Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/1161
h+: Prototype takes its anti-hero theme pretty far. how did you frame this approach for the higher-ups at the publishing company? DeNNIs DeTWILLer: The original pitch was "This is a monster movie. This is like The Thing, except... you're the Thing." so many people had been pitching games from the other angle that we took a lot of people by surprise. The fi rst reactions were "No way! No one will want to do that." The second reactions were, "Oh wow. That might be good." h+: Aside from monster movies, what other touchstones did you use to fl esh out Alex? DD: We looked at a lot of different sources. It was bizarre. We looked at Taxi Driver. That was one infl uence. We really like Taxi Driver. We really liked The Thing. We basically just said, "What if Travis Bickle was the Thing?" h+: Playing travis bickle as a science fi ction monster demands a certain setting. once you'd settled on the main character, how did you develop the game's story? DD: It was clear from the beginning we didn't want a "save New York" story—it's just boring. We wanted a really, really dark kind of game. You're not sure if you want to root for the main character or not, but it's a hell of a lot of fun playing him. Alex is not a moral person, because as eric puts it, if you give a player a balloon in an open world, they're not going to play with it, they're going to pop it. eric wanted to build an experience where the game would tailor around the concept of you literally doing whatever you want, and more often than not what that is, is something awful. I just squeezed that into a story that told you something about Alex. so the entire story is geared around Alex discovering exactly what happened to him, what caused all of this — and that's it. Whether he saves New York on the side? It's a possibility, but it's not by any means the center of the story. h+: If there's no moral arc provided by the game, what motivates the player to keep playing, to learn more about Alex? DD: The idea of Alex transcending humanity was very strong in the story. By the end of the game, Alex has consumed hundreds of people. He's literally an agglomeration of a hundred minds, a hundred lifetimes. A hundred different people, all skewed into one. He can pilot helicopters and tanks, use any weapons, because he's consumed all of these people… he has all of their memories. That was a strong theme we wanted to hit. The opening cinematic says, "There was once an idea of an Alex mercer, a body linked to a particular name, a series of letters that meant one unique thing, one being, one mind, but I'm past all that now." What we wanted was… you begin as a blank. You discover some really awful truths about who you were, and then you realize it probably doesn't matter, because you're no longer human. You're something bigger and something worse and something scarier. We didn't want to shy away from that. We didn't want a pat ending: "You're cured!" or "Don't worry about it!" or "It's no big deal! You did everything right! Good job!" It's more that you fi nd out some horrible truths. h+: these "horrible truths" have both in-game and real-world implications. What out-of-game ideas does Prototype get across? DD: This idea that the government is willing to cut