00:18I'm taking you into custody.
00:19I think I can smooth talk my way past them.
00:22Don't expect any manners out of me.
00:31Our basic goal going in was to figure out how we wanted to use dialogue to tell the story,
00:36keep it very tense, and yet at the same time have immense production value, great-looking
00:41characters, and awesome VO.
00:43And so all of those top-level goals are what we sort of put in the mixing bowl and moved
00:47around, and the dialogue stance system is what came out of it.
00:50There's some things I'd like to find out before you stop breathing.
00:54Charming.
00:55Dialogue stance system, or DSS, is a very fancy way of saying you have choices.
01:00and that the choices are going to dictate the way the game goes for you.
01:03If you go through the dialogue stance system and decide to extort somebody, and another
01:08player decides to execute them, there are totally different options that come up.
01:12Why are you wasting my brain?
01:15Drinking alone is time well spent, then.
01:17We provide different options, so it's a little bit of choose-your-own-adventure.
01:21Why are you wasting my brain?
01:26So say there's a character that loves for you to be more business-like, you know, if you
01:33come into that conversation and you are being suave, coy, or annoying, you're going to get
01:39a lot of different options from them.
01:41They're probably not going to give you the information that you wanted, but you may get
01:44other things.
01:45So what's the code?
01:46Tell them that the Adirondacks are beautiful this time of year.
01:49The player actually has the option to be the dick or be the hero, be completely in the
01:53gray.
01:54He can be a chauvinist, he can be a misogynist, he can be a ladies' man.
01:57I think my gun is working just fine.
02:00Not according to the tests we ran while you were under.
02:02You're going to hit the same maps, you're going to hit the same levels, but the way characters
02:06respond to you and how badly you're going to get hurt and how easy it's going to be for
02:10you to get access to certain areas so you can progress through the game is entirely
02:13dependent on the way you treat different people.
02:15We work together, we both get what we want.
02:17In a film, people play off of each other in a realistic and very timing-sensitive type
02:22realistic conversation.
02:24So essentially, you only have a certain amount of time to respond, but it gives a much more
02:27cinematic feel.
02:27You're not waiting for somebody to respond.
02:29If your objective is to reach the train, then we can help each other out.
02:32After that, I can't make any promises.
02:36Nor can I.
02:38Alpha Protocol has quite a large amount of dialogue.
02:41Not as much as some of our games, like Planescape Torment, or even Neverwinter Nights 2, but
02:46there are a ton of characters that you talk to.
02:49What makes you think you're ready?
02:50Because I tell you, we get a lot of recruits in here, and you're not convincing me.
02:58There's a cast of characters that are about 30 sort of named characters that you encounter,
03:04along with a lot of B players and C players.
03:06Can I help you? Or are you going to stand there and insult my shop all day?
03:12I initially thought it would be much more of a challenge, but once we actually got in the
03:16studio and the main, the voice actor who plays Michael Thornton, he picked it up within one dialogue.
03:23What I don't understand, though, is why we're talking at all.
03:26Unless keeping me alive is important for some reason.
03:29Mike!
03:31It's all about testing the environment and seeing if the environment bites back.
03:35So Alpha Protocol should provide the same sort of experience for the player where it just might bite back.
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