Alpha Protocol/Awesome

• A lot, but what about Falcon Punching and slamming the head of the Big Bad after having to listen to him to him debrief you for hours?
  • That part? Easily as satisfying as watching Anderson punch out Udina. That is how much of a jerkass Leland is.
  • The entire Leland debriefing, in fact, can become one if you side with Albatross in Moscow, as it becomes increasingly apparent that Leland has no idea G-22 exists, and Thorton dodges trick questions to make sure things stay that way - until they show up in person to stop your execution. Few games have ever allowed the player to feel like as much of a Magnificent Bastard as you do when you play that sequence right.
  • Especially if you make it seem as if your other allies, i.e. Heck, Hong Shi, SIE, etc. are the ones Thorton thinks will come save him; Leland responds to them with mockery, but he has no idea G-22 are the ones who are about to hit them. Thorton can also spare Shaheed, and thus throw Allen Parker's careful planning for a loop by keeping that wild card on the table.
• Sparing Shaheed then killing him near the end.
• The entire battle against Brayko. He's almost That One Boss, except that the music playing while fighting him is so freaking awesome.
• If Thorton has a low approval with Madison, she'll beat him over the head with a statue and then blast him with a shock trap. Watch it here.
• In the finale, when Leland protests that the government won't allow his involvement with Alpha Protocol to be unveiled, Mike's response is so crushing that it stuns him into silence.

Mike: Alpha Protocol? What's that? They'll just deny it exists and shut it down.

• Completing the game on a Pacifist Run, without using lethal force. Think about it. Mike Thorton, alone, with limited support, is betrayed, cut off, and forced to fight police, mercenaries, terrorists, Deus Vult agents, G22 operatives, Triads and Russian gangsters, the Chinese Secret Police, CIA agents, and Alpha Protocol soldiers all armed to the teeth and willing to kill him. He stops terrorists, brings down arms dealers, puts a halt to assassinations and riots, gets captured and escapes again, and generally wages a one-man war that ends with (potentially) the collapse of Halbech, the destruction or exposure of Alpha Protocol, or Mike Thorton taking over the world. And he did all of this without killing anyone.
  • Though the game still says Sean Darcy died, even if you shot him with tranquilizer darts.
    • Allergic reaction to the tranquilizer. Not much could be done there.
    • Well given that Darcy was an active agent going in and out of Grey Box and Mike had to shoot him full of darts, it may very well have been overdosing on so many tranqs in such a short time.
    • That, or Darcy might have fallen from inside the top of the tower to the bottom past the stairs, thus breaking his neck.
    • Also, Darcy did keep chucking grenades at Mike so we can assume he's got explosives on hand. An ill timed knockout round could easily lead to Darcy falling out cold and letting go of live explosives....
  • Taken extra further when you are sent on the mission to take out the Triad defectors and you use nonlethal force on them. Despite only knocking all of the Triads out, you're still treated as having succeeded in the mission, apparently because you made the Triads return to Hong's fold by terrifying them with the fact that you could have used lethal force on them but apparently just knocked them all out to prove a point.
• Mike's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Marburg in Rome. Pull it off correctly, and Marbug's reaction is classic.

Marburg: I will end you, Thorton.

• The "Thorton, Inc." ending. After spending the entire game as the Unwitting Pawn of Alpha Protocol and Halbech, Mike finally turns the tables on them, and it is glorious. At the beginning of the final mission, Leland offers Mike a job as Halbech's new chief of security, then sends him off to destroy Alpha Protocol and collect the data that can be used to expose it to the world (as Mike was intending to do all along). If the player accepts his offer, the awesome begins in the final cutscene, with the Most Wonderful Sound: "Here's the thing, Leland: I don't really need you anymore." Mike then describes, in detail, the network of contacts and allies he built up throughout the game -- right under Leland's nose -- which he can now use to replace Leland as secret head of Halbech and direct the course of world events, and finally must decide whether to leave Leland alive as a Cruel Mercy or kill him then and there. Should you decide to kill him, Leland gets probably the most viscerally satisfying death in CRPG history: Mike reveals that the disc containing the Alpha Protocol data he handed his supposed new boss was a remote mine...just before Leland is literally Blown Across the Room. Mike then delivers a Bond One-Liner and heads to Leland's luxury yacht, where he (and possibly the Love Interest of the player's choice) rides off into the sunset with Pleasure Club's "Cops and Criminals" playing in the background. All of this is doubly awesome if you were playing the game after giving Mike the Recruit background, since that means Michael Thorton has -- purely by virtue of the player's own skills as a Manipulative Bastard -- gone from a rookie CIA agent fresh out of training to the new head of The Illuminati, all in the space of three months.