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My name is Matt Armstrong and I’m the Design Director for PROTOTYPE 2 at Radical Entertainment. My role at the studio is to provide all of the creative direction for the game and ensure that it’s all delivered to the best possible quality. From story and missions to characters and core gameplay, my job is to ensure that everything is comes together in a way that is delivers the best possible experience for the player. Today I’m going to give you a heads-up on the customisation the game offers.
Open-world/city games often tap into gamers’ desires to customize their character. Can you detail some of the best mutation perks? E g. locomotion abilities, claws, disguise…
Customization in PROTOTYPE 2 is really broken up into three different elements:
POWERS – Players that explore the three zones of New York Zero will discover entrances to underground Lairs. These subterranean chambers are frequently home to special enemies that Heller can defeat and consume in order to upgrade his many attack powers.
LEVELLING UP – Everything that Heller does in the world earns him Evolution Points. Whenever he hits certain thresholds and levels up, he gets to upgrade certain stats and abilities such as health, mass and parkour.
MUTATIONS – Mutations are a form of perk that are acquired by completing certain open-world missions and quests. These range anywhere from “Bullet Proof” which makes Heller immune to small arms fire through to “Jungle Cat” which massively increases the range of Heller’s Claw Pounce attack.
Is there any element of the player shaping their own experience through actions and choices?
There are a number of ways that this plays out in the game. One of the most impactful ones, however, is the parallel mission arcs. All of the game’s key powers and abilities are delivered through story missions so that the player can be properly introduced to them and get a feel for their best usage. What’s interesting about this is the fact that different players will gain those abilities at different times based on the order in which they complete the game’s story missions. This means than certain missions can play out very differently simply based on the arsenal of weaponry that the player has uncovered by that point in the game.
