languages, X amount for voice acting, and X people to make it happen. Your goal is to create a compelling story. Again, my answer is to add reactivity.



So in Alpha Protocol we achieved this by reducing the cast, not only because it complimented the genre (the central cast list in a Bond, Bourne, or Bauer production isn't large - although in 24, the emotional switchbacks among the cast are very high) but because it would create a better story.



Class dismissed.



10. How linear or non-linear Alpha Protocol is? Mass Effect 2, for example, had many interesting choices, but if I wanted to replay the game, the replay would be almost identical minus a few irrelevant in the end choices here and there. What should we expect from Alpha Protocol?



Chris Avellone: I don't expect people who reach the end-game to have the same results. One of our design visions was you can't reload the endgame 10 minutes before the end and hit all the different endings. While the opening mission is the most self-contained to get the player up to speed, what we shot for in Alpha Protocol is "hubs within hubs," and the idea was to include a range of missions in each hub that you could tackle in any order, and hopefully, by studying the mission details, you decide what mission you want to tackle based on your skill set and your preferred playstyle.



If you're focused on stealth, for example, you may want to tackle infiltration missions instead of the combat-oriented missions. If you've accumulated enough Intel and Dossier info on a contact, you may want to talk to them first before starting the other missions, and use what you learn from them (and what you hide from them) to your advantage.



In short, the choices you make in these missions can result in different missions, different objectives, different handlers on missions, different perks, different boss battles with different tactics, email exchanges, new merchant options (and unique weapon options), and the unveiling of hidden agendas.



* * *

Well, I'm definitely intrigued. Alpha Protocol is a day-one purchase for me, so you can expect my impressions shortly after the release and a full review 2-3 weeks after.





I've had a chat with several Alpha Protocol people: Chris Parker - Executive Producer/Project Director, Chris Avellone - Lead Designer, and Matt MacLean - Systems Lead, so if there is something you'd like to know about the game, there is a good chance that you'll find the answer in this 6-page long interview.If you're an aspiring game developer, you might enjoy Chris Avellone's "" lecture and even learn a thing or two.In Alpha Protocol, the genre defined the 3rd person player perspective and the amount of action/shooting/stealthing the game should have. The game is an espionage RPG, which means we present spy challenges, combat challenges, character progression, and attribute changes based on the genre conventions. So what does that mean for the RPG experience? Well:- Being a spy conjures (excuse the irony) forth images of infiltrating an area undetected. So, you are rewarded for being stealthy and avoiding detection as much as if you'd killed someone in your path. 3rd person was the best way to communicate this aspect in the game.- We wanted martial arts, which we felt was key to the Bourne experience - the ability to perform satisfying martial arts moves in 1st person is harder to do than in 3rd person. Much of the emotional payoff from hand to hand combat is being able to see exactly how your kicks and punches connect with the enemy, so again, we felt 3rd person was a good choice.- We wanted the player to identify with Michael Thorton, which means we wanted him visible during the action.There are other genre conventions as well, although they don't break down by camera perspective or shooter vs. 1st/3rd person RPGs. We wanted the player to use intel, hacking, and lockpicking and have these actions reward you with experience, information, and knowledge of an area or a subject and make you a better spy. We also wanted to make sure we gave the player options based on what actually transpires in the mission - if your superiors tell you not to kill or kill, avoid detection or be obvious, you can choose to accomplish it however you want based on your judgment and the circumstances.The short answer is we wanted Alpha Protocol's RPG elements and camera perspective make sense within the genre, and that's what we were striving for.Bioshock is a shooter with choices, it's the lack of character construction phase that prevents an RPG comparison. This is fine because Bioshock's not billed that way and I had a lot of fun (and fear) while playing it. I also don't mean the a set persona for the main character prevents the RPG experience, either, I'm talking about the choices in building that persona with different paths at the outset, which you had in System Shock 2 with the interactive career path options.Regardless, I did not go into SS2 expecting an RPG. What I did get was a great game. There's a reason I continually cite System Shock 2 as a "design doc" game developers should play - it got so many things about the game experience right, it's a must-play title.The biggest problem we ran into was trying to balance the action game and maintain the things we think are important in RPGs. For example, you can't have a high action shooter with bad weapon mechanics - so when you are figuring out how you want your RPG system to work, you need to work against some of the typical RPG clichés like having your ability to-hit determined by skill. Instead you need to embrace all the great things about the first or third person shooter, and then figure out how to make your RPG without screwing those things up.What worked for us is deciding how much we wanted the game to be player-skill-driven vs. character-skill-driven and stick to it. For instance - we were okay with making the player actually aim, shoot, and take cover via action controls and not a tactical menu were you select attack or defend - if you can't play an FPS, you probably can't play our game but to try and accommodate that level of action handicap would require making two different games.From there, we knew we wanted the game to be theoretically beatable if you never used any RPG skills but were just ridiculously good at action gaming - not because we wanted the player to ignore the cool abilities we offer, but because giving the player the choice to put points anywhere means we can't make progression contingent on any one ability - so we were okay with skills you didn't invest in getting less useful vs. enemies rising in power as the game goes on - there's just never any obstacle that requires any one certain skill.We also decided we wanted only a few vectors of randomness in the action - a bucking SMG fires in a cone (not directly down range in laser beam line) so that might be random, but the damage it causes is not and the bad guy doesn't have a random chance to dodge. When you upgrade your skills, weapons, etc. your weapons have a tighter cone, your shots do more damage, you suffer less inaccuracy running or sustaining fire, and you open up more ways to get super accurate shots - so upgrading Mike's skill acts as a way to improve your action gameplay, but even an un-skilled Mike could dispatch every enemy in the game with a savvy (and determined) player controlling him.Each weapon in Alpha Protocol has a personality - while playing, I found assault rifles and pistols suited me for my stealth/suave path, and I used each weapon in a noticeably different way in the environment: pistols were an excellent companion for stealth, for example, due to the silencers and the incredible precision shooting (the tradeoff is you have to get close enough to make it work) and assault rifles were sloppier but with an excellent range, allowing me to remotely target and dispatch enemies with subsonic rounds (which requires patient aim). I had initially intended to use the assault rifle solely as a backup weapon for enemies at a distance if I tripped an alarm, then I changed my use of it once I was able to contact weapons dealers to get the ammo I needed to make it more effective. Once I got subsonic rounds, I used those bullets sparingly to stealth kill opponents from a greater distance when I couldn't sneak in close enough. In general, I found the pistol's default silencer makes it better for stealth reliability.On my aggressive playthrough, I decided I was going to arm myself as if I didn't care about the whole world knowing my presence no matter how many alarms were going off, so I fell back on shotguns for close-quarter ambushes (drawing enemy attention, then taking cover and lying in wait for them to run around the corner - or bust down the door - then blast them all at once). I also used submachine guns for clusters of enemies I took by surprise or reinforcements funneling from a common entry point. This had its own consequences in the game, but it was my decision to mow down anything that got in my path.In any event, the weapon skills have sufficient personality and environment usages to make them merit their own skills on a par with Martial Arts, Stealth, and the tech line."Everything Else" isn't rolled into two skills - the play has 4 shooting skills plus Stealth, Toughness, Martial Arts, Technical Aptitude, and Sabotage. Guns are the most expedient and straight-forward way of dealing with enemies in Alpha Protocol - not necessarily the best way, but it certainly takes the least amount of mental effort to point and shoot. Rolling every weapon skill into one shooting skill would present something of a no-brainer - you'd be hard-pressed not to put all your points into it every time you play the game. Additionally, we have a ton of weapon abilities and if we wanted to roll all the cool things you can do with all the guns in the game, you'd need to make several dozen ranks of the skill to unlock all the abilities (not to mention the iterative steps of each ability from early-game dabbling version to end-game master edition) or we'd be overloading each rank with more information than we want the player to have to track - or the player would find that they're wading through several ranks of this one single skill collecting bonuses for weapons they never plan on using and that hashes the buzz of a good character building flow.The goal was to create a cinematic spy experience with a sense of urgency, and the dialogue system accomplishes that. A timed dialogue system is more true to the genre (sense of pressure, commitment of your decisions, and spurring the player to make sure they've done their homework before going into a conversation they can't take back).Like 24, we want you to feel tense and on edge, even during conversations. In focus tests we've done, it's certainly worked. During EmSense testing (a testing procedure that puts sensors on people's heads, then tracks their brainwaves during playtests) the amount of engagement the player had during a dialogue in Alpha Protocol was comparable to a combat sequence, something other RPGs hadn't exhibited before, and that's a good thing.When you see a Speech skill in a role-playing game, it's usually the "correct" response. That's not much of a choice. So we made the "speech skill" based on actions you take in the game world including research, paying attention to cues in the dialogue, your attitude when speaking to someone, the amount of Intel you've gathered or purchased, and how you treat other people - not just the person you're talking to. We want you to act the way you want when choosing a stance or action, not have a skill point you to the "best" option.In addition, dialogue in Alpha Protocol is complicated in that you don't always want to succeed in a conventional speech check against someone. In the spy feel of the game, there are many positive and negative repercussions to dealing with folks that pay off immediately (which is how players have been trained with Speech) but also longer-term counterbalancing positive and negative repercussions (which do undermine how Speech skills are perceived). By the end of the game, there isn't always a clear win when all's said and done - just reactivity.In short, the payoffs for a response or behavior that would be typically defined by a short-term Speech skill success are often "too soon to tell," both immediately and in missions down the road.Without giving spoilers, the answer to your first question: the changes that take place from this trilemma are in boss reactivity, merchant availability, the armament (better or worse) for future adversaries in other optional and critical missions in the Op after the event takes place, availability of added caches, perks, bonus pay, additional intel options, and news reports (which aren't a game mechanic, per se, but they are designed to hit the player emotionally). It also affects reputation from your handler, and from the people you are fighting in your first Op. The answer to your second question: you lose a lot of resources and connections in the region, you lose access to better weapons, it causes changes in boss reactivity, loss of a vendor, and reputation changes in the NPCs involved with the Op.The consequences aren't all bad, however, and the bonuses for arresting him have different (positive) consequences as well.Just play the way you want to play. You get different rewards and consequences, and betraying or disobeying your superiors feels just as satisfying as carrying out their orders to the letter. We designed the interactions so that purposely disappointing your superiors with your attitude and approach also provided a feeling of satisfaction.Class, my lecture and/or discussion is entitled the "kitchen sink theory of game design and gamer perception," and what I learned way back when at Black Isle (groans from class, followed by "not BIS again").The lesson is this: you can achieve an equally compelling and I'd argue, more compelling story with fewer, deeper characters than a thousand shallow ones.That, however, is only one of the points I learned and applied concerning a title I worked on back at Obsidian Entertainment before they rose to power and took control of the Western Seaboard (hushed fear from class).The first point is making fewer characters that are deeper and more reactive creates a more quality experience. We didn't have 40 companions in Torment, we had less than expected for similar titles, and I worried about that decision at the time. In the end, the choice was the right one. It's not just that, though.Way back in 2010, once upon a time at an IGDA forum panel on story, I was asked what makes a good game story. I argued that a good game story can be achieved with a lot of reactivity, however you choose to implement it. If the story has the player's actions in the game at the forefront, the positive feedback loop is much stronger than a passive story the player is subjected to. I firmly believe that. That was the goal in Alpha Protocol 1, and it delivered, as evidenced by the recent releases of Alpha Protocol 12, Alpha Protocol: Hidden Agenda: International Politics Simulator, and Alpha Protocol: Global Thermonuclear War.The second point I want to make is something that's largely either given the finger ("what's that," someone whispers, "is that an old symbol of disrespect in the 21st century?"), viewed negatively, or else given a dismissive shrug by the gaming community when you explain why you haven't included a feature in the game.For example, you may be tempted to ask why don't you include a thousand deep interactive characters? We're paying for this shit, after all, it's the least you can do.So right you are, you are paying for a quality experience... you in the back, shut up for a second or I'll activate the educational restraint collar... in a blue sky world (back when the skies were blue), having thousands of characters in a game with thousands of ways to interact seems ideal. Great.The realities of game production, however, give you bookends and force yourself to ask how can you develop the same emotional reward without a ten year development cycle and a two year testing cycle? The unfortunate reality is you have X years, X languages, X amount for voice acting, and X people to make it happen. Your goal is to create a compelling story. Again, my answer is to add reactivity.So in Alpha Protocol we achieved this by reducing the cast, not only because it complimented the genre (the central cast list in a Bond, Bourne, or Bauer production isn't large - although in 24, the emotional switchbacks among the cast are very high) but because it would create a better story.Class dismissed.I don't expect people who reach the end-game to have the same results. One of our design visions was you can't reload the endgame 10 minutes before the end and hit all the different endings. While the opening mission is the most self-contained to get the player up to speed, what we shot for in Alpha Protocol is "hubs within hubs," and the idea was to include a range of missions in each hub that you could tackle in any order, and hopefully, by studying the mission details, you decide what mission you want to tackle based on your skill set and your preferred playstyle.If you're focused on stealth, for example, you may want to tackle infiltration missions instead of the combat-oriented missions. If you've accumulated enough Intel and Dossier info on a contact, you may want to talk to them first before starting the other missions, and use what you learn from them (and what you hide from them) to your advantage.In short, the choices you make in these missions can result in different missions, different objectives, different handlers on missions, different perks, different boss battles with different tactics, email exchanges, new merchant options (and unique weapon options), and the unveiling of hidden agendas.Well, I'm definitely intrigued. Alpha Protocol is a day-one purchase for me, so you can expect my impressions shortly after the release and a full review 2-3 weeks after. Logged