Steven Heck

Overview

Voiced by Nolan North, Steven Heck is a notable character in the action-RPG Alpha Protocol: The Espionage RPG. He is introduced and prominently featured in the Taipei portion of the game, and could be protagonist Michael Thorton's handler in the final mission.

Heck claims to be a member of a secret Central Intelligence Agency branch with 'total operational discretion', but there is no way of determining whether this is true or not. While it can't be confirmed, the days Heck have claimed to be acting covertly coincide with deaths with highly unusual causes- the in-game dossier specifically mentions a man linked to the Triads being found with a bicycle protruding from his midsection and a Vatican intelligence agent whose windpipe was clogged with 17 communion wafers. These and more are supposedly indicative of Heck's self-professed "Liquid Terror" killing style.

Heck will be fairly peeved if Thorton goes on any missions in Taipei without contacting him first. He is known for being eccentric and rather insane, and often goes off on random tangents during conversations. Further underscoring his temperamental nature are the circumstances in which Thorton meets him - Steven is busy torturing an informant of some repute and nearly makes him drink some quantity of dry-cleaning fluid before said informant divulges the location of...Steven's keys. Heck furthermore gets irritated if people call him 'Steve' instead of 'Steven' (and can possibly go on record in the culmination of the Taipei arc as having killed a Halbech-aligned representative who proposes selling out Thorton, just for that faux pas) and tends to take ridiculous conspiracy theories very seriously, including ones Michael just made up. He generally dislikes strict professionalism, but the "Stick to Business" perk and associated discount on armor supplied by Heck implies he nevertheless respects it.

Oddly enough, Heck's chronic sociopathy and penchant for indiscriminate violence make him one of the few contacts Thorton can associate with who doesn't have some sort of conflict of interest with his mission to get back at Halbech. The closest he'll get is withholding secrets about another of Thorton's possible allies given the notion that Michael might be trying to score with them. (Incidentally, the player actually *could* be trying to score with them.)

Due to the game requiring at least one NPC ally who trusts Thorton enough to support him on the game's final mission, if the player goes to Taipei without having secured another ally (Either by visiting Taipei first or having exhausted all other contacts throughout the game) then Steven Heck will always like Thorton, no matter how low his reputation with him goes.