In this episode, we piss off Darcy, break into a weapons stockpile, and have a brush with Glitch.

Let it be said that I really, really dislike Darcy. While he has an interesting backstory and character, it does ever go anywhere. And as previously stated, his relationship to Mike is one of the most static relationships in the game. Whether or not he likes or hates you, nothing really changes about him and how he reacts to you. In a game like this, that really stands out.

Anaphysik made a great point about the reputation system. That is: What Mike actually feels about any character in the game is left entirely up to the player. The game gives you the possible interpretation that you are just manipulating them to suit your whims, whatever those whims may be. It is also possible for players to make what Mike says what he genuinely feels. It’s all left to interpretation. The game itself generally assumes nothing about the player and his/her attitudes, which is a point I want to elaborate more on when we get further into the game.

My question that I posed to you viewers still stands: Do you consider Alpha Protocol to be a “good” game? It’s a difficult question because it really depends on what you are looking for in a game. Some people will be put of by the admittedly rather mediocre gameplay, some will adore the way the game handles choices, and even more will find the way the game handles dialog to be off-putting. None of these states are mutually exclusive either. While I personally enjoyed Alpha Protocol, there is no denying it is a flawed game. What do all of you guys think and why?

I have heard many stories in the past about Alpha Protocol being glitchy, but honestly this recording was the first time I’ve seen the glitchiness firsthand. It was actually quite amazing to me the amount of bugs we encountered. I can hypothesize that it has something to do with how FRAPS, the stream, and the game itself interact with each other because this is an oddity to me.

Confession: When I first played through the game (Recruit/Hard/Assault Rifles), I ALSO put very few points into either Sabotage or Martial Arts. I didn’t think I would need either of these skills. Because of that, I became all too familiar with the 8-12 numbers keypads and super difficult hacks/lock-picks because I put no points into Sabotage. I learned from my first playthrough, and I can only hope that those who watch this and decide to play Alpha Protocol learn from my mistakes.

Did I seriously call him “Mikey” at the end of this episode? Good lord!

(As a side note: Whenever Aldowyn stomps on a guard, I think of this clip from LA Noire.)

In this episode we bond with Mina over romantic dinners, a sense of honor, and killing waves and waves of terrorists.

As the game goes on, Thorton will get various trophies from characters in the form of items scattered about the safehouses. When you approach one and examine it, Mike will make a quip regarding the gift or its giver. Some of these trophies and quips change depending on your reputation with the person that is represented by them. It’s a nice way to remind the player of notable events that have happened in their career while fleshing out the characters of the game. In particular, the certificates only come up if you score 100 or more on the orientations in the Greybox (1 for each of the 3).

Mina serves as the game’s primary moral compass. If you kill an innocent person during a mission, she is the only person that will lower their opinion of you. If you’re role-playing, this means that you have a way of knowing when you’re doing collateral damage. However, mix/maxers may wish to consider pissing her off to get the -5/10% cooldown bonus as her handler perk. Either way, since Mina the character you’ll be dealing with most, getting her reputation up or down is fairly trivial. I should apologize for talking about people we’ll meet in the future, if only vaguely, but this game is very hard to talk about without referencing past and future events because of how involved everything tends to be with everything else.

Several times during this episode, I demand that Aldowyn cut his microphone. During the recording session, Aldowyn’s roommates were particularly loud and irritating. Because Aldowyn doesn’t have a good headset yet, we hear a lot of what goes on in his room during recording sessions. This can reach the point where literally none of us can hear him or even ourselves over that background noise on his mic. We’re still trying to find an adequate workaround, though Skype’s push-to-talk and Aldowyn’s masterful(?) editing should help to mitigate the problem.

I am curious as to why Obsidian chose to make the Sniper Rifle a static object in the world as opposed to a gun that you can carry with you like an Assault Rifle or a Pistol. I understand that it is a very powerful piece of equipment, but really players should be able to carry it with them. The easiest way I could see to remedy the situation would be to very tightly control the Sniper Rifle’s ammo supply. If anyone here has any thoughts about the decision making behind the Sniper Rifle, feel free to leave them here.

I will never tire of telling this story, but playing on Recruit on Hard with Assault Rifles really gave me a negative opinion of the game when I first played. Like I said in the recording, I almost refused to touch the game ever again after that. Fortunately I changed my mind and DID playthrough again… and again… and again. This just goes to show how you need to know what difficulty is right for you. I misjudged the game and paid for it. If not for the fact that I was already at the Moscow boss before I realized my mistake, I would’ve restarted the whole game. This is why I recommend playing on Easy and with Stealth/Pistols. The gameplay is just not worth doing otherwise. Your experience will suffer for it.

I apologize in advance for the quality of the recordings this week. Our mission in Saudi Arabia was fraught with peril. And by that, I mean Aldowyn’s roommates wouldn’t shut up, the Skype call went down a few times, and the game glitched on us more than once. Fun stuff!

Intel is really one of the best investments of your cash in Alpha Protocol. They give you so many useful bonuses to help you on your missions at a very cheap price compared to any decent piece of equipment. Each piece of intel confers a passive bonus in the mission that it was purchased for (with the exception of dossiers, as they just unlock the next section in a given character/faction’s dossier). You can use them to get Sniper Rifle drop offs, lowered guard presence, maps detailing the ideal routes through areas, and occasionally they can even give you side-objectives you otherwise wouldn’t have access to.

The whole conversation with Canadians and Christmas Trees really does highly how mind-numbingly dumb many of the Suave quips can sound. Part of the problem (or humor, depending on your viewpoint) is how deadpan Micheal Thorton delivers any of his lines. The voice actor, Josh Gilman, doesn’t exactly have an extensive record. Aside from this role, his most notable credit is Angeal from Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. Other than that he is mostly known for “Additional Voices.” Maybe once he gets some more notable roles under his belt, he will become a bit better with regards to VA work. On the other hand, it could also be attributed to writing or voice direction. Sometimes it is hard to tell.

In this episode, anaphysik says “I would rather have a game like Mass Effect or Alpha Protocol where I enjoy everything but the controls than a game where the controls are perfect and it is just pointless and dumb otherwise.” This is ultimately what will make or break one’s enjoyment of Alpha Protocol. If one is willing to overlook the mediocre gameplay that we have so prominently put on display, then there’s a very solid RPG here that focuses on player/character interaction. Also, I get to gloat to anaphysik and Aldowyn right now because special guest Varewulf and I were right, Awareness is a skill unlocked by default that becomes a permanent boost once you get enough ranks in Stealth. (As a side note: Firing that missile with the computer terminal is one of my favorite moments of the game. It’s hilarious in its own special way.)

At the end, the game glitched at the end of the mission. Since Aldowyn bought an specific intel before the mission, we should have been able to alter the shipping labels of one of his crates to our safehouses address, essentially stealing his supply and netting us a boost in cash. It’s nothing important, but it still sucks.

And we end with the confrontation with Nasri. This very early event in the game highlights how choice and consequence work. People who Killed or Arrested him get the benefit of having guards arm themselves with inferior equipment in exchange for losing access to his inventory in the Clearinghouse. Arresting him and Extorting him also offer cash rewards, though Arresting him nets you a larger cash bounty (since Nasri is a wanted man). This is all on top of the perk a player would get (there is one for each choice).

This episode is a rather dialog heavy one, where we finally leave the Greybox and head to the mission hub in Saudi Arabia. Also, Yancy gives us the low down on Alpha Protocol’s most important mechanic: dialog.

Yancy’s conversation here highlights what anaphysik and I were talking about: There are no bad conversation options you can take in Alpha Protocol. Every choice you make confers some sort of perk. Even if someone is upset with you and becomes your handler in a later mission, you don’t get a penalty for it. Instead, you get a different perk, which could either be better or worse depending on the character archetype you are going for. No matter which way you go through the game, the game will react accordingly, giving you different perks and possibly dialogue options.

We also learned a bit about dossiers, which are another important element to the game. As you explore the levels, you can learn much more about the people you encounter by scavenging for documents and details on them, unlocking more of their dossier. While this has the benefit of helping you figure out how people will react to you pushing and prodding them, they have another benefit. If you complete a dossier on any of the boss characters in the game (we’ll get to that, I assure you) you gain a damage bonus against that boss. This is more useful than those unfamiliar to the game might think.

We want Aldowyn to wear civilian clothes for the comedic value, but there is actually a good reason to wear regular clothing over armor. While civvies do not have the same protection and potential for upgrades as any of the armors (which come in Combat, Stealth, and Utility varieties), they offer some of the best noise reduction in the entire game, only matched by the Advanced Stealth Suit. Daring players can use it as a cheap replacement until they can gather the necessary funds for the suit.

Lastly, I want to take the time to mention how hilarious I think it is that every intelligence agency and criminal enterprise goes through the same Clearinghouse system to do business. I understand that it has to be that way because Alpha Protocol is an RPG, but it still amuses me. Several characters reference this because oftentimes when you meet them for the first time, you’ll get an e-mail later saying that they’ve marked you as a preferred buyer at their Clearinghouse store. The guy who runs the service must make a fortune off all the sales that happen over it.

Most of you out there know that I love to talk about video games. I derive pleasure from discussing what makes certain games work, where they go wrong, whether or not their stories make sense, and so on. Out of all of the questions related to video games that one could asked, there exists two that I dread seeing. These two are “What is a game?” and “What is an Role Playing Game (RPG)?”. This week, I will be discussing the latter because the topic came up on Twitter the other day and the realization dawned on me that I would be unable to answer that question in a series of 140-character posts. The fact is that there are so many games under the umbrella term of RPG that a definition that is broad enough to include all of them, yet narrow enough to exclude other types of game. With that in mind, coming up with my own definition and then working it around all the kinds of games in the genre would be impossible. Instead, I think it would be best to analyze all the games, from Mass Effect, to Fallout, to Final Fantasy, to Kingdom Hearts, that people mostly agree fit under the term and create a definition of “RPG” based on what all of them have in common.

The first of these characteristics that I notice in all RPGs is an overall sense of progression. By that, I mean that as the game goes on, there is generally a sense that the protagonist is growing and getting better at certain feats. Most of these games accomplish this through an experience/leveling system. As players accomplish objectives and dispatch enemies, they gain experience. After enough experience, they level up and gain stats and/or skill points used to purchase abilities. This model is one of the most common, appearing in Final Fantasy, Persona, The Elder Scrolls, and many similar games. Other franchises like Fallout add perks to this to further a sense of growth. While this is the most common method of instilling a sense of progression, it is by no means the only way to go about it. Both Deus Ex and its modern sequel, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, employed different systems. The original Deus Ex gave players Ability Points directly, after completing objectives or finding certain locations, which they could spend on skills from different types of weaponry to more passive skills such as First Aid, Lockpicking, or Swimming (which I would not recommend). Deus Ex: Human Revolution had experience, but instead of ability points which increased certain skills, they allowed protagonist Adam Jensen to unlock the cybernetic augmentations he is equipped with. Regardless of what systems are in place to encourage it, an RPG always has some way to make the player feel like his/her character is growing in either skill or power.
Another very common characteristic in RPGs is that designers tend to place a very large focus on the world and its inhabitants when making them. If players take the time to talk to people and explore in an RPG, they can expect to learn about economies, cultures, society, geography, political struggles, and more regarding the world or region that it takes place in. Games like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout (both older and newer titles) can boast a very rich and detailed world just waiting to be explored. That is one of the biggest draws of those games, and a topic I have writtenabout before. Also, Bioware games like Mass Effect, Baldur’s Gate, or Knights of the Old Republic serve as good examples. Like it or hate it, a major part of what makes the Mass Effect franchise so popular is that Bioware took the time to envision and develop a very vivid lore that most of the fans fell in love with. Learning about all of the various races, their cultures, and beliefs is half the fun of the game to some players. This is also true for the Japanese side of the RPG moniker. While games like Final Fantasy and Persona do not necessarily need to have very detailed background information due to how linear those games tend to be, players of them are often treated to pretty interesting worlds like the land of Spira in Final Fantasy X or the rural town of Inaba in Persona 4. The people and places all have there own story. The church of Yevon and the story of its creation and internal corruption are as fascinating as the discovery of a world inside the TV and all of its mysteries. When it comes down to it, all RPGs have deep, interesting worlds to learn about and/or explore.
The last element that I have noticed in all Role Playing Games to some extent is a feeling that the player has some element of choice in how the player character/party develops. Admittedly, this one is going to be a bit of a hard sell, so hear me out. In most western-style RPGs, this characteristic is pretty obvious. Usually, the player gets to choose what skills the protagonist has and/or how they develop. This is usually tied into the development system, similarly to the sense of progression. Players can often be asked at the start what class they wish to play as, a tactic employed in Alpha Protocol and other games. This can either be used separately or in combination with a system that gives players Ability Points to spend on skills as they rank up. Another well known system in Western RPGs is Skyrim’s system where skills develop as they are used. From the other side of the coin, in JRPGs, this characteristic may be less noticeable, but I feel that it is still present. Games like Final Fantasy usually have characters evolve on static and fairly predictable paths, at level X they acquire ability Y. However, all of these games have some form of customization. The very first Final Fantasy allowed players to choose their character classes at the start of the game. The second had abilities level up upon using them. The third and fifth had job class systems that allowed players to experiment with different classes and truly customize their characters to their own playstyle. And most others allowed players to pick their party from a very large group. All of these games have some element that allows players to pick their own way to play through the game. The other notable JRPG, Persona, is also extremely well known for this thanks to its system where the player character and hold and use different personae while the rest of the party can be chosen from a diverse cast of character, although earlier games in the franchise allowed all party members to switch personae. Every RPG allows for players to think for themselves and play through them in their own way.
To me, all of these elements are what separate an RPG from other genres of video games. A strong sense of progression and customization along with a detailed world are ultimately what binds all of the games under this heading together. While this is the definition that I have reached, I will not claim that this definition is absolute by any means. Feel free to dispute and criticize my opinion on this subject all you like. I would welcome the conversation gladly. Whatever your own opinion is, I encourage you to discuss and share it with others.

In this episode of Disclosure Alert, we continue on to the game’s last orientation: The Stealth Orientation.

One interesting fact worth noting is that the Stealth orientation is almost the complete opposite of the Gadget one. While the scored section of Gadget training can be completed without actually using any of the gadgets (it only asks that you take out the guards, meaning Martial Arts can be used to take them out), Stealth requires a little bit of hacking and lockpicking along with the assumed skill in sneaking to get a high score.

The proctor of this exam, Alan Parker, is also an infinitely more interesting and important character than Darcy. While Darcy’s roles in the game could be easily done by any other character in the Greybox, Parker is vital to the way the story plays out and the backstory of quite a few characters in the game. As he so confidently points out, his role in Alpha Protocol is one of the most vital. He specializes in analyzing and tracking world events and deciding the most appropriate action with which to deal with them. Also, when Alpha Protocol gets discovered, he’s the one who shuts the whole thing down and starts it up again. While Westridge is officially the leader of the organization, it can be said the Parker is the guy who is truly in charge.

His importance is even extended into his side quest. Unlike the other two side quests, you get a bit more than money or reputation from his quest (in fact, you can lose reputation with Parker, as we did, for screwing it up). You get intel and information which can be quite interesting and useful for the upcoming missions in Saudi Arabia.

Lastly, we talked a bit about Tranquilizer rounds. This is another reason why I strongly recommend Pistols. They are the only weapon-type that gives players a non-lethal option to deal with foes, although it is also possible to use Martial Arts for that. It is astounding how imbalanced the weapon skills are in this game. While the other weapons are indeed decent, the Pistols offer much more in terms of combat ability and versatility, which is ultimately what you want. Also, as it turns out, Aldowyn’s lack of sneaking skill is not entirely his fault. Since we are playing Veteran, we were given combat armor when opening the locker. That armor has low noise reduction, so guards could hear us coming from a mile away. Recruits gave civilian clothes with high noise reduction, so they are actually better at sneaking in this segment than Veterans. While you can fix this by not opening the locker and/or using Silent Running, it was pretty dumb of Obsidian to make that appearance anything put cosmetic. Seriously, while I love those guys, they can be particularly daft at times.

As my final remark (I know I already said lastly, but whatever): Since Aldowyn has been having a particularly difficult week with 3 tests and 1 project and I have been having internet troubles of late (I hear the storms been causing similar problems all over New England), we haven’t actually recorded this week’s episodes and it will cause a delay in our posts. Since this show just started and has already gained so many viewers, it is distressing that we are having these kinds of problems so soon. We hope you understand and appreciate your patience. 🙂

Because a lot of people were requesting that we post the videos on a blog, and since I am nothing if not shamelessly trying to attract an audience to this site, I have decided to post updates on this site as well. So without further ado:

This episode really highlights one of Alpha Protocol’s biggest issues, which is that some skills are blatantly better than others and it almost forms a kind of hierarchy of weapon skills.
Pistols are clearly the best weapons in the game. I do not think that anyone who plays this game can really dispute that. They allow you to equip silencers, have pretty decent range and power, are easy to make critical hits with, can make shots from behind cover, and have Chain Shot, which allows the user to make up to 6 headshots at the same time (depending on the player’s ranking in Pistols). The only downside is the lining up the sights for critical hits can take a bit of time.

Assault Rifles are the next best weapon in my opinion. If you don’t want to use Pistols, they are your best bet. They allow you to line up your sights similar to the way a Pistol can, but they don’t require a target to lock on to the way a Pistol does, so you can sit and wait for enemies to walk into your sights. This combines well with their incredibly long range. Their power is Focused Aim, which is not as good as Chain Shot, but still very solid. It temporarily slows down time and gives Mike’s Assault Rifle an auto lock-on where the cross-hairs track enemies.

Next, we have Shotguns. As you would expect from video games, shotguns are strong, but are really only good at close range. Their critical hit mechanics work in that all that is requires is holding down the aim button long enough and then firing, which will knock down targets. Their special power is Room Sweep, which makes all shots critical hits, along with a higher rate of fire. I wouldn’t recommend specializing in Shotguns, but they can make for a decent sidearm.

Lastly, my least favorite weapons are SMGs. SMGs are good for clearing small rooms, which is a situation most players won’t incur very often in Alpha Protocol. They don’t necessarily have a critical hit, but rather a damage multiplier. As enemies are wiped out with the SMGs, the multiplier increases. Once you reload, the multiplier is reset at one. SMGs offer the Bullet Storm skill, which makes your clips bottomless temporarily, but you are forced to reload once the skill is over. I honestly do not see much of a use for SMGs. They are points better spent on other weapons.
(As a side-note, my copy of Alpha Protocol came with a “Stealth Pack” that included a Pistol and an SMG. I guess SMGs are more “stealthy” than the Assault Rifle and Shotgun in the “Combat Pack,” but really they have no business in a Stealth Pack.)

Gadgets are another discussing entirely, and exist somewhat outside the combat skill hierarchy. Alpha Protocol throws all the Lockpicking, Hacking, and Gadgetry into a blanket “Sabotage” skill. Combined with Technical Aptitude’s passive bonuses and it’s Brilliance skill, I suppose it would be entirely possible to create a gadgeteer character, but I do not think I could recommend it. Gadgets are an expensive investment which can often preclude players from higher level weapons and armor. Fortunately for gadgets, most players will likely invest a bit in Sabotage anyway for the hacking bonuses (which also give more money from infiltrated computers and safes), so it’s not a huge hit to skills. Also, most players will want to make investments in EMPs and First Aid Kits to make life easier.

And, for the record, the skill to disable devices with EMPs w/o damaging systems is available at Rank 1 of Sabotage. It basically allows you to use EMP grenades to bypass hacking minigames. We should have been able to do that, but I imagine that it was disabled as part of the training.

So with college starting up, I’ve been a bit too busy to write something this week. In order to make it up to the more consistent viewers out there, I’d like to plug some of my other projects.

First off, I am now starting up a new Let’s Play series with my friends Aldowyn and anaphysik. Called Disclosure Alert, we will be doing Alpha Protocol as our first game. The first episode can be found here with updates on the groups Twitter and YouTube accounts:

There’s also the Let’s Play of Vampires the Masqurade: Bloodlines that I have been doing with Exetera and Krellen. The first episode can be found here and updates can be seen on Exetera’s YouTube account.

Lastly, some of my old friends from high school and I occasionally update our group YouTube channel, ZombieKrew. Though we have not updated in awhile, you can find the channel here.

(A Spoiler Warning is in effect on Dishonored and the entirety of its campaign.)
Recently, I went back and complete my high chaos, highly lethal playthrough of Dishonored. While this playthrough made me feel like a complete jerk (thanks to all of the destruction and devastation I caused) it also became the perfect opportunity to reflect upon morality and how it is viewed through games like Dishonored. When it comes down to it, the moral choices expressed in these kinds of games can be considered juvenile, showing a lack of understanding of nuance and ambiguity that many of these situations entail. In particular, I take issue with the fact that “non-lethal” options are almost always considered objectively good and just. The two main reasons I have for this are the topic for this week’s posting.
The first of these reasons is that, for all the talk of moral superiority, non-lethal gameplay styles are not inherently any more moral than their lethal cousins. As Chris Franklin, aka Campster, already explained much earlier in thisvideo on Dishonored, many of the things players do in a non-lethal playthrough can be seen as “bad” or “wrong,” including theft of personal property (pickpocketing/looting), forced injection of toxins (crossbow with sleep darts), choking enemies to unconsciousness, and forced invasion of the mind and body (possession). From a certain standpoint, all of these things are transgressions against all of the various people players will encounter. The problem here arises when the game only judges the audience based only on the number of kills made. If the player kills roughly less than 20% of the people in the game, then they are considered Low Chaos and the game ends with Princess Emily guiding Dunwall into a golden age under protagonist Corvo Attano’s tutelage. Any more than that, then Emily either grows into a ineffectual dictator of an empire ravaged by plague or dies, leaving ruins in her wake (depending on what happens in the final mission). Corvo, who is nothing more than a supernatural assassin, is either a Bastion of moral purity or a bastard leading a nation into ruin, solely depending on the number of people he killed. This gets even more hazy when the types of non-lethal takedowns of many of the game’s targets are taken into account, because almost all of them are fates worse than death. When facing High Overseer Cromwell, head of a group of religious zealots, players are asked to either kill him, or burn his face with a specific branding called the Heretic’s Brand, which forbids anyone in the city from being nice to him in any way. Likewise, the Pendleton twins, rich noblemen, can either be assassinated or forced to work in their own silver mines with their tongues removed and their heads shaved. Sure, the fate of these people are rather awful in the non-lethal versions, but according to the game, it is all okay because they are not dead. In fact, players will often be rewarded by NPCs who drop gifts off for him because they opted to “show restraint” and not kill them. Whether one choice over the other is inherently better is an open ended question, but we cannot deny that neither one should be considered objectively good or inherently better than the other without close scrutiny.
While that is indeed bothersome and honestly does not make much sense, it is far from the only issue I take with that kind of dualistic moral choice. The other problem I have with Dishonored is that its lethal and non-lethal divide really inhibits the number of options developers have at their disposal. Like many of its gaming contemporaries, such as Bioshock, inFamous, or even Mass Effect, the complex subject of morality was rendered into a binary choice that lasts for the duration of the game. When the only thing that is tracked is the number of kills, it prevents the game from truly reacting to the way that people play it. No one bats an eye when every single guard in a level has either been choked to sleep or pumped full of sleep darts, but a group of dead bodies causes a massive backlash from the world. This type of binary thinking can break an otherwise strong illusion of a coherent and reactive world. It even seeps into the gameplay as well. When dealing with his targets, the game will only acknowledge whether Corvo killed them or took the non-lethal route given by the game designers. This closes off many avenues of possible problem solving that could would otherwise be possible in a real world scenario. One such example comes from one of the missions that takes place in Act 2 of the game, Lady Boyle’s Last Party. The gist of the mission is that Lady Boyle is the mistress of the Lord Regent who has taken power in Dunwall, financing his military as well, so the player has to infiltrate the party she and her two sisters are throwing, figure out which one is the Regent’s mistress, and take her out through lethal or non-lethal methods. To the game designers credit, they allow for more than a few ways to go through this mission. Players have the choice of discovering the identity of the mistress, either through sneaking around or by blending in and talking with the guests at the party, and taking her out exclusively. Alternatively, they could kill off all three Ladies Boyle, ensuring that the true target is also eliminated, or knock out the target and sell her off to her creepy stalker who promises Dunwall will “neither see nor hear from her ever again.” Ignoring the potential implications behind that last option, this does drastically reduce the number of options left available, especially for those attempting a non-lethal run of the game. If Corvo speaks with the real Lady Boyle and asks to see her in her bedchambers, she reveals that she has no particular love for the Lord Regent and only sleeps with him to further her own family’s social status. That makes all of the methods of dispatching her seem unappealing and unnecessarily punishing her for circumstances beyond her control. It would be nice to allow for options that leave a better taste in the player’s mouth like convincing the good lady to drop support for the Regent’s cause, either by persuasive or coercive means. Perhaps players could even reduce the Boyle family’s sphere of influence in some way, making her support and financial backing less significant. The point is that by forcing a binary “Kill target or take the designated non-lethal approach,” the game is not challenging players to think outside the box as much as they could. It would be interesting to see games track other things besides whether or not people are killed, like maybe how violent players are or how much they stole throughout their run of the game or level. Players who only strike against their targets, yet do so with lethal force, would be treated as a Hitman-esque Silent Assassin, while those who keep their presence and influence as hidden from the world as they can would be treated like a Ghost. It seems like only allowing one single stat to affect everything in the game is naive in a way, given the people are rarely so singularly influenced.
Before I wrap this up, I do not want people to be under the impression that Dishonored is a bad game by any means. While the story is weak and I do criticize the game for not offering a lot in terms of choice, the amount of options and approaches players are given is significantly more than what most even attempt in other modern games. The exploration and focus on moment-to-moment gameplay are the strongest points of the game. It should also be noted that the Blink mechanic, which allows players to use short-range teleportation to jump to areas within their field of view is revolutionary and dramatically hastens the pace and verticality when roaming or sneaking through the fairly large and wide open (by today’s standards) levels thrown at players. It is a remarkable throwback to the likes of Thief with a dash of Deus Ex thrown in; A decent start to a new budding franchise. I only hope that the developers were taking notes and learn from the feedback generated by the game’s audience.

Update: Shortly after publishing this post, I showed it to Dishonored’s lead designer Harvey Smith, who I follow on Twitter. He disagreed with the notions I asserted in the second paragraph of this post, where I talk about the morality of it. From his perspective, he released this game with the message that “mass murders inevitably lead to instability,” which was a guiding though behind the Chaos system and a notion that I can agree with. It was a commentary on the nature of violence in gaming and gaming culture. The conversation had about this was interesting, as we both lamented how little consumers and even designers think about the amount of death in the games we play. While this does really help me to understand the rationale and reason behind the Chaos system, I still maintain that using more than primarily killing as the means to track Chaos is not something I entirely agree. (And, to be fair, I am being almost willfully ignorant of the fact that players of Dishonored can lower their Chaos by doing things that help out the common folk.) I write this addendum so that you may get the full story and judge for yourself. It feels disingenuous to have a conversation with the lead designer and not include the fruits of that conversation for you to see.

The other day, I had a discussion with a friend of mine over the impact of used game sales on the profits of game developers. While we argued for quite a long time on the subject, a lack of data led to a stalemate. Having said that, it made me start thinking about used games. I have always been a massive supporter of the used market, but had a hard time justifying exact why developers and publishers should stay out it, since they would logically want people to purchase new releases instead. Despite how massively unpopular measures like Online Pass systems are to the gaming populace, they are not annoying enough for consumers to outright boycott companies that use them. This means that on the consumer front, there is also no reason to not include them in the vain hopes to combating used game sales. Upon reflection, I realized that indeed there are very good reasons to not try to stifle the used games market and realize that it is not a developer’s enemy that needs to be stamped out, which just so happens to be the topic for this week.
The first reason publishers would be wise to not fight used games is that, depending on how far they go, it could be illegal. This is because of a law that is on the books in the United States (and I assume most developed countries, though perhaps in different forms) called the First Sale Doctrine. For those not familiar with copyright law, the First Sale Doctrine says that when a consumer purchases copyrighted material from its copyright owner in a lawful manner, the rights to that one specific copyof the material transfers to them, including rights to barter with or otherwise dispose of it. The copyright owner is no longer allowed to have any influence over that one particular copy. The one exception to this is that the new owner, who bought the copyrighted work, is NOT allowed to copy or duplicate it; Aside from that, the consumer now owns that copy in its entirety and the original copyright owner no longer has authority over it. Because of this, there is a possible, if admittedly weak, case to be made that using Online Passes or other methods of curtailing used games may be illegal. The same may even be said of On-Disc DLC, but that exists outside the purview of this article. Though this may seem like a good reason, there are a few loose ends to it. First of all, to the best of my knowledge (and I am no legal scholar by any means), because of a variety of different reasons including court costs, time, effort, and the massive amount of resources that publishers have at their disposals, this has and likely will never be challenged in the court of law. Honestly, most sane people (myself included) would rather just spend the $10 on an online pass or whatever than go through all of that. Also, the First Sale Doctrine strictly applies to physical goods. When dealing in digital distribution, what consumers purchase is not an actual product but rather a license to use the data and copy it onto their system. This may be changed some time down the road, but until then it is pretty cut and dry. There is also no protection for server access, so if the Online Pass is strictly for some online component (and not something like Arkham City’s Catwoman missions), there is also no legal leg to stand on.
Another very good justification for allowing used game sales to continue as they have for a long time is that the money that consumers get by trading in used games can go towards new games. According to Gamestop’s statements, (which are admittedly biased, so take them with a grain of salt) 70% of all the money that given out through used game trade-ins immediately goes in that direction, in support of publishers and developers. In a dwindling economic environment, this is even more important now than it ever was before. People are on tight budgets, some more than others. For these people, trading in games is often the only way they can get the $60 necessary to purchase new games on release day. It is either that or do not buy that game at all, which neither the publisher nor the potential customer desire. This war on used games has a potential to severely reduce the potential market and profit margins for game publishers. Without the money that is generated through trade-ins, it becomes more difficult for lower income wage earners to afford gaming. Games are a luxury product after all, they are no where near necessary. When it comes time to cut the budget and see where one can save money, games are often the first things to take the fall, being as extraneous and expensive as they are. Keeping this in mind, it may actually be more important to preserve the used games market in order to allow people to continue to buy video games and stimulate the market.
The last reason I will go over that publishers have to ignore used games is that later on, they can help generate a market for future games. What I mean by that is simple. If there is one thing that publishers can be counted on trying to do, it is make sequels to IPs in their possession. (Unless it is Mirror’s Edge; Yes, I am talking to you, EA!) Once sequel time comes, then companies are going to obviously want to attract as large an audience as they possibly can. One of the easiest ways to do this is though the used game market. Instead of dropping $60 on a brand new game that they may not like, consumers would be more willing to spend a smaller amount, maybe $20-30, on a used copy of the previous game in the franchise. Then, they could learn whether or not they truly like the concepts and ideas behind the series before jumping in blind with the new installment. This is quite a common practice that people have come to adopt. I know quite a few people who have gone on to buy many other games based on what they have seen in a previous game. For me personally, I would have never bought the latest Hitman game if I had not taken the time to play through Blood Money the summer before. My purchase of Fallout: New Vegas was also entirely based upon my enjoyment of its previous installment, Fallout 3. This form of brand recognition is something that publishers count on to sell units. It does not make sense to stifle that by trying to inhibit used game sales.
The bottom line here is that used game sales are just a boogeyman. I have yet to see any conclusive evidence that used games harm the sales of new games. Considering that its the only fair way to operate, I must assume that used games are innocent until proven guilty. It is far more likely in my opinion that video game are not as profitable due to a combination of over-inflated budgets and an unwillingness to lower prices to below $60 to compete in the marketplace. Games like The Walking Dead prove that high budgets are not necessary to make remarkable games. Steam sales prove that lower prices, even if only temporarily, will boost sales and improve overall revenue. Instead of trying to needless combat this used games “menace,” the industry should focus on improving itself and changing away from an obviously unsound business model.
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