I can tolerate the 360 controller for a little while, but it gets damned uncomfortable to me after long periods. No idea why. Guess I just don't use it enough. But I have found a solution! 8D

I like the playstation 3 controllers a lot more. Smaller, more comfortable to me. I picked up a few wired, cheap knockoffs for $10 a piece of e-bay.

Then I found MotioninJoy. Lets you use playstation 3 controllers and spoof it as a 360 controller.

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You can go with Albatross and G22 or SIE and VCI for the Embassy and Brayko missions in Russia; you choose between Mina, SIE and Madison for Marburg's villa; and for the last mission you choose between G22, SIE and Steven Heck backing you up. But from what I've heard, before Obsidian got inevitably forced to release it early, they planned a hell of a lot more for the handler system.

As for the Gelato Shop, this maps out how it works - if you stick with the Professional responses it's pretty much a freebie, but if you get creative you can end up shooting they guy pretty easy. And the Embassy has a bug where if you go through the door between the roof and the upstairs hallway, you count as killing the guards, even if you didn't, and even if you managed to bluff your way through the guard on the door.

 

I have a PS2 clone controller, but it won't work in that game, neither will the kid's el cheapo one. It only recognizes the xbox 360 one. And the worst part is, it's on of the smaller ones, the 15$ Neo Se, that are like 25% smaller then the standard controller, so yeah after awhile it hurts your hand.

Tehan, do they explain why the hell the guy doesn't know the passphrase?

 

He does, if you don't give it he'll shoot you, pretty much guaranteed. Either the counter-phrase has changed, someone's fed Mina disinformation, or he's just being a dick because he doesn't like his job. It's never spelled out which in-game.

 

I hate when the do that shit. :/ At least let me choose what controller I'm using. >_>

But yeah, I like MiJ for that reason. But yeah, I wouldn't really suggest buying a PS3 controller just to use it on a PC. >_> I mean, there is probably something similar for just about every controller out there.

I may go reinstall this, though. Just to fucking finish it. >_> Stopped for some reason right after you meet Albatross and Sis in Russia I think.

Also; Is it me or does Heck remind anyone of Simon from Burn Notice? D:

 

Yeah the assault rifle and the SMG's are pretty much just gigantic steaming piles of shit unless you pour all of your points into them and max them out. I tried them first when I originally started the game and when I had to go through two clips to kill one guard who was ten feet away I just said fuck it went back and reloaded with pistols and stealth and I one shotted everyone. Its absurd how overpowered the pistols/stealth mechanics are in this game.

Vash: Kinda except Heck is even more clownshit crazy to me, that thing with the Gatling on the subway car in the Taipei train station? That goes past insane bordering on comic book villain type ideas to me.

As for my handlers I pissed Albatross on purpose to get rep with Sis so he wasn't any real help to me, I just went with SIE most of the time because I thought she was hilarious.

 

How did you wind up talking more to SIE? I talked to her at the mission where she's hanging out of a helo, and I passed on her at the Villa, and I never got the option for her at the embassy =(

Edit: Something I almost missed, was the emails they send you can often be replied to gaining you more influence. And yeah Heck is kinda like a crazier Simon. I asked him if he wanted me to get a funnel so he could pour the drain cleaner down the guy's throat, and I was rolling. Especially when I found out he was just looking for his keys.

 

You have to have a certain reputation level with her which I think is 8 but I don't really remember anymore. Aggressive responses usually did the trick for me and if you part on good terms at the end of the first meeting agreeing to talk more later then you should get the option. Her way of getting you into Braykos mansion is also a hell of a lot more fun as well, instead of all the sneaking around crap you just bust through the front gate on a Stryker assault vehicle. Also you didn't know about the emails? Its how I got myself to 10 rep with Scarlet at like the halfway mark in the game.

 

Nah I noticed the emails after Saudi, was just pointing it out for anyone picking it up, it's easily missed if you just scan them.

 

Ah gotcha, they saved me a lot of the time when I said something wrong to one of the characters I needed to keep rep with.

 

The emails are one of the best parts. Heck sends you some conspiracy theory shit in a run-on sentence that spans the entire screen, and you can reply to him with some Timecube copypasta and it completely blows his mind. And when Mina asks you if you were given a password for the DV server, you can tell her it's M1lfluv3r and she'll give you a Swiss bank account containing 25 grand in exchange for never making a joke that bad again. And some of the blackmail letters you write with the Halbech data are hilarious.

 

Yeah I read all the options before picking the one I need to send, the Milf lover one was great.

 

I beat it, confused spoilage, and how the ending made no fucking sense to me. Without spoiling anything, it seems like they just ran out of time. Nothing is really tied up or resolved in the ending I played, and most of it contradicts itself.

Spoiler

I choose Albatross as my handler and I think I heard like 5 lines from him the entire time once I got outside, and that consisted of Westridge is in the boat house stuff. I like how in the last mission I saw a handler screen, evidentally I could of chosen Sie as well. How fucking secret is Alpha, when everyone knows about it.

Alright, so I decided to side with Halbech. Leland gives me this bit about how I'd have to escape... that makes no sense at all if he's running Alpha like he says, and they say he does.

So I escape, Sis lets me go. How the fuck did she get in? Where the fuck does she go afterwards??? I find Scarlet, who's the sniper, and an assassin suddenly. Um.. okay maybe I can buy that, she wants to escape and take Halbech out since they didn't pay her. We escape and a heli is shot down, but hey she's got a backup, which I guess I find later, and it's busy shooting at me. After she comments on a waste of a good missile, and telling me of her backup heli I don't hear from her again

Mina supposedly gave me up somehow, they gloss over that bigtime, but I let her live, and she's another agency's watchdog for Alpha.. which is again supposed to be known to only a handful of folks. She goes to do some disabling of security, and vanishes.

Parker I talk to and point of the flaws in his plans, and he wants to put the blame on Halbech. He gives me evidence, and then vanishes. I know Madison's his daughter from the wiki, but I never get the option to bring it up.

Westridge fight I don't kill him, but I arrest him? Really??? That makes no fucking sense. What authorities will get there? No one's supposed to know about it.

Leland I stay loyal to at the end, and he hooks me up with a huge cigar and the game closes.

Conrad give me shit for not working with Leland... yet I am working with Leland.

Sooooooo what the hell. I get they were influencing events to boost the companies sales, because they arm both sides. But the characters themselves just go all over the place at the end. Me and Parker are talking about taking out Halbech with Leland in my earpiece, the whole thing was just shit. Going to replay it a few times and see what I get different, or I may just read the wiki, because the last level layout is pure shit.

AND FUCK THE CONSTANT NEED TO HACK

Edit: Played the ending the other way. Didn't make sense that way either.

Spoiler

The brutality of the way Westridge and Leland get executed is pretty nice. Rare to see that, normally the screen would go dark, or it'd happen off camera. Parker I was supposed to talk to, I wasn't given the option this time, no computer to patch into to talk to him like the previous play through, so I had to kill him. I took the wrong door way and couldn't backtrack, so I couldn't free Scarlet, and I must of passed Mina while running from bullets, she didn't make it out either. I chose Heck as a handler, and it played exactly the same. Boring. Conrad didnt show for me to kill him either.

In closing, the game is half finished. It's playable on PC, but only with a controller. Pistols and even just crouching for headshots is overpowered, I was sniping folks from 200 feet away. The Alpha guards though I'd have to get a crit headshot to take out. Stealth I didnt even really use, I just stuck to cover and lined up headshots. I did use the uber buff on the second run through at the end, and it's just beyond broken.

I tried to use assault weapons, but with the 3 round burst it wasn't worth it, and didnt do enough damage. Even maxed out it was shit. The grenade damage, same thing. Only pistols and hacking skills worth a damn in this game.

 

Okay, I'm going to explain everything involved in the end that Middy's muddy on, so this post is going to have HUGE MASSIVE GODDAMN SPOILERS.

If SIE is your handler, she uses her VCI contacts to get 'recruited' into Alpha Protocol as your replacement (and sexes you up on the table before unstrapping you); if Heck is your handler you activate a homing device in your PDA for him to follow you after you're captured and drugged; and Albatross does something similar. Albatross knows so much about Alpha Protocol because G22 is a splinter of G19, which was an earlier iteration of Alpha Protocol.

He doesn't run Alpha Protocol per se, he's just able to come to mutually beneficial arrangements with those calling the shots due to Halbech's massive pull in the Military-Industrial Complex. He convinces AP's bosses that Halbech's arrangement with Shaheed getting swept under the rug is in America's best interest and off Thorton is sent to Saudi. But he can't outright dictate that a rogue AP agent should be given to him.

The shot-down helicopter was G22's, the backup plan was the boat you end up leaving on. The helicopter that was shooting at you was AP property.

She's the one that enacted Alpha Protocol on you - Halbech was just going to use the telemetry that Parker leaked to them to blow your arse up, but Mina sort of spoofed you going rogue on Alpha Protocol, which is why the missiles landed close but not on you - they lost the tracking data so they couldn't home in directly on the PDA in your back pocket. If she hadn't done that, Alpha Protocol wouldn't have ever turned on you, but you would have gotten a missile colliding with your right buttcheek. And yeah, she's NSA's mole into Alpha Protocol, trying to get enough data to shut it down - but it's damn hard to shut down something if you don't know where it is, and the only way anyone gets into the AP HQ is sedated.

She can be on the boat with you at the end, if you either never work with or turn on Leland. The other possibilities are Scarlet and Steven.

She tells you herself if you have a good relationship with her and make the right conversation choices in Rome. If you do tell him, he tries to kill Marburg and only manages to wing him (after commenting that he recognizes Marburg - Marburg was part of Deus Vult, another Alpha Protocol predecessor that splintered into Marburg's elite inside VCI, and so was Parker - but Parker was the only one that went on into the next facility. Parker actually hints at that during the first conversations with him. That, incidentally, is how Leland found out about Alpha Protocol - he found out about Deus Vult through Marburg, and sniffed around via his political contacts to find out where the latest iteration of it was.

There's just been a huge series of explosions, someone's going to come investigating. And when they do, the US government will disavow all knowledge, so Alpha Protocol will be declared a paramilitary terrorist organisation and Westridge will clam up and take the fall, staying loyal to the ideal of Alpha Protocol to the end.

In that end, you lied to Parker to get him to help you take down Alpha Protocol to cover Halbech's tracks. There's dozens of different ending combinations, but only four main variations - the one you had is one.

The one you had except turning on Leland at the end, declaring that with all your contacts and new friends (some or all of G22 and Albatross, SIE, Marburg, Parker, Shaheed and Al-Samad, Steven Heck, Hong Shi and the Triad, Omen Deng, Nasri, Scarlet, Mina, Brayko/Surkov/both and the Russian Mafia, and Grigori - you can make a lot of friends over the course of the game) you can make your own Halbech.

And then there's the non-Halbech endings, where you expose Halbech and choose whether to expose Alpha Protocol or not. If you decide to keep mum about Alpha Protocol, you fight Leland at the end instead of Westridge.

 

You got me after my edit.

I skipped through the scenes the second time when I chose Heck, but I never saw anything involving how Albatross finds Mike, or how the hell Sis got inside AP.

Scarlet called the backup plan as having a pilot, not a captain for me. Maybe just a problem with the voice.

They don't explain where any of them vanish off to if you help them, and you side with Leland though.

I grabbed the data after killing Parker, and still had to fight Westridge to get to Leland.

 

More massive spoilers ahoy.

It never outright says, but like I said, they're a G19 splinter group that has a lot of information-sifting facilities. If anyone can find Alpha Protocol, it's them, and that's without being able to follow after Darcy and his team after he 'captures' you.

She might have an alternate plan for getting out, I haven't played through an ending where you team up with her yet. But even in that end you end up escaping by boat if you don't team up with Leland.

No, it doesn't. They probably just scatter in the chaos. Even if you ship in your Handler and run into Mina and Scarlet and Parker and Marburg on the way out, you only have one of Mina, Scarlet or Heck with you on the boat at the end, so you can probably assume the rest of them make their own way out.

Yeah, because you were trying to expose Alpha Protocol. If you're trying to expose Halbech but not AP (the decision is made while talking to Shaheed, I don't know where you make it if you killed him in Saudi or during that conversation) then you fight Leland.

 

meh my save point was after I decided to betray my government with Shaheed. Aw well, uninstalled, checked off the played list. Next up!

Do you still fight all the AP guys, if you decided not to expose AP, but still expose Halbech?

 

Darcy's the only guaranteed opponent from the Alpha Protocol payroll; you only fight Westridge if you choose to expose Alpha Protocol or if you side with Leland, and you only fight Parker if you can't talk him around or choose to get in touch with Omen Deng instead (assuming you didn't shoot him).

 

Also Mid a lot of these choices depend on your rep with the various people involved, as I recall you can only get Parker to a shot at Marburg with enough rep, same with SIE as your handler, Scarlet working with you in the facility although I think you have to have enough rep with her to have gotten the sex scene before the final mission in order to get her in the ending and for me since I got my rep up with Sis when she came for me at the end in the medical lab I thought it was kind of cool that they implied through her body language (the way she smiles at you and gives you the gun) that she wasn't there on orders but genuinely wanted to save me and was scared they were going to kill me.

 

I sexed I Madison, Scarlett back to back, was pretty lulzy considering I don't think Madison's blood had dried yet.