14 DAY TRIAL // Prototype, in development at Radical Entertainment and to be published by Vivendi Games, is one of those games that offers freedom, an open world experience. The player is cast in New York, playing a character with limited to no memories of his past, that has the ability to steal the identities of people around him and also to shape shift. All of this takes place as parts of New York are locked down by the military as a mysterious alien invasion is going on. Intrigued enough, already? Wait till you hear more details on the web.
Prototype senior producer Tim Bennison recently sat down with Gamasutra to talk about the game and the way the open worldliness of the setting contrasts with the linear story, a one-ending story that the game aims to tell. The elements that will make the game more than a linear trek through a prescribed ending is the game mechanics called the "web of intrigue".
As Alex Mercer, the protagonist of the game, roams New York in human or superhuman form, he will see some people that are marked as being "web" interesting. If he manages to take their identity, which might sometimes prove harder than expected, the hero will receive a bit of information that is somehow related to his past and the mystery of what's happening in the city. The mini movies are no more than 30 seconds long and are integrated into an interface that shows how several of these web nodes are connected to each other. The developers hope that the player will be so concerned with creating the full picture that he will sometime forget about the mission's progression, which drives the actual plot of the game.
Bennison said that: "We're really trying to do something interactive, and I don't think it's been done before in telling a story, in addition to the regular ways you tell stories in games".
It certainly sounds like an interesting mechanics and could make the game much more enjoyable than a linear trek through the story. Prototype is shaping up nicely and we'll have more details on the combat and control mechanics really soon.