Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
- So all those crossover Fan Fics between Prototype and Assassin's Creed that have Mercer and Desmond getting together mean they're having a vaguely incestual relationship? And I do mean vaguely, considering Mercer's not even human.
- This is pretty much confirmed in-game; one of the Web of Intrigue videos has a pilot talking about shooting down a commercial airliner.
- Except that's a soldier shooting down an airliner trying to flee New York due to the infection. Pay attention.
- Why would he need to be a descendent? A change of face and name are quite simple for Alex. Besides, it's not like he will ever age.
- However, Isaac Clarke is pretty capable of punching out Cthulhu. The battle could go either way. As for the theory; both Mercers do share a disregard for even basic human decency, so it may be possible Challus is real, non Virus Alex's great-great-great-etc-grandson, assuming sociopathy For Science! is a genetic trait.
- Well, if Isaac spammed the stasis module, while constantly blasting Alex with his higher end weapons, then yeah, he has a chance. However, stasis is his only chance — most of the Necromorphs were incredibly slow in comparison to Alex, and once Alex gets into melee range with the blade, it's over. More on topic, one wonders if Isaac is in some way related to Cross — two Badass Normals who routinely take down apparently much more powerful Body Horrors?
- DS's Dr. Cross obviously never inherited the badassery of Cpt. Cross.
- Alex Mercer IS the Blacklight virus, or at least he is the face it wears. James Heller was 'infected' by the blacklight virus, he was infected by Mercer. something happened during Heller's infection that caused the part of blacklight infecting him to lose it's memories of Mercer and embrace his instead, thus ZEUS gains another mask. in the end Mercer decides that the memories of the people he has consumed are holding him back, and allows Heller (who has absorbed far fewer people) to overwrite his personality, thus resetting ZEUS to a newer, less weighed down state. the entirety of Prototype 2 was simply Blacklight arguing with itself.
- Zombies? Check. Giant, horribly strong mutants that can kill armored vehicles? Check. Horrible rapid combat mutations? Check. Hell, Alex Mercer's abilities aren't all that far from what the Uroboros does to Wesker at the end of Resident Evil 5.
- Alex is what Wesker wishes he was when he grew up.
- Or, the Blacklight virus was engineered based on Uroboros recovered from Wesker's body after the Final Boss fight of RE5.
- No, the body would have been immolated eventually. The plane with Uroboros, however, could have been recovered.
- No, it doesn't fit, at the time of NY outbreak Wesker's still alive, well and hiding and Uroboros isn't done yet. Anyway, they are from different uneverses, otherwise the fight between Mercer and Chris (who became a worcaholic after Jill's death) would be inevitable and one of them would be killed in it before Prototype 2 and RE5 - temporal paradox, people.
- Hordes of lesser infected, with smaller numbers of more powerful ones? Hell, it's like Alex Mercer has superior versions of the powers of several of the boss infected. The smoker's long range grab (Whipfist), but Alex is faster reeling them in. The parkour of the hunter, but Alex is even more agile and can leap much further. The strength and resilience of the tank, but much faster. The claws of the witch.
- Something was done to them after their Dark Tournament win to make them powerful "demons". There is plenty of mad science going around, and at least one instance of, you guessed it, superpower-giving parasites. So it's entirely possible that the orchestrator of the Dark Tournament could have had access to the Blacklight Virus. This version of the virus does not bestow all of Alex's powers, but the ones they do have are enhanced. Further proof can be found by looking at their powers. The Younger Toguro clearly has a souped-up Muscle Mass power, and the Armor power, though it manifests as tough gray skin rather than beetle plates. He only has two powers, but the level of enhancement goes way beyond what Alex can do with those same powers. The Elder Toguro has... pretty much everything else, honestly. He can shapeshift, he can extend his limbs to attack (whipfist), he can rip things to shreds with his nails (Claw), he an transform his limbs or whole body into a sword (blade), shield (shield), and many other things besides. While both brothers can regenerate, his regenerative powers are so advanced that he can survive total point-blank annihilation, just like Alex. And for the final piece of evidence, look here. Go ahead, look at that and try to tell me that it's anything other than the Tendril Barrage Devastator. Elder Toguro even gains the power to eat people later on, for crying out loud. It doesn't get any clearer than that, does it?
- Jossed as of February 2011 gameinformer.
Plus, who wouldn't play a Prototype game in which you were Alex Mercer versus the Matrix and Skynet at the same time? Possible with lots of sequences of Alex fighting Sentinel-like giant robots. Also, dividing the enemy factions into Human Military, the Infected, and Machines would inject a lot of much-needed diversity and some other playable characters if need be. And thematically, pitting a protagonist who is a giant mass of shapeshifting biological components versus a nanomachine monster would work like a charm.
- Which means Alex will no doubt be fighting the Scrin and Skynet. He will be aided by a naked Summer Glau robot sent back from the future, along with Cole's future form. Therefore creating the single most awesome game ever.
- Alternatively, Predators.
- OR! Pariah could be the Beast. The Beast seems to have fire based powers, so it may not be Alex. And then sometime in the future, both Cole and Alex fight Pariah/the Beast in a cataclysmic battle of epic proportions, full of erupting volcanoes, lightning striking from the heavens, and great feats of strength and skill unlike any seen before.
- ...That has to be one of the best ideas I've heard, excellent! That probably means, however, that in Kessler's time, Mercer was killed before they could team up. Doesn't explain some of Cole's abnormalities. But hey, there are other explanations...
- Easy. Redlight and Blacklight are 2 of 14 (or was it 15) strains of virus. Cole has one of the others, maybe called Bluelight or Whitelight.
Theory formed by the Web of Intrigue piece from Dr. Jared Cooper. In it, Cooper talks to Cross about the parasite injected. He claims "we're supposed to be stopping these things, not manufacturing new ones!" The final scene is the Supreme Hunter standing over Mercer. This also explains why the Supreme Hunter is not only intelligent, but able to shapeshift and use quite a few of Alex's attacks. It's also a good degree more human-looking than the rest of the Hunters. Too close for coincidence in my eyes.
- That's not a "theory", that's pretty much canon. During one of the cutscenes, the soldier Alex is talking with, who we later discover is Specialist Cross, who we later discover is the Supreme Hunter even says something in the lines of "A sentient cancer parasite. Do you have any idea how he felt being torn away from his host?". Mutant parasitic cancerous vengeful biological abomination with daddy issues? Yeah...
- The only point of uncertainty is: did Alex inject Elizabeth Greene with the parasite removed from himself (or some part thereof, it seemed to have grown far too large to fit in the injector), or more of the same material Cross originally injected into him? In any case, it is most certainly the same type of parasite, just with a different reaction to the Redlight virus.
- He keeps all the new mass inside his own body, thus becoming super-dense. That's why he plummets in water like a rock, stops cars that crash on him and wrecks them in the process, and crater-lands after a jump.
- Also notice all the clouds of red when Alex does things and uses powers, that's him disposing of extra mass as well as burning it up, so he stays at his "crack the sidewalk when falling" weight.
My theory is that Blacklight is in fact a culture of cells from Adam, which still remain somewhat sentient. As a result, the transformation of Greene was actually them realizing they had found a suitable host for transformation into a humanoid Angel like Tabris. After possessing her, she then gained the ability to created pseudo-Angels in the form of the Infected-the reason they have a Hive Mind is that they're really just one big Angel. When Mercer-the human one-enhanced the culture to make them more powerful, he really caused the original Angel to become two. The new Angel/cell colony tried to possess him but only succeeded in making him drop the vial. However, by that point, they had become powerful enough to mimic his form, as well as a human mind. They-or rather, he-then was driven by instinct to destroy the "weaker" Angel-the Infected. He succeeded, and then went on to his true purpose at the end of the game-finding Adam's body.
Where does the original cast of the series fit in? They don't. It's an Alternate Universe in which the Second Impact wasn't nearly as bad as in NGE.
- Or, taking into consideration Pariah is called the purpose of all life and Greene stated she was "the reason for everything" just before Alex triggered the Supreme Hunter's birth, then think of Greene and her son as the combination of Lilith's and Adam's descendants: Humans from Lilith, virus from Adam. We still remember what happened during Third Impact? Adam + Lillith = God. Or at least something with a god-like power. With that power, Shinji was able to re-shape all life on Earth, most likely revived Asuka and everyone else became LCL, people finally left him be and Asuka was with him, tadaa. That "re-shaping life" part should sound familiar. We got three persons that are working hybrids: Greene, Mercer, Pariah. Now we don't know much about Pariah, but we know Mercer's shape-shifting abilities on a genetic level, his ability to re-write living organisms, his consuming abilities, and Greene's abilities to create Hunters and an Infected army in general. Sounds pretty much like the ability to re-shape life to me (Also, Mercer is called ZEUS, hehe, pretty god-like in itself if you ask me).
- The Angel that gets WTFPWNED in Asuka's Rebuild 2.0 intro scene certainly has variants of Groundspike Graveyard and Tendril Barrage.
- Slaanesh is easy: Tentacle Rape Overdrive.
- Unlikely; it's mentioned in an WOI that Elizabeth Greene is "imperfect", Mercer is "something more", and that Pariah could be "the final purpose of all life on Earth", and it would be a very, very bad thing if Mercer and Pariah ever came into contact with one another. If Cross was Pariah, why the Hell would they send him to fight against Mercer, if in their own words it would be even worse than Mercer is by himself? Hell, why even let Cross walk around if he's "the final purpose of all life on Earth"? As for how Cross can last more than one punch; I'd say gameplay and story segregation.
- What would that make Blackwatch then? A powerful Radical Inquisitor's private army?
- Not necessarily. It's entirely possible that Prototype's Earth is simply a world out of contact with the rest of the Imperium and has come to think its the real Earth. Blackwatch could simply be exactly what it appears to be-a black ops section of the military with extremely questionable ethics.
- Why does Alex fight the infected then?
- Hive fleets have been known to fight each other. Maybe whatever work Gentek did on Redlight means that the main swarm doesn't recognize Alex as one of their own anymore.
- Another possibility: Alex is captured and shot into another galaxy via a secret government project FTL-capable spaceship. Approx 40,000 years later, Hive Fleet Behemoth shows up...
- More like he becomes New York's Guyver. Powerful, destructive, inhuman, and capable of killing hordes without a thought, yet still better than the alternative.
- Come on, you know Blacklight would make an awesome codename.
- He would make a damn good '90s Anti-Hero.
- Only what kind of ungodly powerful supervillain would be needed to pose a threat?
- Physically, Alex is very powerful, but actually no more so than a lot of middle-tier superheroes - Superman could probably take him to school, for instance. Also, threats don't have to be lone supervillains; they can be conspiracies, impersonal forces, natural disasters, all kinds of things. And Nineties Anti Heroes often have no worse an enemy than themselves - which goes particularly for Alex, a creatures whose goals in-game, protecting humans and destroying the infection, run contrary to his very nature. He has ten thousand voices in his head continuously screaming in agony. If you can't make a plot out of that, you just ain't trying.
- Only what kind of ungodly powerful supervillain would be needed to pose a threat?
- Not quite:
- Mercer: Mine is the Devastor that consumes the heavens!
- Alternatively, Alex ends up creating the Bydo when the Strogg invade Earth.
- He outright states that he's the last possible leader of the Infected to Cross/the Supreme Hunter.
- But after the plot is all done, the infected are just as hostile to him as ever.
- Alternately, Dunn wasn't Blackwatch, he was actually perfectly innocent; Alex acts scared shitless as Dunn because that's how the others expect him to act, it's part of his cover. Dunn was mortally wounded in combat and was the first such soldier Alex both found and was able to consume as a Mercy Kill without anyone seeing; this actually gels well with Prototype canon, which suggests via character development as the game approaches its conclusion that Alex (aka, Blacklight) is growing out of his Sociopathic Hero phase. In order to learn how to act like him, Alex would've had to have absorbed him fully with his memories intact instead of pounding his brain into paste; Dunn displays a sudden bout of patriotism after retaking Whiskey Hotel when another Ranger expresses a wish to counter-invade Russia because in taking Dunn's memories, Alex inherits his desire to serve; Alex could also wish to make up for the horrible things the real Alex Mercer did, and once someone else kills Shepherd, presumably crippling Blackwatch, sticking it out with the Rangers would be a convenient way of doing that.
- Isn't that basically canon from the last cutscene/conversations with Cross?
- Nope. Alex recalls everything that happened to his victims as though it happened to him, including their horrible deaths at his hands (hence the screaming in his head. That would obviously be the clearest and most recent memory). In the WMG, that would be because they're still alive, but in canon they aren't; the voices are just echoes.
- Well, she would be... popular with the net.
- Addendum. Alex will have transformed her so as to save her from being a regular infected. This will explain any differences in powers.
- The comics show that there is a confirmed Runner that escaped Blackwatch, and they don't know about her. It's Garcia; you see her all crazy like at the end of issue 6.
- Half-right, half-wrong it seems. Turns out Alex is likely to be the boss, but the new Runner is just some random grunt.
- He can already shoot biomass with the Critical Pain devastator.
- Yeah, but that's a Devastator and you really can't make consistent use of it. Imagine having something like the Slam Cannon in Generator Rex only fueled by people. How awesome would that be?
- Alternatively, Alex managed to find a way to summon a ForbiddenBeast, the price he paid was his memory. He doesn't experience the decomposition Eddie does because he can renew himself with additional biomass.
- The Marvel theory is lent additional credence by Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions; where Ultimate Spider-Man (wearing the symbiote suit) shares quite a few similarities with Alex in terms of attack animations, and Ultimate Carnage fights sort of like a combination of Greene (He spends a lot of time inside a fleshy, tendrilly blob; and the people he drains to husks turn into Carnage-allied zombies) and the Supreme Hunter (Out of his blob, he uses groundspikes, claws, and tendrils)
- Furthermore in the video game, it's revealed that the covert military group headed by Colonel Whitely was doing extensive (and unethical) research into possibly weaponizing The Thing (which they classified as the Cloud Virus). Whitely's group could easily have been a predecessor or a part of Blackwatch.
- Even more notably, GENTEK exists in prototype. Who's to say GENTEK wasn't originally Gen Inc. from the Thing game?
- Jossed by the game. If you find all of the Web of Intrigue nodes, there's a short cinematic of Alex infiltrating Karen's safe house and killing her (well, terrorizing her, but c'mon — do you really think Alex Mercer is going to stop at scaring her?).
- You don't get a Web Of Intrigue node, though, and the game specifically cuts out before the whole Consuming thing begins. Given that by this point the player has devoured probably at least thirty people to finish the game's missions, I'm not sure why it would decided to censor that unless it was going to be a plot point. I mean, some of the Consume animations involve shoving someone's head inside their ribcage. Seriously?
- Personally, I am inclined to believe that Karen is still alive, but I just wanted to mention a possible counter-argument to the "fade-to-black" thing. Yeah, there's been a ton of violence and bloodshed up to that point, and a ton of it afterwards — however, that scene, to me, was about psychological horror rather than visual. It really played up on Alex's ability to be anyone, anywhere, without a single person knowing. The game definitely shows it, but that scene really jacked up the paranoia level for me. Personally, if he did kill her, I think that simply fading to black, with the player knowing exactly what's going to happen to her, is more horrific than simply being shown the same kind of murder-consumption we've seen a thousand times before. In short, Alex could very well have killed her, and the fade out was just for dramatic effect.
- You don't get a Web Of Intrigue node, though, and the game specifically cuts out before the whole Consuming thing begins. Given that by this point the player has devoured probably at least thirty people to finish the game's missions, I'm not sure why it would decided to censor that unless it was going to be a plot point. I mean, some of the Consume animations involve shoving someone's head inside their ribcage. Seriously?
- Also, I can't think of many better ways to fake someone's death than having it seem like they've been completely devoured by Alex Mercer... No need for a body, after all.
- According to the section of the official strategy guide that includes commentary by the creators, Karen is dead:
- Parker's Character Bio: Parker uses Alex's memories of her and his fragile emotional state to keep him in check, something which becomes more and more difficult to achieve as time goes on. Parker is interested only in saving herself, and understands Alex's odd predicament fully; she knows, for instance, that "Alex" is dead, and that the virus has replaced him. As such, she is both amazed and repulsed by the creature she is forced to work with. Eventually, that fear will cost her life.
- I'm doubtful of how canonical the strategy guide could be considered.
- Honestly, so am I; but it's the 'bonus' section where the Dev team, rather than the writers of the strategy guide, talk about the characters, their roles, and their development (along with some really badass art) as well as their profiling. So I'm a little more inclined to believe it. Trust me, had the bit about Karen just been thrown in the guide somewhere, I wouldn't have bothered to post it. *fistshake* I've been lied to before.
- I know that, I'm still doubtful. Strategy guides are compiled before the game is finalised and sometimes contain inaccurate or out-of-date information, and aren't necessarily canon sources even with developer comments. ...Plus having to beat the shit out of someone to make them work for you doesn't mean they count as "willing".
- True. Didn't think of that. Also, in regard to Karen not having a choice... Yeah, I agree totally. I hope that Alex didn't kill her, because she really seemed regretful while speaking to him — ("For what it's worth... I'm sorry that it had to play out this way.") — and GENTEK/Blackwatch twisted her arm when it came to betraying Alex. "Betray the virus who took over your ex-boyfriend's body and we'll give you any assignment you want, with great pay and flexibility, and pardon everything you've done wrong thus far, or... well, there's nothing we can do for you." Considering Alex's transformation into a being with actual morals (and, presumably, a capacity for mercy), I would like to think that he spared her.
- It could also be a case similar to the "How could guards not notice Sam Fisher's glowing NVGs?"
- While I agree with the troper below me, the thought that they're just ignoring Alex crossed my mind, even though they ran to the craters. After all, they do have to acknowledge that something just happened; they don't have to acknowledge that they know who's responsible for what happened — at least, no one can prove that they saw who did it. Sure, there's a guy who resembles Mercer, maybe, I guess, who happens to be wandering around near the crater — but that could just be any dude, right? We should just investigate the crater. And if no one's specifically at the crater, I guess there's not much we can do, huh?
- ...Er, I think that might depend on the person. Most people, myself included, would probably scream and run. Even if I did figure out that Alex was only specifically after the Infected and the people crazy enough to open fire on him, I don't think I could see him as anything other than just another monster. I mean, I don't know anything about the guy. If he grabbed me out of the way of a tank, or struck up a conversation with me, and then went off and starting killing Infected, then maybe I wouldn't be so concerned about him personally. And yet I'd still run upon seeing him, because where Alex goes, explosions, gunfire, and death are sure to follow.
- Actually, come to think of it, in the comics, it's explicitly stated that some people do think Alex Mercer is ripping up Hives and beating the crap out of the Infected, so... hey, he might not have too bad a rep after this. Not quite 0% Approval Rating, anyway.Radio VO: Social messaging website have provided the best coverage from inside the city; there are reports of Alex Mercer ripping apart the Infected. Many feel he may be the key to combating the effects of the virus. Others insist he's somehow responsible for the outbreak.
- God bless you, Facebook / YouTube addicts. May your vigilance never falter, even in the face of a Zombie Apocalypse.
- Except that there's no way to get out of the vehicles before Mercer turns the helpless crew into red paste. The animations even show tank crews desperately clawing their way out of the turret only to get yanked back in, and helicopter pilots struggling to jump out rather than be killed by Mercer.
- Well, they could always start putting gigantic, bright messages on the sides: WILL BAIL OUT, PLEASE DO NOT EAT, HAVE LEFT SANDWICHES AND BEER IN COOLER
- More likely, the military could just rig their gear to explode when Mercer gets inside.
- And potentially blow themselves up? Sure, you could probably rig a minor charge into the controls to make it scrap on wheels, but that's a recipe for misfires and wasted tanks. You're really better off just letting Alex have one.
- And it's not like Alex isn't capable of doing more damage on his own than with a tank anyway, depending on what he's attacking.
- Or they avoid sending in ground forces and let the air force handle it. Alex would have trouble hijacking a b-52 in flight.
- I dare say that sounds like a challenge.
- It would only take a small upgrade to his superjump-airdash-glide combo to turn it from Not Quite Flight to Real Flight.
- Or consider this, since Alex is basically an insanely dense clump of biomass that weigh possibly in tons, it is not impossible for him to just dedicate some of that mass into processing power far beyond what little brain we Muggles have, then it won't be far-fetched to say he could snap-calculate everything he needed to accurately shoot whipfist to catch that B-52, the rest is just chomp-chomp or however it is he eat, and maybe how to get close enough to it to pull it off
- And potentially blow themselves up? Sure, you could probably rig a minor charge into the controls to make it scrap on wheels, but that's a recipe for misfires and wasted tanks. You're really better off just letting Alex have one.
- There is actually a little interesting fact here: You can actually see a logo that reads "Templars" one some of Blackwatch's equipment in the cut scene.
- Yes. Yes you should. But, as far as this WMG is concerned, my guess is that the sequel will begin with a case of Wide-Open Sandbox Gameplay and Story Segregation, where Mercer recovers From a Single Cell after being nuked to discover that he's lost all of his offense & defense powers.
Come on, by this point, Alex Mercer is a frakking GOD. The military (Or blackwatch) would probably have to do a simple "Fight fire with fire" policy, by making a cyborg to fight him that runs off humans. The upgrades would be you being literally taking apart by the military and having new stuff added. Plus, you could pretend to be human by just switching to non-lasers and metal oh my mode.
Come on, you'd play it. And plus, Alex Mercer could be running around whatever new city or county or maybe country in real time, and you could try to stop him!
- A cyborg wouldn't be a believable opponent against Mercer. He can crush tanks. No cyborg would remain functional long enough to do the job.
- Now, if you had a nanomorphic mimetic poly-alloy cyborg...
I am calling this one right now, since I don't see them throwing away a character so casually after taking so long to build him up. For one, we don't SEE him get consumed in the cutscene, which as mentioned in the Karen Parker issue seems highly suspicious indeed, though slightly less so than the aforementioned example. Secondly, we don't know how powerful consuming is or at least how far it can go. Do you have to eat the entire person in order to impersonate them, uniform and all? Could it work with just a hand or other disposable body part? In Prototype 2, he will be back sans one natural arm (which he cut off in a Randellesque attempt to escape) and more dangerous than ever.
- The Blacklight Virus is not actually a virus. It is a seed of the Old Ones that humans have managed to weaponize, without realizing what it is. This explains why Blackwatch is so psychotic and crazy, and also explains why they've gotten crazier in the second game, to the point of outright villainous insanity rather than excessive devotion to the job. The entire storyline, from the destruction of Hope to the way New York ends up in the second game, is all part of a very subtle long-game plan by the Old Ones, since their more outright stuff involving cults has failed so often throughout the 20th century. The Blacklight Virus is a tool designed to seek out the most powerful potential servants, and they've used it before. Both Alex Mercer and James Heller's abilities are very similar to what Nyarlathotep is said to be able to do in the Lovecraft stories. This explains how the Virus can make them defy the laws of physics. The scientists spout something about biomass because it's the closest our understanding of the world can get to explaining it, but the virus actually makes the protagonist into vessels of the Old Ones, pulling power and energy directly from the Outside where they are locked away. This explains why Alex Mercer went from a very dark anti-hero to a full-on A God Am I villain. The Old Ones corrupted him and drove him mad, just as they do to all things of this world when they come into contact with it for too long. James Heller seems more resistant to their influence, perhaps because he has his daughter to fight for. If they ever make a third game and he ends up the villain, it'll show that the corruption eventually won out.
- Converts some of that extra mass into something akin to Kinetic Energy. It would explain why he keeps falling even as he glides, despite the fact that he should be far FAR too heavy to fly while he has a human shape and significantly higher density. The reason this doesn't effect His health is because It would take a HUGE amount of energy to actually kill his mass any. Might even be part of the reason they call him Zeus
- Creates Gas filled Sacks in his body that make a gas that is MUCH lighter than air. Considering the amount of people he's eaten if he gets their knowledge and what not in full, It wouldn't surprise me if he figured out the physics of it. As to the gas made...dunno
- Shoots out millions of microscopic tendrils out to the nearest buildings to lift or support him, dragging him down slowly instead of dropping him like a rock. Explains the boosting (he's pulling himself forward)
- Shaves off bits of his mass in order to become more aerodynamic.
- Plot speculation, go! Alex is after the real leaders of Blackwatch, possibly the Templars as mentioned above, while being pursued by (insert threat: Blackwatch, PARIAH, other unnamed Infected, Blackwatch and their brand new pet Infected). Where he goes in this quest, destruction inevitably follows, and you, as the player, will have the option of controlling how much destruction is caused in your choice of powers and methods - do you infiltrate, precise and careful, or tear apart everything in your way? Dana returns either as Alex's data analyst (and having taken a level in badass) or slowly dying/going nuts from her infection while Alex searches desperately for a cure. Or both. Setting: ...I have no idea, but I hope it's not just New York again.
- Your real nemesis will end up being Pariah, and that's what that big monster thing is in the final shot of the trailer. At least I hope so...I don't want Alex to die.
- Me neither. But, on the plus side, Alex survived a fucking A-bomb, he won't die by the hands of some stinking new Player Character. And I also don't think that we get to consume him because, well, that would be a little lame (although pretty ironic).
- Alternately, James get eaten halfway through the game by Alex, letting you control Alex for the remainder of the game.
- As a Third Option, James ultimately, in his single minded revenge, jumps off the slippery slope into villainy, perhaps allowing himself to be assimilated into the Redlight Hive or something for the prospect of getting revenge on Alex, and ultimately becomes a menace that its up to (ironically) Mercer to stop.
- Me neither. But, on the plus side, Alex survived a fucking A-bomb, he won't die by the hands of some stinking new Player Character. And I also don't think that we get to consume him because, well, that would be a little lame (although pretty ironic).
- They might do a "play as one or the other" type-thing. Choose from the start to play as Alex or James. Either that or you rotate between them.
- They might end up working together when James Heller learns that Mercerlight isn't the real monster.
- More specifically, he's the chunk of Mercer/Blacklight that we saw at the end of the first game. Having to regenerate From a Single Cell did a number on Blacklight's already jumbled memory, so the only identity it was able to hold onto was that of a random soldier Mercer absorbed. Heller may have jumbled memories of his own death at Mercer's hands and may have come to the mistaken conclusion that Mercer infected him, when in reality he was just outright absorbed.
- Note that the appearance of a separate Alex Mercer doesn't necessarily make this Jossed. After all, nobody said that there was only one chunk of Mercer left.
- After being blown up to pieces, a part of Alex consumes James while he was still alive, so that part ended up being "James", while the other bits of Alex only consumes animal or dead bodies so they don't develop into another Runner. And at the final battle against Pariah or someone else James will be consumed by Alex voluntarily to stop The End of the World as We Know It or something
- No, but he might have eaten one at some point.
- Sometime in 1969-70, a scientist working on a deadly microorganism, which turned out to be a modified form of the "Hope, Idaho" strain, grew disillusioned and stole the sample from Fort Detrick. Eventually arriving in Hawaii, he intended to release it on the entire State as a lesson on the horrors of bioweaponry. That is, until the local Five-O managed to both calm him down and helped track the sample before it could be released. The Army detachment sent to clean up the mess presumably destroyed the evidence. But the poor doctor's research is salvaged to create the Blacklight virus down the line.
- And in case you're wondering, it's based on an old Hawaii Five-O story arc involving someone disturbingly similar to Alex Mercer (pre-virus).
- Or know damn well that bad things would happen if they get eaten by Mercer, and stay outside the quarantine zone.
- After learning of the true evil (Pariah and the governments actions) Heller will then either allow Alex to consume him, enabling Alex to gain a massive boost in power.
- But then how did he survive getting riddled with holes and devoured by his own virus?
- The most likely method would be that when they touched in the station, the virus got his form and he became infected in a similar manner to Heller. I also just find it weird for our Mercer to be Playing with Syringes, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a fake Alex in play.
- Assuming somehow Karen is brought back to life if these bio's including the fate of Karen is canon.
- Dana obviously knows a lot about Alex and what's happened to him, and she's also one of two people he really seems to care about (Ragland being the other, debatably). Consuming Dana would be a big Web of Intrigue boost for Heller, and would also give him a form he can take to get close to Alex without raising his alarm. Of course, once Alex finds out what happened, then it's game on.
- Elizabeth Greene knew Alex would kill her, so she deliberately infected Dana to make her the new hive mind. Since there's no way Alex could bring himself to kill his own Living Emotional Crutch, it falls to Heller to do it.
- The viral outbreak in New York killed Heller's family, and he shows extreme hatred towards Blacklight-Alex. So he might simply track down the comatose Dana and kill her just so Alex feels his pain.
- Jossed by the fact PARIAH is older than Alex.
- As the Trailer showed, Heller releases the Virus back into New York, injecting himself with a sample directly into the veins and causing a different, but similar form of the virus to create him. He goes on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge to kill Alex for not killing him.
- Alex's is based around surviving Heller's wrath, finding out how the infection started up again, who James Heller actually is, and then fighting him when he kills Dana to mess with Alex, instigating the coolest and most deadliest boss fight EVAR.
- Himself = Ego/Self
- Elizabeth Greene = Id
- Captain Cross = Super Ego
- Dr. Ragland = Anima
- Supreme Hunter = Shadow Archetype
- Dana'd be more likely to be Anima, since that's the female aspect of the male soul in Jungian psychology. ...Just saying.
- Unless the developers are lying, this has pretty much been Jossed by the various interviews and previews they've released. The virus wasn't re-released, it's the same outbreak from the first game only it's gotten worse over the 14 months between the games. The developers have explicitly stated that Mercer infected Heller on purpose and have even released concept art of it.
- According to the Prototype Wiki, this is correct. Mercer found him dying and injected him with Blacklight to save him.
- According to interviews he infected Heller because he wants to make Heller his lieutenant in "a plot to spread the virus beyond New York Zero".
- Which interviews? This Troper has only found the actual trailer, the various teasers, and one interview which just says 'he[Alex] sees that Heller has potential'. The spoiler tag isn't needed BTW.
- The EGMi (EGM's online magazine) interview. It's also mentioned in the article for the print version of EGM.
- Link Please?
- EGMi (it's in issue 246.2).
- I Stand Corrected. I part is now disapointed that Mercer is indeed the villain, but another part is sure that there will be some kind of twist revealing the truth, can't know until the game actually comes out though. This still gives me many different WMG about the plot though.
- The EGMi (EGM's online magazine) interview. It's also mentioned in the article for the print version of EGM.
- It stil seems that Mercer has a reason for spreading the virus. It could be a gambit to draw out Pariah, or more of Blackwatches higher ups. And what better way to draw attention then with TWO extremely powerful super humans?
- A completely ordinary if sociopathic biologist watching microbes in petri dishes and filling in reports. Sounds like fun. I can't wait to see you try and pitch it to Activision.
Making things worse is the fact that he's flipping nuts. Really, ZEUS was not a nice guy; he was the lesser of three evils. Even assuming he wasn't merrily slashing his way through civilians like players were, look at who he's been consuming to get information on the Web of Intrigue; members of Blackwatch and Gentek researchers. Having them in his head would likely give him a dim view of humanity. Add on to the fact he has Greene and Randall in his head. Both were involved with the virus from the beginning; and both likely have very divergent views, which both believed were the one true version of events. Having them both in his head can't exactly bode well for his long-term mental health.
Finally, there's the fact that he is the personification of a horrific death virus. As much as he might regret that fact, he knows that he was designed to be a deadly plague, nothing more or less. So directionless, having no one to trust, with a head full of enough crazy for a small country, and the knowledge that he's nothing more than a mad scientist's successful attempt to make a deadly plague even deadlier, and it's not that hard to believe that at some point within the fourteen months between Prototype and Prototype 2, he reached a Despair Event Horizon/Eventually lost his marbles from everything/Decided "screw it, Being Good Sucks"/What have you.
With that accomplished, what does Alex decide to do? Why, the same thing any viral abomination would. Raise an army of infected monstrosities, and take over the world, of course!
- Perhaps what finally drove Alex over the edge was Dana's eventual fate. We never did figure out what became of her. Perhaps she got infected between games, became a Runner, and Alex himself had to put her down. Deprive an Eldritch Abomination of the only person it cares about, and well...this is what you can expect.
- Him being a villain is confirmed. The speculation on why exactly he went evil was mostly jossed.
- Alex will still be playable.
- The final battle would be in the rain.
- The ending would be the death of Alex and Heller.
- This is interesting, but I have a bit of an issue with it. For one, PARIAH is a white six to eight-year-old kid. Even if you say that he can change form, then James loses his sympathetic motivation. Plus PARIAH can't grow up. He's the son of Elizabeth Greene, and she hasn't aged a day in 40 years.
- Heller is about to kill Alex, but he manages to escape his wrath.
- Alex absorbs James, and proceeds to fight against PARIAH. However, he does a Taking You with Me move by self-destructing himself, saving New York City.
- It's rumored that Activision's management generally refuses to cast females as protagonists, due to allegedly poor sales of games which do feature women in the led role.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation. To be honest, if in-story Alex did a quarter of the things I did to civilians throughout the gameplay, he'd be way past the point where his actions could be "somewhat excused". YMMV, but I find a Roaring Rampage of Revenge for the deaths of one's family a more sympathetic motivation for charging headlong across the moral event horizon than "I have no memory and want to figure out what the fuck's going on, and am sure that one of the people I'm angry at is responsible for all my problems".
- Highly unlikely. Mercer was a scientist who had little experience with military hardware prior to the game. Heller presumably has no scientific background.
- PARAIAH's father is implied to be a hippy shown in the Prototype comic mini-series. And PARAIAH's eyes aren't glowing in the Wo I, they're just scribbled over like various other people in the Wo I including a doctor in one of the Super-Soldier nodes.
- Even more so in 2. The Freaks are humans mutated by a virus, who slowly progress from basically zombies to giant apelike monstrosities covered in pus. Maybe Czernenko was experimenting with a different strain of Blacklight (ability to spew acid, but vulnerable to sunlight)?
- Perhaps a deconstruction of sandbox games, full stop? After all, no matter what the story says, at some point in any sandbox it's inevitable the player will get bored and start massacring the local NPCs, and there is rarely anything in the story to justify or punish the character for acting that way. Enter Alex, who is enough of a psychopath for that not to matter - and then make the key plot revelation that he's not even human. Because really, what sort of bastard would act that way, even if they had the ability...?
- That would mean that a lot of those people are either going to die or become zombies. Maybe the Redlight virus has two strains, the typical turn-or-die zombie propagator spread by direct contact with bodily fluids or zombies, and a weaker but much more contagious airborne strain. The only symptoms of the weaker strain would be headaches/migraines, a preference for the outdoors, perhaps the occasional cough or sneeze, delayed reflexes and easily being confused. None of those alone are anything to really watch out for and are probably going to happen in times of prolonged stress (like a zombie apocalypse while trapped on an island), meaning the civilian has no idea they're infected. Easy prey for the Infected and for turning into Infected, particularly if the weaker strain makes the civilian more susceptible to the strong zombie-making strain.
Alternately, Alex had split off the part of his gestalt personality that remained from the original Alex Mercer. He tried to kill it via dumping it in the ocean, but it didn't stay dead. This separate Alex is the one fought in Prototype 2.
- Magic of retcons, my friend. New canon overwrites old canon to fit.