In the history of video games, there’s one genre that has consistently been poorly represented: the spy thriller. Not for lack of trying, you understand. We’ve had adaptations of films and books like The Bourne Identity. We’ve had technothriller authors lending their names to games like Splinter Cell. We’ve even sort of had love letters to the early iterations of the genre with No One Lives Forever. But it never seemed to hit all the right notes. In 2010, Obsidian Entertainment tried their hand in the spy game with Alpha Protocol. And much like other titles, it didn’t quite accomplish the mission, though it certainly made a good try.
Alpha Protocol was Obsidian’s first effort at developing their own original titles and series. And like any first try at something new, it had some problems both during the development process and after release. On the one hand, it was definitely a new genre, and the conventions of the genre were rather different than the sort of work Obsidian had done prior to this with Knights of The Old Republic II and Neverwinter Nights 2. At the same time, they were also working on Fallout: New Vegas (both New Vegas and Alpha Protocol came out within six months of each other), which might have added some grit to the gears in a number of ways. But ultimately, it was on Obsidian to recognize when things weren’t going well and fix them. In that respect, they didn’t quite get things fixed in time. And yet, both Alpha Protocol and New Vegas are still some of the most well regarded early works of Obsidian Entertainment by gamers. Funny thing is, only one of those two games has been consistently available for the last fourteen years, and it wasn’t Alpha Protocol.
In Alpha Protocol, you take on the persona of Michael Thorton, a new recruit for the eponymous shadowy intelligence/direct action outfit. You’re initially given a chance to pick his background to help flavor the story (and your later skill set), including a special “Recruit” background (which provides special dialogue options) and a “Veteran” background which unlocks after you’ve completed the game as “Recruit.” A brief prelude cutscene sets the stage for players as they watch a passenger airliner shot down with a surface-to-air missile, with two figures commenting on how the incident set the pattern for everything that followed. From there, you wake up on a medical exam bed, and are told you need to try and escape. As tutorial levels go, it’s fairly effective, giving you the basics of the game’s various elements without getting terribly bogged down.
For a game running Unreal Engine 3, Alpha Protocol still looks pretty damned good today. Maybe a little dated compared to the current capabilities of Unreal Engine 5, but still good. From character design to weapons to the intricately laid out mission maps, this is the sort of high quality work players could expect from Obsidian, and still do even today. And, like so many other Obsidian titles, you can see the artistry in the fine details. The fonts used for computers, the different styles of electronic bypass circuits, the iterative way armor sets were presented, all of it had a cohesive sense of style. Special effects were maybe a little iffy in spots, but overall, it’s not a bad looking game. I’ve seen newer games with more recent iterations of the Unreal Engine that didn’t look so good.
It’s probably very silly in retrospect, but it was one of the audio elements that had Alpha Protocol going MIA for five years. Specifically, the one licensed song Obsidian used for one particular boss fight, “Turn Up The Radio” by the 80s glam band Autograph. When the licensing expired in 2019, Alpha Protocol was no longer available for sale on Steam. And given the original release’s mixed reviews at the time, it didn’t seem like Sega was going to be motivated to renew the license. GOG.com, on the other hand, was motivated enough and persistent enough to get the license renewed as part of their efforts to update Alpha Protocol for contemporary audiences. Beyond that, however, Alpha Protocol made good use of sound in every capacity. The soundtrack is really quite good, with the main theme composed and performed by trance artist BT, along with orchestrations by Jason Graves (Dead Space).
Some of it is how sound is used within the gameplay loop itself, such as the “Silent Running” special ability which lets you run full tilt without making any noise. The special effects are pretty much stock stuff, though an effort is made to help immerse the player with subtle sound cues to motivate the completion of a task like hacking a computer or disabling an alarm system. It’s the voice work that really carries the weight of Alpha Protocol. From the inhuman calm of Alan Parker (played by Michael Bell) to the meth head hyperaggression of Steven Heck (played by Nolan North), you get a lot of great voice actors doing some excellent work across a wide spectrum of emotions and personalities. Listening to the voice work now, there’s a lot of subtlety in there which I hadn’t previously appreciated. Small shifts in tone and cadence which really do give you a sense of how you stand with a given character.
The gameplay in Alpha Protocol was probably the most contentious aspect which so many critics bellowed against. And in truth, it’s not entirely fluid. My first experience was on the PS3, so many years ago, and certain elements of the gameplay such as the excruciating amount of “lock-on” time for weapons and the somewhat counterintuitive hacking systems didn’t exactly inspire a lot of joy. Playing now on PC, they’re somehow not quite as bad as I recall them. Still a little janky in spots (the sections involving using a sniper rifle are more torturous than I remember them being), but otherwise decent if unremarkable mechanics. The stealth aspects are well thought out while a little flaky in spots. Level design makes sense spatially, although some sections are clearly designed as “skill challenges” for certain special abilities like the pistol-based Chain Shot. The user interface is good overall, even if certain elements like the map screens are kind of a pain. It’s as if Alpha Protocol had really solid premises but couldn’t quite get the execution of those premises right. Very close, in a number of ways, but always just a little short of greatness.
The narrative arc for Alpha Protocol is one which is a classic in the spy genre: the agent out in the cold. Only, not exactly in this case. Across four areas of operation, you have to guide your iteration of Mike Thorton as he picks his way through a web of intrigue and countervailing loyalties, making friends and enemies along the way. How you do so is entirely up to you, and your choices will have effects in the world which are both immediate and far reaching. More than once, you’re faced with a binary choice about what to do or whom to save. And the timer on some of your choices means you have to act now, to make a snap call and hope it works out for the best. Other times, you’re not on a timer, but you are faced with a fork in the road which you can’t circle back around from. To some extent, it does feel realistic. There’s only one of you, and there’s a bunch of fires you have to put out all at once. The thing which, I think, undermines the whole premise is that the Alpha Protocol organization is supposed to be hyperefficient, adept at staying concealed, disappearing and reappearing practically at will. Yet they seemingly lose track of safe houses, leave computer terminals able to access their secure networks and communications channels laying around, and otherwise behave like fumble fingered idiots. Not exactly convincing as an elite clandestine service.
Ostensibly, Obsidian was trying to shoot for a cinematic style with different tones, from the suave people skills of James Bond (pre-Daniel Craig), the more kinetic and close quarters style of Jason Bourne, or the bulldozing recklessness of Jack Bauer. You can be a ghost, moving carefully, leaving no trace of your presence (or at least make a very good effort to try). Or you can be a black ops murder machine, leaving only piles of corpses and burning wreckage in your wake. Or something in-between. Except Obsidian has the same problems narratively that they did mechanically. Solid premise, slightly fumbled execution. We never quite got enough background to make ourselves believe in the character of Mike Thorton. Sure, we could play him as a chameleon, or we could play him as a stereotype, but the little character references and callbacks supposedly intrinsic to the selected background never quite hooked you. The lore bits we discover about different factions and personalities never quite feel organic, like there’s a reasonable expectation we might find some tidbit about a certain person in a certain place. Our discovery process feels too contrived.
So why, you may ask, has Alpha Protocol gained such a cult following? Why do people enjoy something that doesn’t seem to excel at delivering the goods? The cynical answer might be because there’s nobody else making this sort of game anymore. It’s not about the action-adventure, it’s about the genre. Ubisoft wouldn’t release Watch Dogs until 2014, and the series owed more to Grand Theft Auto than Fleming or Clancy in terms of inspiration. At the same time, Ubisoft was trying to make their Splinter Cell series more accessible and removing the stealth elements which were such an important part of those games. In doing so, they stopped feeling like espionage thrillers. Deus Ex: Human Revolution wouldn’t come out for another year. High Moon Studios had put out The Bourne Conspiracy in 2008 to middling reviews. Given that set of circumstances, it’s not much of a stretch to state that Alpha Protocol was literally the only game in town for the time period.
A less cynical take is that Alpha Protocol did what it set out to do. It gave us Obsidian’s take on the spy genre, warts and all. It wasn’t trying to give us the slow burn of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or the wacky hijinks found in Roger Moore-era Bond movies. It didn’t try to pretend that those genre touchstones weren’t present, but neither did Obsidian go out of their way to genuflect towards them. If Alpha Protocol happened to call to mind some of the garrote wire tension of LeCarre or the seemingly absurd aspects of “Cubby” Broccoli’s more whimsical productions, that was more on the player’s own knowledge of the genre than any deliberate effort on the part of developers. In this, Alpha Protocol (whether by accident or design) became the sort of game which genuinely could command the appeal of a broad audience. Considering that elements of the genre like car chases and parkour were cut from the game for both budgetary and project development reasons, it’s kinda of amazing Alpha Protocol turned out as well as it did.
When it first came out, critics were badly divided on Alpha Protocol, with some decrying it as bland and uninspired, while others praised its humor and RPG systems. Having gone under the knife at GOG.com to bring it up to date for modern systems, Alpha Protocol sits in what I would argue is select company: games which are deserving of sequels and deeper expansion, but will never get it. It’s part of the same club populated by titles such as Jade Empire, Freelancer, Sleeping Dogs, and Brutal Legend. Since Sega is currently holding the rights, and is unlikely to give them up to a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, we’ll probably never see another Alpha Protocol. And that’s oddly OK with me. I wouldn’t object if Obsidian took another stab at the genre, but there can’t really be a proper sequel to Alpha Protocol. It came at a certain time, in a certain space, and left a mark in the hearts and minds of gamers. Much like the spies filling its locales and storylines, its efforts will largely go unnoticed for a long time.
