“Mike Thorton is a partially written slate. Tabula ‘kinda written but still with room for you to customizus’, if my Latin serves me right. He can’t be a sea elf, an escaped mental patient or a were-cabinet – he’s an educated, multi-lingual clandestine operative, and that rules out being a chaotic neutral Urdlen-worshipping deep gnome bard /cleric.’“
The above mentioned Mike Thornton is the player character in Obsidian’s upcoming espionage RPG, Alpha Protocol. The snappy, quippy, quotable quote is from the game’s Systems Lead, Matt MacLean and is excerpted from a November 7, 2008 interview in RPG Vault. Alpha Protocol’s Lead Designer, Chris Avellone and Senior Producer Ryan Rucinski also sit in. It will be available for PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. Obsidian fans have been buzzing about the game for a while now and its got its own web page and a release date that is basically “sometime in the spring of 2009 if we’re lucky”.
It sounds like my kind of game. A single player RPG set in the modern day, with a character who, while allowing for a few tweaks is otherwise a full blown creation of the development team. I’m in full agreement with MacLean’s philosophy of character creation: “Making a character should not require a large investment of time; spend your time playing, not staring at a creation screen.”
As Michael Thorton, you play a spy, get missions that you can carry out in several different ways depending on your skill set and gameplay preferences. It looks to be a hybrid RPG/shooter, a genre that I quite selfishly hope will continue grow in popularity as it’s my favorite type of game. Stealth will play a large part in this game if you so desire and there are gadgets galore. The dialogue system is getting a lot of attention. It’s dubbed a “stance” system where you have to quickly choose your answer from a few attitude choices such as nice, aggressive, sarcastic, instead of clicking on a word-for-word block of text. There is no returning to exhaust the dialog option. Apparently the germ of the idea for the game came about when a few of the principals were watching a Jason Bourne movie and wondered what a modern day spy RPG would look like. Also Chris Avellone of Planescape Torment and KOTOR 2 fame is at the rudder. Want to know more? Read the above linked interview and check out the web site. Now that Fallout 3 has escaped into the wild we all need a new, unreleased RPG to speculated endlessly upon. Alpha Protocol seems as likely a candidate as any.
Thanks for the links, Scout. I’ve been very interested in this one – the non-Splinter-Cell modern spy genre is very underpopulated, and with Obsidian’s writing talent, I think it has real potential. I’m eager to see more of it, and with Spring 2009 fast approaching, I should get my wish. This is Obsidian’s big first grab at a totally new IP, and they could really make a mark in it. Best of luck to them!
looking forward to this one too. hope they really make a great story and gameplay out of it!
Dear Ms/Sir,
I’m the sales of EASEUS software. We are impressed with your website and expecting that our EASEUS Partition Manager Server Edition can be reviewed on your website.
If you appreciate this, would you please kindly give me a reply? If there is a charge for writing a review, we’ll be glad to pay for this.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Here is the detailed information about the product:
EASEUS Partition Manager Server Edition is the best value server partition software to partition server disk for IT administrators. It manages Windows Server fast and stable. You may perform basic and advanced partition operations on your servers without data loss, including: create and deleted partitions, resize and move partitions, Copy Partition, Copy Disk, format partitions, hide and unhide partitions, set active partition, etc. Changes of server partition can be previewed before applying to hard disk and all data is completely protected during all operations.
Unlike partition magic server, it is compatible with Windows Server 2000/2003/2008 and non-server 2000/XP/Vista 32 and 64 bit systems on one machine – single licensed, which provides more comprehensive uses.
Hot Features:
*Resize and Move partition without data loss.
*Disk Copy Wizard, Partition Copy Wizard to protect data.
*Supports Hardware RAID.
*Supports Windows Server and non-server system.
Why thank you, Eric. We are flattered by your compliment.
I think our own Scout would be most eager to review your software, and may I commend you on your outside-the-box thinking in asking us to do the review. After all, a gaming site with no particular knowledge or experience in partition server manager software solutions makes a logical choice for a starred review.
Scout looks forward to his copy. 😉
Eric, you have the right attitude. Offering to pay for a review is certainly a step in the right direction and has garnered the attention of the complete Four Fat Chicks staff. Due to scheduling conflicts however we would require a penthouse suite for a week, per diem and a cost plus contract. As we will soon be in London reviewing plans for our proposed London Tunnel FFC International Headquarters, the top floor of any available 4 star hotel in the core London area will just do fine. We look forward to working with you on this project and on future ones as well.
Scout