Preview

E3 2011: Prototype 2

Prototype 2 is set to deliver a new adventure, built upon a fresh engine, and starring a new lead character. Former soldier James Heller hunts down Alex Mercer (the original game's hero) in a revenge drama set for 2012.

Xav de Matos

June 17, 2011 1:15 PM

QUICKTAKE: Radical Entertainment gets the band back together for a new entry in the Prototype series. Prototype 2 is a different beast though, as this time, players take on the role of a new character whose mission is to hunt and kill the man responsible for the outbreak in New York City featured in the original game. This time, the game's "big bad" is none other than the original game's playable character, Alex Mercer. (And no, Mercer is not playable.) Radical is adamant that changes have been made to Prototype 2 in response to criticisms people had with the first game, while peppering in new and interesting ideas to make the new hero a different breed of monster. THE DEMO: My behind-closed-doors demo of Prototype 2 was introduced with a caveat: what I was about to be shown was a "proof of concept" created for publisher Activision specifically E3. The demo shows off a few immediate changes to the game, primarily, its new engine. The first section of the demo features the new protagonist, an ex-soldier named James Heller, standing on a rooftop across a guarded off alleyway in a rebuilding New York. After the devastation the city saw in the first game, New York is beginning to come back to life and has been dubbed New York Zero. The city is broken into three sections: a Blackwatch military-group controlled area known as the "green zone"; a quarantine and triage area dubbed the "yellow zone"; and the skyscraper filled, urban jungle called the "red zone." After discovering a lifeless monster in the greenzone, Blackwatch scientists begin to investigate as soldiers wall off the area. As citizens approach, the city guards push them back before firing into the crowd to keep the civilians away. Here, Heller is tasked with extracting DNA from a scientist to learn more about the situation. Once again, the main character is able to shape-shift into other characters he has extracted DNA from to move through the city undetected. Masking himself a Blackwatch soldier, Heller drops down to the patrolling guards below and uses a new ability, the BioBomb, to take out the soldiers and scientists with one move. Heller grabs a soldier and pushes a mass of infected tissue into him, turning him into a time bomb. Upon exploding, a sea of tendrils spill out of the character, grabbing onto nearby enemies and pieces of the environment before exploding. It's both brutal and impressive. The demo continued to show off how the game handles upgrades and mutation "perks." Abilities aren't freely purchasable in Prototype 2. Instead, they become available to unlock after players complete non-story Blackwatch missions. When players find and complete a Blackwatch mission, they will be able to select a new perk to add to their arsenal. In the demo, the perk selection was equated to the perk system in Fallout 3, giving players a number of options to customize their own James Heller. "At the end of the game, your Heller will be very different from mine," a rep said during the presentation. The final stages of the demo showed off infected lairs that will be scattered throughout the world. These look like pustules emerging from the city, which players can enter to tackle a wide array of enemies to clear them out and 'seal' the lair off. There was also a tease of a slick (and sick) looking giant boss character the team affectionately (and ironically) referred to as "Tiny" during the demo (though the in-game health bar more aptly called the creature 'Behemoth.') This creature was as tall as a skyscraper and used a shielded arm to push an entire city street of vehicles out of his path in one fell swoop. Like many demos at E3, the presentation ended upon the giant creature's introductory attack, a familiar cliffhanger.

Heller's tendril attacks can devastate the biggest threats throughout a rebuilding New York in Prototype 2.

DETAILS: At its core, Prototype 2 is a revenge drama. Due to the infestation caused by Mercer in the first game, Heller lost his wife and child. Now the former Sergeant wants to "kill his maker" while attempting to eradicate the virus that has brought New York to its knees. To tell the tale, Prototype 2 brings players back to the city 14 months after the original game. What I've seen is only a vertical slice from the planned 2012 release. Prototype 2 takes some of the ideas from the first game and looks to build on top of it, adding more options to what the team calls "the Swiss Army knife" of protagonists. Heller's bag of tricks is similar to Mercer's--all the traversal abilities from the first return, for example. But, he's learned a few new things along the way. A lot of what was shown was tendril based. Heller can fire horrific strings of infected mass at enemies and objects in the world, string them up like Spider-man, and clear the area. In one instance I saw Heller take on two tanks, destroying them and stringing up nearby enemies in a matter of seconds. The new power screams inspiration from comic characters like Carnage and Venom. Radical reps told me they wanted to tackle a different kind of character. Mercer was "emo" and "passive" they say, referencing Mercer's uncanny and unfortunate ability to be both the most powerful being in the city and everyone's errand boy. Heller is different. He seeks out missions to gain information for himself. They want Heller to be driven and to use people as a "tool to get what he wants." It's an ambitious goal for a genre that usually resorts to giving heroes nonsensical quests to pad game time. According to Radical, the original game lost focus, throwing too much at the player without a good sense of pace. There was no middle road. Prototype 2 has been approached with a stronger focus on creating a balanced experience, I was told. My hope is that, while Radical attempts to pace the game more fluidly, it still offers the same level of action and power players felt in the original adventure. [Note: Shacknews had previously posted impressions of Prototype 2; however, the preview included story element errors. Shacknews revisited the game on the floor for the purposes of delivering a new, more accurate preview.] Watch the Shacknews E3 2011 page to follow all our coverage of this year's show. You can also subscribe to it with your favorite RSS reader.

Xav de Matos

Xav de Matos was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

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June 17, 2011 1:15 PM

Xav de Matos posted a new article, E3 2011: Prototype 2.

Prototype 2 is set to deliver a new adventure, built upon a fresh engine, and starring a new lead character. Former soldier James Heller hunts down Alex Mercer (the original game's hero) in a revenge drama set for 2012.
- okellyc
  
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  June 17, 2011 1:37 PM
  
  some of the boss fightsin prototype were insane, i remember the one in NYC took 30-40min to kill
  - XAVdeMATOS
    
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    June 17, 2011 3:51 PM
    
    One thing they mentioned was that they wanted to make it less frustrating. I had a hard time getting into the game over time (the first one that is). Looking forward to see what this game turns into.
- valcan_s
  
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  June 17, 2011 1:37 PM
  
  Want big time.
- Elsaispo
  
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  June 17, 2011 3:51 PM
  
  Although i really liked the first one, the fact that there was zero support for the pc version turns me off completely for the sequel.
  - ManiacalMoose
    
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    June 18, 2011 3:19 AM
    
    Did the PC version have any problems to begin with? I played through pretty much all of it (37 hours played according to Steam) and I don't recall running into a single problem the entire time.
    
    The game itself was pretty good. The core gameplay was great but it felt like they never really built up on top of that because the side missions became repetitive, the story was bland and disjointed, and character motivations didn't always make sense. It ended up feeling like an asshole antihero sandbox, and it was very good at being that.
    
    Side note: I didn't think it was possible, but it looks like this Heller character is even more of an asshole than Mercer.
    - Elsaispo
      
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      June 18, 2011 5:03 AM
      
      Yes there were plenty of game problems, and i as well was plagued with a couple of them.
      
      Game wouldn`t let you choose you desired resolution, i was forced to play half of the game in 1024x768 on a widescreen monitor because it felt that my 2 9600GT in Sli weren`t capable of running it any higher (which of course they could).
      After that problem was fixed by a user (by hex editing a certain file), there was the other problem of the game running at half the speed it was supposed to run at, meaning it was going slow as hell even in the menus, again this was fixed by a user, by disabling all HID that you didnt need on your computer.
      
      Of course there were many more problem with the game but those were the 2 ones i had which were fixed by a user and not the dev team, before the game released they were very active on the forum and when the game launched they were never seen again and no patch was ever released to fix any of the bug encountered by me and many others.
- Nullzero
  
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  June 18, 2011 7:35 AM
  
  Wonder why they tossed the old engine. Seems like an expensive proposition.
- Arcanum
  
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  June 18, 2011 9:32 PM
  
  I'm looking forward to this. I quite liked the first game (despite it's problems). The variety and types of abilities were pretty cool.
- shurcool
  
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  June 19, 2011 1:28 PM
  
  I like the concept behind the game a lot, but I hear the actual implementation wasn't that stellar. First game, that is. Maybe they'll improve things with the second coming.
  - shurcool
    
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    June 19, 2011 1:28 PM
    
    Similar to how they've addressed some of the biggest player gripes in AC2.