Headscratchers / inFAMOUS 2

As a Headscratchers subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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• In the evil final mission for Infamous 2, Nix used the RFI to weaken The Beast, despite it not being fully charged. It also uses a Beam Attack instead of hitting every conduit at once. Why the hell couldn't this have been used in the good final mission to weaken The Beast, then have Cole finish him off?
  • Beating the Beast wasn't the point any more. The plague had infected millions of people, and the only way to cure them and stop its spread was the maximum activation of the RFI.
    • It's also debatable if it's even possible to defeat the Beast without the RFI to "switch off" Conduits completely; the Beast can regenerate damage it takes from Cole's powers, and it can put itself back together after being vaporized by a nuke in its face. Despite what Kessler thought, there may be no other way to kill it. As the above notes, however, it's a moot point anyway. Killing the Beast without a full activation of the RFI is the bad ending made worse, since there won't be enough Conduits left to continue the human race after the plague is finished.
  • The Beast can put himself together as easily as Dr. Manhattan. Only by completely eliminating his powers can he be stopped. Remember, John (not Osterman) was totally disintegrated by the ray sphere, and the very first power he got was reintegrating himself. Until you take away that power, John was always going to be able to reassemble himself. However, it still might have been possible to take that power without the RFI - don't forget the power transfer device. Perhaps Nix and Cole could have weakened John with the RFI enough to restrain him in the device, allowing Cole to steal John's powers. It doesn't solve the plague, but it might have at least bought them some time.
  • Too bad the Transfer Device was destroyed after being used by Cole and his "friends." But even then, John would still have his powers, so the RFI would have to be used on him anyway.
• So, from the Infamous 2 dead drops, we learn that Kessler knew that John would become the Beast. So... why not just kill John?
  • Technically, the wording is ambiguous enough that Kessler could be referring merely to the fact that John is a conduit rather rather than the fact that he'll become the Beast.
    • That seems to be the proper suspicion that Kessler had.
  • We also know from the evil ending that Cole also becomes the Beast. Kessler may not have known who the Beast would be, but only that the inherent conflict between humans and conduits would inevitably give rise to the Beast.
  • According to the comic, Kessler knows that John is an NSA agent, and he knows that the NSA is at odds with DARPA and the FBI over the First Sons' research. He may simply realize that since John isn't on his side, it will put him on Cole's side post-blast, and since Cole is supposed to save the world, being what is a essentially his sidekick is worth referring to as an important destiny.
    • Considering that Kessler seems to know that John is a potentially powerful conduit, it's possible he wanted Cole to have a potentially great ally.
• The Plague was caused by Ray Sphere Radiation Poisoning. Kessler came from a future where the world had already suffered everything it could possibly have: People died, cities were destroyed, etc. When Kessler came from the future, he had the opportunity to at least NOTICE what radiation did to the people with no powers. The point of the last Good mission is that even if you defeat the Beast, humans will die. With no Ray Sphere, there would be no Plague, and no Beast because the Beast was created when the second Ray Sphere exploded in John's face. The only reason he became that monster was because he had to reconstruct himself. To do that, he needed a strong mind. During InFamous's Dead Drops, John narrates that Kessler had trained his mind to be strong, even stronger than his. Exactly what he needed to become the goddamn menace Kessler was trying to defeat with his Evil Plan. How come all problems would have been resolved if Kessler just did the natural thing and stopped the Ray Sphere development? Forgive bad grammar, English is not my first language.
  • Kessler has no idea these things are related in the way that they are. He would have no reason to suspect the plague is caused by the Ray Sphere; all of his experiments are about making the Ray Sphere work better, he doesn't care what effect it has on normal people other than using normal people to fuel it. Any non-conduit in his experiments would only be there as fuel for using it on the test subject, so they wouldn't live long enough to be poisoned by it. In the interquel comic, we see Moya watching a Ray Sphere test and she doesn't get sick (nor is she killed by the Ray Sphere's activation, for that matter,) so a lab environment with a properly isolated test chamber must be enough to contain ray-field radiation and keep it from causing the plague. Also note that having a strong mind has little bearing on the Beast in the long run; John's mental strength would be meaningless if his conduit powers didn't give him the ability to put himself back together. His ability as a conduit is essentially "become the Beast," and this is the crucial piece of information Kessler doesn't know.
    • If Kessler didn't knew, then why to teach John to have a strong mind in the first place? Kessler is a Chessmaster, it's not exactly logical to teach someone to mentally overcome you for nothing. Seriously now, if Kessler hadn't taugh John those mind tricks, Cole probably wouldn't have to worry about so many things. Except the Plague, of course. That would eventually destroy the world, and you can't exactly zap a virus.
    • I think you're misremembering the first game. There is never any indication that Kessler trained John as a mentalist. Again, John's mental strength is simply inconsequential to his being the Beast; it's his Conduit power. In fact, he even admits that he was so shaken by the process of restructuring himself that he had no idea what was going on around him at first and he didn't realize what he was doing when he attacked Cole. This suggests he doesn't have extraordinary mental resolve.
    • Actually, he did, John said a big man told him to move an object with his mind and beated him when he couldn't, but the reason he couldn't was that he was never a mentalist to begin with, he said that to infiltrate the First sons.
    • Also, it seems that John's appearance seems to have happened rather sudden, possibly a last minute rewrite? Aside from that, it's never implied that a Ray Sphere created Kessler's beast, or that John was Kessler's Beast. It's only implied that he was a powerful conduit. Another thing is that Kessler never knew who the beast was, where it came from, or how it came to be, and the two games have some ambiguous writing that allows for them to happen, even if they don't make perfect sense. It's almost set up as tragic irony that Kessler becomes the facillitator for the Beast's creation, but personally that doesn't story doesn't sit well.
• There is an inherent problem with Ray Sphere Radiation and the RFI in general. Specifically, RFR is something that a conduit can absorb that activated their conduit genes faster making them into a power user. This is caused and facilitated by a Ray Sphere Event, which generates the stuff when it pulls the bioenergy and other goodies from normal humans forcing it with a dose of RFR into the conduit. Problem is, dormant conduits seem to be perfectly normal humans when affected by it, ie; dying, and a Ray Sphere Event shouldn't be any different. Seeing as apparently 1 in 10 is a conduit, shouldn't there be more power users after a Sphere Event? Aside from that, if dormant conduits are no different than normal humans, then how would the RFI affect people who have zero RFR in their bodies. The RFI was made to inhibit RFR and stop the plague, with the side effect of, in this case so far, killing the conduit via what seems a nervous system blowout. If anything shouldn't it kill their powers rather than kill them entirely, or more importantly, shouldn't it not affect dormant conduits, non RFR poisoned, as there is no RFR in their bodies to react to? Basically, even of the RFI were to actually use RFR to lead the cleansing effect, there shouldn't be enough there to kill dormant conduits in theory. Especially worldwide, when much of the world lacks RFR exposure. Unless a conduit is a natural generator of RFR, then the plague is entirely inevitable, but a person can live their whole life without becoming a power user without getting sick, due to RFR not killing them being that there is seemingly none, nixing the RFR generation theory.
  • The gangs of Conduits in the first game are the result of the Ray Sphere Event. This doesn't happen in New Maria because the Ray Sphere was detonated out in the swamp, where nobody except Nix was close enough to get powers. Since they weren't holding the Sphere, only some potentials luck into getting powers like that. John, for example, didn't.
  • This also implies that using the RFI in the good ending in part 2 kills up to 10% of the world population, while the bad ending should in contrast kill about 90. But the game leads you to believe that that number is much higher as many dormant conduits seem to die from Ray Sphere Events. -This is mainly based on the sheer ambiguity the second game has on facts, which blur the numbers from the first game which had more consistency-
  • Where did you get your numbers from? As far as I know, the game didn't state that 10% of the population are conduits. It states that (at most) 1 out of a 1000 people carry the conduit gene, making them potential conduits. Where did this "10% of the world's population" come from?
    • It was during the ending, I may have forgotten the exact number since Zeke didn't seem to know himself, but it was stated that up to, possibly, 10% of the world were potential conduits that would have been killed by the RFI. Also, there are a lot more than 1 in 1000 conduits running around when you use Beast-Vision in New Marais. Could just be the randomness of the civilian generation, but the second game isn't totally clear on how many conduits do exist, though yeah, the first game gears towards the 1 in 1000 more so.
    • Having just seen both final missions and both endings, I don't see where this is indicated. In the good ending, Zeke says that some people overseas died, and that they must have been conduits without even knowing it. He also says that the death toll was in the thousands, while millions were cured of the plague. And in the evil ending, Cole explicitly states that odds of someone carrying the conduit gene were "only one in a thousand". So again, I don't see where this '10% of the population are potential conduits' actually comes from.
    • Not going to argue it, you are right. Checked back with the game again. Probably picked up that nugget somewhere and it stuck in mind, so a 10th of a percent is correct.
    • The RFI didn't kill everyone with the Conduit gene. Regardless of whether the gene Cole's number or the ratio of people you see with it on the street is a better estimation, only thousands die in the good ending. Either way, not enough to account for all the people with the gene.
    • That's more likely an error on the writers' part.
    • It's easy to see that only those who were currently carrying the gene (active and about to activate) were killed. Zeke's speech at the end in no way indicates total eradication of the gene or the conduit species.
• Biggest question of all. Ok so John is a conduit with sucky powers. Cole activates ray shpere with sucky powers and becomes lighting man. John activates the ray sphere and become a GOD? WTF?
  • I don't think that was a consequence of John "activating" the Ray Sphere so much as a consequence of the Ray Sphere exploding and fusing with John. Any other conduit probably would have gotten the same level of power.
  • I was in a rush when I wrote that. So let me try to elaborate. As I said above, when a conduit activates the ray sphere, he becomes about ten times more Badass. Cole used it once, and he went from messenger boy to Lightning man. That establishes the parameters of the levels of power that the raysphere could impart with one blast, to the person who activated it. John doesn't even use it, and yet he gains enough power to be considered a Physical God.this is way more power than we have been lead to believe that the Raysphere could impart. plus WHERE DID IT GET THAT MUCH POWER. might I remind you that a) if you are evil and activate it again, there arn't nearly enough people nearby to steal from to get enough power to give cole another Level in Badass AND create the Beast, also the explosion should have been as big as the blast from the begining of the game or B)(good Cole) ??? I have no idea at all how it could get enough power to create the beast. and of course, did John absorb the power instead of getting destroyed by it? I get what he was trying to do as the beast, with his power. What I don't get is basically everything about how he became the beast.
  • Cole using the Ray Sphere once doesn't establish anything. Just because he got a certain level of power does not mean that the Ray Sphere can only give that level of power. A person could get more power, or less, depending on the circumstances of when it's activated and on the specific person who activates it. John had the Ray Sphere explode and fuse with him, so comparing how much power he got from that, to how much power someone gets from using it normally (which again, varies due to circumstance), is pretty much meaningless. They're aren't equivalent situations, so trying to say John should have gotten more or less power based on what happened to Cole doesn't hold up. And finally, yes, John absorbed the Ray Spheres powers instead of being destroyed by it. That is why he has the Ray Spheres powers and isn't dead in the second game. The process tore his body apart, but he could eventually put it back together again.
  • Ok so John fuses with the ray sphere. How? cole was the one who activated/destroyed it, so why did john become the beast. Also what I was trying to say before is that cole used the ray sphere once, and it does what is supposed to do. It killed at least hundreds of people and drained their energy into cole to make him Badass. But when he activates it again at the end of the game, there is no explosion, and it doesn't kill anyone. If the power the sphere gives is derived from how many people it kills in the blast, than how come john got more power when the ray sphere didn't kill anyone except HIM, and it didn't even drain him. Why does he fuse with the sphere? and While we're at it, why did he come back as an insane, titanic fire monster? Why didn't he just re integrate his old body to go around snapping conduits incognito?
  • John was the closest person to it. If Cole uses the Sphere, then John grabs it from him. If Cole destroys it, then he does so at a distance. Either way, John is closer, gets pulled in and Cole runs when the Sphere breaks open. And you need to check the scene again, because there is an explosion and people do die if you activate it. The Sphere normally gives power by killing people. What happened with John was not a normal activation of the Sphere. The fusion with the Sphere seems to be an unintended accident caused by the Sphere's nature. It awakens and increases Conduits powers, and John was a Conduit. When the Sphere was destroyed, that ability transferred to John, and gave him numerous other abilities. And John says that coming back as an insane monster was basically a mistake. He wasn't really in a state to know what he was doing, so he formed an approximation of a human body trying to get back to normal and appeared like that. Later on, there isn't really a need for him to go around incognito since everyone's already seen him and he's basically immortal anyways.
  • Did John fuse with the Ray Sphere? We know it was destroyed when he got his powers, but we don't know if he assimilated it at any point.
    • It seems a logical assumption based on the evidence - especially John's powers. It makes more sense to me that he fused with the Sphere/its contents and is thus constantly fuelled by and emitting its radiation, rather than his becoming a Conduit gave him every superpower ever. But granted, it is just an assumption.
• Also If John has the power to snap conduits, thats the reason that he's causing so much death and destruction right? is it like, every time he snaps a conduit, he lets out a ray sphere blast? (that would explain the spread of the plague, unless he radiates ray sphere radiation just from existing) Also, I think the epilogue said something about the plague going global. How did it get across the oceans? The beast only terrorized the east coast of the US.
  • Yes, John can use his powers exactly like a Ray Sphere to create new Conduits. The Plague wasn't only spread by him, however, as it's indicated that the initial Blast in Empire City created the Plague and that the infected zone was growing larger even without anyone setting off more Blasts. John probably carries it with him, but it's actually been spreading out from the initial Blast zone faster than he can make new Conduits. I'm not sure where it's indicated that the Plague spread globally (I didn't see anything like that in the ending), but if it was it wouldn't need John to do it.
  • The plague was in New Marias because a Ray Sphere was used close by. It was also implied that the quarantine failed to contain the plague in Empire City.
• Did Zeke even realize that he should have re-covered up the nuclear missile from the truck BEFORE he drives away with it? I'm pretty certain the Militia wouldn't attack if they couldn't see the nuke.
  • Let's say you're in the Militia and you're aware a nuke has been stolen. Next thing you see, the "Electric Man" is riding alongside a truck with cover the size of a nuke on the back. What would you think was under there?
    • Also, Zeke may have initially assumed that if the militia could see it, they wouldn't shoot at it. Of course, that assumption would prove incorrect.
• How is it that the RFI, a device no bigger than the Ray Sphere, could possibly affect the entire continent and more?
  • By being made of Applied Phlebotinum, same way the Ray Sphere can give people super powers by stealing electricity from the brains of others.
• Okay, Cole can recharge his powers by draining electric devices, generators, or even people. How do Nix and Kuo recharge their powers?
  • Does it even seem like they need to? They just seem to have an endless amount in them.
  • From what I remember, Kuo went through some kind of Nightmare Fuel-esque activation of her powers followed by the mass-producing of her powers, so it's possible her powers have been activated to such a huge degree they don't need charging (Or on the Fridge Horror side of things, her powers are taking energy from her body), and there was a higher concentration of people from the Nix/Bertrand Ray Sphere detonation from what I saw, so again, maybe their powers just don't need recharging, or are a part of their own being, while Cole is more of a lightning storage unit, zapping it out in ways he needs to and recharging when he's flat?
    • Its possible that Nix could simply be draining heat from the air around her, since her powers are fire based.
• Why did the Beast go after Kessler in Kessler's timeline?
  • It was a beast of pure destruction, it wasn't after him, that beast was mindlessly destroying everything.
• Why did the Beast make a beeline for New Marais?
  • John knew Cole was there. He wanted to talk to him.
• Why didn't Kuo go crazy from her ice powers (like really crazy) like all the other icemen did?
  • Kuo didn't go crazy because she's a conduit. The majority of the Ice soldiers weren't conduits; they are forced conduits.
• So all powers come from Ray Sphere explosions?
  • Some powers were natural and sometimes the Ray Sphere wouldn't explode; Kessler and Wolfe were shown to be experimenting on a fully powered conduit rat.
• Why are all the TVs on New Marais' roofs from the 1980s?
  • Would you put a new television on the roof?
• Why would Kuo lose her job for getting ice powers? They wouldn't affect how she worked.
  • Becoming a conduit basically turns into what normal humans can call a freak. Probably because its like being turned into an alien. She's probably going to be experimented on instead of working on her old job if she comes back on her job.
• What was making that noise in the swamp during the mission where Nix drives the boat? That couldn't have been Bertrand, could it?
  • Most likely.
• Even if you haven't learned counterinsurgency tactics in NSA agent school like Kuo presumably has, it's not hard to figure out what's going to happen when you steal a conspicuous, easily recognizable vehicle full of valuable supplies from Bad Guy HQ and drive it straight to the Good Guy hideout, while shooting at Bad Guys the whole way. Is Kuo less "evil" than Nix, or just a lot better at manipulating people?
• Two things that are a load of Fandumb going around: 1. Why does everyone think the Infamous Karma ending means the wiping out of normal human civilization? It's stated multiple times that both Cole and John just want to stop the plague. If Cole moved fast enough he possibly could stop the plague from leaving the Mid-West area. His plans aren't to rule as at the end of Infamous 2, as you are still a hero(by all dev interviews it about becoming an agent of chaos or exemplar of order), just an Anti-Hero in the Type 2 to type 5 range depending on who you ask. Also 2. where is it said that the Hero Karma end of Infamous 2 is canon one going into Second Son? I ask as it makes more sense with what I said with question one that Infamous 2's Infamous Karma ending would make sense for what is going on in 2nd Son. This looks like a point of going back on their word to me.
  • The evil ending specifically states that Cole will have to kill people to activate a conduit's powers. Remember John wanted to activate Conduits first, getting rid of the plague was just a helpful side-effect. Civilisation would eventually die off in order to activate all conduits.
  • Neither John nor Cole were acting as a scalpel. They were a hammer, smashing everything. The plague was shown to be spreading faster than Cole or John could catch up to it, meaning that limiting the spread was not an option. Also, the world was shown fighting back. They was going to be an enormous amount of collateral damage.
  • Word of God has confirmed that Second Son is set after the good ending.
• Why would the RFI affect potential conduits? The RFI affects Ray Field energy, and potential conduits don't have any more of that than normal humans, so why would it kill everyone with the gene?
  • The answer seems to be that it doesn't. The third game still has potential conduits around.
    • But in the good ending, Zeke says that people were dying overseas, and they were probably conduits, even though they didn't know it. I assumed that meant that they were potential conduits.
    • Or they were just weak active conduits. Natural active conduits have always existed in the games, they just aren't strong enough to attract attention. Heck, Alden's powers were originally very weak despite being raised by the First Sons, so most natural conduits probably have powers too weak to notice.
• In the mission before Storm the Fort, Kuo says the militia haven't been suffering from the plague because of their medical supplies. Then why is Zeke suffering from the plague? He did join the militia to spy, then why didn't they give him any?
  • The medical supplies didn't stop the plague. The militia were either able to use them to treat the symptoms, or just weren't fielding sick men.
• In the mission "BOOM!," how does blowing up the place actually help you? Once you get in, the mission is exactly the same as "Leading the Charge," except with Nix helping you instead of the cops.
  • Nix is crazy.
• Why was the fear of death enough to convince Kuo to lose her nerve and side with The Beast? She's an NSA Agent. Joining the NSA and reaching a position like hers is fraught with risks that would prove insurmountable to anyone who's that scared of death. It's understandable to still be scared of death, but someone like her should've been able to conquer that fear after everything she's done and been through. It seems very out of character and inconsistent for how she was written.
  • It probably wasn't JUST fear of death, but rather that compounded with the utter ineffectuality of the US Government on all levels re everything after the first Ray Sphere blast (shaking her trust in an institution she had to have a whole lotta faith in, being an NSA agent and all), coming to New Marais and seeing what a total hell hole Bertrand, an emblem of the establishment being a politically powerful, christian, rich man has made, and having her Conduit powers awakened in an utterly horrifying way. Fear of death after all that was just the straw that broke the camel's back.