The Alpha Protocol had a very interesting approach to story building. In the game you are playing an American agent, a foot man who takes role in major events, but you are mostly acting on orders and the strategic decisions are taken by your superiors. Yet your actions do matter on a personal level. While most of the large scale story events will happen whatever you chose to do, their meaning to you personally and the perspective can be drastically different.
Kingdom Come writers told us they do not want to allow the player to change the history. I think what Alpha Protocol does is a good example of how the actual “what the history books will say” descriptions may stay unchanged, but the small scale personal aspects of it all change drastically. That is something the history books ignore but for the people who were there it matters a great deal.
At the end of Alpha Protocol, you may either emerge as a devastated person who lost all hope and is making one last desperate stand against the people who ruthlessly used him to advance their own agenda, or an influential background player who is tying the loose ends before he moves on after time well spent building contacts and extending influence all over the world.
There is a nice videoblog on YouTube which gave me the idea, âžś Serious Gaming : Kingdom Come: Deliverance Kickstarter Dicussion I will take the liberty to quote from it starting at 20:00 time mark:
I would like to see a rise to power in a sense. Not in the sense of becoming a military leader, becoming this high nobleman or anything like that. More like I am becoming this force in the shadow that is able to influence these noblemen, these kings and queens of Europe. Because that is what you are able to do in Alpha Protocol. You do not become a president of a country, or the head of an intelligence agency. You work with the heads of intelligence agencies, you make allies, you manipulate people and you form alliances with various groups. And at the end of the game, if you had played your cards well, you can take down the antagonist, the main opposing force of that game, who’s the head of this international corporation that’s been manipulating world’s events for years and you can take his place and tell him: You think that I need you? Because he offers you the chance to join him and you can just agree to that initially but then turn him away and tell him: I don’t need you any more.