Dear god, it’s been so long. Sorry for such a late post guys, but we have been busy. And by “we have been busy,” I mean “Aldowyn has been lazy.” Regardless, we’re back.
I apologize in advance for this week’s episodes. Not only were we slacking on the commentary, but the recording was a bit of a… massive failure. The net result is that I have to make it all up with witty and informative posts.
Shame that’s never going to happen. Oh well, at least we managed to rope Tyler/Irridium into our symphony of mediocrity. Anyway:
All I want is the Lumberjack beard (and another thing, but we’ll get to that later). Instead, we got the Douche Patch. Goddammit. This is like a Cannibalism in the Spoiler Warning season of Fallout: New Vegas. At the very least, we got a very nice view of the Moscow safehouse. It’s still amazing that Obsidian took the time to create all of those details for people to look at. It would’ve been easy to put blinds over them or a crappy texture.
Though we only meet Grigori this one time, the time players spend with him is so much more memorable than the encounters with some other one note characters like Hong Shi. Part of it is simply how customized the whole affair is. Grigori will change his dialogue based on both whether or not you did other hubs before meeting him in Moscow and whether or not you finished other missions in Moscow before talking to him. This is one top of the number of ways you can go about this conversation that all feel unique. Truthfully, I like Grigori and only voted to headslam him because I doubt people other than those like me, who played through multiple times, actually saw that scene. He’s a pretty interesting guy who feels a bit more “real” than other characters and has a very dry sense of humor. It’s almost a shame we missed that conversation, but on the other hand we slammed a dude’s face into a desk, what could be better than that.
This horrible failure on the Yacht marks Aldowyn’s very first use of a Med-Kit. Make a note of that because I don’t think we’ll be see it too often as he’ll be too busy dying in the future.
There usually is an intel to hack a computer to get money off this mob underboss’s account. I have a suspicion that we didn’t get it because Grigori hates us. I wonder why he hates us so much….
As you all have no doubt suspected, I was the one who proposed that we kill Sis. It’s not even for the reasons you would think. I like her character. In fact, I wish they utilized her a bit more because she is a pretty interesting little firecracker. I just wanted her to die because so few people actually do that and it really does change the way you and Albatross interact as the game goes on. With her dead, you can either make amends to Albatross, showing that he’s willing to put personal feelings aside in order to work with you, or mock him with her death. Had we done Taipei after this and instead chose to kill Sis here, for example, Thorton could meet Albatross by saying, “Hey Albatross, how’s Sis? Oh, she’s probably not well since I KILLED HER!!!” I like the way the game accounts for her death and changes the dynamic between Thorton and Albatross accordingly. I thought it would be interesting for the viewers to see it for themselves. Still, I don’t mind being outvoted. The contact mission it unlocks is one of my personal favorites, which we’ll see next episode.
Thomas
April 18, 2013 at 2:58 pmYou frightened me with that last paragraph 😛 I nearly shut the video down and gave this one a miss
newdarkcloud
April 18, 2013 at 3:03 pmLike I said, I like Sis. It's just that no one kills her (I only did it the one time and never again), so I figured fewer people would have seem that permutation.
anaphysik
April 18, 2013 at 3:11 pmThe yacht's name (seen at 13:25), btw, is a Russian pun. It's called "победа" (meaning victory), but the first two letters of the name have fallen off, leaving "беда" – misery.
Additionally, those posters? I think they're actually Soviet propaganda posters, or else takeoffs thereof. The blue one says "Не болтай" ('be quiet' – like unto the old 'loose lips sink ships' slogan; look closely in-game and you can see an X over the person's mouth), though doesn't match the most common representation of the poster (http://www.sovietposters.com/posters/1240356374ussr0401.jpg), which makes me wonder why it's different. The later one in red clearly (well, only clearly if you can read Cyrillic like I can, and have access to a pause button ;p) lists Stalin, Lenin, etc.
Thomas
April 18, 2013 at 3:15 pmBecause we never ever want to see it! =D
Anonymous
April 18, 2013 at 5:45 pmSince you were talking about the detail around the Moscow hub and didn't mention it, I think I should point out that the window in the bathroom overlooks another window from a neighboring building, and every time you come back to the safehouse, you can see something different happening through it. Sometimes there's a woman working at a computer, sometimes there's a man talking on a cell phone, and sometimes there's the same man getting a lap dance from a stripper. For a game with a general reputation of being unpolished, Alpha Protocol has a lot of interesting little things in its environments.
newdarkcloud
April 18, 2013 at 5:53 pmThat's really interesting. I didn't actually know that. Thanks for sharing.
anaphysik
April 19, 2013 at 9:56 amI was going to point it out next session. The stripper event is really bizarre since you can see subtitles even though there's no sound, and they appear even when you're not near the window o_O (iirc, they tend to appear if you go up the stairs, not even into the bathroom). Was super creepy the first time I noticed it, as it makes it look like the apartment is haunted.
Jake Albano
April 19, 2013 at 8:59 pmI killed Sis in one of my playthroughs where I murdered EVERYBODY, and I did think the resulting dynamic between Mike and Albatross was interesting. I really appreciate the amount of reactivity that this game supports.
That was actually the only time I've ever killed her, though. I really like Sis as a character — I'd even go so far as to say she and Albatross are my two favorites in the game, and I find that astonishing as she doesn't have a single line of dialogue. I always get her rep up as high as it goes just to get that small smile out of her at the very end. 🙂