CRITICAL ANALYSIS/2

Okay, now you may be thinking "Nyeyeyeh, Beeeen, how could you hate on Prototyyyyyype, it' aaaaweesooooome". And, to be fair, it is. Prototype is an incredibly fun game, but I'm here to talk about why the STORY is complete and utter bullSHIT. Which, it is.

Alex Mercer

Alex Mercer might just be the least sympathetic, least compelling and least interesting character in all of video games. He is a bland arsehole with a dumb outfit and he might be one of the main reasons the story for the game is so dumb. In fact, he's so dumb, this might have to be put into subsections.

MOTIVATION

Alex Mercer has no ambition, no goal. The largest motivation he has is "Who am I"? which he has on account of his, and let's sing along if you know the words! Amnesia. But, this goal, as dumb as it is is abandoned about one quarter of a way in because some bizarre conspiracy angle is bought about, involving genetic weapons or some twaddle, and we only really find out who Alex Mercer is in the last few missions of the game, and it seemed very tacked on. And come the sequel, it makes even less sense, but let's not go into that.

So anyway, at this point Alex's goal becomes an incredibly vague "answers". Answers for what, Mercer?

"THE CONSPIRACY!"

WHAT FUCKING CONSPIRACY, YOU BELLEND? The whole thing baffles me because the entire time we still have no idea what he wants, and the fact he's going around murdering half the population of New York to get what he wants makes him seem like even more of a tosser. Which brings me directly to...

MURDERING HALF THE POPULATION OF NEW YORK

Alex Mercer murders half the population of New York. Alright, so what? Here's what, despite this, he's played as a tragic figure. Look, when making a sandbox game that allows you to murder people, making your protagonist a tragic figure is a terrible idea because video game players, on a whole, are MASSIVE DICKHEADS, and as such will murder everyone and their dads.

The games attempt at getting around this is making everyone either one of the big bad Team Plasma-level dickheads who's hobbies include: raping, murdering and burning puppies alive at the stake or zombies. Okay, zombies? That's acceptable but I want you to consider a few things:

1. Alex Mercer is a direct reason for the existence of a lot of these zombies

2. The arsehole goons are also fighting off the zombies.

See, no matter how buffoonishly evil you make these guys, it looks like they're actually doing things for a just cause. It all makes Mercer come across as an even bigger arsehole. But maybe if we had reasons to feel sorry him, it'd be okay? Well...

AMNESIA.

To all aspiring writers: if you want to make your character sympathetic, and the way you do so is via amnesia, please never touch a pen again. Unless you are planning to stab yourself in the eye with it.

See, the main reason nobody feels sorry for someone with amnesia is because basically nobody on the planet has ever had amnesia. We have no idea what it's like to be in his position, and it's impossible to empathise. It's like a man trying to feel sorry for a pregnant woman, or a member of the conservative party attempting to feel sorry for anyone human, it just doesn't work.

Well, maybe the amnesia is there to drive the story. And it is, but like I said, the whole thing is dropped half-way through, and we move onto the Assassin's Creed Conspiracy Crap™. It's dumb and the whole thing is just a half-baked excuse to make us feel sorry for a known genocider. But still, this isn't even the number one reason we can't feel sorry for Alex Mercer, that'd be because...

HE'S ALEX FUCKING MERCER

Alex Mercer is a god. He is immortal. He can not be killed. He is invincible. He is a shapeshifter. He has many deadly weapons in his arsenal. He's the faster than Usain Bolt. He can jump higher than the Empire State Building. He can make clones of himself. He could beat Superman, the Hulk and Theodore Roosevelt in a cage match. And yet, the ENTIRE TIME, he sits around moping about it. Imagine you were in his position. Would you scream and cry and declare it a curse? FUCK OFF! You would do whatever the fuck you want and get away with it! This is the main reason Alex Mercer comes off as a doucher, because he has it all and he doesn't want it, the cockend.

THE WEB OF INTRIGUE

The web of intrigue is an...intriguing idea. The ability to learn more about a story through little snippets of extra information that can be done of your own free will. Great idea in theory. But what's the problem, you may ask?

Well, there are several. One is that almost 75% OF THE ENTIRE STORY is hidden through these things. If you choose to skip some, or maybe you're going through the story just to get all the power-ups then the story will not make too much sense to you, on account of you missing a good chunk of information through them.

Secondly, they're not entirely coherent, usually just about three voice lines and a few blurry pictures to go alongside, but that's a minor problem. What is a larger problem is that because of this you don't really know what you're getting, as there are two storylines to this game: is it the "The Mystery of Alex Mercer" puzzle or the "The truth shall set you free!" conspiracy angle? This wouldn't be a problem if the webs were a little more fleshed out, but of course, they aren't. You end up mixing one story for another, just to muddle things even more.

Finally, as it's a sandbox you can get them in ANY order, within reason, because I believe some people are only available in some parts of the game, which, again just makes things weirder, as you end up getting some out of context, and having some people not avaliable at certain times makes it WORSE on account of you potentially missing one and again losing context.

So, the way I see it, there were three ways to go about it. Number one: Make it so you have to get all the Web Nodes before you move onto the next story mission. Uh, no. This would be tedious and dumb. Number two: Make a storyline that is Web exclusive, and let players figure that one out, Sherlock style, maybe have some side-quests that involve it as well. And finally number three: Make it so regardless of who you kill, you get a certain web of intrigue in a certain order in a linear fashion, which would spoil the whole point, I believe.

I don't know, the whole thing is a good idea on paper but ended up falling through so utterly drastically and ended up making the game poorer for it.