Spoilers here:
[spoiler:02dae178b3]
Makenshi said:
As most reviews have said, the first 3 hours or so are rather slow. Well, if you disregard the opening cut scene, the sub level, etc. then yes that true. Except you know, the kill prophet. They basically give him a few lines, you randomly get the suit, etc. No explanation and the fact that he gives you the suit in that room with crappy tools causes massive continuity errors later on when Hargreaves wants it.
No error there. You see, the suit bonds with the host and has its own consciousness that with time becomes more and more merged with that of the host's, and the host is less and less able to distinguish his own thoughts from that of the suit's, and is less and less really himself. To quote the novelization, "What does seem certain, however, is that much of what we regard as the "person" that is Subject A now resides outside his own head. We are no longer justified in regarding the Nanosuit and its wearer as separate entities".
Prophet couldn't take it, so he managed to force himself to get rid of the suit and give it to the only one of the marines sent to retreive him who made it.
Thing is, the suit didn't like it. And it evolves, it learns. So it made sure that its new host would not be able to remove it. It not only fused with his body, but also deliberately consumed some of his internal organs for energy, so that he would not be able to survive without it.
"It is a jealous skin, Roger, and it's already been dumped once. Prophet had to literally rip it from his flesh and blow his brains out to be free of the fucking thing. Maybe the suit doesn't want to go through that again. Maybe it's whittling me down so I won't be able to--leave..."
Oh yea, no explanation or prologue to how the aliens got there, so I hope you played Crysis 1. They just ARE there.
They didn't "get there" in Crysis 1. They have been on Earth for millions of years.
Anyway, some stuff happens, a lot of the cool things you thought you'd see (i.e. tidal wave in new-york) you only get to see for a few seconds and are NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN.
They're not? That sucks. It's a major point of the book.
Eventually you learn that the Cell military leader (not Hargreaves) wants to kill you because you killed a lot of his guys.
Well, that and Lockhart's been against the whole Nanosuit program from the beginning, having even testified in a Senate committee against putting it to use, but I guess that's not mentioned in the game itself.
You foil his trap, some stuff happens, and of course, Hargreaves tricks you and tries to steal your suit. Oh, btw, you only TRIES to take it with some crazy gear designed specifically for the job. Remember prophet? Yea he did it with one scalpel. Continuity people!
As I said, the suit fused with Alcatraz much more thoroughly than it had done with Prophet by this point.
Anyway, you'd think that he'd just kill you when he fails to get it, but no. He basically goes "oh, ok. I was wrong. Here's what you need to finish the aliens". AND YOU GO ALONG WITH THIS. Seriously, wtf.
Well, by this point, he already knows he is going to die anyway, as he's in suspended animation, he has no way of getting the suit from you, and the Ceph are all over Prism. And saving humanity is more important to him than revenge (even if he were still capable of it at this point). What's wrong with that?
Then the spire sends out some sort of energy wave which kills all the aliens, and you get to talk to prophet and he says "man" a lot. Basically that the aliens have always been here (man), and that they build everywhere (man). Then your suit re-boots for the 47th time in the game and you magically come back to life. But then there's this German guy who talks to you over the com, who was never mentioned anywhere else in the game. He says his name too fast to hear it, says he's at your service and asks for your name. You say "Im prophet" (in prophets voice).
A remnant of Prophet's consciousness (which Alcatraz calls "False Prophet" in the book) lives on within the suit. At the end, what used to be Alcatraz is part him, part the suit and part Prophet, with False Prophet apparently being the dominant part of the final personality.
As for the German guy, he was mentioned elsewhere. He's Karl Rasch, the other founder of Hargreave-Rasch, who, along Hagreave, was a member of the expedition to Tunguska. Hagreave mentions that Rasch rejected his way of achieving immortality, but apparently he is still "alive" in some form or another.
How did the aliens change to much from C1 to C2?
No need to explain this, since they are not exactly the same aliens. Well, they're of the same origin, but generally they are a separate group that was dormant under New York for millions of years, although the Ling Shan incident might have alerted them and woken them up. Hagreave speculates that they're merely the aliens' gardeners, while Alcatraz/False Prophet thinks that they're even less than that - just stupid gardening tools improvising. If it was an actual invasion, we wouldn't even notice it before we were dead.
[/spoiler:02dae178b3]
Summary: Get rid of Richard Morgan.
I can't really comment on that, having read only the book, where, for all I know, Watts could have compensated for the game plot's shortcomings. But then again, you did get some of the stuff that must have been mentioned in the game (like Rasch) wrong.
Ilosar said:
this is game about shooting aliens in New York while in a super-powerful armor (why would you need an explanation for that anyway, just shoot them), and they try to bring in metaphysical concepts and fail because it seems to come out of nowhere. The series started as a semi-realistic shooter with power armor, and then there was aliens, and there is magic.
Metaphysical concepts? Magic? What the hell do you mean? I have only read the book, but I very much doubt the game differs that much from it.
) but I think in the next 20-30years or so we will see a new style of storytelling emerge that is more attuned to what defines gaming.
.