Obsidian’s quirky espionage RPG Alpha Protocol is the latest to be de-listed from Steam. The game’s store page confirms that it was removed from sale at the request of the publisher, Sega, whose rights for the game has expired. While no longer for sale, players who bought it during its nine and a half years of availability can still download and play it, and keys from other sellers should still work. While much maligned at launch and best played with a gamepad back when such things were unfashionable, it was a sneaky RPG well worth experiencing at least twice.

Update: Sadly, the reason for de-listing the game is as mundane as it gets. As reported by cheery RPS fan-site PC Gamer, Sega’s music licenses for the game had expired, and while Microsoft have purchased Obsidian, Sega still hold the Alpha Protocol rights.>

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So – no Alpha Protocol 2 then. This perhaps unsurprising news emerges from a C&VG interview with Sega West’s President Mike Hayes, with the relative meaty bits torn free by VG247, the finest jackals of the videogame press savannah. Key quote: ““Let’s speak very commercially; the game hasn’t sold what we’ve expected, therefore we won’t be doing a sequel”. Well, that’d explain it. The interesting thing for me though is how important he positions metacritic, stating explicitly that an RPG needs an average score in the high eighties to be a hit. While that’s arguably not true, it puts the blame entirely on the game simply not being good enough. Good, yes… but not good enough. I actually bought it myself, but only have got a couple of hours in, bouncing off the surface and having trouble finding the will to return to it. Still – it’s an obvious shame that an attempt to break the Fantasy/Sci-fi duopoly on the genre failed, because an accountant’s logic will mean that further attempts are even less likely. As in “Look what happened to Alpha Protocol”. My 70s punk RPG will never be. Despairing emoticon.

If you haven’t read my experiences with the first couple of hours of Alpha Protocol, it’s worth reading those first, since I’ll be building on top of that. That done, here’s Wot I Think:>

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We had hoped to bring your our Alpha Protocol WIT by now, but a series of unfortunate circumstances means that it’s much delayed. You might even have your own Thoughts to Wot below. So here is a description of the first hour or two, which isn’t a very pretty sight. I’m absolutely sure things much improve after this, especially now I have the game in a state in which I can play it at all. So yes, this is especially negative. No, this absolutely is NOT our review of Alpha Protocol, and anyone who says it is gets a dead arm.>

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Alpha Protocol is so close that if you go outside and look to the horizon you’ll just see the tip of its hat. In a strange reversal of fortunes it reaches Europe on the 30th May, not making it to its native US until 1st June. We grabbed this chance to talk with producer Matt Hickman about the development, balancing role-playing and combat, and moral ambiguity.

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This is disorientating. Much-delayed Obsidian secret agent RPG Alpha Protocol has hoofed out of couple of new videos. Thing is, they introduce characters we were introduced to at length a year ago. So, if the marketing cycle is taking it from the top again, just what have Obsidian been doing to the game for all this time? Applying a thick, classy layer of ultra-polish, hopefully…

Or maybe not. Carry On Spying below. (more…)