You Should Play Alpha Protocol

There are few fantasies as thoroughly explored as the international secret agent. The queen and country spying of James Bond, the nonstop thrills that chase Jason Bourne, even the anime-inspired over-the-top global politics of Metal Gear Solid—the idea of one person caught in a tangled web of espionage, seduction, and action has captivated audiences for over a century through books, movies, and those pesky little video games. 

Besides the aforementioned adventures of Solid Snake, games have also played host to Sam Fisher’s covert ops in Splinter Cell, Joanna Dark’s X-Files-esque intrigue in Perfect Dark, and the global conspiracies that line the Deus Ex series. But none of these examples focus on character and choice nearly as deeply or as satisfactorily as Alpha Protocol, a weird little RPG that time has chosen to forget…

Alpha Protocol is a 2010 RPG created by Obsidian Entertainment, published by SEGA, and released on the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. In the game, players assume the role of Michael Thorton, a newly minted special agent recruited into Alpha Protocol—a US-based black ops agency about which even the player is given basically no information. After a brief tutorial that optionally walks players through the basic concepts of the game’s stealth, gunfire, gadget, and conversation systems, it just starts going and doesn’t stop. This approach to getting players into the thick of the experience is such a treat, especially considering the era the game released in. But what really stands out in this intro is how off-kilter everything feels from the get-go. Thorton just kind of accepts what’s going on after waking up in Alpha Protocol’s base of operations and starts taking dudes out with measured prejudice. It’s great to see a game unafraid of throwing its core systems at the player fast and loose, and the option to entirely skip the little training courses in the second half of this section is a Godsend for repeat playthroughs.

Obsidian, as a development house, has always felt like a spunky and more-talented younger brother of bigger kids BioWare and Bethesda. It doesn’t help that some of the studio’s best work (Fallout: New Vegas, Knights of the Old Republic II, the expansions to Neverwinter Nights 2) are follow-ups to properties that already had stellar entries from these other studios. While Obsidian’s dedication to ambitious narratives and thorough player choice lets their work stand out, it’s hard to make a name for yourself when your catalogue is defined by other people’s properties. We could sit here and argue all day about how Obsidian’s work trumps anything they’ve ever had to produce a sequel to, and I will do that if forced, but Alpha Protocol was something entirely new. Indeed, it was the first wholly original project the studio saw through. It’s kind of strange in retrospect that the company that developed Pillars of Eternity and The Outer Worlds started that journey with the janky Alpha Protocol.

And that word is something we must address. “Jank” is a made-up term from hip-hop that video game writers co-opted as a way to write articles about how technically deficient certain games were without having to repeat “bug” and “glitch” too often. In the context of games, it means nothing and is a crutch of a word, much like saying a game’s controls are “floaty” or that something is the “best X of all time,” which are both absurd in their usage and meaningless. But I’m still using it here as a way to both A.) stand on this minute soap box and B.) transition into talking about the technical aspects of the game.

Alpha Protocol has generally impressive visuals for 2010 but the core of the thing is a car engine that has had a radiator leak plugged with duct tape and gum. Sometimes, everything works just hunky dory, and you have a fine gameplay experience. Other times, though, you pay any attention to the AI. Apparently the enemy artificial intelligence in Alpha Protocol was one of the core tenets of the game during its earliest stages, but at some point was heavily downgraded because the complexity of it tanked the performance. I don’t know how true that is, but if it is to be believed, Obsidian took their smart little baby out back and beat it with the stupid stick. On occasion, an enemy will spot you from three states away and psychically trigger the alarm, letting everyone in the immediate vicinity know that a super-secret spy is there. And by the same token, they will sometimes stare into a wall for four days while you systematically murder every living thing around them. There is very rarely an in between state where they seem to just work as intended.

The good news is this constant state of unknowing weirdly feeds into the spy wish fulfillment and also serves as a good demonstration that the game lets you play through it with the character you want. Essentially, you can play Alpha Protocol as a stealth game, a shooter, or something in-between. Now, the… special blend of intelligence that the AI exhibits probably means you’re going to fall into the last category. My playthrough was almost purely built for stealth, I wanted to be the greatest sneak freak the world had ever seen, but even with that skill line maxed out and armor boosting the score even higher, I was still being spotted seemingly at random. It makes it impossible for the game to stand out as a quality experience in either the stealth or shooter genres because, well, it’s a poor example of both.

The gunplay sure feels like an RPG from 2010: anything but solid, propped up by activated skills, riddled with phlebitis. I kind of like the mechanic of aiming longer to get a better shot at your target, but I only like it up until it actually hinders the game. You have to stop and aim and shoot rather than run and gun, which isn’t a problem on its own, but when a number of fights throughout are set up with a design akin to the popular run and gun shooters of the time… it doesn’t work out so hot.

And that big issue is especially apparent in Alpha Protocol’s boss fights. Each one feels incredibly lackluster because it’s either over in a few minutes or just involves running away in frustration until your skills become available to use again. Though the developers tried to make each fight look unique and set piece-y, including one with an actual rock song playing the entire time (more on that later), they are ultimately all the same. Find a place to lay low, use your skills and either move to a new place and wait for your skills to recharge, or wait in the SAME PLACE and wait for your skills to recharge. Keep doing that until the fight is over. Hooray! You win! Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a contemporary of this game in both genre and theming and it also faced this issue. The thing is, when you allow a player to build a character in their own way and then put an unskippable roadblock in their way that severely disadvantages or outright invalidates some of those builds, you’ve got a pretty big design problem. With my character built primarily for stealth who never became proficient in any weapon larger than a handgun, these boss fights were, invariably, a chore.

It’s nice that Alpha Protocol offers so many options for play, but it ends up hobbling players who don’t go for optimal character building. Now, in an RPG, especially an RPG that is so focused on player choice, this is major issue. In essence: your choices are being made for you without any indication and if you don’t follow the invisible blueprint, you’re going to be up a creek. To my mind, I was able to write off some of these encounters as necessary evils for international super spy Michael Thorton. Someone in his shoes would end up in a firefight they were unprepared for from time to time. But when this happens multiple times throughout the game, it gets frustrating and my ability to credit my own crippling to the story withers away.

But where the game really shines is in its conversation system. In some ways, Alpha Protocol feels like Obsidian’s answer to the original Mass Effect—it focuses on streamlining the role-playing aspects without removing or reinventing them. Mass Effect had the conversation wheel, but where that allowed you to consider your options forever… Alpha Protocol puts a timer on every single dialogue choice in the game. This has good and bad consequences, but ultimately, I think it works in the game’s favor. In spy fiction, every conversation is an opportunity, and the game makes sure you understand this concept early on. A downside is that the paraphrasing players may be familiar with from dialogue wheel games like Mass Effect is absent, essentially replaced with three “attitudes” Thorton can assume and an occasional context-sensitive choice. These attitudes are heavily simplified into Suave, Aggressive, and Professional, but what’s odd about it is making one of these choices never felt like a roll of the dice the way conversations in Mass Effect can. Where sometimes Commander Shepard will take a conversation in a wholly different direction than intended, the broad guidelines of Alpha Protocol’s attitude system only rarely had me wanting to strangle Thorton for not saying what I wanted him to. In a way, I think this strengthens the sense of role-playing. Rather than decide exactly what my character is saying, I’m deciding how he should act and the gaps are filled in as we go. It’s not a perfect solution and nothing will ever top knowing exactly what your character could say and making a choice based on those options, but if we’re talking about a simpler system designed to work as part of a minimal user interface, Alpha Protocol made a valiant attempt at this on the first try.

Conversations flow well, without those weird pauses I mentioned before, and characters react believably to Thorton’s attitude. Different characters value different approaches and their perception of you and what they want to hear will change over time, as your relationship with them solidifies. Mina Tang, the character who most often acts as your handler as you go about your globe-trotting missions, gives us a great example of this: if you’re too forward with her when you first meet, she’ll rebuff you instantly. But if you stay professional and build a trust with her, her opinion of a flirtatious response will be entirely different. That’s fascinating and, I feel, super indicative of the character-based storytelling that Obsidian has always kept central to their design philosophy. In other games, like a Mass Effect, your relationship with characters seems entirely based on events because their attitude toward you is oftentimes tied to a flag in the game’s code being active or not.

Let’s break that down for readers not super into games. A “flag” is basically another word for variable. In most games, a flag is an event, and its status is the outcome of that event. Something like:

Did this character see you do this kind thing?

>> If yes, they like you.

>> If no, they don’t like you.

That’s a simplified way of looking at it, but lots of games don’t operate on a level much higher than that when keeping track of characters’ interpersonal relationships. Alpha Protocol has a gradient scale where the way individuals perceive you will affect their attitude toward you. So instead of the flag defining your relationship with characters, your relationship with characters defines how flags are read. If somebody likes you, they’re more willing to give you a pass for making a mistake. If they don’t, then they’ll grill you on it. That sort of thing. It feels incredibly complex and allows your character building to expand beyond your abilities, something that more role-playing games should strive for. Over time, you feel different connections to these characters and they’re much more personal because you have shaped how that connection formed. It’s way more impressive than making enough right decisions to trigger a sex scene and gives the player a chance to really slip into the role of Michael Thorton in an immersive way.

The developers clearly knew they had something special on their hands with the dialogue system and the way relationships with characters are formed. There are a handful of missions in the game that are just conversations: no gunfight, no sneaking, just walking into a place and talking to a person. Sometimes it is to collect intel, sometimes it is to meet a new contact, and sometimes it is a direct result of an earlier action. In a “normal” game with shooting mechanics at its core, this could be a bore or needless filler. In Alpha Protocol it feels just as relevant to the overall progression of the game as anything else. It’s also where the perk system really shines.

Throughout the game, certain actions unlock perks that help define and improve agent Thorton. In dialogue, you can end up creating certain relationships that unlock these perks. Or you can make choices that help define who your character is. If you choose a lot of Suave dialogue options in the early game, you get a perk for that. If you have a romantic encounter, there’s a perk for that too. Combat milestones that would be relegated to achievements in other games, getting 50 headshots with a handgun for example, instead reward perks. Essentially, the game says “You play your character like this, so here is a little reward for it.” The effects tend to be miniscule, but not unnoticeable. A character with a lot of perks from a thorough playthrough will be more powerful and interesting mechanically than one who has only a few and has powered through the game’s story.

I think it’s a shame that Alpha Protocol has never gotten a sequel. This entry feels very much like the beginning of something much bigger, but thankfully wraps up its own threads well enough that you will not feel shorted once you reach the ending. The universe surrounding Alpha Protocol still has mysteries to it, especially concerning the organization itself and its history. And while tidbits are scattered around in the form of emails that can be found in missions, it isn’t enough to feel satisfyingly complete. There were definitely plans for more adventure with Michael Thorton and the fact that this universe has remained dormant for so long is borderline criminal.

What’s truly unfortunate is that this game’s availability is very limited. You can go out and find a physical copy for PC, Xbox 360, or PlayStation 3, but you cannot purchase it digitally anywhere. In 2019, some music license expired and the game had to be pulled from digital storefronts as a result. It’s been over a year as of writing and Alpha Protocol has still not returned to these platforms. Alpha Protocol was developed by Obsidian and published by SEGA, which is a very weird set of circumstances I would love to know more about from a behind the scenes perspective. As the publisher, SEGA would be in charge of managing the game’s availability on different platforms. With a licensing issue like this, the easiest solution is to take the game down, replace the songs in question, and republish it. Usually you do this with a reduced price to get people to bite after a game shows up in the news cycle for disappearing. But this didn’t happen with Alpha Protocol. Obsidian partnered with SEGA for this one game, but they were never owned by them. In fact, they are currently owned by Microsoft, and continue working on new games using their own intellectual properties. While some voices within the company have expressed interest in a sequel to Alpha Protocol, the complicated nature of its publication makes such a thing a difficult prospect. So with the original development house engaged in projects a good decade past the original release and the publisher perhaps unfamiliar with the insides of the game and how to change it up, what looks like a simple fix has dragged out into a question of the game ever being available for purchase in this way again. I’m not a developer though, so this may be a very difficult thing to do technically and what I just said should be taken with a decently sized grain of salt. But I can only think of two licensed songs in the game and while the moment that one frames is pretty neat, it wouldn’t be ruined by a substitution. It does not change the scene, it only accentuates it.

That is a huge shame. Alpha Protocol is a wonderful example of a role-playing game that should be considered in the same breath as the original Mass Effect. But while one of these games became a pop cultural, cross-media phenomenon, the other isn’t even available for purchase. What Alpha Protocol does, it does well. And while the combat may be akin to limping through a 10K with one broken leg, the core conceit of the game: becoming a spy, is present and powerful. Indeed, Alpha Protocol manages to expertly accomplish the facet of role-playing that is so central to its conception: wish fulfillment. The game does everything it possibly can to capture the elements of espionage and portray a series of events that gives the player reasons to think through their decisions. The cast reacts to these decisions and outcomes change, shaping the overall narrative like a sculptor hammering their masterpiece out of marble.

Alpha Protocol is no masterpiece, but it is something special. I cannot think of any other game that captures this type of fiction so well. And that is why you should play Alpha Protocol.