I didn’t remember it had any.
Would it greatly hurt the game if TURN UP THE RADIO was removed from the Brayko fight? No. Would that fight be the same without it, or another suitably eighties rock song? No.
It’s a weird outlier of a scene in the game as it is, but if you replaced it with generic action music, it’d definitely suffer.
On the other hand, if the option is removing the music or removing the game from sale, it’s no contest.
Oh man I love that song. Maybe I should reinstall this. Never made it much past the beginning…
Just a silly question from somebody who doesn’t know anything: how do other media like movies manage to not be prevented from sale or broadcasting? I have heard of that music licensing issue very occasionnally for tv shows, and even seem to remember a couple of series having to use a new soundtrack to get around it, but that seems to be the exception. Or is that just a digital distribution issue?
Well for the longest time you couldn’t get WKRP in Cincinnati with the songs they used originally. Like even in syndication they had to replace the songs with “sound alikes” because a lot of the stuff was original contemporary music from groups like The Cars, Marvin Gaye, The Police, Foreigner, stuff like that. I believe they did eventually get the rights for most of the songs back for the DVD release but that was something like thirty years later.
I think it’s mostly just a contractual thing where when they were making these games it was just assumed that they would make them, sell them for a few years and be done. That was the industry model.
They didn’t anticipate them actually being viable to sell so far in the future so they didn’t negotiate an extension mechanism. Now they would have to go back and do it but there just isn’t enough money for both sides to care to do it.
It generally regards the structure of the licensing deal. For movies, the common and overwhelming practice is that music licensed to films is essentially a perpetuity thing, with either a lump sum or small residual fee paid. More and more that’s becoming common to TV shows, due to the issues that ddd mentioned with WKRP, or the issues that caused single seasons of Northern Exposure on DVD to sell for $50-70 on initial release.
Licensing ends up being something where you can make a deal for that music inexpensively, but they’re going to set a hard expiry date on it. For game developers, as Lantz says, that was basically how things were done a few years ago in a lot of places.
Thank you for the very accessible explanations, good sirs!
And I was hoping this would come to Xbox One BC so I could get back to it.
I knew better than to get my hopes up when I saw this thread bumped. But, it still stings a little it was merely a rights issue.
One of the things I appreciated about Alpha Protocol is how awful the main character was if you picked the aggressive responses consistently. It did not hesitate to make your character look like a complete and irredeemable asshole. Yet, it actually fit with the character considering the game’s early events. Most games that offer a ‘bad’ dialogue option end up either coming off as cartoonishly evil or merely a good guy with a bit of an attitude. I admire it for pulling this off as well as it did.
I love that video so much.
Asshole Thorton > asshole Shepard.
Has anyone mentioned Stephen Heck yet? He’s pretty much my favorite character in my video game.
Lol…yah, Stephen Heck ahhh…so good. I played through this game so many times, and would do it again if I still had an Xbox.
The funniest thing about asshole Thorton is that some NPCs like those responses and it hilariously changes the tone of the playthrough.
Ah, the minigames–they make a lot more sense when you consider that they were almost certainly designed for a dual-stick console controller. But they’re awful on mouse/keyboard.
Everyone should check out the Steven Heck ending if they haven’t already. Did anyone actually get that in their own play through? I assume it requires stiffing all his love interests.
I got the Heck ending the one playthrough I did. Loved it.
Come to think of it, Alpha Protocol is probably my favorite spy/espionage anything in any media.
I’ve said this before, but this is a game that got better every time I played through it. First time through was actually pretty tough, just because the game is so full of wonk control wise, but once you get used to that, the magic happens.
Much the same here.
My no-kill play through was fun (and tricky in places).