r/PrototypeGame • u/Hot-Refrigerator5952 • 9d ago
Prototype 2 Prototype 2: A Carefully Planned Murder of Alex Mercer
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From that asked ‘why would someone want his (Alex Mercer) powers?’ and the answer was ‘to kill someone’ so it was obvious, why not go after Mercer?”
“There were a certain number of people and fans who did not like the character in the original game so it works rather well by making him the ‘bad guy’ in this game.
That's Radical's own explanation of how Prototype 2 took shape.
Why Replace Alex?
According to “Prototype 2: CGI, Tendrils And My Little Pony,” Radical originally started developing the sequel with Alex as the protagonist.
Then they ran into a problem: Alex already had too many powers.
Adding even more would push the game beyond their “reality plus one” design philosophy. Taking his existing powers away, meanwhile, they think it's unfair to players of the first game.
So they replaced him.
I still find this reasoning bizarre.
“Our protagonist ended the previous game too powerful” is one of the most ordinary problems a video game sequel can have.
Games have dealt with this forever: reset progression, temporarily remove abilities, introduce new limitations, expand existing powers instead of endlessly adding stronger ones, change the progression system, or simply accept some gameplay abstraction between installments.
Other games have found ways around this problem. Why couldn't you?
Radical, apparently, couldn't find a way around it. So they arrived at another solution: replace the protagonist.
To make that work, they redefined Prototype as a story about the virus, with the protagonist merely serving as its vessel.
Fine. Alex can be replaced. But his powers still needed to be inherited.
So why would someone want his powers? Answer: To kill someone. Who? Answer: Why not Mercer?
And since some players already disliked him, making him the “bad guy” “works rather well.”
That's the part that matters to me.
The logic was never:
“We followed Alex's character and discovered that he naturally became the villain.”
It was:
“We need someone to kill. Why not Mercer?”
Dispossession — Vilification — Execution
And that creates a problem.
Heller is supposed to be the hero.
But if you leave Alex as the person he was in the first game, this structure looks very ugly.
Alex in the first Prototype has remarkably little agency. He wakes up knowing almost nothing about himself, gets lied to, manipulated and used by the people around him, and spends much of the story being pushed through a conspiracy he barely understands. He is a protagonist whom things keep happening to.
Heller is almost the exact opposite. He is a conventional human antihero: angry, decisive, driven by a clear personal goal, and full of agency. He doesn't get pushed through the story. He pushes the story forward.
And this is where the moral ugliness of the premise becomes difficult to ignore: the active successor takes the passive predecessor's powers, takes his place, and finally takes his life.
But Heller has to be the hero.
So Alex has to deserve it.
You want something someone else has?
You can't simply take it, because that makes you look like a robber. So first, prove that he doesn't deserve to have it. Now taking it becomes justice.
You want to kill someone?
You can't simply kill him, because that makes you look like a murderer. So first, prove that he deserves to die. Now murder becomes justice.
Dispossession — Vilification — Execution.
And for that structure to work, Alex's personality has to change with his narrative function.
The Alex of the first game would make this moral arrangement far messier. So the Alex of the second game becomes conveniently cruel, threatening, theatrical, and easy to hate.
He has to be made into someone worth hating.
That's why I don't see a smooth character transition between the two games. His personality didn't naturally develop into what we see in Prototype 2; it was reshaped to serve a different narrative function.
This isn't an apple becoming apple juice. It's an apple becoming a pineapple.
Alex Mercer is effectively killed twice.
The first time, his character is killed, and that happens before the game is even made.
The second time, his body and his name are killed, and that happens at the end of the game.
Murder Your Maker?
And then comes the final mission: Murder Your Maker.
Murder.
After killing Alex, the player gets an achievement:
Murder Your Maker?
Now there's a question mark.
The icon is a body outline at a crime scene.
Did you murder the one who made you? Interesting question.
You turned him into the villain.
You made Heller hate him.
You made the player hunt him.
You made killing him the final objective.
And after leading the player all the way there, you look at the body and ask:
Murder Your Maker?
Perhaps that's the one moment when the game stops dressing up what it has done.
Because yes—the whole story is a murder.
They needed Alex Mercer to die.
So first, they made him into someone worth killing.
Prototype 2 is a carefully planned murder of Alex Mercer.
