Alpha Protocol - Interview @ GameBanshee

GameBanshee chats with senior producer Ryan Rucinski, lead designer Chris Avellone, and designer Matt MacLean from Obsidian about Alpha Protocol.  Apparently the game has recently reached alpha:

GB: Where do you currently stand with the development of Alpha Protocol?  Have you recently reached any major milestones or ran into any unforeseen issues?

Ryan: Currently we are at Alpha stage in development of Alpha Protocol.  Reaching Alpha is huge for us because instead of just dealing with single elements of the game we are seeing all the pieces together.

One interesting issue we had recently was that our A.I. turned into crack shots.  In the past we could weave our way around and the bad guys would be firing wildly but not hitting the player that much.  With a couple of tweaks the next time we tried that we started getting tooled and were forced to start using cover.

Then the A.I. started laying suppression fire while another one of their squad would creep up for a more accurate shot.  Needless to say there was some "WTF moments" because what used to be a walk in the park was now getting us killed.  We still need to do some balancing but because of the A.I. actions the skills that the player chooses becomes more important.