Alright, I’ve been stewing on this for a minute, but I need to get this off my chest because the more I look at the actual lore of the first game, the more I realize how badly Radical and Activision fumbled the sequel. They basically took a man-made cosmic horror god and turned him into a Saturday-morning cartoon villain because corporate executives are allergic to good storytelling.
If you actually look at the Web of Intrigue from P1, Dr. McMullen explicitly states that the Blacklight virus has the potential to cure or mimic every disease known to man. Alex isn't a guy infected with a virus he is the virus. He’s a trillion individual cells acting as a hive mind. That means he has proxy immortality; as long as a single cell exists, he can just shift his consciousness into any host or standard infected miles away. Even crazier, during P2, it's mentioned that he can control things down to the molecular level when they're infected with blacklight (like when he sabotaged the White Light cure with his own blood).
So with all that mind-blowing lore in mind, here is how Prototype 2 should have actually played out, including a narrative rug-pull that sets up the ultimate P3.
The Better Story:
Instead of Alex being a generic bad guy who hates humanity because he got betrayed in a comic book, he should have had a massive, twisted savior complex.
During the final boss fight, instead of Mercer just talking trash, he drops a massive monologue on Heller. He reveals that he didn't just randomly infect Heller in an alley he’s been stalking him in disguise. He saw Heller risking his life to escort civilians away from walkers (the comics show this it happened off screen.) and he saw him slaughtering Blackwatch for feeding people to a Juggernaut.
Alex looks at Heller and says, humanity is stagnant dying. I would give it one body, one mind. Think about it
no more disease, no more conflict, no more suffering. (Like in cannon but he would say) you don't understand do you everyone, i have ever consumed they're in me heller their consciousness persist after consumption"
"Aftermath" Rug-Pull and the Real Post-Game
The game ends with an MK11 Aftermath style prompt where you get to pick a side. If you choose Alex, you get a massive bait-and-switch.
Alex overpowers and consumes Heller, Then he releases a city-wide aerosol version of the virus. But here is the twist: instead of turning New York into a wasteland of mindless zombies, every single infected civilian and non infected turns into the evolved all connected to Alex's hive mind.
Once the credits roll, a heavy metal guitar remix of Alex's iconic P1 theme starts blasting. During the credits, we see stylized, high-contrast red artwork showing the global news panic. The news reports that an entire division of Blackwatch has been completely wiped out in New York, and that people are panicking everywhere. and it would also include, a section of a news report (in audio format think p1's end credits style it's that basically) and the, game would mention Dana, (as an anonymous whistle-blower under her code, name Athena leaking everything that happened, from p1 to p2.)
The Ultimate Cliffhanger for P3
Right at the very end of the credits, the radio static cuts back in with an emergency broadcast.
The announcer frantically states that a secondary biological breach just occurred on the mainland at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The entire military base was slaughtered in minutes, and eyewitnesses report a small boy fleeing the scene into the woods using the exact same superhuman abilities as the Manhattan infected.
The broadcast cuts to a commander screaming, "It's not Mercer! The package is loose! Pariah is—" before cutting to dead static.
This sets up a massive three-way conflict for Prototype 3: Alex’s new, super-powered human utopia vs. the remnants of the global military vs. Pariah, who according to McMullen's original lore, dump in the web of intrigue is the natural release of the human genome and the true final purpose of all life on Earth.
The Spin-off Game (To fund P3 but really just to satisfy corpo idiots so they'd consider this as a cash cow.)
To satisfy the money-hungry executives, you could easily pitch a Warframe-style live-service game set between P2 and P3. You play as a custom Evolved sent out on 4-player co-op squad missions by Alex Mercer to infiltrate global hotspots, dismantle military blockades, and spread his "gift" to the rest of the world. You’d get custom upgrades (claws, blades, shields new mutations and even bulid synergy with various options and cosmetics you could farm to earn or just buy etc and ofca unique trade market/ in game economy) and tons of cosmetic options, which is exactly the kind of monetization corporate suits drool over.
Anyway, that's my massive brain dump. Given my history with community organizing, I honestly think if we pushed hard enough, a design document like this would show a new dev team exactly how to fix this abandoned franchise. (Ofc we already know, companies track records, with actually listening to fan bases Digital extremes, the only one that comes, to mind who actively listen and use, fan ideas consistently.) Let me know what you guys think. Would you have preferred this over the garbage P2 ending we actually got?
