Alias is a 3D third-person stealth/action video game developed by Acclaim Studios Cheltenham (being the last game developed by them before their closure) and published by Acclaim Entertainment for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Microsoft Windows. It is based on the television series Alias. The plot was written by Breen Frazier and the game features the voices of the cast principals. The score was composed by Michael Giacchino, and adapted by Chris Tilton. The game was released in 2004, and has a rating of T. Canonically, he game is set between episodes 19 and 20 of season 2.
Players get to play as Sydney Bristow, who is deployed against Anna to prevent her from enacting a plan with Sark and Sloane that has devastating consequences for the world.
Plot[]
Sydney is called in to work on her day off, under orders from her father, Jack . A fellow deep cover operative, Agent Jacobs, has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. His last communiqué to the CIA contained highly sensitive intelligence regarding Sydney's nemesis, Anna Espinosa, formerly a top agent for K-Directorate, who had resurfaced after her disappearance in Argentina and has now gone rogue. While Sydney's been dismantling SD-6, Anna has been busy - hard at work taking over the "Followers of Rambaldi" cult, a cabal of zealots hell bent on bringing the visions of 15th century philosopher, physicist and prophet, Milo Rambaldi, to life. Now, Anna has been teaming up with Sark and Sloane to achieve these goals.
Starting in Agent Jacobs' last known location, a casino in Monte Carlo, Sydney and Dixon infiltrate the casino with Vaughn and Marshall providing support remotely, then drugs Sark's current driver with a radioactive tracer serum. Sydney then locates a data disc in a dead drop in the kitchen freezer, then continues to the executive suite, where she discovers that the casino's luxurious exterior hides a huge arms manufacturing facility in the basement, where a laser prototype assumed to be the machine is being developed. Sydney manages to acquire the laser prototype being tested there, then sneaks back into the casino to spy on a meeting between Anna and Sark, and finally escape from the casino grounds with armed enemies in hot pursuit.
Jacobs' data reveals that the laser is part of a mind control device, powered by a fuel cell concealed in a hollowed out bone and its power diffused by prisms. It also leads the team to a museum in Saudi Arabia proudly displaying new artifacts, one of them being that very same bone that had been discovered by accident. When Sydney covertly enters the museum with Marshall running ops on location to acquire the bones, she finds that Anna had the same idea at the same time, except that Anna has brought her task force for the operation, strangely including Sark's driver. Racing against Anna's forces and under the incorrect assumption that the fuel cell was concealed within multiple bones, Sydney retrieves all of the bones in the museum floor before getting a trace on a fleeing Anna, who ordered Marshall to be captured during the chase, that takes them to ruins in the desert. Anna threatens to kill Marshall until Sydney exposes her position, and is subsequently bound right next to a nuclear warhead that Anna armed. Barely picking the locks of their shackles, Sydney disables the warhead and escapes with Marshall.
While Sydney's been in the desert, Vaughn has tracked both missing agent Jacobs and to her shock, Dr. Caplan, to an insane asylum in Romania, where prisoners are being held against their will. Lacking any means of entry, Sydney enters a tattoo parlour where the employees that have covertly taken over the asylum frequented, discovering that their method of entry was a tattoo with a special ink that the asylum biometrics can scan. After tattooing herself, Sydney breaks into the asylum and discovers that the prisoners are being used as human guinea pigs for Anna and Sark's experiments with their laser. After freeing Caplan and narrowly saving Jacobs from a brainwashing trial, who in turn free the prisoners, Sydney initiates a daring plan to take Sark into custody and put an end to the experiments by starting a chemical reaction with the laser's components, which destroys the asylum when the reaction goes critical. The horrific truth about the experiments comes out as Caplan is debriefed back at the CIA.
Trading his intelligence for immunity, Sark tips the team off that Arvin Sloane is cutting a specific diamond containing a drop of Rambaldi's blood to Anna's very precise specifications in a laboratory beneath an embassy in Hong Kong. Gaining admittance to the embassy by attending a glamorous party in the ballroom, Sydney gets into the cutting room and manages to acquire the diamond, but is forced to trade it for the lives of the innocent partygoers when Sloane appears on the scene and informs Sydney of the C-4 explosives he has placed around the embassy as insurance. Ignoring Sydney's warnings about Anna, he triggers a countdown on the bomb giving Sydney and Dixon just a few minutes to evacuate the embassy and get themselves to safety.
Tracing Anna to Rio de Janeiro, Sydney tails her to a nightclub where she is scheduled to meet with Sloane. Bugging a meeting between the two, Sydney finally manages to discover the true, awful potential about "The Machine" - the device being a doomsday device and its location in an underground bunker in Russia, with the diamond as the detonation key. As Anna marches off a double-crossed Sloane, the CIA operatives receive a surprise visit by the Followers of Rambaldi SWAT team. Realizing there is a mole within the agency, Vaughn attempts to stop the raid under the assumption that the team had arrived to free Sark, only to find out that they were deployed to kill Sark at Anna's orders and to find that the leaks have come from the most unlikely of sources - Marshall, who had been unknowingly brainwashed by the laser during his captivity under Anna. Vaughn manages to snap Marshall out of his brainwashing, but is unfortunately forced to detain him for now after discovering that he had provided Anna's men with one of the fuel cells. The CIA team must regroup to draw up their final make-or-break plans to stop Anna's from initiating a cataclysm.
Following a HALO parachute jump insertion, Sydney infiltrates the bunker. By stealth, combat and quick-thinking, Sydney gets past Anna's forces and finds a captive Sloane. Reluctantly agreeing to an uneasy truce with him, Sydney must defeat Anna and figure out how to destroy the mighty Machine to stop ecological disaster being launched on the whole planet, with Marshall's help using one of her gadgets from her operation in Monte Carlo to overload the machine. As Anna's grand scheme and the bunker begin to collapse around her, Sydney manages to escape the bunker.
Characters[]
- Sydney Bristow (playable character)
- Michael Vaughn (playable for only one section)
- Marshall Flinkman
- Jack Bristow
- Marcus Dixon
- Julian Sark
- Anna Espinosa
- Arvin Sloane
- Neil Caplan
- Milo Rambaldi (mentioned)
Continuity[]
Accuracy to the Series[]
- Neil Caplan, who appeared in Season 2, appears again, having been captured by Julian Sark once again to assist him against his will.
- Anna Espinosa reappears after her confrontation with Sydney in Argentina to kidnap Nadia Santos, In the show's run, her absence extends from 1.8 Time Will Tell to Season 4.
- Milo Rambaldi had crafted plans for a mind control device far advanced from his own time, which was concealed among many of his documents like in the series. One of the prototype components of this device was used by Sydney in-game as a gadget before its purpose was fulfilled.
Errors[]
- Anna Espinosa allies with Julian Sark momentarily in the game, despite meeting him for the first time in Season 4 prior to his betraying her as she was impressed with Sark's ruthlessness in having Lauren Reed assassinating his birth father Andrian Lazarey.
- Milo Rambaldi had crafted a doomsday device despite his intial endgame involving a Mueller Device and The Horizon, although this could've been a backup despite his penchant for prophecy.
Trivia[]
- Eric Weiss, Allison Doren and Will Tippin were absent in the game, despite having huge roles in Season 2 - when the game was set. Irina Derevko was also absent as well. Allison's absence could be explained that she's still maintaining her masquerade as Francie Calfo and couldn't break cover until Will discovered her true identity.