I...I am really glad you played Alpha Protocol and liked it. Any insights about it?
It's
gameplay was definetely hit and miss, but once you basically bear with
it, or in my case abuse the OP abilites, you can get to the story
(hello, pistol chain shot) then it's story can be very satisfying. The
independence ending is really great. The only thing that ever made me
feel the same self empowerment was the Fallout New Vegas NO gods NO
masters ending.
IMO it's the best conversation system I have seen in an RPG in terms of feeling natural. I think they did a great job with the reactivity as well (especially a lot of the more subtle stuff).
Mechanics wise it struggled in places. There were some issues such as lockpicking speeds being determined by game performance (lower frame rates made it more challenging because the tumblers actually moved slower) and things like that which are bad. The PC controls made hacking problematic. Balance issues with the combat do exist, but I think it's overstated (If I specialized in any combat style, I never had any real problems). Jerk Mike is also amazing. And Steven Heck. Steven Heck.
EpicBoot2daFace wrote...
Allan Schumacher wrote...
The only "Oh damn" part of preordering Alpha Protocol was the lack of sleep I had to endure the following day 
Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I thought you didn't and that's why you stopped pre-ordering. As for me, I have a Target right down the street that never seems to run out of copies of the games I want. Are the pre-order bonuses actually designed using the game's budget or do you have a small team dedicated to that stuff?
Nah, it's more a statement that I rarely preorder. Alpha Protocol is one of my favourite games.
I don't know the full cost of doing things like pre-order bonuses. Doing the item packs and the like are done because of an arrangement made with Gamestop (the impression I get is they give us money to make preorder exclusives for their store). I'd say the level of work needed to be done for those item packs is not very expensive compared to other aspects of development. It does mean more work for more than just the artists though (i.e. QA will have to test with permutations of item packs and whatnot to make sure they are working). If there's any tie in to the main budget, my
guess would be that it's factored in from the start (i.e. when working up the budget, someone can say "Based on previous arrangements we've been able to get X dollars from retailers for preorder incentives, so we have that money available to us")
Something like cross promotion offers is probably more budgeted on the benefits of getting money sooner. Not sure exactly how it works or how it motivates it. Could also be money coming from the other studio (despite being under the EA umbrella, each studio still has its own budgets and whatnot, just because it helps spot out inefficiencies and the like. So EA Madrid will charge BioWare Edmonton for localization at a set rate. In the end it's money moving around internally for EA so the cost to them isn't particularly high, but I think it's better in that it helps examine how time and money is being spent. If we could consider VO and Localization "free" then it'd be easy for us to say "All languages for everyone! It costs us nothing!" while Madrid cries.
Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 25 mars 2013 - 10:51 .
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