As a WMG subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Going off of this, Kessler's time-travel ability is a textbook Chekhov's Gun; at some point in a future installment, Cole will be faced with a problem where being able to go back in time will seem like a solution, or he'll have two problems to solve and he'll have to choose between them because the time-travel power, as was explicitly said in the ending, only works once. Perhaps this will be how the next game's Sadistic Choice is presented?
Finally, it's worth considering that with time travel involved and the restrictions on it, we may very well end up with some combination of You Can't Fight Fate, Screw Destiny, and / or Stable Time Loop.
- I'm pretty sure it was said that using the ray sphere over-rides whatever you would have developed without it.
- According to the comic it adds to your abilities and doesn't take them away.
- Many of the "non-electrical" attacks Kessler does are really just more powerful versions of Cole's attacks: energy grenades, powerful single-shot blasts, memory transfer, shockwaves, etc.
- They're really not; the grenades have more in common with fire than electricity. The energy blasts and the memory transfer both come from his metallic arm, which is clearly some sort of active machinery, suggesting he has to use technology to get the electrical effects Cole can produce naturally. His shockwave contains no static electricity like Cole's, suggesting it's telekinesis instead. The only time any of Kessler's powers is ever shown with an actual electrical element is his time-travel.
- They certainly seem like they could be. At highest resolution, Kessler's fireballs are opaque glowing orange/red balls which let out sparks, and its ambiguous whether they are electrical or thermal in nature (though their explosions closely resemble Evil Cole's grenades). During the shockwave, you can clearly see blue sparks and static surround him as he charges up and pounds the ground. Another attack has him charge up and shoot white lightning, which he does with both hands. The weird clone things he sends at you also have white electricity crawling over them, and even attract electricity from surrounding electrical outlets. The little shock wave he uses to punt Zeke doesn't have any visual clues pertaining to electricity, but it's the same visual effect as when Cole deflects projectiles (which is manipulation of magnetic fields).
- I thought that Kessler was using his electrical powers to power his metallic arm. Given how similar his attacks were to Cole's, if he wasn't supposed to have the same kind of powers, I'd honestly think that was something of an asspull.
- If Kessler is powering the arm, then what's the arm for? He doesn't do anything with it except fire off an attack. If he had electrical powers to power it, why bother? Again, note the above; none of his other powers actually involve electricity (seriously, youtube the fight; in addition to the above notes on what his powers look like, his grenades aren't ball lightning like Cole's are, either, they're made of fire,) so the reasonable conclusion is that he's not capable of manipulating it and the arm is a technological alternative for things Cole can do naturally.
- Almost all his powers involve electricity, many blatantly so. His teleporting, fireballs/ball-lightning, and shockwaves are the only ones that are debatable, and Cole can do the shockwave thing on a small scale.
- Or maybe Kessler is so much more experienced than Cole that they just don't look electrical in nature. The ray sphere would simply explain why Cole was able to win despite this difference.
- The arm is for having a second arm. Kessler is encountered three times in the game, and in one of those, he's too far away to be seen clearly. The other two times, he's talking and then fighting. Not exactly the time to see him perform household tasks with it.
- I've always assumed the arm and that mechanical device were some sort of high-tech generators. Notice Kessler never has to absorb any electricity during the fight.
- Don't forget the Game Informer article that had the developers mention that Cole is going to get ice powers (they also say that he's going to still be electric man, however)
- They're really not; the grenades have more in common with fire than electricity. The energy blasts and the memory transfer both come from his metallic arm, which is clearly some sort of active machinery, suggesting he has to use technology to get the electrical effects Cole can produce naturally. His shockwave contains no static electricity like Cole's, suggesting it's telekinesis instead. The only time any of Kessler's powers is ever shown with an actual electrical element is his time-travel.
- Jossed via inFamous 2. (Also, the Time Travel power doesn't "only work once". They said it was one-way.)
- Sorry, but play the second game. If you select the Good ending, no more Cole exists to go back in time. Additionally Evil Cole would know that Trish is doomed anyway because non-conduits can't handle Ray-Sphere radiation; Zeke is a prime example. Not to mention that Cole would need the Ray Field Inhibitor from New Marais to weaken the Beast. Luckily if you are Evil, you can become the Beast. But then you wouldn't want to go back in time because you ARE the Beast and would kill Trish if you went back in time.
If Cole went evil, became the Beast and destroyed the world, it prompts Kessler to go back in time and try to fix it. His interference changes how his past self grows, and the Cole we play as becomes heroic instead of becoming the Beast; there's some irony in this, because heroic Cole is not quite what Kessler intended, but is nonetheless the solution to his plight, and he unquestionably achieves his goal of hardening Cole for the troubles to come
It seems that once someone travels into the past, they're protected by changes in the timeline, as evidenced by Kessler still existing even after he has Cole use the Ray Sphere, drastically altering his own past. So, from the original future, evil Cole / the Beast has used his time travel power to chase Kessler. This could mean that Kessler has actually been royally, tragically screwed by You Can't Fight Fate, because in trying to fix things, he's changed things so that the Beast will emerge before it originally did, possibly before Cole (Heroic Cole, the player's character,) is strong enough to oppose him.
- Just one little problem here. Namely, how can evil Cole go back in time to chase Kessler if Cole and Kessler are the same person?
- If you take Cole's choices between good and evil as literal and not just a game mechanic, you have a classic "one or the other" choice that will spawn an alternate timeline so both choices can exist. My admittedly poor wording on the matter was meant to imply some use of a Timey-Wimey Ball when needed; a third alternate Cole could exist because the plot wants him to, and time just happens to work in a conveniently incomprehensible way so that, given the right circumstances and timeline abuse (thank you, Kessler,) different versions of the same person start getting spat out in a single reality. Admittedly, this is the kind of thing most people hate about time travel, I like to think of it as a blank check for doing crazy stuff, so long as the silly explanation is handled well enough. The writing already seems like it's willing to take time-travel with a grain of salt for the sake of plot, considering how Kessler is immune to changes in the timeline.
- It would explain why Kessler didn't simply go back in time and kill the beast in his cradle. As a slider from another timeline, there would be no information about John in Kessler's timeline until he appeared and started killing people.
- It was explicitly stated (at least, if you chose the heroic path) that John was ripped to pieces by the Ray Sphere, so there wouldn't be much of a body (or anything, really) left to find.
- Both the good and evil paths say that the Ray Sphere rips John apart, and that both John and the Ray Sphere were "reduced to ashs".
- The defense would like to present Exhibit A: Dr. Manhattan sometimes being reduced to subatomic ash is only the beginning.
- I've been thinking this could be the case. John is like Manhattan, except insane and evil. The ray sphere and him did vaporize, to some other place of existence where they merged, possibly the implied entity within the sphere hijacking John's body. That would explain his near godly powers, he's basically a walking incarnation of the sphere itself, an ever evolving force that jumps in power in leaps and bounds.
- Both the good and evil paths say that the Ray Sphere rips John apart, and that both John and the Ray Sphere were "reduced to ashs".
- This does actually make sense if you think carefully about it and compare it to events that have happened in inFamous 2. Kessler's meddling with the timeline has caused the Beast to arrive earlier than anticipated. Judging by the fact, as stated in the first game, Kessler accelerated the construction of the Ray Sphere and upon use/destruction of it near the end of the game John is swept up in its vortex that nothing is left of him. Now picture this, the Ray Sphere has incredible power within it. Whether John snatched it away or was simply caught in the warp doesn't matter, the fact is he was drawn into its massive energy build up. This could mean he was merged with the Ray Sphere's incredible power and energy and thus warped into the monster that is the Beast. Combine this also with John feeling like he's been abandoned after his mission in Empire City plus being drunk on power or his mind warped to the point of insanity, it would make sense he's the blood thirsty destructive monster we know as the Beast.
- Confirmed. He rebuilt his body after the Ray Sphere ripped it apart and became the Beast. Though it turns out he's not the bloodthirsty monster Kessler presented him as.
- Slightly less wild guess; Sucker Punch simply learned about the slaughterfest that Prototype would turn out to be from publicly available developer interviews, and started throwing anvils into their game's Karma Meter, right down to Cole's Private Eye Monologues on moral choices, quotes about the use and abuse of power, even writing
Alex Merceran amoral butcher into the ending as a Take That! against Prototype's obligatory sociopathy.- It may not be true, but there's some definite similarities between Mercer and the Beast. If you look at one of the images of the apocalyptic future that Kessler showed you, you can see a bunch of people impaled on spikes. That's one of Mercer's special moves in Prototype; though it might just be coincidence or a quirky nod on Sucker Punch's part.
- Seems unlikely. The images of the Beast's true form is very different from Pariah's.
- Actually, I decided to use that in my mashup-fic, though I think that was just us thinking along parallel lines.
Incidentally, the reason that Kessler thought that the Beast was a human was because everyone who saw the Beast in its true form died.
This could also be the setup for a new crossover fighter. Cole must use his time travel powers to assemble Ratchet, Jak, Sackboy, ICO, and Solid Snake, while Kratos finds allies in a Black era Needles Kane, and Wander. Add or delete as seen fit.
- Well, to fill out the evil side, Kratos could probably take a trip to Hades to resurrect Liquid. Continuing with the Evil Counterpart theme, Crypto from Destroy All Humans! (alien with an ungodly aresenal of weapons) makes a good counterpart to Ratchet (ditto). Sackboy could simply be put against an "Evil" style sackboy. The only issue would be Jak's counterpart.
- Needles. A decidedly evil vehicle user.
Based on what the game told us about how the Ray Sphere works, it isn't entirely unreasonable. Since its initial activation took out six blocks of a heavily populated city, the ensuing death toll must have been in the thousands if not much greater. It's not unreasonable to figure that this blast caught more than a few other conduits in its scope, taking their energy and focusing it into Cole. Assuming that the Ray Sphere both only granted powers to the Conduit that activated it and that the energy absorbed from the dead people was absorbed largely intact or as-is, Cole will eventually discover that he has access to other power bases. This nicely explains all the non-electrical things Kessler could do (I do not think it was implied enough to be canon fact that Cole is getting different powers than Kessler) and gives a justification for the Cole will get in the sequel - he may still have all his electrical powers but his new power sets that he is awakening to are fouling up his control across the board.
- Except: Kessler didn't get his powers from the Ray Sphere, Kessler got his naturally (he invented the Ray Sphere later) and has electrical powers (Most of the attacks he uses during the final confrontation are stronger versions of your own abilities)
- As noted above, Kessler does not mirror Cole's powers, only their functionality; his grenades are on fire, not made of electricity. His shove attack has no electrical dressing like Cole's does, presumably because it's straight-up telekinesis instead of electro-magnetism. It's more likely that the Ray Sphere simply overrides the natural progression the user would make on their own.
- Kessler's powers looked more electrical than Cole's did after his second usage of the Ray Sphere. And as mentioned above, Kessler's power do have plenty of electrical dressing, it's just more subtle than with Cole. The Ray Sphere overriding the Conduit's natural abilities was never mentioned or even implied in game.
- Kessler didn't invent the Ray Sphere, it was the First Sons. He just accelerated its development when he took over them.
- Confirmed! The trailer for Infamous 2 shows Cole using ice powers.
- Don't be so sure. The makers have said that Cole's still going to be electrically orientated, so it's more likely that his Lightning Can Do Anything powers are just getting a boost.
- Doubly confirmed! Two new protagonists are going to increase Cole's power in the direction of cryokinesis or pyrokinesis with Good an Evil, respectively.
- More of Law or Chaos.
- Don't be so sure. The makers have said that Cole's still going to be electrically orientated, so it's more likely that his Lightning Can Do Anything powers are just getting a boost.
- Kessler's powers actually have a lot in common with Cole's and are quite electrical, although subtle in appearance.
- Sucker Punch have stated that Infamous 2 opens with Cole fighting the Beast, losing and fleeing to the new city in order to power up for a rematch. In fact the Beast seems to have appeared earlier than its debut in Kessler's timeline.
- Jossed The Beast appears earlier than it would have simply because of Kessler's actions.
On a more serious note, if we assume as suggested above that the Beast is Playing with Fire, then the roles - Fate/Cole, the "good guy" with Shock and Awe versus Signum/Beast, the "bad guy" pyrokinetic - fit. However, the relationship may not, considering that Fate and Signum considered each other Worthy Opponents while Cole and the Beast most likely will be out for each other's blood. Or maybe that is the point, that the moral choices in the sequel will affect how their antagonism plays out.
- Zeke is explicitly not a Conduit, that's why the Ray Sphere did nothing in his hands.
- That doesn't mean he can't get abilities through other means. It isn't quite known how far a 'conduit' goes with getting abilities. Or if they can get abilities without the use of the Ray Sphere (every team had it at one point [Sasha could have used it before they kicked her out], so they could have taken advantage at the time). Perhaps non-conduits can get abilities through other, not quite as safe means.
- First, this was Jossed when John was revealed to be the Beast. Second, they know enough in the second one to know that being a conduit is determined by a gene, hence why it's called the Conduit gene.
- Well...he graduated from high school, right?
- No, one of the devs was giving an interview for gametrailers and said that Cole was "Your typical High School dropout."
- Actually, for all we know the magnetic shield was Zeke's idea. If not, we can still imply that Cole knew enough about magnetism to use it because:
Zeke: You took college-prep. I took shop class.- All right, then he dropped out after learning enough science to use electricity to create magnetism.
- In the second game's intro, he says that he dropped out of college. Maybe he subconsicously used magnetism.
- According to the interquel, he dropped out just a few credits short of graduation. He's definitely book-smart.
- No, one of the devs was giving an interview for gametrailers and said that Cole was "Your typical High School dropout."
- I think one of them contacted the other after hearing Yahtzee and then made the similar pictures to mirror their games. No one knows who copied who... if they did copy each other which I doubt.
- The two were originally one company, after all.
The theory is that the Ray Sphere is basically a Localized Third Impact Generator, converting non-Conduits unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast to be converted into LIV, which is then transferred to the Conduits. The Conduits then gain the ability to manipulate Dirac seas, and to a far more minor-or major, in the case of Sasha-extent, LIV itself. The "Bio-Drain" power allows Cole to drain LIV from a dying person for a quick boost, and "Healing Touch" (I think that's what it's called) uses the LIV directly to quickly knit a guy's body back together.
As for the original characters, Cole (and by extension Kessler) is not one of them. Zeke, however, is Shinji, Sasha, Asuka, and Alden, Gendo.
- After inFamous 2 the evidence keeps piling up-the Ray Sphere is an Angel who fused with White to further it's/his aims, and there's nothing "artificial" about the Conduits-they're the Beast's version of Third Impact, the replacing of humanity with it's/his own race. Which makes it/him Kawarou, of course.
- Zeke was best man at the wedding.
Cole implies at one point that he can't take a shower and obviously he can't swim, but he has epic-level self-cleaning abilities. As he matures his control he should be able to perform nifty tricks like cooking off the odor-causing bacteria on his skin, or ionising dust particles on his body to repel them. He may still need to brush his teeth, though.
He also seems to generate some electricity (though not fast enough to not need a pick-me-up after using the more powerful abilities). It seems he could plug his bed into the power grid and make money in his sleep. Also, if my recollection of meteorology serves me, he could use his lightning-summoning ability to dispel tornados (and possibly even full storm systems).
- In the sequel, he can summon tornados. People commented on his stench in the first game, but it is possible he sponge-washed; small amounts of water don't kill him.
- Rain water is fresh water, and fresh water isn't conductive. Its just water with impurities that screws him over.
- Completely pure water isn't conductive, but completely pure water is very hard to make. Rain water would still be as problematic as other sources, though he could probable cook it off unless it was really pouring.
- Rain water is fresh water, and fresh water isn't conductive. Its just water with impurities that screws him over.
- The Darkness talking to him and those trips to the otherworld? The hallucinations of a disturbed mind- being a mafia hitman since adolscence is not conducive to mental health. He's actually a conduit with darkness related powers. He's probably not The Beast, as his vulnerability to light stops him being a world class threat, but I think a fanfic portraying a feud between a superheroic good-ending Cole and a post-game mob-boss Jackie would be awesome, if only for the ease with which Jackie could be made into a Noble Demon Evil Counterpart to Cole. Their powers are even vaguely opposite!
- Sucker Punch is considering making Cole look and sound as he did in the first game, so potentially Jossed.
- They're keeping the voice, though the clothes are back, so still possible.
- My theory always was that the explosion of the Ray Sphere damaged his vocal chords somehow, and in the second game, enough time has passed that his throat has healed.
- My geuss was that a bit of sharpnel from the rayshpere may have gotten lodged into his throat during the blast and since it was the most life threatining injury he sustained, his healing abilities went to work on healing that first, effectivly sealing the piece inside of his throat. During the transition to the sequal he probably got surgury to get it removed.
- Well there is a second game due for release in 2011, and it assumes the player took the good path. And the beast definitely isn't the evil Cole.
- Actually, the jury is still out on that one. Sucker Punch has said they're working to see if they can implement the Good/Bad endings in a way like The Suffering did, or at least come to a middle ground that won't upsets fans of either ending.
- You can select which of your profiles you wish to use to begin. You get experience, energy-cores, and/or karma depending on how much you have.
- Actually, the jury is still out on that one. Sucker Punch has said they're working to see if they can implement the Good/Bad endings in a way like The Suffering did, or at least come to a middle ground that won't upsets fans of either ending.
So on top of the responsibilities and the lack of ability to have a normal life, he also has to deal with smelling like a really bad electrical outlet all the time. Having super powers isn't easy.
- Alternatively... It's because you're going through the sewars and possibly through RAW SEWAGE if you fall in.
- In the end of inFamous Cole and John find the ray sphere on a dock and the player decides either to destroy or use it themselves but in both scenarios John is apparently killed by the energy of the sphere What the sphere actually did was send John several years into the future along with the ray sphere in a sense creating the future Kessler hails from (super stable time loop) and becomes the beast and when Kessler comes back in time the beast/john follows but shows up later in the inFamous 2.
- By the time John/the Beast shows up in inFamous 2 he has experienced a full time loop and is most likely over 100 years old.
- Confirmed, sans the Time Travel. John's body was torn apart, atom by atom, but From a Single Cell applies.
- I think it's simpler than that, Kessler's (future Cole) situation is similar to Future Trunks from Dragon Ball Z. He went back in time to alter event and ensure his younger self was ready to face the coming threat (Beast/Androids), but instead created a split timeline. Cole was forced to gain his power earlier, and by some strange proxy his nemesis has arrived earlier than scheduled. To sum it up: Even if you can change the past, odds are it won't bode well for your original time or the new one you're tampering with.
- Whatever happens in his final confrontation with the Reapers creates a temporal anomaly, fusing all possible versions of Shepard that could have existed into one- in effect, creating a version of Shepard with the full abilities of every class at once. Super-Shepard is able to wipe out the Reapers single handedly, but the resultant strain on his psyche (he's got the full memory of every version of himself that ever existed- he's lived out every single possible way the events of the Mass Effect series could have gone, not to mention his own life prior, also factoring in the conflict between his Paragon and Renegade selves), not to mention the accidental death's of the entire Normandy crew (due to his being unable to fully control his new abilities) drives him mad. Resolving to stop humanity from ever developing inter-stellar travel (avoiding the attention of the council, the Geth, the Reapers and whatever other horrors are in space), Shepard decides to travel back in time to before humanity discovered the Mass Effect drive. He does so by using his biotic abilites to tear open a time/space anomaly, piloting the Normandy (now crewed by thousands of Geth reprogrammed to be loyal to him) through it. He arrives in modern times shortly after the events of inFamous, planning to conquer the planet and forcibly keep it from discovering Mass Effect technology, while reinforcing it against the threat of alien attack.
- So we have a mentally unstable genetically-engineered, power-armoured super-soldier/cyborg, with technological skills thousands of years in advance of modern science, access to an arsenal of alien and futuristic weaponry (includng his own Cool Ship), his own personal horde of Mecha-Mooks and the ability to create black holes with his brain. Yep, that's a world ending threat.
- Himself = Ego/Self
- Sasha = Id
- Alden = Super Ego
- John = Anima
- Kessler = Shadow Archetype
- But what if Cole does bad things?
- That's an interesting idea, but it then begs the question of how he got captured then, and what his origins are. It's been stated before that Kessler accidentally creating his nemesis would be strange and rather hard to explain for the orginal beast's appearance in his timeline. However, it's possible that Poole was a conduit captured by the Government and his existence hidden from Kessler during his and Moya's partnership.
- Huh? Kessler would have to already have had powers before going back in time in the first place.
- While the idea of gender-based powers isn't specifically out the window; all of the given examples except flight have appeared in both men and women. Kessler and Nix could teleport, they all seem to have increased strength, endurance, etc.
- Quite thouroughly Jossed by the endings.
- I don't know about the main game, but the Festival of Blood DLC has been confirmed to be a story Zeke is telling a girl he's trying to impress.
- There's a hole in this theory though. Didn't Kessler (future Cole) witness his wife Trish dying in his arms?
- That actually makes me feel better about being massacred by a junkie with a hood covering his face, throwing up black tar, and not even looking up from over 100 meters.