For players seeking an agent story shaped by consequential mission choices, Alpha Protocol™ has a clear single-player focus. At $6.79 from GOG, weigh the cost against your interest in Thorton's mission: your decisions affect his development and the fate of the world. A future Steam sale may offer another opportunity if you would rather not buy now.The Standard edition is available for DRM-Free, with Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Klarna as verified payment methods.
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated daily
Historical Low~ $9.992025-11Current Low Across Stores~ $6.79GOGAt its historical low now
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About Alpha Protocol™
In Alpha Protocol™, you take the role of Michael Thorton, a talented agent cast out by his government and tasked with stopping an international catastrophe. Decisions and actions across missions shape the secret agent he becomes and affect the fate of the world.Steam players rate the game 83%% positive across 3,430 reviews.The Steam PC version was released on June 1, 2010.
$9.992025-11-27 · SSteamBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.
Language support
Language
Interface
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Audio
English
Yes
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French
Yes
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German
Yes
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Interface
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Audio
Italian
Yes
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Spanish
Yes
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Czech
Yes
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Polish
Yes
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Russian
Yes
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Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-17
02Before you buy
Single-player and choices
Alpha Protocol™ is a single-player game on Steam for PC. Your mission decisions and actions shape the kind of secret agent Michael Thorton becomes.
Interface languages
Listed Steam PC interface languages are English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Russian, and Japanese.
03Frequently asked questions
Who is the protagonist?
You play Michael Thorton, an agent cast out by his government who must stop an international catastrophe.
What do choices affect?
Choices and actions during missions affect Thorton's future and the fate of the world.
Can I play solo?
The Steam PC listing identifies the game as single-player.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviews
Selected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
It's like Mass Effect meets James Bond.
In lovely Obsidian tradition, the game has more bugs than an African Jungle and enough cut content to make a second game.
All in all, it's pretty good.Show moreShow less
20.5 hours at review212 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
The Good:
* Alpha Protocol is a unique 3rd-person-action/RPG hybrid. Truthfully, though, it caters more to the "twitch" side of stealth than the "methodical" side. Keep this in mind if you like your Stealth games slow or medium-paced.
* Alpha Protocol laid the groundwork for some of the games that you are playing right now. It is the reason current-gen iterations of Deus Ex, Borderlands, and Fallout exist in their current form. And, because of this groundwork, AP has similarities to all three of these series, but it is unfortunately a worse game.
* It is widely-reported that the game has a number of game-breaking bugs. This may have been true upon release, but is NOT true now. I did not encounter any game-breaking bugs.
* The method of gameplay caters to the players' choice: it can be played multiple ways: run-n-gun, stealth, etc. However, playing with stealth is quite difficult compared to games like Metal Gear, Splinter Cell, or even Oblivion. This difficulty leads to many more twitchy fire fights than you would typically desire in a stealth game. And it's not a "good" difficulty. It really feels cheap or unfair when the enemy detects me while I am in full camo in the dark, crouched and not moving.
The Bad:
* Most levels are essentially hallways, with only one or two alternative routes that can be used.
* Some animations are a bit stiff. For example, the open scene features your avatar's bicep and forearm occupying the same space at the same time. Enemies will also "slide" into cover at times, and the normal guard's walking pace is way too low for the length of his stride.
* Character animations are incomplete. Most games feature some sort of "turning" animation as your avatar changes direction. Turning is automatic in Alpha Protocol: your character is facing one direction and suddenly faces another direction.
* The computer hacking feature is definitely the dated relic of a game developed for a console. Rather than allowing a click and drag interface using the mouse, the player must move two "passwords" across the screen using the keyboard for one and the mouse with the other. Although I have done a poor job of describing it, believe me that the interface feels dirty and and the controls are alarmingly poorly-designed.
* UI Features, such as the item selection menu, are a little unintuitive. They are confusing but are not hard to get used to.
* Pausing while in the middle of a conversation is really inconsistent. Sometimes the game allows you to pause, other times it doesn't. This is especially frustrating because the game allows you to choose what to say, and if you step away from your computer to give the baby a bottle, you may come back to a conversation headed in the completely wrong direction, essentially ruining your game up to that last checkpoint.
* On one mission I was instructed several times to use dust storms to hide my approach. There were no dust storms. On another mission I was told the sound of trains would disguise the noise of my bullets. The trains: they did nothing.
* Bugs encountered: (1) after dying, I loaded my last checkpoint and the game crashed. (2) On one mission, I found an invsible wall in the middle of a hallway, got my foot stuck in a rock, and found a health dispenser floating in mid-air. (3) It is impossible to do a stealth takedown on an enemy near a door, you will simply knock the door down instead of killing the enemy.
The Ugly:
* Alpha Protocol's method of encouraging the player to be stealthy works by making the combat mechanics horrible. One example of this is that in order to shoot accurately, you have to wait 4 or 5 seconds between each shot. Deliberately making your game worse to encourage a particular playstyle is a horrible idea, why did Obsidian think that would help their game?
* Playing the game 100%, or even "somewhat fully," requires lots of extra (boring) dialogue. Even worse, and the reason why I don't think this game will be remembered, is that the game "features" hours of reading extra dossiers to find clues.
The Verdict:
* Alpha Protocol is neither solid nor decent, but a game that you may enjoy if you are a fan of Bioware or Bethesda games. The game is an interesting combination of stealth, gunplay, and mind-numbingly boring conversations and reading segments. I only recommend picking up this game if you are interested in game design so that you can see how pacing, genre-hybrids, and player agency became such important concepts in newer games. Alpha Protocol experimented with these methods and was successful in some ways and a complete failure in others.Show moreShow less
9.1 hours at review119 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Without a doubt the best modern spy game I've heard of. I'm not a fan of wordiness, so here's the basic rundown, pluses and minuses and stuff.
+ brilliant stealth system. People notice gunshots (but not silenced ones), dead bodies, themselves being shot... loads of stuff
+ skill customization is wonderful. By end-game of my stealth build I could walk into a room invisible, kill 5 people and walk out without anyone seeing me. Leeroy Jenkins run: kick in the door, empty the clip, everyone's dead before the alarm's raised.
+ boss fights were pretty good. They all had features to make them unique, and it was fun to fight all of them except non-spiked Brayko
+ dossiers were super useful, both as flavor-text and in-game. I loved pausing before the end to read all the stuff I'd learned about everyone
+ cutscenes were well-done. Most were skippable (BRILLIANT) and I loved Mike's various responses to things
+ special mention for letting me Punch Marburg as a dialog option
+ also: "refuse" "kiss my ass" "♥♥♥♥ off" is the best set of options I've ever encountered.
+ There were so many things I could do. The devs coded in a lot of secrets and stuff
- dialog choices could've been more descriptive. I wasn't expecting Mike to insult someone when I pressed Suave.
- I wish Sis got more involvement in the game
- there were an unfortunate amount of glitches, such as Mike trying to hold an Assault Rifle like an SMG, or slowly creeping up a wall
* Positive or negative: the Chain Shot's final upgrade is incredibly overpowered. This would be completely negative, but it allowed me to destroy forced aggro fights (bosses) and continue on my merry, crouch-walking way.
* Some of the glitches were hilarious. I managed to stick a guard through a wall, and he wouldn't stop vibrating.
* Security minigames. I loved the Digital Keypad, was neutral on the Lockpicking, and despised Hacking, because of mouse sensitivity.
* The characters could emote really well! ...could be a little higher-rez, but it was originally for consoles, so whatever.
Overall, wonderful game! I'd easily give this a 9/10 on a standard scale, and wish there was a sequel in the making.Show moreShow less
43.4 hours at review176 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
At maximum stealth level, you can basically walk through most maps entirely unseen, taking the most direct route from checkpoint to checkpoint, entirely invisible to all the enemies. It's like the game designers realized you'd get bored with the game, so they gave you an option to just skip most of it. They also gave you a pistol, which at high levels can one-shot kill almost any enemy in the game, if you wanted to skip the bulk of combat as well.
There are at least two easy ways to play the game 'right,' and I found one unfortuante way to play the game 'wrong.' While the pistol can kill anything, the shotgun can barely kill the starting enemies. Leveling it up doesn't make it materially better. If you chose a shotgun build, you've chosen wrong, and the game will punish you for it.
The one interesting aspect of the game is also one of its most frustrating. Conversations have real consequences and are hard to reset and replay. It encourages you to research your conversation targets well, like you're supposed to, and to accept convesation mistakes if you make them. But it's too easy to make mistakes. The game doesn't tell you what you're character is going to say, it just says something like, "suave." Now "suave" might be cool and seductive when talking to one character, but creepy and stalker-ish when talking to another. You don't know until you click the button what ridiculous crap is going to come out of your mouth. So I never really felt like my conversation choices were "my choices." It was just a question of whether I pushed the 'right' button, or the 'wrong' one, based on what the online wiki said. That's not fun.Show moreShow less
35.9 hours at review59 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
One of the best executed third person shooter out there. The stealth mechanics are flawless. The skill tree is detailed without being cumbersome and I don’t need to learn how to use a pistol before I can shoot a shotgun (that’s right Mass Effect, callin’ you out.)
The story is better than average and they’re not afraid to call the bad guys out. The Saudis, Russians and Chinese are key antagonists (sure that helped international sales.) The evil corporation trying to start a global war is a little silly (evil corporations don’t start wars, they sell virtual trading cards.)
Enemies react logically to seeing or hearing you, rather than letting you have a running gun fight through the intergalactic U.N. headquarters without anyone batting an eye (burn two! ME), although they are a little quick to get tired of looking for you after they find the dead body of one of their buds. The boss fights are challenging without the bosses being overpowerd into super (or Metal Gear Solid) villains. The fight with the Russian drug lord is classic.
In conclusion (that makes me sound smart,) if you like TPS/RPGs it’s a must own and it’s 5 bucks less than some other TPS/RGP (needs some Aloe Vera for those sick burns Mass Effect?)Show moreShow less
61.7 hours at review163 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
The game is great but the version on Steam is outdated and no longer works on modern hardware, get it on GOG instead.Show moreShow less
4.9 hours at review56 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
I usually make the main conclusion about the game in the first sentence. But Alpha Protocol is so suave, that it needs personal and quite thorough preparation to make an appropriate statement.
This game comes from the Obsidian studio, which is known for taking already acknowledged action-RPG systems, and then remaking them into much deeper, more truthful RPGs. It scares many old fans of those previous games but undoubtedly earns new admirers among those who can see farther than one step ahead. So it was with Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout New Vegas, Dungeon Siege III...
Alpha Protocol was the first game released by Obsidian which was not a part of a big franchise. It was made with limited resources, a powerful publisher (who overhyped the project but made it in uncool way), and on the engine of Mass Effect. While limited resources were not a problem to make an outstanding game, the other two caused its fall upon release.
People were expecting another Mass Effect, in a cloak-and-dagger setting. But Alpha Protocol had much less pathos and shooting than in the beloved and iconized sci-fi world, and much more responsibility for every action than everybody was expecting. So for some time, Alpha Protocol became a pariah in the world of the Mass Effect fanboys, who kept a majority in the gaming trends and patterns.
I admire Mass Effect for its huge and rich in the details sci-fi universe. I enjoyed playing the ME games. But even more I am enjoying some pen-and-paper games based on the ME universe, but using different mechanics. GURPS is good, Savage Worlds - even better. I’m telling you that the mechanics in the ME games are far from desirable for immersive RPG play.
However, guys from Obsidian took it and turned it into a quite decent and even bright thing. They added a timer to dialogs (field agents supposed to think fast) and they added perks, events and consequences to almost every line we speak and every turn we make in the game process.
While Alpha Protocol is relatively short, it is so hard and intense in terms of character development, that many players simply failed to make good choices there, ended up with weak set of skills, and were forced to leave the game unsatisfied. Of course, they all made thumbs down reviews, and that drowned the game on the market. Only now, 5 years after release, the tide is finally turning. The number of players, who managed to play it like it was meant to be, is growing, so the Metascore is slightly rising. You can see the current state of mind just by looking for a combination of Phil Owen+Alpha Protocol (see commentary). Although I don't totally agree with that fella's point of view, well, yeah, generally, Alpha Protocol IS one of the greatest RPG of the given time.
It is a great RPG – if played right. And how are you supposed to do that? When making choices in that game, just make it like a responsible, adult man, who really can play in the cloak-and-dagger games. As always, there are two main approaches, one silent, other is the assault, and as a third option, you can try to mingle and twist (sometimes speaking saves much more bullets than stealth). But please! Please, turn on the real field agent mindset, anticipate the consequences Before you act! Even when you have to think very fast, you still Need to Think, and not just picking lines and turns occasionally.
Summarizing:
Alpha Protocol is one of the best current-gen RPGs I’ve played, I’ve paid for it twice, and I don’t think it was wasted. Quite the opposite, it is one of those rare titles in my book, which is totally worth the money.
As of gameplay, you got a skill tree and dynamics from Mass Effect but greatly enhanced towards wagering a given role of a field agent of US secret service. You hack computers, breaking locks and skulls, you master the pistol and the sniper rifle, but, the most significant, you collect info on your opponents, and that info, used at the right time, becomes your strongest asset.
As of bugs, so commonly commemorated as a game’s main fault… I must make a statement that I haven't seen any significant and game-breaking flaw by all 5 years I’ve known that game. I’ve played it from its release, with quite a humble hardware, on the 4 different PC systems, and everything was working smoothly. Always! Well, AI of the opponents sometimes was performing some questionable tricks, but that’s not a bugs pattern.
The overall mark is 9/10, and I’d really like to see some more stuff like this. Whether from Obsidian, or from some other inspired and gifted people – that’s irrelevant. As long as it's at least that non-linear in choices and consequences, it's fine.Show moreShow less
152.8 hours at review152 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I would've liked to enjoy this game since it tries its best to give you the feeling of an Bourne-like agent. The RPG elements give this game a great boost. If you like games with this spy theme and you could ignore the underwhelming third-person shooter part and clunky controls, then you will love this game. However, in general I would not recommend this game because although you have the option to play it stealthy and without kills (my favorite way), the game engine and AI make it not possible. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=910517351 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=910515620Show moreShow less
15.5 hours at review32 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Welcome back to Steam!Show moreShow less
11.7 hours at review132 people found this helpful
Received for free
Not recommendedSteam player
This game really is a mixed bag.
To keep it short, this is a third-person shooter with RPG elements (conversations, relations, skills). The overarching story has to do with espionage and conspiracies and thriller stuff like that. You play the role of Michael Thorton, a new recruit in Alpha Protocol. You can pick different backstories that affect your starting skills as well as some conversations later down the line, a la Mass Effect 1.
To highlight the good points, I really enjoyed the conversation system in this game. It was very similar to Mass Effect, and the voice acting was solid for the respective roles of the characters. The story seemed interesting at times, and enough to keep me going.
However, that's where the good points end. This is an incredibly clunky game while in the shooting sections, and regularly glitched on my computer. It was nothing game-breaking, but very immersion-breaking. Also, the shooting mechanics seemed woefully half baked. You can improve your shooting skills, but your reticule never gets any smaller even when crouched and not moving, and its a big damn reticule which means this super secret agent f##king sucks at shooting.
Also, its VERY short for a single-player-only RPG; probably about 9-10 hours. Tripling that length wouldn't fix all this games issues, but i'd still press on because I wanted to see how Thorton's story ended.
I really wish I could give this game a recommendation. I really do like it, but this is disappointing coming from a studio as good as Obsidian. I'd definitely play a sequel if they made one, but they'd have to iron out the bugs and tighten up the story. I wanted to see deeper and more involved conversations and character development.
As it is though, I cannot give this game a recommendation unless its on sale for $2. I REALLY hope Obsidian makes a sequel, because I will definitely be first in line to buy it.Show moreShow less
11.3 hours at review31 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.
GOG, weigh the cost against your interest in Thorton's mission: your decisions affect his development and the fate of the world. A future Steam sale may offer another opportunity if you would rather not buy now. The Standard edition is available for DRM-Free, with Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Klarna as verified payment methods.
