For those who haven't been following the news, Prototype tells the story of your average amnesiac science experiment gone wrong, Alex Mercer, who wakes up one day in New York with incredible destructive powers but no idea of who he is. At the same time, a strange virus that turns people into mutants has been unleashed on the city, along with the requisite black-ops unit tasked with taking it, and Alex, down. And so, as Alex the player must perform various missions in a GTA style free roaming version of this 'New York gone bad' to uncover the mystery behind himself, the virus, and the perpetrators of both. One particular power that may help Alex in his quest is his ability to absorb the memories, skills, and even the form of anyone he kills. It attendance at the event was Radical's Director of Product Globalisation, ex-pat Australian Chris Ansell, and in a presentation he mentioned Alex's character was inspired in different ways by three movie characters: Darth Maul, Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro's character from Taxi Driver), and Hannibal Lectar. We didn't really see much in the way of what the character development will be like, but while these inspirations are hardly savoury types, we were also assured that the player would have relative freedom in terms of moral decisions throughout the game. While we didn't learn much of the story apart from the previously stated premise, it was revealed by Senior Designer Dennis Detwiller, who appeared in a pre-recorded presentation, that there would be a 'conspiracy theory' element to it, linking it in with current world events.
Alex's signature 'spike' attack.
During a demo of the game, we were shown two missions. In the first, Alex had to get into a guarded military area, and then destroy a certain building. In one run through, Alex first took out a couple of guards, brought one of their bodies around into a back-street, and absorbed the guard's essence and assumed his form allowing the player to proceed into the exclusion zone unnoticed. Once inside, the process was repeated on a certain colonel who had the ability to call in air strikes. Once his form was assumed, Alex was able to move to a safe distance, target the building and then call on an air strike to have the military complete the mission for him. In a second playthough of the same mission, Alex's powers were used to full effect, and he was sent in at full charge, smashing past gates, slaughtering guards, and in the midst of a full scale firefight, ultimately destroying the building by hand.
At this point, it became clear that Prototype wears its influences on its sleeve. Most obvious inspiration is obviously Hulk from Radical's previous work in The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, as Alex seems to have the speed, strength, and seeming invulnerability of his Marvel forebear. Alex has also inherited the wall running, building scaling abilities of Assassin's Creed's Altair, and even has some Spider-man-like powers, ably demonstrated to us when Nick the playtester managed to 'swing' Alex up onto the front of a helicopter - at which point the pilot can be forcibly ejected giving the player control of the aircraft Halo style. Add in the shapeshifing ability and attacks that allow Alex to send out spikes, and Alex is somewhat of a 'best-of' all the super-characters you've ever come across. By not being hamstrung by the realities of an existing property (such as previous radical developed open world games like Hulk or Scarface: The World Is Yours), or even a set reality thanks to the sci-fi themes, Radical have been able to create a character whose abilities best suit the interactivity with the virtual city that they have in mind, in what they call a 'power fantasy'. So while various ideas have definitely been taken from other sources, the combination of all these abilities makes Prototype probably the most fully-realised implementation of the 'sandbox' gameplay style we've yet seen.
Even just running destroys things.
And to go with this increased interactivity, it definitely seems the virtual world is up to scratch, as is Radical's technology powering it. The game is set in New York in 2008, and according to Ansell (and Executive Producer Tim Bennison, who joined the presentation from Canada via Skype) satellite imagery has been used to re-create the city as faithfully as possible while still being a playable environment, and he estimated that the streets and landmarks would be 70-80% accurate. Draw distance is as good as we've seen in such an engine, and while the early code we saw featured some pop-up and missing textures, the more finished parts looked very sharp, and the framerate was already very steady. Possibly the most impressive part of the demonstration were the crowds filling the streets. Not only were there a huge number of pedestrians moving independently, but their reactions to various situations were quite varied. Upon knocking a passer-by down, some of the others in the crowd would run, some offer up a fight, while others would simply watch from a safe distance. Some of the animation was obviously incomplete at this stage, but what is complete works well, particularly Alex's movements through streets and traffic at high speeds. The second mission we were shown brought the mutants into the fray, allowing us to witness larger scale chaos as a battle broke out between mutants, Alex, and defence forces, including the 'Blackwatch', a secret special forces unit connected with the outbreak. With a god-code enabled (so Alex couldn't die), we watched an impressive scene of destruction as mutants, cars, helicopters and hundreds of humans collided and exploded.
Army meets mutants meets Alex - chaos ensues.
One final note made was that the game will be playable via online co-op. While there won't be split screen support, and story-wise the second player is only justified as a 'clone', the ability to complete the whole single player story-mode with a friend will certainly be a selling point.
All in all we were quite impressed even by this early build of Prototype. In a still-crowded genre it will be difficult to stand out, particularly with the Juggernaut GTA IV coming out this year. But Prototype looks like it will have what it takes to do just that.
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