Alpha Protocol/General Notes
From SDA Knowledge Base
Contents
Movement
Movement is a peculiar concept in Alpha Protocol. There is no real way to increase your speed naturally, except for sprinting. But before we get there...
Although covered more below in "Shooting", aiming your gun does reduce your speed by a margin. You could call it "walking" speed as opposed to "jogging". So obviously, you should avoid it as much as possible.
Generally, performing actions with the world will lock you in position until the action is complete. This generally does not come into play, and is mostly artificial, such as opening doors.
Speaking of which, opening doors is something you should never do. Always bash doors. The key difference is that bashing a door down opens it instantly, whereas opening will cost you about a half second while you wait for the damn thing to open. Bashing doors will attract guards to you, but you were never being stealthy in the first place, right?
Guards will constantly block your way. All the damn time. So obviously, you should go around them, giving them plenty of leeway. The primary reason for this is because all guards have a melee attack which will stop you in your tracks. Aside from losing your pacing and being open to any enemy fire in the area (which is generally plentiful) you will also be knocked back and dead in your tracks for about a second or two. If you can't move around an enemy, knock them back with the shotgun.
Sprinting
This gets a title of its own for a very specific reason. That's because it's bloody stupid.
Alpha Protocol uses an "invisible stamina bar" system to determine how much you can sprint. This is common in many games, for example, Grand Theft Auto. Alpha Protocol however does not have your character panting in place if he is out of stamina. However you obviously cannot sprint, which is critical in many places.
Your stamina bar is actually very large, you can sprint for a decent distance, and is as said, critical in some locations. For example, the Rome Finale. However, there are three critical flaws to simply sprinting through the entire game.
First, your control is slightly more limited while sprinting. Although you are not locked on the line, you do have slightly less control than if you were not sprinting. You cannot round corners as well while sprinting essentially.
Secondly, you cannot perform any actions, such as shooting or reloading. Therefore if a guard gets in your way, you have to stop sprinting. The reason this is a problem...
When you start sprinting, a portion of your "stamina" is depleted. It has not yet been figured out exactly how much, but it is significant. This makes it much more economical to sprint larger, straight distances, than short little spurts of the sprint. If you have to start and stop, you are simply wasting sprint.
Using your sprint bar therefore becomes a matter of judgement based on the situation. Although guards are not governed exclusively by RNG, there are some RNG factors that could place guards that usually are not in your way, in your way. Therefore you would save sprint there. Further, if you know you are going to want sprint for another section, you may need to "save" sprint up to that point.
The last thing to note is that your stamina bar regenerates with loading screens. So essentially, after any unskippable cutscene that lasts any semi-decent length of time, you will have full sprint.
Shooting
I have before today described this game's shooting mechanics as very much like Mass Effect 1's. I stand by that.
What I mean by that is that you will never actually have a 100% accurate gun like Call of Duty or (almost) any other shooter game. I am aware that my analogy is not by strict definition accurate, I still think it at least mildly fitting.
Although in Alpha Protocol there are some exceptions to this rule (such as Critical Shots) this holds true. Therefore, being the best shot in all of the world is not a specific requirement to run this game...
Although by the same token, aiming does help. If your crosshair is on your enemies head, you won't be shooting the vase on the shelf that is 20 meters away, it will likely hit, or at least be close. Therefore aiming well is always a good thing to do. But be warned, this doesn't guarantee a hit.
Moving and shooting is really what you want to do, but the penalty for moving and shooting is huge, especially with the pistol. Therefore stopping to really nail your foe in the head is not always a bad idea.
Shooting from the hip (i.e. aiming without holding the right mouse button) is virtual suicide...except with shotguns. This leads on perfectly to the next topic.
Weapon Chemistry
You will be using the pistol and the shotgun throughout your run. You may find the assault rifle really good, or the SMGs really fun, but if you aren't using the pistol and shotgun, don't let the door hit you on the way out. I will now of course, explain the reasoning for this.
(Please note, this section only regards the ebb and flow between these weapons. For a more detailed analysis on why these weapons are chosen, see below in the Weapons section.)
The short version is that the pistol easily can deal the most amount of damage in the shortest amount of time, and the shotgun can stun enemies...but obviously there is more than that.
Using the pistol on the move is almost suicidal. Not only is it slow (as you must stop to aim properly) but is also risky as you may run out of ammo if not conservative, or you will simply miss.
The shotgun has the problem that as the game progresses, the chances of killing an enemy go from reasonable to zero. In fact, the same could be said about the pistol. However used together, they form quite the team.
Essentially, you only want to use the pistol when you need something dead - and fast. If you need to stop and actually kill something, you pull out the pistol. If not, you keep the shotgun out. The shotgun is used for knocking back enemies on the fly, as firing from the hip is not as ineffective. (Seeing as the pellets spray everywhere anyway, aiming is a virtual formality)
Believe it or not...it's that simple.
Weapons
Weapons in this game are obviously critical, given the genre and all. However the problem is that effectively, some are more useful than others. You can only ever carry two on you at a time, therefore choosing from the four available is tricky.
Oh who am I kidding, it's easy.
The Pistol
There is a very simple reason why the pistol is used.
Using the pistol, every boss will die. Between the moment when one can shoot at the boss, every boss in the entire game will die in under 10 seconds. This feat is impossible with any other weapon. Now, one can say that is a very narrow view, and that therefore the weapon is useless in the long run. If the only purpose is killing bosses, then what about the rest of the game?
Well, the pistol shines there as well. If one could only choose a single weapon to take with them throughout the entire game, it would have to be the pistol. It operates brilliantly even by itself. In a speedrun, one primarily will use the shotgun on goons for the knockback, however the pistol works very well in situations where you have to actually kill someone. It deals superior damage even without the use of the skill. Therefore, it is an easy choice for the number 1 slot.
The Shotgun
When playing casually, I always used the assault rifle for my "second" weapon. However for a speedrun, this is a fools errand.
The shotgun is not brilliant, deals only moderate damage after the prologue, and is overall useless if you were playing this game casually. But for a speedrun, it has one real advantage. It can stun enemies.
When enemies actually get stunned is beyond me. I believe it's when they suffer enough damage from the shotgun in one hit...and then roll the dice for a "saving" throw. (So to speak) So essentially, it's almost random as to when an enemy is stunned. However, the advantage over the pistol is that you really don't have to aim the shotgun to gain the full potential.
You can run by and hip fire the bad boy until you need to reload. You also don't have to stop. This has the obvious advantage that enemies will not get in your way while you run by, or hit you with a melee attack. It is primarily the fact you can run and gun most effectively with the shotgun that easily secures it the number 2 spot.
