Alpha Protocol has by far the most reactive narrative of any modern cRPG. No, it's not perfect, but it sure as hell has better C&C than ME or ME2. The timed dialogue system was fantastic, and the move to general stances as opposed to specific responses was necessary to make it work. There were maybe two instances I can remember of being surprised at what my character said - generally, the descriptions were more than enough to know how you were going to respond.
That said, I don't think a timed dialogue system should be implemented in ME3. That was something that was specific to AP, and fit in well with the espionage setting and the mindset of having to think on your feet. The emphasis is very different than that of Mass Effect. In many ways, the main focus of Alpha Protocol was on interaction with the various characters, and it makes sense that it was the most fleshed out and complete part of the game. This is not true of Mass Effect, and I really don't think it should be.
There's also something to be said for the monumental task of implementing C&C on the scale of multiple games - from what I can gather, it took a *lot* of resources to give AP the amount of branching that it had, and you have to keep in mind that a similar amount of C&C is nearly impossible to maintain over a three game series. You must keep in mind that developers, even those as large as BioWare, have limited resources.
Now, slightly off-topic, the complaints about the combat in AP are understandable, but unfounded. The main problem people have is that the combat system (especially for pistols) almost completely revolved around lining up criticals - if you adapted to this, the pistol became absurdly powerful. No, you can't play it like your standard point-and-shoot TPS, and it would really have been nice if the tutorials hadn't been so worthless in that respect, but overall the action and stealth worked fine. Hell, I even managed to complete a playthrough using only SMGs without much trouble - yeah, the balance was really off, but none of the guns were unusable (as some would have you believe). I've heard the game was buggy for many people, but all I encountered was the occasional graphical glitch and a few reactivity bugs (surprisingly few given how ambitious it was).
It wasn't a perfect game, not at all, but it was a very satisfying RPG. Overall, I'd say I enjoyed it significantly more than I enjoyed ME2, though somewhat less than I enjoyed ME1. It certainly wasn't deserving of the terrible review scores it received from all the mainstream American reviewers, but then again, no one with any sense puts value in those (and, oddly enough, it was almost universally well-received in Europe).
If there's one thing Mass Effect could learn from Alpha Protocol, it's to have better writing, but then again BioWare doesn't have Chris Avellone so I doubt they'll ever match Obsidian in that regard.
Modifié par Oblarg, 01 novembre 2010 - 05:35 .
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