If you had felt bad for making Shamus feel old, you would have felt really terrible after Thoroughly Unprofessional.

This was recorded months ago. By the time we really got into TU, I had no problem makig old men feel bad about being old.

I absolutely hate the sniping in this game, at least with a mouse. It's floaty and imprecise, and makes this mission incredibly tedious.

I actually hex-edited a save file once to enable the tux for standard missions. It has the same stats as the normal civilian clothes, but there was a weird bug that caused my pistol to always be oriented to the right while I was in cover, which made it impossible to aim while peeking left. It's a real shame; I was dapper as heck.

I felt like the email beep was a missed opportunity. It would have been awesome if you could get side missions, requests for intelligence from your allies, or extra goals for your missions through email. It would have incentivized players to check their computer more often and the need for a mysterious beep would have been eliminated.

I've got this dream RPG that I hope to be able to make one day, and parts of it were inspired by a thought I had about this game: What if it were possible to turn Darcy to your side by sending emails about Halbech to him instead of Scarlett or the Black Market? You could potentially skip that whole boss fight at the end, while still allowing for him to "arrest" Mike as a ploy to get back inside the Graybox. There's yet another compelling way to integrate the email system deeper into the game.

I should clarify: I don't hate this mission, I just have trouble sniping on a PC due to this game's input issues. I think the idea behind it is super cool and I wish more games had interesting, distinct segments like this. Despite really hating Hitman: Absolution, I had a lot of fun with the Sniper Challenge minigame.

"I'm extremely disappointed we missed the scene with Surkov in his office. Odds are we didn't get it because we pissed Grigori off."

Actually, we missed out on the office contact mission because we crippled Surkov here, getting the Brayko lead right now instead of later.

Unfortunately, I think this also meant we missed out on some dialogue trigger that will be important later this week…

Fun Fact; Leland is voiced by Fred Tatasciore, the same actor who voices Saren. Even funnier; he also voices Shaheed.

As anaphysik and I discussed previously, 'I have a shotgun' seems to have replaced 'yeah' as my catchphrase. I am fine with this.

WHY AREN'T YOU SHOOTING DOWN DOORS?!?

The G22 soldiers differ from the VCI in one respect; they actually heal themselves when they've taken damage. And they have less armor, and are more susceptible to flashbangs but less susceptible to shock traps (I've confirmed that this is true through some vigorous experimentation). Other than that though, yeah, the two forces are identical.

I assume that Albatross wants to get to Surkov for the same reason Thorton does; to find out about where the missiles are. If Thorton refuses his help, than he sends his grunts in as a last resort. But if Sis is alive, I don't know why he doesn't just send her in Thorton's place, so I've headcannoned that she was too injured in the yacht battle to go on another mission (though apparently not enough to stop her acting as his bodyguard). I also don't know why G22 tries to kill Surkov if Thorton works against them, but not if he works with them. I chalk it up to story and gameplay segregation; they had to work that friggin' defense sequence in somehow, I guess.

Their positioning is even the same, apart from the finale, where G22 will just pop out of seemingly everywhere, while VCI just pile in from the front gate, which is directly opposite the sniper rifle perch.
Thus the sniper rifle makes the section comically easy if you are up against the VCI, but not so much against G22.

I can see not sending in Sis if he believed that the embassy attack might turn out messy and too dangerous to risk Sis on. The boat was a lot smaller and it seemed reasonable that G22 could take everyone out on it without raising an alarm.

I find it harder to justify why G22 would try to kill Surkov. The best I can could argue is that they're an organisation who want to control everything and they may prefer that no-one has access to his information if they can't have it. But it seems weak. The embassy level needed a bit of a rewrite in places

Yeah, I can see Albatross not wanting to send Sis on such a high risk assignment, and it's implied that him sending her to the Yacht was an unusual break in protocol. But if G22 wanted Surkov dead, than why doesn't Albatross order Mike to execute him? And if they don't want him dead, than why don't the soldiers try to subdue and capture him?

And I have no idea why the VCI attacks that embassy if you side with Albatross. Who ordered them to do that? Is Halbech trying to bump off Surkov in order to tie up a loose end. If so, why do they help Mike assault Brayko's compound? Does SIE know about any of this, and if she does, why does she help Mike protect Surkov from G22? Argh!

But at the end of the day, a lot of these plot holes arise from the game trying to be non linear and offer branching choices to the player and I can respect that to a degree. It's not like they tried to tell a viciously on-rails storyline and managed to screw that up.

You frightened me with that last paragraph 😛 I nearly shut the video down and gave this one a miss

Like 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.

The 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.

Because we never ever want to see it! =D

Since 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.

That's really interesting. I didn't actually know that. Thanks for sharing.

I 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.

I 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. 🙂

Ah. I think I must have made a mistake by going to Russia first (and subsequently ragequitting there). This safehouse looks pretty neat, and that mission with that crazy guy? Sure seemed interesting.

Also, mumbles is sooooo quiet. Next time she guests, tell her to shout everything instead of mumbling 😛

/X2e

Moscow should be a decent starting point. Most people end up starting there. The only real problem is (like all 3 hubs) the boss fight there sucks. (Although the Moscow boss sucks particularly hard.) You meet a couple of key characters and offers a few choices.

Despite that, I would EASILY recommend Taipei as a starting point. Steven Heck is one of the game's best characters and meeting him unlocks a useful intel that I will mention once we get to the end of Moscow.

I love Taipei's safehouse, and Moscow is the least interesting safehouse imo, but to me the Rome safehouse is the best. We'll talk more about it later.

Mumbles's audio was something we tried to fix, but couldn't. Because we record in Skype, It's all one audio file. :/

The lumberjack beard is amazing. You guys MUST keep using it.

I was always under the impression that "Scarlet Lake" was a fake name anyway. It sounds fake.

It could very well just be a pen name, much like how Micheal Thorton is implied to be our codename and not our real name.

But when I was playing through, I never got that impression. It seemed to me like Scarlet was her real name. It's not like they draw attention to anything that could imply her name was fake.

Maybe it was because of the game overall, but Scarlet never became stale or felt too cliche to me. I always assumed that the people I was talking to could be untrustworthy people who were plotting to betray me (which gave me some guilt in Rome) and they particularly foreshadow it with her, so I kept umming and ahhing between trying to piss her off in the hope she'd be unable to find reasons to stay close to me and trying to gain her trust so that I could trap her/because I thought she was a nice person.

You get backstory on her family before you find out her secret so I guess it can't be a fake name, although it really should be. (I don't know if the backstory is actually true admittedly)

I think Moscow's the most boring. Albatros, Sis and SIE are cool, but the mission is the least clear cut of them all, the setting is drab grey and it's got two of the worst points of the game combat wise, particularly low level. It's better when you come to it later after a bit of visual spice and when you've got a fuller picture of Halbech's actions (and preferably have been introduced to G22).

Rome has got a lot of mission variety (although to be fair, so has Moscow), is colourful and has a nice obvious climax +Marburg and Taipei is colourful with an obvious climax and the most obvious objective running through all the missions

I can agree with that. However, I do think that a lot happens in Moscow worth taking note of and talking about.

On a few of my many playthroughs, I considered bringing Heck's rep down just to see what happens. I've never been able to follow through with it. He's just too awesome.

I've played around with getting Heck to hate you a few times. It's actually pretty interesting.

Definitely, but that stuff works better once you've settled in with another mission first (also to save another CAPTCHA, from below, does low rep Heck ever sell you out?)

Yes. If you piss Heck off, at the end he sells you out instead of Wen.

He does not sell you out if you kill or alienate Sie or Albatross first, Im not sure if he does when doing Taipei first.

Ive played this game some many times and in trying to find new stuff to do i tried to have no options at the end for a handler but it can't be done. I had max hate with Heck and did not meet Sie and killed off Albatross yet he still sold out Wen.

Even if it were fake, it'd be a DUMB fake name. It'd be less stupid to have her go by 'Red' (as a pure nickname), and that's saying something.

@Jokerman: Interesting. We do know that Heck is always available as handler for the final mission (as, say, the Yes Man route is always available in New Vegas and the independent route is always available in Bloodlines), but that him not selling you out depends on more than just him liking you is interesting and kind of weird.

Pistol + Stealth + any random skill is what I always pick in my playthrough. Mainly because it let essential 'skip' the gameplay and get to the good stuff (Never thought I'd write that about a game). I'm looking forward to your reactions to the Deus Ex: Human Revolution Boss Fights.

Oddly enough, my usual build is Stealth + Pistol + Sabotage, with a few points in Technical Aptitude. Even still, I don't use gadgets besides First Aid and EMPs because I am usually saving up for the best Stealth Armor.

Martial Arts may be decent, but I don't think I would get much use out of it.

Sabotage is good for those awful lock-pick minigame – there seem to be an inverse correlation of how 'realistic' a minigame is and how fun it is to play. I usually throw in some points in Toughness for the boss fights.

Oooh and everything's blue now. Feel like a completely new blog.

Yeah. Also, I'm a huge mix/max-er and Sabotage gives you extra money from hacking. Gives me a nice solid heap of cash.

I changed the blog layout because I was getting complaints that it was hard to read.

Fuuny thing: I didn't know that you could sell stuff till late in my second playthrough. I'm also a min/maxer and end up knocking out every enemies in a level just so I can freely explore the level for dossier/money bag without being 'detected.'

Yeah. The very first thing I do in a new playthrough is sell all of my SMG and Shotgun stuff and my AR ammo (because the game doesn't let you take just one weapon >_>).

Gadgets are an interesting thing because I think they may actually be REALLY POWERFUL, just hard to use (dumb controls) and extremely rare/expensive. I'll bring that up in the next set of episodes.