Dades wrote on May 21, 2011, 21:32:
Alpha Protocol was delayed multiple times so they could get more time to polish the game, it seems unfair to blame Sega when Obsidian spent years working on the game. Finally it was delayed a last time so that it could release outside of heavy competition but ultimately word of mouth and reviews took their toll on sales very quickly. The game has excellent writing but not much else going for it.

The game was delayed, yes. But unless the publisher ponies up the cash to do further refinement work (which SEGA didn't do) then no refinement gets done despite there being extra time. If you check the interviews this game was on a very tight schedule and it tried some very ambitious things - the degree of flexibility in mission structure (being able to jet between the three major mission hubs at any time) and the flexibility of choice/consequence was amazing. Entire characters and missions could appear/disappear depending on the choices you made. Heck how NPCs interacted with you was often influenced by the choices you made both in the missions you had to take before getting there but also by choices made in missions you *might* have taken at that point.

I can understand why people had issues with aspects of the game but it is a crying shame this didn't sell at least moderately well. It did a lot right and really tried to push RPG storytelling ahead.

I'd love to see Mass Effect 3 take a few lessions from how Alpha Protocol handled choice/consequence.