Alpha Protocol Sex Scenes: "Tasteful" Yet "Satisfying"

[Odude]

Beats me. I played NWN 2 and my brain shit itself out through my eyes. That was one of the worst sequels (or tribute sequels) that I have ever played. Not the worst but up on the top 10.

Mask of the Betrayer was amazing, though.

I LOVED the orginal Neverwinter Nights, especially the Shadows of the Underdark expansion. In my opinion, the story in that game ranked up there just below KotOR and Jade Empire (BioWare kicks ass, huh?).

I think one of the main reasons NWN2 got such bad reviews in the story department was because it was a disappointment when compared to NWN1. By itself, it was decent I think. This is much the same way KotOR2 went... can you see what happens when you let Obsidian take over your titles BioWare!?

But I do think the small sex scene in the game was done with a decent degree of maturity. Sadly there wasn't any choice involved (the Wood Elf was about as interesting as dryer lint).

Sadly I have not played Mask of the Betrayer yet. I most definitely will some time in the near future.

Here's something different:
Anyone ever play The Witcher? While personally I give the game a 10/10 and my personal seal of awesomeness...

Spoiler

Spoiler

...it has gratuitous amounts of sex in it. Now, this game was based on a series of Polish books which contained gratuitous amounts of sex in it. It it mature to keep the game as close to the book as possible?

Let's weigh this out.

Pros:
-The game doesn't actually depict the actual act even except for a single very blurry kiss, of which screen is the same on every occasion. The book itself does the exact same thing (IE the leadup, without the actual act).
-It's always optional. You can go the entire game without having to endure sexual content.
-The game is already rated M.
-The sex is in line with the series of books, hell, it's many of the same characters from the books (which I've read).
-At least a few confrontations are due to your character's developing personal relationship with a female (which I see as mature).
-Witchers are sterile... so at least you're not leaving a bunch of illegitimate children to fend for themselves.
-Medieval setting, so it's a bit more plausible.

Cons
-"Sex cards." If you sleep with someone, you get a picture of them. Some people have construed this as demeaning to women. In my opinion, it's more of a digital cookie to make you actually want to explore this aspect of the game (which is the only reason I did... I'm one of those who needs 100% completion).
-Nudity in the EU version. Some sex cards show breasts. In the US version it was redone so all the females are clothed.
-Casual sex. Lots of it. While it DOES coincide with the book, giving a peasant woman flowers then to find out that you just went for a roll in the hay at the drop of a hat? No thank you.

So is the sex in The Witcher mature? I think so. Why? Because it's exactly how the book does it and that's what they used as a template. If you did not read the books and dove straight in? Maybe not.

 

[timmytom1]

Here we go again,i can`t wait to see the media reaction to this

 

[Xanadeas]

Haven't you turned on the TV in a while? Or been to a movie? Or seen a shampoo AD or read a magazine? x_x Every time I see a movie with a "love making" scene in it I wanna keel over. They're in everything anymore and it's never even relevant to what's going on in the movie/show. They just...go at it like rabbits. I makes me sick. D:

Well...
Not really.
I stopped watching TV a while ago.

Damn, I haven't been able to stop myself. I always get drawn back to the History Channel, Animal Planet, and well...really that's about it anymore.

 

[The Infamous Scamola]

But sex and violence... hand in hand? Anywhere. I dare you to find a violent film/video game/book that doesn't feature sex of some sort.

You'd think they couldn't go hand in hand..
I mean, both acts require you have your hands relatively free, right?

Annnyyyway.
Uh...What about all of those FPSs?
Gears of War and whatever its best friend on the PS3 is?
Do they have sex?

Pah-lease, Gears of War is fuckin' dripping homosexual subtext.

Hold me Marcus...

Anyway, violence itself is a very sexual thing, the body fluids, the fact that nearly every weapon ever invented is shaped like a phallus and whatnot...

Gun = Penis pretty much.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Tasteful yet satisfying, eh? So it's art? Because that's generally the only time nudity is tasteful yet satisfying, and even then, only under the right pretense. Sex, however, is very rarely tasteful, so this really creates an intersting quandry as to how they're going to present it. Tasteful usually means like a velour, or silk, or just a silouette, while satisfying means expressions of ecstacy and delight over the period of about a minute to two minutes. That's generally all that can be done before it becomes too satisfying, or no longer tasteful.

 

[Xanadeas]

oh god massive snip

I actually wanted to buy The Witcher just because I was looking for a darker RPG, and I had heard good things.

Pah-lease, Gears of War is fuckin' dripping homosexual subtext.

Hold me Marcus...

Anyway, violence itself is a very sexual thing, the body fluids, the fact that nearly every weapon ever invented is shaped like a phallus and whatnot...

Gun = Penis pretty much.

That's uh..
That's not subtext.
That's pretty much just text.

Also, stop trying to ruin violence for me.

Damn, I haven't been able to stop myself. I always get drawn back to the History Channel, Animal Planet, and well...really that's about it anymore.

I pretty much just use Hulu.
Sucks for those outside the US, though...

If I can't find what I want to watch there, I'll just Google it, like I did with Code Geass.

I never really gave Hulu a chance myself. Just kinda browsed it a bit then decided to go do something else.

 

[theultimateend]

I know man, this makes what...2, 3 games?

Ridiculous.

That's exactly what I'm saying!
Not to mention about a thousand films.

A thousand films and AT LEAST 85 billion times in the last 2 thousand years or so and that's assuming that every person scored a pregnancy on the first try and didn't ever have sex again. It's almost like there has been more sex than murders...perhaps video games inaccurately portray reality...I bet THAT would be some shocking news .

It's a psychological thing. We overlook the grossly more common good things in life for the fantastically unlikely bad things. They call it the Mean-World Hypothesis, or at least they did when I studied it.

You are more likely to get fucked than to get killed or even to see someone else get killed.

 

[Doug]

God, must everything contain a sex scene?

Oh, whatever.

To paraphrase a certain writer, All true stories include sex. Except, you know, that one with the Virgin Mary.

Lies! God and Mary, sitting in a tree, K-i-s-s-i-n-g.

 

[Doug]

They say that, but they're hardly going to describe it as "Tasteful yet Explicit", nor are they going to say "Hardcore yet Boring"

Fox news would be on them in a FLASH if they said something like that. After all, 3 seconds of optional bare ass in Mass Effect somehow turned into 'PORN SIMULATOR' on Fox news.

 

[theultimateend]

A thousand films and AT LEAST 85 billion times in the last 2 thousand years or so and that's assuming that every person scored a pregnancy on the first try and didn't ever have sex again. It's almost like there has been more sex than murders...perhaps video games inaccurately portray reality...I bet THAT would be some shocking news .

hublburhglr i am allergic to numbers

But you're right.
I must pick up the slack!
I'm off to murder.

I just like to remind people that just because its Taboo doesn't mean its rare. The fact that Sex has been out of games this long is mind boggling to me.

I mean don't get me wrong, I don't want it pouring out of every orifice of the game. But for the sake of everything sane if I spend 12 hours saving some wench who keeps getting herself almost killed I deserve something. Shit bake me some cookies at least.

I'm often disappointed at just how hard we try to exaggerate the most unlikely of events. You can find people all the time who are scared of flying but aren't scared of driving. Sure in 'theory' driving should be safer because you are earth locked, but the chances of you dying from a car accident far outweigh a plane crash.

If planes crashed all the time my pilots wouldn't constantly be dudes who have been flying for longer than I've even been alive ;p. Course on that same note I'm still in awe watching bus drivers move those behemoths around without killing people. I'd be on the 7 o'clock news after accidentally hitting a daycare or something. They are just too big for me to properly control.

Likewise I'm not a huge fan of ultraviolence because too many games now think that violence will save them from shitty content.

Also to someone earlier who said NWN 2 was a solid RPG...I respect your opinion but the fact that games like that get fantastic reviews is just...wow.

Kind of like when people said SPORE had ground breaking gameplay. NO...it had amazing editors. The gameplay wasn't groundbreaking two generations of consoles ago.

 

[NoSlottedToaster]

Sex is a part of life, games imitate life at the most basic levels, there's nothing more basic than sex.

Anyway, I'm not complaining... I just hope I don't have to sit through five minutes of soft-core faux orgasms.

No, killing is the most natural thing ever.
Everything in nature kills, even if it doesn't do it directly.

You can't kill if you aren't born.

So you fail. Try again emo boy .

More things in nature breed than kill. Take hundreds of thousands of species of plants for example. Of them VERY few kill but ALL of them breed.

If you want to say indirectly things do things. Then all things do all things to all things. Which is a universal statement and universal statements are absolutely meaningless. You get a big fat F in philosophy and logic courses for using them.

the kill vs doing it debate is awesome, obviously you do it more than you kill (unless your crazy) and then also you eat more than you kill, heck I even poop more than I kill. I do everything more thank I kill... In fact I have yet nor do I ever intend on killing. Now in regards as to nature... then again Breeding wins there to, as stated above, there would be no killing without the life being born first.

 

[RelexCryo]

God, must everything contain a sex scene?

Oh, whatever.

To paraphrase a certain writer, All true stories include sex. Except, you know, that one with the Virgin Mary.

Psshh, she just got drunk and passed out at a party.

Jesus loves you. So does God.

Just passing it on.

 

[Byers]

Is it just me or does Alpha Protocol seem like Obsidian's attempt to create their own Mass Effect...

Not that I would consider that a bad thing, in fact more power to them.

The similarities are pretty intense though, in my opinion.

Obsidian has always been making games that are almost....tributes to Bioware games. They did KOTOR 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2; both of which were sequels to Bioware games.

Obsidian are excellent developers, they just aren't too hot with ideas. They're also making Fallout: New Vegas as their tribute to Bethesda.

They did KOTOR 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2, both of which were AWFUL.

Interesting thing to say, considering they didn't change a bloody thing from the original games, aside from the story line and graphics.

They sure as hell changed the voice acting from NWN to NWN2, because NWN2 sported some of the worst voice acting I've ever been forced to endure in a game. It was also so bug-ridden and weighed down with a story of such mediocrity that it was physically painful to watch them build a game around it. The origin of your character was also way too specific and clumsy, forcing you to be referred to as a 'harborman' or some such for the entirety of the game, regardless of what class you picked or how you chose to design your character's personality through dialogue et cetera. The graphics engine was a real dinosaur too, which seemed unnecessary as it didn't look tremendously good.

KOTOR2 has been too long since I played. The only real thing I remember is that the character reputation system worked in such a flimsy and arbitrary manner that you were almost forced to look up the correct approach online instead of using common sense to gain the favor of your crew. Beyond that I know that I stopped playing it halfway through, even though I was a MASSIVE fan of KOTOR 1, which indicates that other things were also seriously wrong with it, although I don't remember specifics.

Overall I'd say both of these games had some really interesting ideas, but dropped the ball big time on execution and didn't think everything through as well as I would have wanted for my $50.

 

[Byers]

Is it just me or does Alpha Protocol seem like Obsidian's attempt to create their own Mass Effect...

Not that I would consider that a bad thing, in fact more power to them.

The similarities are pretty intense though, in my opinion.

Obsidian has always been making games that are almost....tributes to Bioware games. They did KOTOR 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2; both of which were sequels to Bioware games.

Obsidian are excellent developers, they just aren't too hot with ideas. They're also making Fallout: New Vegas as their tribute to Bethesda.

They did KOTOR 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2, both of which were AWFUL.

I know, right? They're absolutely terrible [http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/starwarsknightsoftheoldrepublic2?q=Knights%20of%20the%20Old%20Republic] games [http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/neverwinternights2?q=Neverwinter%20nights].

To elaborate, KotOR2 and NWN2 were both solid RPGs and if you can't see that then you're clearly lacking in some vision.

I think I will trust my own opinion on the matter more so than statistics found on the internet. But thank you for your fanboy rage.