Postmortem: Prototype

Executive producer Tim Bennison relaxes on the old Crispy hot seat in our exclusive look at everything right -- and everything wrong -- with Prototype.
7/21/2009 8:37 AM | 1 Comments | Page 1 of 3

During the great Vivendi Universal fire sale of 2008, Activision's Bobby Kotick sloughed off several blue-chip titles, including Ghostbusters: The Video Game and -- ack! -- Brütal Legend (though it seems Activision might be having second thoughts about the latter).

But Prototype? The grim, gruesome and borderline depressing take on the sandbox genre? Activision would be keeping that one, thank you very much.

Sure, it looked interesting, and cool. And Vancouver-based developer Radical did make that terrific The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction game a few years back. Still, Bobby, you kept this over Ghostbusters and Brütal Legend (and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena)?

But that gamble is paying off.

For every copy that a certain other open-world/do-awesome-things/shoot-lightning-from-your-hands game sold last month (don't be coy with me; you know the one), two copies of Prototype were rung up at cash registers.

I finished Prototype a couple of weeks ago and liked it a hell of a lot more than Tom Chick did, though I agree that it's not without its problems. I sat down with Prototype's executive producer, Tim Bennison, who was gracious enough to indulge even my dumbest questions.

Crispy Gamer: I played the living crap out of The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. It was during my busy season, over the holidays, and I had all these other games that I needed to review, but all I wanted to do was play more Hulk.

Tim Bennison: Wow. That's good to hear.

Crispy Gamer: With its open-world structure and bust-shit-up aesthetic, that game was obviously the, erm, prototype for Prototype. Only this time, Radical wasn't tied to any previously established IP. So what we get is a surprisingly dark, and even borderline morbid, experience. Talk to me about that.

Bennison: Well, we obviously wanted to make a kind of game that we knew how to make. That's especially important when you're introducing a new IP. You've got to play to your strengths all the way. So we knew we'd do another open-world game. As for the dark material, I think Ultimate Destruction really started that trend for us. As with most open-world games, players typically had the most fun [in Ultimate Destruction] by being a real jerk. [Laughs] Take that to the extreme, and that's Prototype.

Crispy Gamer: Alex Mercer is kind of a jerk, isn't he?

Bennison: But he's also a bad-ass. Bad-asses are often jerks. It can't be helped. They're selfish by nature. Our goal was to make the ultimate videogame bad-ass. We wanted to take the whole anti-hero thing to the extreme. And we were able to do that without the obvious limitations of the Hulk, who is a T-rated Marvel property.

Crispy Gamer: The biggest "jerk moment" for me is when the game forces you to consume other humans in order to survive.

Bennison: I hear what you're saying. But it really all comes back to fun, and to letting the player do what he wants to do, with no restrictions. I've read a lot of the reviews; I'm one of those developers who really listens to the feedback. What I'm hearing is this: "I don't necessarily like this guy, but damn, this game is fun." And that was our intention, right from the original concept.

That reminds me: I read a story a few years back, in USA Today I think, that talked about how the Oscar nominees one year were all anti-heroes. Someone who is evil can be so talented at doing evil that you wind up rooting for him. Hannibal Lector is an example of that. He's a terrible person. But he's also the most interesting character in "The Silence of the Lambs." Gamers are so comfortable playing heroes; our goal was to push you out of your comfort zone, and make you do things that wouldn't feel too familiar to you.

Crispy Gamer: Still, I felt kind of queasy whenever I consumed innocent humans to regenerate health.

Bennison: Alex does some dark things, yes, but we also tried to build a redemptive quality into him. He's a blank slate at the beginning of the game; he's almost feral. But as he goes on, as the game progresses, he becomes an amalgamation of all the minds he's consumed. And that makes him superior to other humans, and to his enemies. In the end, that redemptive side may lead to other things down the road. [Editor's note: This seems to be a not-so-subtle reference to the game's inevitable sequel, no?]

Crispy Gamer: I've lived in New York City for 15 years. I'm pretty impressed with the game's version of New York. You even managed to squeeze the hideous Javits Center in there. But, like all New York-centric games, you chop off NYC at around 110th Street. Talk to me about that decision.

Bennison: A couple points about our New York City. It's a game. It's got to be fun. That means we're not putting stuff above 110th Street if it's not fun. If there's nothing up there that's fun for us to do, or that's fun for the gamer, then it's not going to be in there. Maybe in another game, with different gameplay mechanics, the area north of 110th Street offers fun things to do, and they can keep [that part of the city] in their game. [Editor's note: There are fun things to do above 110th Street. But what Bennison is saying, we think, is that there isn't anything fun to do up there if you're a shape-shifting anti-hero. Unless you like soul food. Then I'd recommend Sylvia's. Because even shape-shifters have to eat.]

The second point about our NYC is that our first conscious goal was to make it feel like it's populated. You lived in New York; you know it's not 10 people walking along a deserted street. Add in the roving Infected, and the war zones, and things get even more chaotic. That's how we spent the machine horsepower: in creating the impression that you're actually in a hustling, bustling place.

Crispy Gamer: I've heard other gamers complain about the overall lack of visual detail in the game, saying things like, "It doesn't look as good as this game or that game." Or, to be blunt, "It doesn't look as good as Infamous."

Bennison: That was a conscious decision on our part. What we were going for is not so much a picture-perfect representation of the city. For us, it was always about the chaos and the mayhem, and delivering that mayhem to the max, on a large scale. Infamous is a great game. I'm not going to kid you; we respect it and enjoy it. But what we tried to accomplish with Prototype was very different from what they were trying to accomplish with their game.

Crispy Gamer: Was there a collective oh-shit moment for you when you realized that, a) Infamous was similar to what you were doing, and b) that it was getting shipped a few weeks before your game?