Destructoid has been chatting to Radical design directer Matt Armstrong about the studio's upcoming sequel, Prototype 2. I'm a fan of the original, but fully admit it had some flaws, and I wanted to see what improvements were coming. Firstly, will we get a better protagonist in James Heller, someone less of a blank slate?
"Heller’s a character who’s actually become more and more interesting over the course of development as we’ve got to know him better," Armstrong said. "Revenge is definitely his defining motivation at the start of the game and his character is strongly driven towards that goal, but there’s a greater subtlety and complexity that starts to emerge as you progress deeper into the game.
"One of the things that I’ve been most happy about in the game has been Heller’s dry sense of humor. Humor in games is a very difficult thing to pull off successfully, but our writers have done a really impressive job of simply allowing it to flow out of certain situations and interactions without forcing it. This has gone a long way to making Heller a really engaging and relatable character."
The very idea to turn the original protagonist into a villain is already a very interesting shift, and I wanted to know more. Why turn Alex Mercer into the bad guy?
"The decision came out of one of our early design meetings," revealed Matt. "We were just throwing out ideas about where we could take the sequel after the events of the first Prototype when one of the guys said 'You know what? We should just kill Mercer.' The room was suddenly bursting with energy, excitement and debate around the idea and that made me realize that we had the seeds of something really special. In the end, the premise was just too exciting to pass up.
"This decision also allowed us to execute on the idea that the Blacklight Virus is the true star of the series. Part of the appeal of the Prototype universe is the fact that it allows us to go anywhere in the world, release the virus onto a completely different person, have it express its effects in a completely new ways and experience how this new protagonist uses these abilities to achieve their own goals and desires."
It sounds like promising stuff. The virus and the Blacklight military group tracking it down were far more intriguing than Mercer himself turned out to be, and the world Prototype was set in happened to be rather engaging. If James Heller can be a more likable protagonist within that, then Prototype 2 is definitely on the right track.
Keep an eye on Destructoid for more from our Prototype 2 interview.
Contest:
9:20 AM on 01.11.2012 | 
Looking forward to the rest of that interview.
"Turning"? Alex Mercer was an asshole.
The first game kept trying to paint him as this tragic anti-hero on a quest for righteous revenge against the evil shadow government, while having him nonchalantly engage in the most sociopathic acts ever in a videogame.
The guy was quiet literally the main villain of the story.
That's kind of what I liked about Prototype: that you were playing the main villain with no real moral justification for anything you did, though I'm not so sure that Radical INTENDED that, more that they really couldn't figure out a personality that worked for Mercer.
But that's just it, you weren't Alex Mercer at all. You played as the Blacklight virus, codenamed Zeus. That's why you had no memories of your past, because you had no past! You are correct however in labeling Zeus as a heartless, evil killer. Even 'saving' NY from the nuke wasn't a good act as he did it only to have a populace to infect.
My point is, Zeus (Mercer) wasn't as 1 dimensional as everyone makes him out to be. That said, I do welcome the chance to play as someone else in the sequel.
"My point is, Zeus (Mercer) wasn't as 1 dimensional as everyone makes him out to be."
I think you are confusing multi-dimensional characterization with a complicated back story.
The background of the character known as Alex Mercer was complex and nuanced; the character of Alex Mercer was 1 dimensional.
He might have thought he was an infected human that still had ambition, but he was actually driven by his instinctive nature to procreate and infect.
Obviously, the remnants of Alex disappeared and his monster makings have shown their true form. Its the new protagonist going to be a virus-with-human-thoughts again? If do, they could explore the psychological justifications of destructive actions and their duality between human revenge and viral perpetuation.
The game looks better than the first, and the first was a blast to play, so either way, I'm excited.
I wouldn't necessarily say that Alex Mercer (or Zeus) is a one-dimensional character. I think that Radical may have been conflicted in constructing an appropriate identity for the character, but even if their efforts didn't completely come together, Mercer still remains an interesting character. Was Mercer really vengeful? Was the vengeance just a means for the virus to spread itself and it motivated him to kill? And I think the question comes to how much of Mercer is still left in the entity created by combining him and the virus? Hopefully its a question that the sequel will answer, which is likely why Mercer is literally made the antagonist of the story, at least from the outset.
Developer: "Set it in New York and make the guy american with a revenge story again!"
Did stuff like that all game and ended up getting 1000/1000 achievements because I liked it so much. I know it had plenty of problems but I loved it for what it was.