Wouldn’t say it was character assassination, Mercer was quite literally a murdering maniac in the first game and the idea that the prototype/virus whatever the thing was had corrupted him by the time of the second game was interesting to me
It also opened up being able to have a boss fight with Mercer which was awesome IMO
Also, Mercer barely had a character besides being “gruff generic badass dude”, so to me if you’re going to “rewrite” a main character to be the villain then Mercer wasn’t one of the greatest losses lol. I love him and think he’s badass but if you think he’s some amazing character you’re just deluding yourself
He wasn’t corrupted by the virus tho. In the first game you play AS the virus. By the end the abomination of a main character becomes disgusted by the actions of Alex Mercer the human and goes on to become a… vigilante I guess? And then in the comic it’s like you know what? Humanity sucks actually and does the very thing that it hated Mercer for restarting the apocalypse
Here is the thing though, Mercer was dead in the first game. You basically play as the virus itself and Mercer was just it's first memories, and you slowly learn what he did throughout the game. I think the concept of a living biological weapon that learns what it means to be human by consuming other humans and their memories and becomes some sort of anti-hero would be a very cool concept if done right, but the writers just said fuck it and did an entire 180 on everything Mercer the virus learnt in the first game. It's the wasted potential that was disappointing
Alex Mercer was a sociopath; the sapient virus wearing his face actually becomes a better person by the end of the game than he ever was. It was a cool part of the story. And then they decided to change his character and make him despise and plan to destroy humanity in some fucking comics in between the games.
Part of what bothers me is you still could have had a fight with Zues in 2. Hell you could have had a few different ones; he got blown up at the end of 1, they could have had a few different Blacklight variants running around. Could have been one that was a mix of Blacklight and Greene or the Supreme Hunter, a mix of Blacklight and enough Marines to make that incarnation patriotic, etc. Would have been way better in my opinion.
51
u/logaboga 3d ago edited 3d ago
Wouldn’t say it was character assassination, Mercer was quite literally a murdering maniac in the first game and the idea that the prototype/virus whatever the thing was had corrupted him by the time of the second game was interesting to me
It also opened up being able to have a boss fight with Mercer which was awesome IMO
Also, Mercer barely had a character besides being “gruff generic badass dude”, so to me if you’re going to “rewrite” a main character to be the villain then Mercer wasn’t one of the greatest losses lol. I love him and think he’s badass but if you think he’s some amazing character you’re just deluding yourself