I'm reading an article in Electronic Gaming Monthly, April 2011. I'm reading about Prototype 2, excited. I'm reading in further, and the excitement is turning sour. By the time I hit page 2, I'm devastated.
To be fair, I haven't yet finished the article. [I finished it about halfway through writing this one, so chill.] To be concise, the fact that partway through I'm inspired to vent and bemoan what I think is gonna make me very, very sad should be a hint on how impassioned it's made me in a page and a half.
Prototype 2 is centered around the character Heller, a guy who is infected with the virus from the first game, and he's on a revenge mission intent on taking out Alex Mercer, our protagonist from the first game.
Now I loved Prototype. Really. At first, when I was thrown into the intro mission, I thought, wow, okay, this isn't going to be really immersive, plotty, anything, really. Maybe fun, but brainless fun. Still I played through that mission, and realized it was a kind of disjointed playable cutscene. When I got to the title screen and then realized how things were going, I leaned forward a little. Barry Pepper's superb voice acting helped a bunch, and by the time the 'real' beginning took place, I was hooked.
One of the things in EGM's article that caught me out was the developers at Radical and Activision speaking of the elements they felt didn't go over so well in the first game with the gaming community. Too dense, plot too confusing or perhaps too lean at parts, too much stuff going on, that kind of thing. Now, I state I'm biased, and that I loved the first Prototype. I loved the plot, loved the way the storytelling unfolded. I appreciated the pacing.
I really, really dug the voice acting overall, which was a massive part in me liking Mercer so much--I became invested in his character. Thank you, Mr Pepper. (Nod to Sergeant Cross, too.) The character development was surprisingly pleasing.
That isn't to say I wasn't frustrated at times--there were just some events that I could not for the life of me get a bronze, never mind the gold. I got there, eventually, but there were times when I was so frustrated I threw up my hands and never looked at the event again.
But as for the core gameplay, I was sold. A large part of being able to look over my small misgivings was the ability to run up the Empire State Building, leap off, and divebomb Times Square. This coupled with the very cinematic feel of moments in the game snagged me but good, and kept me with it. I wanted to discover the plot, wanted to uncover each bit of story. I wanted to hate Alex Mercer because he's kind of an asshole, but I loved his dickhead ass by the end of the game.
One of the devs compared Prototype's structure and wealth of extras as a bucket of LEGOs overturned in a huge pile. My first reaction is "Wee! Playtime!" Unlimited imagination + tools = fun, right? Unfortunately the devs felt that there were a lot of players who either felt that digging through the mountain of bricks was too much effort, that the fun was concealed within, or that just didn't know where to start.
I can understand that. There are times when too much freedom makes things difficult on a gamer, but I posit this: Prototype made you think. It surprised the hell out of me by doing so, given that I suspected it to be plotless mayhem. Now it was no thinking man's game, per se, but I thoroughly enjoyed the execution and the majority of its facets. In reading the article further, I'm saddened by what appears to be a desire to dumb the sequel down for the masses from the sounds of it.
That's probably too harsh, because the game's still got a nice long development cycle ahead of it, and ginormous props to Radical and Activision for how connected they are with their audience, listening to feedback and reviews and implementing gamer wishes. What worries me is the degree that the devs felt players found the original Prototype to be found wanting in areas I had non-issues with, or just straight up appreciated the hell out of down to my little gamer toes.
There are very promising things I'm reading about this sequel, and I'm still excited about it. And as much as I loved the first game, there were things I really did. Not. Want. Spending EP on upgrades wasn't a bad mechanic, but there were times when I didn't want to float around looking for events I felt I wasn't wasting my time on to build paltry levels of EP to get that one upgrade I had to have before I could progress beyond a certain point in the game...blargh.
Prototype 2 looks very promising in the art department, with the first game to draw from and improve upon. The devs speak of the little side events and whatnot having closer ties to the main story, which is nice--while sometimes a mindless destruction event within the first game could be cathartic, having an actual impact in the sequel will be neat.
Heller's character sounds neat. He's gonna be one angsty son of a bitch, that's for sure. But he's got a lot more going for him than Alex Mercer's initial emocentric attitude, like, you know, a valid reason for his poor-me and anger. He also sounds like he's got some Mercerisms going on--vengeance. That's what he wants. Not justice, but just straight up selfish revenge. Works for me, because that makes him more, er, human in that he isn't necessarily a 100% good guy either--he's got personal motivation that may shove other concerns to the secondary side of the scale.
But as for Alex Mercer's character treatment in the sequel--that looks like it might be the gamekiller for me. This swings me around to P2 and the devs' comment about Mercer wishing to recruit Heller as his first lieutenant in "his plot to spread the virus." That might kill Prototype 2 for me. Alex Mercer died releasing the virus on Manhattan, and his Blacklight reincarnation spent the game trying to undo what he'd done. Not totally succeeding, mind, and still holding on to that loveable douchebag personality, but he tried. And at the end of Prototype, he's still trying, committed to stopping the virus in its tracks.
I understand that civilians got in the way, and to Mercer they were often obstacles. Not even collateral, sometimes; but in the end, he made his effort count. What I'm not digging is the turnaround--now he wants to spread Blacklight? What caused this 180? Unless Radical and Activision can do some serious convincing, I'm not buying it.
If you're going to take a character that I'm emotionally invested in and make him the bad guy in a sequel, fine. But keep him true to his character. I can't--Mercer wanting to spread the vir--no. I straight up cannot see it.
Alex Mercer is many things.
- He's an asshole.
- He's a sociopath.
- He's a self-aware virus trying to undo the work his human self did, albeit with generally the same level of dickheadedness.
- He's voiced by the excellent Barry Pepper. Did I mention that...?
However, one thing Alex Mercer is not, ever, is a willing agent of the Blacklight virus. Firstly, his own strain isn't the same that's eating Manhattan. Secondly, for all his jerkoffery he's got one goal alone in the first game--end the virus. Save Manhattan. Destroy most of it in the process, but hey, road to hell, right?
(where's PARIAH?)
I'm excited to a degree, of course. When I first heard "Prototype 2" I about peed myself. When I heard you'd be going up against Mercer, I thought, ooh. This could get good. The idea of a vengeance-based plot from the perspective of a soldier infected by the virus and personally holding Alex responsible (as I'd heard initially) seemed pretty damned cool, largely because Mercer was not the bad guy. Don't get me wrong. He's a bad guy, sure, but actively wanting to spread the very same virus he spent the whole first game literally fighting dying being expoded to eradicate?
Naw. Sorry, guys, if that's the way you're going with this...
Still, the sad part is I'm totally buying this the second it hits the shelves. The boxes'll still be hot. Because I loved Prototype so much, and because I felt the developers made a game that people would find fun, I'll be picking up the second with a glimmer of hope. That hope is that the giant Infected they keep showing pictures of, grotesquely mutated a la Supreme Hunter is not. Alex. Mercer. If I find out it is, I may just cry.
------------
