Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The news that spy-RPG Alpha Protocol has been delayed has been around for a while now, but official word of a spring release has just arrived from Sega. “Alpha Protocol, Obsidian Entertainment’s much anticipated RPG, will be moving to a Spring 2010 release date,” says the release. So no firm date, but it’s looking like around March for the game. lan Pritchard, European Managing Director at Sega said: “By pushing Alpha Protocol to Spring 2010, we can ensure that the game will be released in the best commercial release window possible and will also receive the focus this true AAA titles deserves.” And that’s probably for the best, as the game had a bit of a poor showing at E3, and John was pretty cautious about it in our coverage. Still, we’re all hoping for the best on what looks like one of the most interesting RPGs on the horizon. If this delay can give Obsidian the time they need to pull it off then we’ll be happy.

Over on Eurogamer today are a collection of my words and phrases, strung into a number of sentences intended to give a flavour of what Alpha Protocol, Obisidian’s upcoming secret agent RPG, is like. I begin approximately like so:

In a few minutes of videogame footage, in the face of lots of game-hungry industry folks, it’s vital to show several things, those things being: guns, guns being fired at someone, someone falling over when fired at with guns. Given that RPGs are as much about dialogue and narrative as they are about action, this approach is rather like promoting an album by stitching together all the choruses. Sure, it’s noisy and excited, but it’s also confusing and peculiar. For the same reason, E3 didn’t do Alpha Protocol many favours…

…and then get into what form the roleplaying and storytelling elements of the game take. Read it, do.

So we were complaining that upcoming spy-thriller RPG Alpha Protocol hadn’t shown us much of the actual game, particularly the dialogue. Well, that’s changed with this new trailer, which fleshes out the talky stuff a little better, and demonstrates some of the possibilities for being a bastard to the people you deal with. But it also has some neat in-game footage showing off some of the more interesting combat move. The bit where the player cuts from melee back to ranged weapon is most interesting. Anyway, take a look, as I think this is the most revealing trailer so far.
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Obsidian Entertainment are one of the healthier looking studios out there right now, having become veterans of NWN2 and KOTOR2, and now developing the as-yet-unrevealed Aliens RPG and Alpha Protocol. In the video beyond the jump they talk a bit about the premise for their original action RPG, which is set in a contemporary super-spy espionage scenario. It’s looking as talky as it is shooty, and looks like it might blend a kind of Splinter Cell approach to action with the kind of branching dialogue and quest options we’ve seen in their other games. An interesting an brave direction for the studio, and definitely a game worth monitoring in the coming months. Go take a look.
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