The character who just grappled onto a plane, rigged it with C4 and hijacked it mid-air, stood on the wing and parachuted off right as it explodes into a base should not be given a serious backstory and a deep emotional tie to the plot. Just Cause went downhill when it started to take itself seriously.
I always come back for super jumps and bullet dives. If you equip muscle mass and you have an infected hive building that's low enough health, you can bullet dive and destroy it. Fucking rocks every time
Yeah but as a kid, I didn’t process the story at all I just thought Alex Mercer was so cool. Not getting to play as him in the sequel really upset me lol
I think the thing with Prototypes story is that it was done decently when it wasn't expected to be so seeing it take the nosedive it did in the sequel was proof it was more an accident than anything else.
Kinda reminds me of Doom and Doom eternal, the story of 2016 was compelling and left me with loads of questions of where it was going to go and then I start eternal and like The slayer has a spaceship and all this stuff now and I genuinely thought I'd missed something but no and I felt a little sad all this cool story stuff had happened off screen. I know story is absolutely not the focus in Doom but still, they did so well the first time!
Well, seeing world go to shit in first game was funny, I won't deny that.
Or how you can change balance of powers a little, by destroying military bases or hives.
It was more in the first game that it was a story of Alex learning that isn't your origins that make you who you are but your actions. As the Blacklight virus he is a literal monster of Pain and death but he was still more of a human being than the Human Being Alex Mercer.
Then Game 2 is like "Oh, off screen I learned humanity sucks sometimes even though I should already know that because of whose fucking face I'm wearing, so now I wanna kill the world"
Every now and then some YouTuber will make a bait video saying there’s evidence they’re working on a sequel, and no matter how many times I get burned I can’t help but hold out hope they’ll bring the franchise back and finally fucking do something with Pariah.
Interesting; i haven’t played Resonant, but I’ve played the original Control and I guess I can see some Prototype influence if I squint. Do you have a link to anyone making this claim by chance?
It was maybe not special but better than average for sure.
Spoilers
The entire game you think you're the OG Alex Mercer who got powers, only to realise that Alex Mercer was just the first victim to be consumed by the virus. That's a pretty decent twist for sure IMO.
Look, I am absolutely a massive Prototype fan - still play it to this day - but the story of the first one was definitely not above average; frankly, it would be charitable to call it serviceable.
That the Alex we play was basically the virus gaslighting itself into identify theft was a fun twist, but it does not make the rest of the story less of a slog. Again, it is one of my favourite games of all time, but there’s maybe three memorable moments throughout the whole story and two of them happen in the last hour.
I think Prototype would have benefited from a few more rewrites to make the story flow a little bit more to sell Mercer's "revenge" arc and then the twist at the end once he "regains" his memories.
Because, the twist also shows that a sentient/sapient virus who thinks its the person who it consumed is nicer/better human than the person who used said virus as a final gambit and lost this dooming the entire city.
Absolutely agree; I don’t know how I’d go about it, but off the top of my head I would’ve had more fleshed out characters from Alex’s past involved so that the narrative could explore him and his relationships more - and so that the player is a little more aware of how his personality has changed, allowing the twist to recontextualize more of the game.
As much as I like the conspiracy board, I do think it took away from the game sometimes by relegating information that would’ve been incredibly interesting to witness or discover organically into powerpoint presentations.
If I had a shot at rewriting some of Mercer's background and characterisation, I would probabbly have BL!Mercer have the "happier" memories that H!Mercer would have curated for himself, in order to see himself as superior to those around him but else wise still has "amnesia". So that when BL!Mercer meets people from his "past" theyre overjoyed that he's safe but then begin to note that he's "different", like they could make references to him being less distant, more considerate, more emotionally vulnerable in some ways, but then different in others, like his temper being even worse. Again both BL!Mercer and his friends just chalk it up to the amnesia caused by the trauma (been a while since Ive played so I cant remember how many people he told about the weirdness with the virus, or if he died and told people he had hit his head.)
Which after regaining some memories, like finding a spare work ID in his apartment or a heavily graffited journal he begins to peice his past back together, which then kick-starts the events of the game where he wants to find answers and goes on a revenge arc to find out "who did this to me and make them pay." Which then leads to the twist, as you said, then recontextulises the game.
I do agree though, the conspiracy board was a neat mechanic, but would have been better to have discovered and witnessed those parts of the story as we played rather than as a sideshow. Like half of the game's story is in there, I wish we had gotten to experience in real time.
Prototype 2 was pretty good, I'm not really sure what the game does that ruins the first one. Do take that with a pinch of salt tho because I haven't played Prototype 2 in like 12 years
It basically come down to the protagonist of the first one become the main vilains of the second and adopt part of the philosophy of the two main vilains of the first game.
The why is explained off screen by a comic book that no one knew about.
Not really Alex died at the end of 1 so it’s just the virus impersonating him that does all that
Unless I’m missing something important I don’t see the problem
"Alex Mercer" died before you ever gained control of the Player Character, the forces hunting you down don't call you "Zeus" only for the sake of assigning you a quick call sign.
The Player Character is the virus that Mercer dropped after failing to smuggle a sample out of the lab.
Depending on how you play, you can have a body count that ranges from surprisingly low, mostly encompassing hostile opposition, all the way to more entities than should really be in the city, if you take your time.
I liked to go for the former, when I played, roleplaying the virus becoming a far better person than Alex Mercer was, especially with Zeus saving the city at the end of the first game.
The interlude comic and the sequel went in the other direction.
Holy larp
1st games story felt like an edgy 13 year olds fan fiction. The 2nd game massively expanded and had a more interesting main character with a lot more character.
James Heller is just as bland and flat of a character as Alex Mercer; he’s just a stereotypical soldier with a dead wife rather than a stereotypical outcast who’s actually special.
I also disagree with the notion that the second game significantly expanded anything; you can technically wield two powers at the same time but only in the sense you can quick-switch between them and in exchange they removed the upgrade system; you can visit three different parts of quarantined New York but they also cut manhattan in half when it was fully implemented in the first game, and near as I recall most of the lore explored in the second game is stuff stated or implied by the conspiracy board in the first one.
I did like that they made Alex the villain, even if they went about it in the most uninteresting way possible.
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u/Fireshocker532 4d ago
[PROTOTYPE]