PROTOTYPE
Rampaging mutants, trigger-happy armies and butchered civilians. New York gets terrorised yet again, but this time you’re not the one coming to the rescue…

Gamers can be a nasty bunch. On the surface we’re just like everyone else. We laugh, we love, we ethically interact with fellow citizens and we abide by the laws. But as soon as we find ourselves in a virtual world that gives us even a fraction of the freedom afforded by reality, we’re compelled to do very bad things. “Did that pedestrian look at me funny?” Smash. “Did that car cut me off?” Bang. “Did that hoochie really give me my money’s worth?” Thud.

It’s not that we’re some morally corrupt sub-culture (not unless you believe the Daily Mail that is), it’s just that a world without repercussion really does seem to bring out the worst in everyone. If you put a player in control of a car, and plonk a gaggle of pedestrians in front of him, his first thought will inevitably be “let’s paint the pavement red” (this macabre impulse even forms the basis for an entire game – Carmaggedon).

So what turns us gamers into such bastards whenever a control pad is plonked into our hands? Perhaps it’s the same morbid fascination that slows down traffic around car crashes. Or maybe it’s some dark impulse caused by the constraints and trappings of modern society. Whatever the reason is (and before this preview turns into a National Geographic article), players behave badly in games which allow them to get away with it, and this assumption is one of the core elements of Radical’s new open-world extravaganza Prototype.

“Can you make the average gamer care about the teetering schoolbus on the edge of a bridge about to fall into the ravine,” asks Prototype’s lead designer Eric Holmes. “We’ve done conclusive testing and decided that… no you can’t. In fact every player would push that bus off the side of the bridge, swim down in the ravine to look at the carnage, and then expect to be given points for it.”

Whereas most open-world games, such as GTA, penalise you for indiscriminate killing, Prototype intends to “go with the flow”. Radical is creating an entire city in which causing horrific multi-car pile-ups is not only allowed, but encouraged. A city where brutally decapitating groups of innocent civilians is permissible, and where wanton destruction, mayhem, and urban terrorism are simply further ways to achieve your goal. It’s full-on stuff, and although Prototype is indeed giving players what they want, it’s no less jarring to watch protagonist Alex Mercer stick his foot through an innocent bystander’s head, while blood-splattered onlookers scream in terror – in fact, it’s pretty horrific.

“You have to take into account that the player is going to be an absolute son of a bitch in every single scenario,” says Holmes. “Anything you put in the game they will try to blow up, break, batter it, drop things on top of it, anything they can do they will try. So that’s why Prototype fully embraces the spirit of players behaving badly.”

So, Prototype isn’t a game for moral crusaders, nor is it for the squeamish. But the brutal and resolutely unethical behaviour of Alex has a somewhat rational basis (well, sort of). You see, Mercer isn’t tearing apart passers-by just for giggles, he’s a shapeshifter, and must kill and ‘consume’ his targets in order to assume their form. By slaughtering someone and nicking their identity our hoodie protagonist can gain extra skills, powers, memories and, importantly, a new disguise.

“So the core of our game is really our character,” says Holmes. “What’s happened to him, what he can do, and who’s responsible. That’s the core of the story, and the core of the experience is what comes out of that character. And the whole play experience is coming out of that character. He’s a grey man, he’s not a hero, he’s not a villain, but he is fully equipped to do very bad things – the way the player wants him to. But there is also a reason for him to do that given the setting he is in.”

That setting is New York City, which is under siege by a rampant virus that transforms its victims into zombie-like stalkers, and unleashes rampaging, reptilian beasts that thunder through the pedestriancrowded streets. Obviously the government isn’t about to take any of this lying down and has brought in the military to put the city on lockdown, drafting everything from rocketfiring foot soldiers to Apache choppers, Bradley APCs, and hulking M1 Abrams tanks. If you’re thinking “hmm, that sounds a bit like a giant warzone”, then have a gold star and a smile, you’re absolutely correct. The Big Apple’s bustling boulevards, avenues and blocks have become a raging battlefield for these two highly destructive forces. In Radical’s eyes, Prototype’s real-world setting grounds the outlandish violence and otherworldly ‘Infected’ and, in doing this, glosses the whole experience with a more unpredictable and disturbing tone.

“Think ‘Tom Clancy meets Stephen King’,” says Holmes. “Clancy is cutting edge, military, and real world, Stephen King is something disturbing. You put it all together and you get Prototype. It’s important to make this thing feel grounded, make it feel real, set it in a familiar place. That makes it more intense than if it was, for example, a shapeshifter on Mars in the year 3000. If the shapeshifter is in New York then there’s something not quite right about that, it’s a bit too close to home, and the events that take place will therefore also become disturbing, too.”

A major portion of Prototype’s action will therefore be the territorial struggle between the military and the Infected, a battle that Radical technically terms the ‘meta game.’ New York has been divided into three zones: ‘Secure Zones’ which are under the tight watch of the military, Infected-controlled ‘Outbreak Zones,’ and ‘Neutral Zones’ in which neither side has established a strong foothold. Most importantly, these zones aren’t static, Prototype has almost an RTS-style ‘ebb and flow’ between the two warring sides. Even more interesting is that the city itself aesthetically evolves to reflect this power struggle. So, once the Infected overrun an area, sleek skyscrapers, and up-market boutiques give way to smashed windows, dilapidated buildings and a zombie populace, all wrapped in an eerie blood-red fog. During our demonstration we watched a lone civilian car hurtle through the streets; it had taken a wrong turn into this urban malaise, panicked, and become fodder for the zombies and other monstrosities. Radical has admirably created the atmosphere of a city under siege.

So how does our man Mercer fit into this sinister conflict? Well, we’ll get to the plot in a moment, what’s more important – in gameplay terms – is that Alex is able to influence the war for his own ends, either by turning fortified zones into neutral ones, or by luring one faction against the other. Perhaps he’s got a couple of Infected Hunters on his tail, he could tackle them head-on, or he could lead them into a military zone and escape in the ensuing chaos, pick off the weakened victor, and revert the area back to a neutral, and enemy-free, state. Or maybe Mercer has a mission objective in an Outbreak Zone, and clears out the Infection so he can complete it without being constantly under attack. So while the game is based around GTA-style missions and objectives, which Alex must complete to progress the plot, the free-roaming aspect of Prototype’s open world allows the player to dip in and out of this ongoing war, either to aid his progression, or just for kicks.

		DANGER ZONES Big battle in the Big Apple Catastrophic disasters often plague New York in popular entertainment, and in Prototype, the city of yellow cabs, bagels, and bums has become a virtual warzone between the military and the rampaging Infected. The good thing is that the player can use the war to his own advantage, and conduct subterfuge to bring the military down from the inside. We expect a lot of explosions. 1. This is an Outbreak Zone where New York’s bizarre virus has taken hold. On the ground you’ll find shambling hordes of zombies, on the roofs are the infected water tanks, which is how the virus is spreading. Get too close to these tanks and they’ll explode, unleashing mutant, lizard-like Hunters. 2. Ooh look, it’s all nice and sunny. This is a Neutral Zone, where Alex has ousted whichever faction had taken root. Here Alex is free to run around and slaughter civilians without having to constantly watch his back. Eliminating an entrenched enemy also makes it easier to hunt down memory fragments. Brilliant.

“The cool thing about the meta game is it’s a bit like a game of Risk,” says Prototype’s senior producer, Tim Bennison. “One neighbourhood might be neutral at the beginning of the game, it may then become a Secure Zone for two missions, and then the Infected move in and it becomes an Outbreak Zone. Our world evolves through the story in a way that is unique to open-world games. Other open-world games are normally a snapshot at the start of the game, you get an introductory cut-scene, and then at the end of the game, when you see the final cut-scene, you usually see the same world, with exactly the same geometry. But we’ve gone for an evolutionary world throughout our story.”

Now, back to the small question of, ‘who the hell is Alex Mercer?’ Well, that question is kinda the whole point of the game – you don’t know who he is, and Alex Mercer doesn’t know who he is. At the beginning of the game Alex finds himself in possession of some awesome and horrific powers, but without any memory of how he got them. All he knows is that he’ll do pretty much anything to get his identity back. The whole ‘bollocks, I’ve got amnesia’ plot contrivance isn’t particularly new to the world of videogames. In fact, it’s a downright cliché, but Radical has a trick up its sleeve in terms of how Prototype unravels its mystery, and that trick is pretty original.

One thing Alex’s shapeshifting ability allows him to do, other than cause mayhem, is access the memories of the unfortunate individuals he morphs into. It is via this memory-consumption talent that Alex begins to learn about the infection that’s spreading throughout New York, what role he plays in this deadly virus and, ultimately, who he is and why he holds these demonic powers. But the player won’t unravel this conspiracy plot through the typical rigmarole of cinematic – and rather dislocated – cut-scenes. Radical wants to deliver its narrative with a bit more panache than usual, and although it resorts to cut-scenes at times, most of the plot is extrapolated via the ‘Web of Intrigue’. The Web is a virtual interface that players can access, which displays each relevant memory that Alex has collected – the more you collect the more coherent the story becomes. It’s a bit like a jigsaw, but instead of ending up with a picture of some West Country cottage, or a morose duck, you get a sinister and convoluted conspiracy yarn for your troubles.

“The thing about this game is that it has a new kind of story being told in an openworld structure,” says Bennison. “It’s a conspiracy, it’s a thriller. The two things that have been done in an open-world structure are superhero games, or some kind of urban crime game. Our game is an original story. The Web of Intrigue displays different nodes and the memories you’ve collected so far, and what is out there that you can go and collect. You can choose to interact with it as much as you want. The basic player doesn’t give a crap about story, they’ll play through this thing and they’ll probably unlock 40 web nodes – the basic plot. But if you are a collector then you have hundreds of nodes to collect. And we have a giant world to plant them in, and they’re all people in New York. Instead of collecting glowing orbs or flags, you collect people and their memories, and you get a piece of the puzzle.”

Radical wants Prototype’s sinister story to, above all else, be unpredictable. The Web of Intrigue will even try to throw players off track by dropping ‘red herring’ memories, ie memories taken from individuals who think they understand the root of the conspiracy, but have been misinformed or don’t actually have access to the full picture. The plot, characters and setting also draws inspiration from numerous cinematic sources according to Radical, including the Hannibal Lecter series, Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (which directly inspired Radical’s envisioning of New York), and Christopher Nolan’s enigmatic magic flick The Prestige. “I’m a big fan of the movie The Prestige,” says Holmes. “A lot of people bring out movies that sort of copy one or another, but The Prestige was something really different. I didn’t know where it was going right up until the end and that’s a really valuable experience, and I think that is something that is relevant to what we’re trying to do with Prototype, we’re trying to show people something new.”

But enough about the story, we’re sure you’re all craving to know just how Alex will dish out his remorseless brand of violence and destruction. Radical is going for a customisable combat experience, which allows Alex to mix and match his shapeshifting skills to approach a variety of different situations, as well as giving him the ability to turn his enemies’ weapons against them. Alex has three different types of shapeshifting powers, which are grouped into attack, defensive and sensory categories.

During our presentation Alex spent most of his time on the offensive, making judicious use of his attack powers. While stalking his way through an Outbreak Zone, a horde of zombie-like civilians shambled towards him Dawn Of The Dead-style. These enemies were more of a hindrance than a real danger, groping, grabbing, and generally slowing Alex’s progress through the infected streets of New York. So it was all the more satisfying when, with a quick wrist flick, Alex’s arm morphed into a giant, spiked tentacle, and tore its way through the diseased throngs, decapitating, halving, and butchering anything that got in its way.

All this carnage soon attracted the attention of a Hunter, which came thumping down the side of the building with Alex’s hooded head in its sights. Rather than face the beast head-on, Alex took a more defensive tact. By morphing into the human equivalent of an armoured tank and power-running his way into a military-controlled zone, pretty soon the barren and eerie streets gave way to hustle, bustle, and a road chock-full of cars, providing a backdrop for some of the most badass jaywalking we’ve ever seen. Alex ploughed through the oncoming civilian vehicles in his armoured form, propelling them through the air, and crushing fleeing pedestrians along the way.

It didn’t take long for the skyline to fill with the whirring blades of Apache helicopters, and for the tarmac to heave under the strain of Abrams tanks and UAVs. The military had come out in full force. Foot soldiers soon became chew toys for the marauding Hunter and Alex demonstrated his distinctive ‘groundspike’ move, erupting a carpet of spikes metres in front of him that gruesomely impaled two hapless soldiers. As rockets from the airborne Apache whistled a hair’s-breadth away from him, Mercer took a leaf out of Peter Parker’s book and sprinted vertically up the side of a skyscraper, before leaping onto the chopper, cracking open the cockpit, and consuming the pilot. After a snappy shapeshift into something more ‘airforce chic’, Mercer now had full control of the Apache – and the level of chaos on the streets below was ramped up tenfold.

“We have an automatically balancing system,” says Holmes. “So, if an enemy turns up with a weapon, that weapon can be yours too – whatever they turn up with can be used against them. Our process for the action starts with ‘doing stuff that’s cool’. The player will never complain if you’ve got cool stuff in there. It’s that sense of liberation, so you say to yourself, ‘can I do that? Yes I can, wow that’s cool.’ We’ve even got characters crapping themselves when someone attacks them. But making stuff cool is the hardest part.”

One of our early concerns over Prototype, after we caught our first glimpse of the game’s steroid-fuelled combat last year, was that the action was a bit too chaotic, and a bit too full-on. The unremitting pace didn’t seem to leave any room for a varied experience, and gave the game a somewhat onedimensional dynamic. But during our latest preview Radical gave us an exclusive look at Prototype’s ‘deception’ feature, and our above concerns were well and truly allayed.

As well as morphing massive claws and spike-tipped whips, shapeshifting is also quite handy for stealing the identities of others. In fact, if we had such powers we’d be far too busy morphing into members of the opposite sex and hanging out in the lavatories. Luckily, Alex uses his powers of disguise to deceive his enemies (not his sexual targets) and can cause havoc among their ranks without having to resort to brute force tactics. So he can track down a military sergeant, consume him, then attach himself to a squad of foot soldiers. Using this tactic, the player could then infiltrate the enemy base and bring it down from the inside, or perhaps discreetly achieve a mission objective. Obviously, the military are well aware that Alex is a shapeshifter and if he does anything untoward while disguised (such as, you know, running vertically up a wall) they’ll waste no time in peppering him with lead. But Alex can also use this paranoia to his own advantage and try to deceive a squad of troops into firing on their comrades – so not only can you play the two factions against each other, you can also play a faction against itself. It doesn’t always work though, and in the demonstration we were shown, Alex’s Machiavellian tactics were met with a resounding “f**k you” by the soldiers he was trying to deceive.

“The idea is that the player can control the pace of the action,” explains Bennison. “In our previous game, the Incredible Hulk game, you were a big green guy, and people are firing missiles at you. In this game you are able to use your disguises to literally take the enemy base apart by stealth, and trigger attacks when you want to.”

It looks like Radical is on to a winner. Openworld games may no longer invoke the same wonderment and awe that they once did, and GTA IV is certainly going to set the benchmark for the genre incredibly high, but Prototype is making a concerted effort to bring something different to the table. So far our demonstration of the game has been handsoff, so we’ve yet to see its adaptive combat system, deception, and uniquely delivered narrative all come together, but if Radical can make these elements gel then behaving badly will be more fun than ever before.