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InfinityComplex posted:From what I heard it was some kind of stupid bullshit like "Mercer then walked the world before coming back to, whatever the hell the city he was from, and decided that humanity wasn't worth keeping." There was a series of comics released for Prototype 2 that bridged the gap between the games. According to the synopsis on Wikipedia, Mercer was really digging this whole "Become the savior of humanity" thing when he got betrayed by a girl and decided "Nope, gently caress that poo poo." He's basically an MRA.
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Jun 27, 2015 08:43
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Wow.
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Jun 27, 2015 08:46
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Yeah.... Prototype 2 while I seem to recall enjoying the random running around aspect similar to the first one had a LOT of issues. Between their messing with Mercer, their messing up of the plot of the first game, the fact that they made a likable protagonist who doesn't want to kill people and then give the player full freedom to eat ALL of the innocents. Just doesn't work as well as Mercer who WAS a bad guy and could do these things and not make you go 'Would you stop whining about how you have to kill to live now and how horrible it is? You just ran up the tallest building in the city while carrying a old lady then tossed her off as hard as you could and flew out after her killing her with a diving people's elbow before she hit the ground. That's not something you had to do to survive.'
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Jun 27, 2015 08:52
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Chaeden posted:'Would you stop whining about how you have to kill to live now and how horrible it is? You just ran up the tallest building in the city while carrying a old lady then tossed her off as hard as you could and flew out after her killing her with a diving people's elbow before she hit the ground. That's not something you had to do to survive.' But would you really call a world where you didn't 'living'?
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Jun 27, 2015 08:53
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Admittedly, even making Mercer attempt to become humanity's savior in the first place was a weird way to go. The guy was basically an irredeemable villain, the kind of guy who would casually surf on someone's grandma hard enough to grind her to paste against the sidewalk just to let him get to his next task faster. He basically viewed humans (especially civilians) as cattle to feed himself more biomass. It's good that they didn't try to go for the "I'm an innocent man who can't stand hurting civilians!" hypocrisy too many games have gone for, but the game spends all of its time building up Mercer as a power-hungry rear end in a top hat who will absorb your girlfriend right in front of you (before cutting you in half with a giant blade arm) to let him punch a Marine to death easier....and then he wants to become a saint. Like seriously bro, you are way far off from that path. Mercer works as a villain, but the path he took waffles too much between polar opposites.
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Jun 27, 2015 09:00
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The only good thing I remember about Prototype 2 is one sidequest where Heller plans to eat a bunch of evil scientists, only to decide it isn't worth it after hearing just how comically evil they actually are. "Wow, I don't even want you in my head." And then you just jump out of the helicopter and let it crash with them in it.
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Jun 27, 2015 09:02
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GSD posted:The only good thing I remember about Prototype 2 is one sidequest where Heller plans to eat a bunch of evil scientists, only to decide it isn't worth it after hearing just how comically evil they actually are. "Wow, I don't even want you in my head." And then you just jump out of the helicopter and let it crash with them in it. The mission objective for that level is "Kill All Nerds". Prototype 2 rules.
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Jun 27, 2015 09:28
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What Prototype did well is that Blacklight Mercer is a horrible monster but he still isn't as bad as the original Mercer.
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Jun 27, 2015 10:05
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Blacklight\Mercer also gets a bit of a pass since it is the virus and eating people is kind of what it do, having him try to become the 'savior of humanity' though is just dumb. Having him then lose faith in humanity and decide to destroy it all with his virus is dumber. Having him deliberately trap himself on an island while going high profile and getting everyone's attention is even dumber. Having all of this loving explained in a goddamn tie-in comic and leaving nothing at all in the actual game is dumbest.
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Jun 27, 2015 10:10
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Testekill posted:What Prototype did well is that Blacklight Mercer is a horrible monster but he still isn't as bad as the original Mercer. Right, this is the clever part of Prototype (and why Prototype 2's story is pretty dumb), because the big reveal of the game is twofold. The first part is that you aren't actually Alex Mercer, you're a sentient viral construct that just thought it was him. The second part is that despite being a shapeshifting living WMD that eats people you still manage to be less of an rear end in a top hat than the guy you originally thought you were. The original Alex Mercer was a borderline sociopath who was in part responsible for creating the Blacklight virus, and when he ran from the obligatory super spec-ops military kill team that was killing everyone responsible to cover their tracks, he smashed the vial of apocalyptic murder-virus he'd taken with him for no other reason than spite. Which means that even if you spend the entire game eating folks and stree-surfing on random civilians, Blacklight Alex Mercer still winds up being less of a murderous dickbag than the actual Alex Mercer, and by the time you reach the end of the game and he/it decides that humanity is worth protecting he's become vastly more empathetic as well.
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Jun 27, 2015 10:18
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Kai Tave posted:Which means that even if you spend the entire game eating folks and stree-surfing on random civilians, Blacklight Alex Mercer still winds up being less of a murderous dickbag than the actual Alex Mercer, and by the time you reach the end of the game and he/it decides that humanity is worth protecting he's become vastly more empathetic as well. Cleverly, the latter is most likely because of the former. I don't think it's ever directly stated, but the logic I heard for why Blacklight Mercer winds up a far better person than Real Mercer is because he kept absorbing the minds and memories of people that weren't just terrible. Which, if it's true, is a fantastic way to marry the character development with game mechanics. Mercer doesn't become a better person in spite of all the stuff you made him do, he's a better person because of it.
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Jun 27, 2015 10:40
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Yeah I'm pretty sure the game drops multiple clues that Blacklight\Mercer is picking up more than just memories from all the people he's eating and that he's steadily becoming a good 'person' because of it. Ironically it's the very act of devouring innocent people that turns Blacklight\Mercer into a sympathetic character.
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Jun 27, 2015 10:46
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Which isn't to say that he's an unqualified Good Guy or anything, he's still a person-eating viral superbeing, a bit like John Carpenter's The Thing deciding "hey, people ain't so bad after all," but that's what makes Prototype's story so interesting. edit; actually, to bring things back around to Watch_Dogs, all the talk about how virus Alex Mercer becomes a better "person" as a result of consuming various people and absorbing their memories and such, it would have been interesting to showcase more of how the ability to invade peoples' privacy affects Aiden, someone who starts the game out as an emotional wreck on a vigilantism spree over the death of his niece and who has trouble connecting with anyone who isn't Jordi, a guy who makes jokes about murdering people. I mean it would take a deft hand to avoid coming across like you're trying to portray the invasion of other peoples' privacy and spying on their lives as a positive and helpful thing, but I think it would be a lot more interesting if the gist of the privacy invasions were less "unending misery and unpleasantness" and more "Aiden is a broken guy who substitutes spying on people with normal healthy lives for mending his own." Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 11:15 on Jun 27, 2015 |
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Jun 27, 2015 11:07
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Prototype also probably didn't get delayed for a year AND go through multiple re-writes. So they stuck with "horrible people eater is actually not as bad as actual person who's identity he's taken" thing for the whole development cycle. Also sorry to anybody that might have been playing through Prototype for the first time, this thread isn't for you 
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Jun 27, 2015 11:33
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Really, what everyone should be taking from this is that Prototype is better than Watch_Dogs in every way and to play it right now.
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Jun 27, 2015 13:36
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HOOLY BOOLY posted:Also sorry to anybody that might have been playing through Prototype for the first time, this thread isn't for you It's a six year old game at this point.
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Jun 27, 2015 15:05
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Great Joe posted:Really, what everyone should be taking from this is that Prototype is better than Watch_Dogs in every way and to play it right now. It's also just way more fun moment-to-moment. Even if you don't bother doing really anything with the plot or missions, just dicking around the world is really fun compared to watch_dogs. I don't really think "driving around and scaring pedestrians and laughing at their AI" is comparable to "running up the empire state building and doing that amazing flying kick down 50 stories and kicking someone so hard that you slide on their corpse for three blocks".
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Jun 27, 2015 15:50
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Neruz posted:Hey I never said Blacklight\Mercer was a good person (I mean he's not really a person, or a he) but the end of Prototype fairly conclusively establishes that Blacklight\Mercer has no intentions of destroying the world or spreading plague everywhere and is probably going to go take a bit of a sabbatical to come to terms with the realization that it's not Mercer but rather a virus that was able to pattern its own sentience off the mind of the first person it killed. As I saw it, he wanted someone with actual combat experience on the Blacklight side...
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Jun 27, 2015 21:08
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chitoryu12 posted:There was a series of comics released for Prototype 2 that bridged the gap between the games. According to the synopsis on Wikipedia, Mercer was really digging this whole "Become the savior of humanity" thing when he got betrayed by a girl and decided "Nope, gently caress that poo poo." <activates armored Fedora power> And imagine the mad peacocking you can do when you form your clothes out of your own substance! Samizdata fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Jun 27, 2015 |
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Jun 27, 2015 21:09
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chitoryu12 posted:There was a series of comics released for Prototype 2 that bridged the gap between the games. According to the synopsis on Wikipedia, Mercer was really digging this whole "Become the savior of humanity" thing when he got betrayed by a girl and decided "Nope, gently caress that poo poo." Why not just keep him on that "savior" kick, but turn that into something villainous? Say by making his methods something along the lines of "uniting" everyone through the blacklight virus or spawning minions to devour and replace humans to create a "perfect" society? There are a lot of places you can go with someone who thinks they're doing good ending with horrific consequences. Especially here when you're working with a sentient virus that has no real moral limitations and very limited understanding of humanity.
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Jun 27, 2015 21:22
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Samizdata posted:As I saw it, he wanted someone with actual combat experience on the Blacklight side...
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Jun 27, 2015 22:17
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Regarding the Videos being posted, what's the difference between the standard video and Uncut Commentary?
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Jun 27, 2015 22:21
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maswastaken posted:So eat him and steal his memories. You can't steal reflexes and muscle memory and such. Hell, at least I am making an effort here. Also, Aiden has too many (well, one is too many, but work with me here) guns to ever be Batman-like. He's also a little too, ummm, homicidal and unconcerned with bypassers. Besides, if I remember right, Batman has also neglected to ride the Batcycle into clothing stores.  I could be remembering wrongly though. How about "A Weird Uncle Pretends to be a hacker version of the Hatred Dude" or something like that?
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Jun 27, 2015 22:23
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auzdark posted:Regarding the Videos being posted, what's the difference between the standard video and Uncut Commentary? With uncut commentary, you hear Chip and Ironicus going on about whatever. It's the full monty. The other videos are only what they want you to hear. :whateverthetinfoilhatsmileyis:
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Jun 27, 2015 22:25
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auzdark posted:Regarding the Videos being posted, what's the difference between the standard video and Uncut Commentary? From the OP: quote:Our videos come in two versions: cut and uncut. Uncut videos have us talking over cutscenes, while cut videos mute us during cutscenes and other important story bits.
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Jun 27, 2015 22:34
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Samizdata posted:You can't steal reflexes and muscle memory and such. In Prototype, you eat people to learn their skills too, don't you? Like how to fly a helicopter. I could have sworn that was a thing.
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Jun 27, 2015 22:35
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Midnight Voyager posted:In Prototype, you eat people to learn their skills too, don't you? Like how to fly a helicopter. I could have sworn that was a thing. Yup.
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Jun 27, 2015 22:52
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Midnight Voyager posted:In Prototype, you eat people to learn their skills too, don't you? Like how to fly a helicopter. I could have sworn that was a thing. You also give out Free Hugs to drill sergeants and things to improve the effectiveness of human weapons and tanks.
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Jun 27, 2015 22:57
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Wait. Waitwaitwait. Back up a sec here. Aiden's dead niece is Lena, which seems like it's almost definitely short for... Helena. Which is the name of the niece in this latest episode. Whyyyyyyyyy?
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Jun 27, 2015 23:39
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Because the writers are shits.
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Jun 27, 2015 23:47
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I'm sure some iteration of the writing had intended for Aiden to have that little self awareness and at some later one at least one person had decided (and for all those subsequent, maintained) there was plenty work in just removing all the "What the hell is wrong with you?!" there must have been in the script to be bothered with anything contradictory to the endless character revisions.
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Jun 27, 2015 23:54
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Man, the currently-out Batman game, as in licensed Batman game, published by Warner Brothers, is way better at calling out its protagonist's flaws, and they are many. While still allowing him to be cool as hell. Think about that for a minute.
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Jun 27, 2015 23:54
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It's Batman. You don't need to think about it at all.
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Jun 27, 2015 23:59
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Speedball posted:Man, the currently-out Batman game, as in licensed Batman game, published by Warner Brothers, is way better at calling out its protagonist's flaws, and they are many. While still allowing him to be cool as hell.
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Jun 28, 2015 00:21
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Samizdata posted:<activates armored Fedora power> 
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Jun 28, 2015 00:39
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FinalGamer posted:It is however extremely sad to think that, even though Rocksteady is a much smaller studio than Ubisoft potentially have that can focus on one game, they still gently caress up Watch_Dogs to the point of badness that even the worst Arkham game is still quite tolerable and nowherre near as compellingly poo poo. The lack of focus was probably a consequence of their size and budget. Watch_Dogs is basically... soup made by a hundred cooks, each with a different idea on what to put in the pot. Some of them had outstanding ideas. Some of them had ideas that would have been great games on their own (Spider Tank!).
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Jun 28, 2015 00:41
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Midnight Voyager posted:In Prototype, you eat people to learn their skills too, don't you? Like how to fly a helicopter. I could have sworn that was a thing. As I said, hey, I was at least making an effort to make it make sense.
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Jun 28, 2015 00:43
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Speedball posted:The lack of focus was probably a consequence of their size and budget. Watch_Dogs is basically... soup made by a hundred cooks, each with a different idea on what to put in the pot. Some of them had outstanding ideas. Some of them had ideas that would have been great games on their own (Spider Tank!). Hell, have Spider Tank be a new urban pacification device from whatever the CTOS company is, and let Aidan hack it for a mission...
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Jun 28, 2015 00:45
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Samizdata posted:Hell, have Spider Tank be a new urban pacification device from whatever the CTOS company is, and let Aidan hack it for a mission... That sounds like something out of a good game.
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Jun 28, 2015 03:44
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Or something out of a decent Ghost in the Shell game. (Yeah, I know they made an official Stand Alone Complex game, even written by the same writers as the show, but that was ten years ago and the controls were problematic). Basically, anything that involves a combination of stealth, gunplay, detective work, hacking people's machines, hacking people's minds, and investigating weird new social circumstances being created by technology would be decent. Watch_Dogs can't even commit to deciding if it's taking place in the present or the future.
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Jun 28, 2015 03:50
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