Save What's Left... Or Destroy It All
The official tagline for inFAMOUS is way too fitting not to use here. Luckily, we came up with a few words of our own to describe the ultimate fate of Empire City.
Published: May 27, 2009
I would have minded it a whole hell of a lot more if the game didn't support the illusion of becoming pure good or evil. If I'm being completely honest, inFAMOUS showed me a side of myself that I'm not entirely comfortable with. I'd always been the good guy when given a choice, but I had to go through the game fully committed to both sides and when played that way, it's incredibly rewarding. My first playthrough, I was indeed the good guy. I shocked people back to life, I took care in sniping enemies among all the frankly moronic people running out into the middle of firefights. I wanted to make the city better, to make it whole again through my actions. And when you finally crest the final moments of the game and everywhere you go, people are cheering, thanking you, idolizing you and congratulating you the whole way, you feel like a true hero.
When I was evil, though, I was a monumental asshole. I reveled in the freedom of being able to lob grenades haphazardly around a level, watching with delight as the chain reaction of explosions wreaked havoc across the entire screen, bathing everything in the caustic glow of blood red lightning. In both my good and evil playthroughs, I found myself talking to the people in the city, but when I was evil, I was really evil. I would giggle manically as I kicked the snot out of a random person just to flip them over as they moaned and writhed in pain, driving my palm into their foreheads and sapping every last bit of their life out of them to completely refill my health and energy meter. I'd blow stuff up just for shits 'n giggles. When people thanked me for helping them, I'd constantly mutter stuff like, "it wasn't for you."
I don't even know where that comes from, but the key quotes that are interspersed throughout the game's major acts were truly prophetic. The paraphrased "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power" quote from Abraham Lincoln rang surprisingly true. Freed of the nagging encumbrance of guilt, I truly gave in to my dark side in a way I'd never done in a game before. In fact, the dichotomy of my first and second playthroughs made it even more apparent that were I to truly be given superhuman powers, I probably would play the nice guy, but the temptation to simply say, "fuck it" and kill any and everyone I felt like just because I felt like it would probably happen. Like I said, I saw a side of me I really didn't like, and not even GTA's loose sense of virtue and light pull of decadence ever broke my morals like this game did.
There's a good reason why the two different playthroughs were so polarizing, though, and it's honestly not that the powers themselves are all that different. For that matter, nor are the cutscenes or the storylines. Though there are appreciable differences in how the two sides of Cole eventually play -- one being an almost slower, more technique-driven pace and the other a sloppy, angry, pointlessly speedy approach -- the real difference is that the city itself starts to react. I found myself wishing that there could have been more obvious, lasting, definitive changes; the city, despite being blanketed in a more hopeful blue vs. a hellish red hue, is largely unchanged despite all your abilities. All the people though, and the posters they kick up, the random chatter they espouse (voiced by none other than quite a few of the Metal Gear Solid standbys like Kim Mai Guest and Quenton Flynn, among others) work. They should honestly be stupid little digital baubles, but they do make a difference.
Regardless of which route you take, the game's storyline is essentially the same: Cole wakes up at the center of a blast that kicks off the second you press the Start Button on the title screen. With short-term amnesia and a constant string of people that essentially use him and his powers for varying reasons (likely another reason why it was easy to turn the other cheek or tell them to get bent), he essentially has to deal with losing a girlfriend, gaining constantly-growing powers and sussing out who is actually on his side -- all while trying to figure out just what the hell happened to start all this. Without spoiling anything, the twist and the finale of the game feel satisfying while still being a little hollow. Whether or not that's intentional isn't really clear, but they do help to drive home your choices along the way, bookend the story and leave the door open for the inevitable (one can hope) sequel.
