InFAMOUS (series)/Headscratchers

"Cole (Narrating): Asshole [Zeke] makes the choice to kill thousands, stealing their lives so that he can be transformed. And then, nothing. Everyone's fine. No change at all."
 * Uhh... How does Cole DRINK?!
 * Officially, small amounts of water are fine. And before you ask; sponge baths.
 * If he's constantly sweating enough electricity to blow up a gun, how can he use a cell phone with any level of reception?
 * Maybe he's translating the cell phone signals directly and the phone's just a Magic Feather?
 * Well Zeke said that the gun blew up because of the gun powder's reacting with the electricity, and he seems to be able to get near TVs without problem, so maybe his electric powers don't affect electricity.
 * Cole's phone is in a pocket on the strap of his bag. He doesn't actually touch it.
 * You can drain more electricity out of a portable television than you can from a car battery. And even more out of a human being.
 * The car battery isn't hooked up to the mains. As for the second one, if humans aren't a powerful source of energy then the Ray-Sphere doesn't work.
 * How does Cole take a shower? See Super Drowning Skills for speculation. Related; how does Cole...pass the time?
 * It has been shown that small bodies of water do not effect Cole, so he could easily maintain his hygiene with small amounts of water.
 * As for the second question, he would probably...pass the time the same way normal people do; in private, with no one in the, ah, blast range. One must wonder how he can...enjoy human companionship, though.
 * Another possibility for the second question. Maybe he just doesn't? It's not like everybody does it. As for the "human companionship" part, I don't see how his powers would get in the way of that.
 * Then again, it would seems Sasha thinks there isn't anything to worry about since she wanted to get on his pants.
 * Sasha is a conduit so the regular rules don't apply, he could just date conduits. Kessler had a relationship with Sasha.
 * I doubt anybody in the city has had a good shower since the government locked it down.
 * Sponge baths.
 * Yet another possibility for the second question: Some women are just into that.
 * At first, he just doesn't bathe. There's a reason why people in Empire City occasionally shout, "God, that stink!" when Cole runs by.
 * Why would Kessler
 * Justified; Because his own death is part of the plan; see I Let You Win below. He even comes right out and says this after  taking it a step further and admitting that he just doesn't have it in him anymore after the decades-long Plan. If this idea ever occurred to Kessler, he'd have dismissed it after taking all of five seconds to realize that
 * Also, Kessler, despite how powerful he was, pretty much hinted in that conversation that he'd be kicking the bucket pretty soon due to his old age. To give you an idea of how old he is, Alden is around eighty or ninety in the events of the game, but Kessler appeared during his childhood (he was probably thirty or late twenties at the time), which would make Kessler almost a hundred years old during the Game.
 * Kessler didn't know where or when the Beast originated. The first time he met the Beast, he was already close to middle age and saddled with a family to be worried about. He went back in time to ensure that this version of himself would be young, powerful, and unattached enough to find the Beast early.
 * Confirmed. When Infamous 2 starts,  Kessler definitely couldn't have handled it from the beginning.
 * This troper fought some reapers on the train tracks, then restrained them to the tracks before getting the trains running. How is that NOT bad karma?
 * The designers can't think of everything.
 * Besides the obvious game mechanic of being unable to constantly render anyone you restrain forever, this troper always took restraining as the age old super hero "The police can take care of you now". Any bandits you restrained to the tracks before the trains were running were probably taken away by officers in plenty of time. Any mooks you restrain to the tracks one the trains ARE running...well that should probably count against you.
 * Nothing crippling, but a couple things start occurring to you as you play, particularly with reference to Cole's powers.
 * Cole can restrain enemies, rather than kill them, as a 'heroic' act. One wonders whether it's really so compassionate shackle a criminal down on a crowded street full of people they've been terrorizing, on a train track, or in the sewers.
 * Well it's either that, or kill them in cold blood. Of the two options, restraining them is the marginally more "heroic" choice.
 * This one is so dumb: A man who has spent the last four years making a hobby out of urban exploration, who is so good at it that he can climb virtually any building he encounters, cannot scale a chain-link fence. You know, that metal thing that's practically made of handholds and footholds, that untrained children can scale with ease. And it's not because of its conductivity, either--Cole can scale other metallic objects with no trouble.
 * Aren't there supposed to be armed soldiers outside those fences enforcing the quarantine with every single weapon they have access to? While that might not mean much in, say, Prototype, there's no indication Cole can survive being shot to pieces. Self-preservation?
 * Nope - the restriction extends to any chain link fence in the whole game. The fact that Cole can't shoot through a conductive metal fence makes sense, but the fact he can't climb them really doesn't.
 * If you look closely, every single chain-link fence in the entire game is capped with barbed wire or razor-wire. No matter how good an urban explorer you are, you're not getting over that unscathed without some kind of gear -- whether wire cutters to cut through it, or just a mat to provide a safe place to crawl over. He's in enough danger from enemies without slicing himself up climbing over fences when he can just go around.
 * ...so Cole can laugh off being shot repeatedly in the face, yet a couple pokes from quarter-inch long needles is impossible for him to withstand? Only you, video games, only you.
 * It's completely plausible that, after those four years of urban exploration, he's so used to avoiding the sharp pointy things on top of chain-link fences that he doesn't make the connection between being bulletproof and getting past razor-wire.
 * Every chain link fence? Admittedly it's been a while since I played the game but I don't remember every chain link fence in the city being topped with barb/razor-wire. And logically, why should there be? Are we to believe that before the city was locked down by the military the city council declared that all fences within the city limits must be topped by razor-wire?
 * There were rampaging gangs everywhere, plenty of people could have strung up barbed wire during the week or so Cole was recovering from the blast.
 * Here's a Fan Wank explanation: Just as metal bars and chain link fences completely stop his electrical powers, maybe they interfere with his climbing. I know his jumping is a Charles Atlas Superpower, but maybe his new electric abilities eliminate friction between him and the fence.
 * If Sasha was expelled from the First Sons, why did they bail her out after Cole defeated her?
 * They didn't, they took her prisoner. Kessler hooked her up to a milking machine to get enough mind-control juice for his balloons.
 * I wonder if anyone illustrated said milking machine...
 * When Cole is up on the bridge during the riot he says "and I ran, faster than I knew I could" and he ends up meeting Moya. I'm confused, exactly how did he get off the bridge? Where is he during the cutscene? Did he find some secret trap-door or something? It just shows him running and .... he's with Moya. Someone care to explain?
 * To this Troper, it looked like he jumped off the bridge and...into some secret side-of-the-bridge base. Maybe.
 * Zeke smashed through a door, and fell into the river. Cole ran toward that door and jumped over the gap into the quarantine office. That's what it looks like in the cutscene.
 * Instead of telling Cole to pick off Dustmen and police officers, why doesn't Sasha just tell Cole where she is so he can free her from the First Sons? There's nothing to suggest that she was taken outside of Empire City and Cole has proven that he can handle just about anything The First Sons can throw at him. Did she not know where she was being held or was she just holding an Idiot Ball?
 * Two reasons I can think of. First, she's evil. Second, just because Cole is inFamous doesn't mean he is going to forget she's a crazy stalker chick. He wouldn't help her even if he could. Killing police is something they can both get behind, the jerks.
 * Sasha doesn't necessarily know where she is. Being hit with lightning repeatedly probably got her plenty disoriented before she was grabbed. Additionally, the First Sons knew about her mind control powers, so they would have had every reason to make sure that she couldn't get a clear picture of where she was
 * How exactly do the police apprehend people you restrain? They're chained down by electricity. On a similar note, how exactly does electricity give Cole the power to heal people, glide, shackle people to the ground, and create grenades?
 * First question, I would assume that they wait until the electricity wears off (while standing by to make sure they don't escape). Maybe they knock them out and then wait for the electricity to wear off, giving them less chance of an escape. Second question, Rule of Cool.
 * As for the second thing, while all pretty much impossible, Cole's healing powers stem from the fact that a defibrillator (sp?) can be used to revive people (healing is another thing). We'll just say magnetism for gliding and possibly shackling. Cole seems to be able to shape electricity in different ways, so that's why he can create grenades.
 * Word of God says that the electricity running through Cole's body contributes to his Healing Factor, stimulating his body to heal itself, and gets amp'd everytime he drains it from stuff. Cole uses his Healing Hands to stimulate the person's body and voila! Pulse Heal! Speculation starts here: This troper has heard theories that Cole uses the static in the air to glide, so check that off the list. The shackling skill only states he shoots it into the ground to bind that person, so maybe it's magnetism in a strange way. Grenades, a combination of Rule of Cool (as previously stated) and storing energy into a small sphere, but that's debatable.
 * Cole's healing powers simulate a defibulator, shock grenades are small unstable(and therefore live the second they leave cole's hands) focused orbs of electricity, and static thrusters are just him ejecting electricity out of his hand and feet, the arc restraint magnetizes the target and ground so that they stick together, all of cole's powers that are unlikely to come from electrokinesis are justified if you know enough about electricity and magnetism.
 * "Ridiculously Average Guy"? Okay. Who happens to be a god of Le Parkour? Wut.
 * I don't remember them saying that, but I have a friend that's a 9-5 salaryman, who can drill .303 into a q target from 1000 yards, urban spelunking was a hobby for him, plus he was a courrier.
 * Also, most people could, potentially, do the stuff Cole does. It's just the fact that one missed jump = one smear on the pavement that prevents them from trying. Cole, being super-powered, doesn't have to worry about that, and might even get some help clinging to things from his buddies magnetism and static electricity.
 * So what exactly is the quarantine about? The only "infection" I can think of is probably Sasha spreading her mind control tar everywhere. So why is Empire City quarantined by the military? More importantly, why isn't the military in the city hunting down Sasha and Alden and Kessler? If they are trying to stop the infection and find the Ray Sphere, they should probably assign more than exactly one FBI agent and her superpowered lackey to track down a powerful weapon that can kill thousands of people and give you superpowers and to stop an organized secret society and an army of heavily armed and mind controlled thugs. They can't just say "Oh, the government's evil!". It should really be in their common interest to save civilians and stop the mind controlling psychopaths.
 * To quote Cole, "The government created a quarantine to contain a bullshit biological threat." The quarantine was an excuse to keep the ray sphere contained in the city, where it could be more easily found.
 * But then why did they make next to no effort at all to find it? Wasn't Moya the only one trying to find it?
 * Well, John was working for a different agency, so there might have been more people looking for it. But remember that Kessler organised the quarantine to begin with during his decades of planning. Plus, there's also the PR issue; it's easy to quarantine the city, just build a secure perimeter. Sending in the number of troops you'd need to search the entire city without the ray sphere getting through would raise some awkward questions.
 * The NSA didn't want the Sphere stopped, they wanted it made so they could use it as a weapon. Kessler had been manipulating the government for years for just this eventuality. Remember John's comments about the CDC and FEMA being more powerful than ever before?
 * The plague was never BS, although Cole may have thought so in the beginning. All you have to do to see that the plague is real is to go outside. Sometimes even in gang-free areas, civilians will just collapse to the ground.
 * This is explained and expanded on in the second game.
 * The water tower side quests. The Reapers are poisoning people with their tar through the water tower and you go to help, when you get the option to either overload the device which would make a bunch of people sick (evil option), and shockwaving it which made some of it splash on you and made you lose some of your battery cores temporarily (good option). But there's no explanation why you can't take it out from farther away, or even stick a grenade on it and jump off.
 * Perhaps hitting it with a grenade will only cause the tar to splatter on people below, while a shock wave at point-blank would vaporize the tar.
 * Grenades are just concentrated electricity, so sticking one on there is probably like a lightning bolt that won't do anything. I don't see how the shockwave would vaporize it. That move is pretty much just a huge "push" of energy, and what's more, it's a rather short-range kinda thing, since further away it's mostly useless. So Cole gets point-blank, "pushes" the tar tank off, and the nozzle that was injecting into the water tower sprays him as it flies off, or his shockwave breaks open the tank from the concentrated force, causing him to get a dose to the face.
 * Using a grenade also runs the risk of destroying the tower completely.
 * So why doesn't Kessler just use his time travel power to go back and deep fry the fellow who becomes/summons/creates The Beast and spare himself four tons of trouble? And none of that "He didn't know who" stuff. When you have time travel, not doing the research is no excuse.
 * But then there wouldn't be a sequel. Speaking of Kessler, how the hell does general power over electricity turn into Time Travel?
 * The same way he can teleport, summon electrical duplicates, or read the minds of dead people: Lightning Can Do Anything. Specifically, he was limited to only one time travel 'jump', and didn't seem to have that good a control over when he landed, so it's less of an Idiot Ball than it might seem.
 * So he lands far back enough to take control of an ancient cult of telepaths, advance their nightmare-science by leaps and bounds, perform horrible experiments on people and animals, all the while creating a life-time long Gambit Roulette, the end-goal of which is simply to find the deepest and most brutal way of kicking himself in the groin... and he can't find a single man/summoner/scientist/Alex Mercer?
 * Can you identify the man who is going to destroy the world, right now? Kessler fled with Trish and his kids as soon as The Beast emerged. He doesn't know who it is or where it came from - likely, nobody did, cause those who were near it tended to become dead. An unknown entity that was likely created through a freak accident - yeah, that's going to be real easy to find.
 * He doesn't need to find the specific guy who gets turned into the Beast, though. Just the thing that DOES turn him into the Beast. Considering how deeply involved he is in the whole superpower experimentation, he shouldn't find it too difficult to get in on the secret project that forms the Beast.
 * This implies that the organization that created it is known, or that the Beast himself was made purposefully.
 * Kessler probably did try to do just that when he originally time traveled. It probably just didn't pan out. If the Beast is as horrible as Kessler implied, any leads that one could trace back to its origin was likely destroyed. All he, or anybody else knows is that some monster showed up one day and the world went to Hell soon after. With no further leads, well, let's just say that calling the investigation a "needle in a haystack" is a bit of an understatement. His plan in the first game is likely one of who knows how many back-ups he came up with after trying to eliminate the Beast directly failed.
 * How the hell did Kessler get his powers if there wasn't a Ray Sphere around for him to detonate?
 * The Dead Drops pretty much explain that you have to be a conduit to get a power boost from the Ray Sphere, so in Cole's timeline, the Sphere activated his dormant powers earlier than in Kessler's timeline, where they may have just developed naturally. Alternatively, the ending says that Kessler accelerated the development of the Sphere, so maybe in his timeline, he may have gained his powers in a similar fashion, only 10-15 years later when he was settled into his family life and didn't want to fight the Beast.
 * Doesn't Kessler's big reveal talk about how he pushed forward the production of the Ray Sphere? Maybe he was always fated to exist, he just used his time travel to exist earlier.
 * In the sequel, it turns out that the Beast is in essence a living Ray Sphere, so that's probably how Kessler got his powers -- the Beast came along and woke him up. The only reason it came after him in the first place was that its mission was to awaken conduits, and it went in the same direction as an extremely powerful conduit.
 * It seems unlikely that Kessler got his powers from the Beast, since he used them to run away from the Beast. We also don't know if that Beast could or would give people people powers. At any rate, the Ray Sphere isn't the only way to give someone powers, just a way to one person a lot of power, quickly.
 * Shortly before the final few story missions, the military moves into the "carpet bombing" phase of their plan to grab the Ray Sphere since Moya can no longer ensure that it'll be packaged and delivered by Cole the Superpowered Courier. But, somewhere between the showdown with Kessler and the end of the credits reel, the planes vanish and there is no followup. No ground invasion like Moya said, no follow up, the whole thing rewinds itself faster than the Reset Button! Where did they all go? I don't believe for a second the military just said "Screw it, let's all go home" upon learning the Ray Sphere was gone forever.
 * Actually, that's probably exactly what happened. The key plot element here is one of John's dead drops, the one where he summarizes the more subtle things going on and concludes that the government is setting the stage for a massive shift in governing ideology. It's an obvious, thinly-veiled statement of "they see a shiny thing that can give them power beyond their wildest dreams and they're damn well sure going to use it," bookending Zeke's much earlier statement about how they'll "do anything to stay in power" and also going along frighteningly well with Zeke's peak-oil scare poster and the gas prices. The plan to radically shift the United States towards a totalitarian state hinges on the Ray Sphere, though. Without it, they have no super-powered soldiers created by killing tens of thousands of people per soldier in a way that's conveniently blamable on terrorists, all they have is an invasion of a city on the home-front that is not occupied by an enemy force. The government shill news anchor can only explain away so much. The logical course of action would be to stop, use the gang activity in the city as an excuse for the bombing runs (this was probably the actual reason anyway, they weren't actually carpet-bombing the city, Moya said they were attacking strategic targets that would lessen resistance against the ground troops, and the citizens aren't resistance) and then go ahead with the occupation as a relief effort to save face.
 * Two questions.
 * What happened when Zeke activated the Ray Sphere? Zeke isn't a conduit, so he doesn't gain powers, and Cole specifically states that he killed a large group of people, yet Cole (and potentially Alden and Kessler, we can't really be sure) doesn't gain additional powers. So did the absorbed powers just vanish? Other conduits in the vicinity gained stronger powers when Cole activated it, so why didn't they when Zeke activated it? Can't be a one-time power boost because Cole is given the choice to activate it himself for an additional boost.
 * Listen closely when Cole narrates: Zeke never does activate the Ray Sphere, he can't because he isn't a Conduit. It just makes a flashy light show and then fizzles out with nothing accomplished, nor does it kill anyone. What Cole means is that Zeke tried to activate it because he wanted superpowers so badly he was willing to kill thousands to get them, because he knew that was how the Ray Sphere would do its job.
 * Also, why is it when Zeke activates the Sphere on the tower, and when Cole activates it at the pier, the surrounding area is kept intact (actually, having replayed the scene, the end of the pier actually is destroyed in the blast), yet when the Sphere is first activated, it leaves a huge crater in the Historic District? Cole is also battered, bloody, and bruised when the Sphere activates the first time, yet he and Zeke are fine when it is activated again.
 * I have an explanation, that borderlines on Fan Wank though: the sphere simply didn't activate with Zeke because he wasn't a conduit. There was a big show of light, then it just fizzled, essentially the sphere's way of saying "don't bother dude, you're just a fat loser". Now, the first blast drained the stuff out of thousands of people at once. I wouldn't be surprised if Kessler chose the place and the hour with the highest density of population, so that the sphere would go off fiercely. Quite the opposite with the possible second blast. Very few people, if any, to drain, due to the localization of the sphere at the time, resulted in a smaller scale of the blast.
 * To answer both your questions, watch the cutscene. They laid it out pretty clearly that Zeke made the choice, but it didn't work and didn't kill anyone. Here's a direct quote:
 * Also, why is it when Zeke activates the Sphere on the tower, and when Cole activates it at the pier, the surrounding area is kept intact (actually, having replayed the scene, the end of the pier actually is destroyed in the blast), yet when the Sphere is first activated, it leaves a huge crater in the Historic District? Cole is also battered, bloody, and bruised when the Sphere activates the first time, yet he and Zeke are fine when it is activated again.
 * I have an explanation, that borderlines on Fan Wank though: the sphere simply didn't activate with Zeke because he wasn't a conduit. There was a big show of light, then it just fizzled, essentially the sphere's way of saying "don't bother dude, you're just a fat loser". Now, the first blast drained the stuff out of thousands of people at once. I wouldn't be surprised if Kessler chose the place and the hour with the highest density of population, so that the sphere would go off fiercely. Quite the opposite with the possible second blast. Very few people, if any, to drain, due to the localization of the sphere at the time, resulted in a smaller scale of the blast.
 * To answer both your questions, watch the cutscene. They laid it out pretty clearly that Zeke made the choice, but it didn't work and didn't kill anyone. Here's a direct quote:


 * Why is Trish at whatever building you don't rescue the people from... rather than being at the building she's supposed to be, then killed off by Kessler or the First Sons if you choose to rescue her instead? There's no particular reason they wouldn't do this, given Kessler's motivations and their methods, so I'm not sure why the ~Schrodinger's Gun~ was necessary.
 * Heads I Win, Tails You Lose. It's supposed to "teach" Cole that no matter what choice he makes, he's going to lose. If you go for her building, it's supposed to teach Cole that selfishness will damn him. If he goes for the other building, it's to teach him that he'll lose everything to help people. If Kessler just killed Trish, it doesn't prove anything about Cole, only that Kessler is a bastard. And that's not the lesson.
 * No, it wasn't. It was clearly and simply trying to teach Cole that he needed to make difficult choices to save humanity, and getting rid of the most important thing in his life makes it more likely that he won't sacrifice everyone else to save her like Kessler did. The original poster was correct, the Schrodinger's Gun point was nothing more than bad writing.
 * How is it "bad writing"? In his mind, one of the biggest reasons that the Beast did so much damage is because he ran and hid to protect his version of Trish instead of taking any step to beat or even research it. Kessler designed the scenario to get rid of one of Cole's emotional ties and teach him the whole responsibility lesson. It showed Cole that being selfish will make innocent people suffer as well as showing that sacrificing everything for loved ones won't necessarily keep them safe. Kessler was going to kill Trish no matter what. If he let Cole actually save Trish, all that'd do is reinforce the same mistake Kessler himself made. Sure, it's cheap, but that's the point. The Beast isn't going to make the choice fair for Cole, so why should Kessler?
 * Also, Kessler knew which choice Cole would make. Because he is Cole.
 * This would be the correct answer. The ~Schrodinger's Gun~ isn't in-story. Kessler knows ahead of time which choice Cole is going to make, and whichever one it is, he knows that Cole needs to learn the lesson. Thus, he sets it up that way.
 * How old is Kessler? Judging by the times, he lived long enough to start a family, before going back, to unseat Alden when he was about eight, and running the First Sons for the remainder of Alden's life - that would put him, conservative estimate, at about 82 years old (30 in first timeline, 52 before the game). How does he not show it?
 * According to the official guide, he is in fact 140 years old!!!! Why he doesn't show it? Well, it's a game where the protagonist can shoot lightning and violate several laws of physics, so...
 * Really? That surprises me. In the first game, one of the dead drops says that Kessler has been the leader of the First Sons for decades but "vanishes for long periods of time." I always assumed that Kessler vanished because he was skipping into the future: He jumped into the deep past, then pops forward every now and then to check on the sphere's progress so he can avoid aging to death.
 * During InFamous's finale, Cole states that Kessler had a "one-way trip back to the past". So he couldn't skip ahead in the future.
 * Why is Trish still a gigantic bitch to Cole even after it becomes clear that the Ray Sphere being activated wasn't his fault?
 * Stress, probably. You're one of the few doctors left in a city filled with biological mutants, Fero-Kinetic Vagrants, their giant scrap-mechs, and Gas masked Victorian storm troopers, all of whom are crazy trigger happy. And your boyfriend is the #1 most wanted criminal in the town. She takes a lot out on him, but she's gone sane in a crazy world.
 * Also, if you have good karma, she doesn't so much "forgive" Cole as admit she'd been misblaming him.
 * She's still a bitch, though. Nothing you do is ever good enough for her. I got to Hero before I got more than a few side-missions done. And she still complained.
 * If you have bad karma, the bitchiness gets worse. Right after you protect her as she
 * Have you ever been in a relationship that didn't end well? He's lucky she doesn't blame him for the holocaust, Unit 731, and her broken nail.
 * Kessler kicking Alden out to the curb as a young kid was probably the worst thing he could have done (not to mention an unnecessary Kick the Dog move). Just put the kid up for adoption somewhere far away where he'd never be heard from again, or groom him as a kind of Dragon, or just flat out kill him. Any of those would have been better then kicking him out into your backyard and letting the resentment simmer over years of hardship in someone who can move buses with his mind!
 * He had psychic powers as a kid, sure, but we don't know if those manifested before or after he was cast out, but he wasn't bus-throwin' powerful until he got ahold of the Ray Sphere.
 * Maybe Kessler wanted that to happen and planned for it. He did the "worst" possible thing so that Alden would become exactly what he ended up becoming: just another obstacle for Cole to have to overcome.
 * That starts to head into Gambit Roulette territory. Kessler wasn't omnipotent. It was unlikely that he knew that the Ray Sphere detonation would result in other Conduits getting a power boost, or that he expected hordes of bush league Conduits coming out of the woodwork. He probably thought that he was justing getting a kid out of the way without actually killing him.
 * This might have been explained in game, but I don't know for sure... What ARE the Reapers, anyway? Are they the same drug dealers Cole says they are? Or are they the civilians that Cole sees being made into them? If they are the drug dealers, how did Sasha get control?
 * Little of both. Likely, the Reapers might have been a street gang that was somewhat unorganized, then the blast happened, and Sasha (who probably escaped or was released by Kessler) found them and asserted control with her tar. But since there were only so many in the initial gang, Sasha used her powers to corrupt and brainwash hapless civilians.
 * What's Zeke's accent, roughly? Texas? Lousiana? Tennessee? I need to know for a fanfic I'm writing.
 * As far as I can tell, it's a sort of amalgam of several Southern accents. Just saying something to the effect of "southern drawl" will be a safe bet.
 * The fanfic in question is here, incidentally, and the specific context of the quote is (spoiler for chapter, I dunno, thirty or so? It's a ways off) I suppose it's close enough.
 * So Conduits already existed before the Ray Sphere blast. Alden (and possibly Kessler) seems to indicate that a Conduit's powers can manifest naturally. So how can the government plausibly cover-up the existence of these super-powered freaks to the outside world if they're already running around all over the place?
 * They don't seem to be so much interested in a cover-up as in getting the power of the Sphere for themselves. Heck,, according to one comic.
 * Also, it's pointed out that the conduit gene is natural, but a Ray Sphere blast kick starts it to the levels we see in game. Natural conduits probably have to spend years learning how to levitate a glass of water without making it shatter or accidentally make the closest car explode. You think the government is going to seriously be worried about those losers running around when they have a magic ball of death giving their conduits super rape your entire city powers?
 * Go take down a Reaper Conduit. Look at its leg. Now back to Cole. A Reaper Conduit's crotch is up to Cole's shoulder. How did they get so tall?
 * Mutants, Artistic License, etc. Take your pick. Though given the Corrupted, I'd go with mutants.
 * Mass produced Conduits have a tendency towards physical defects. Alden's goons didn't have anything obviously wrong with them, but the First Sons' Conduits were definitely malformed under their suits.
 * Do the dead bodies of the reapers eventually fade away after Cole kills them, if you stand around and watch?
 * No, they only vanish if you look away. You can be standing right next to them, turn the camera to look behind Cole, and when you look back they'll be gone. Potentially.
 * Why do random civilians have Blast Shards, and why can't they just give them to you?
 * It's possible that the random people running around with them in the sequel might be collecting them for the person making Blast Shard bombs, but that's unlikely, given how you get negative karma for frying them. Maybe they just think the glowing rock might be valuable enough to sell/trade for something else; in Empire City, they might think that turning over enough to the military might buy them a way out of the quarantine.
 * In Empire City, the Blast Shards were scattered EVERYWHERE and have been hiding around for at least two weeks before you came to. It's possible that some of the shards landed outright on the ground and those people scooped them up since they couldn't climb to snag them. Possibly, they heard about you collecting them and handed them out if you did something for them.
 * How does letting a guy take photos of you, finding a hidden package, activating satellite uplinks, or killing a bunch of cops (if you're evil) clear the enemies out the area? Especially the last one.
 * Reputation preceding you, maybe? Let's face it; as nasty as these gangs are, they might want to back out of an area where the Lightning Man / Demon of Empire City has a concentrated presence in, especially if he gained it through bloodshed.
 * Given that hidden packages are more or less intra-gang dead drops, the removal of said package might damage the local gang's credibility and either cause infighting or certain members to be cast out for incompetence. Either way, it would be easier to reclaim the territory.
 * I think the idea of territory being cleared isn't that you do the mission, and the gang instantly clears out. The idea is probably more that your actions have weakened the gang enough for the cops (or offscreen Cole) to easily clean them out of the area entirely. Assuming you're evil Cole, they're probably just too damn scared to dare to venture back into the area he just royally screwed them over at. Either way, it's probably supposed to be implied time skip/offscreen shenanigans at work.
 * This is actually how it is. Even when you clear the entire map in both 1 and 2, there are still the occasional bad guys and such present in areas.
 * Why did Kessler think the best plan was to
 * Alden and probably some of the First Sons came into their mentalist powers naturally. We know Sasha came into her powers naturally, because one of the dead drops shrewdly tells us that she tried to use her mind control goo on Kessler pre-blast. The Ray Sphere just made them stronger and accelerates the process in Conduits who haven't awakened to their powers at all yet. If Kessler stops the Ray Sphere from being made, it at best ensures the Beast will be delayed, and does nothing to make sure there's someone strong enough to fight it when it comes. The point of accelerating the Ray Sphere's development is to awaken his past self to his powers before he did in the original timeline, so that when the Beast comes, Cole would be much stronger than Kessler was at that time and wouldn't question his ability to take it down. He may very well realize that the plan will backfire if it turns out the guy whose Conduit power is "turn into the Beast" happens, against all odds, to get hit by the Ray Sphere, and that's exactly what happens, but from Kessler's point of view, the chances of that happening are incredibly small and this is the best chance he has of getting the result he wants.
 * Also, it's not obvious that the Beast is a walking Ray Sphere. The only thing that makes it obvious is that he flat out tells you what he is in the second game. Kessler didn't know, all he saw was an unstoppable killing machine. It's fair to say half of Kessler's plan (at least in the early stages) was making shit up as he went.
 * Conduits actually can develop their powers without the Ray Sphere. Additionally, Kessler knew the Ray Sphere would be created and activated eventually; the second game makes it clear that the First Sons aren't the only ones with the knowledge on record. Who says that there weren't divisions in Los Angeles or Canada? And if Kessler went across the world to destroy them all, they would both hide the information more and fight against him. If it's going to be done anyway, may as well take the helm, right?
 * Also, doesn't J-Beast's activation of conduits seem rather instant, like to the point of them being instantly capable of using their powers? It took Cole weeks to recover and his powers took some time to get the hang of, while a J-Beast activated user seem to be perfectly in control despite being on death's door a moment beforehand.
 * That probably has something to do with J-Beast being able to mentally guide the process, instead of tossing them a Ray Sphere and saying "Good Luck." Also, we never see the woman land. She may be completely out of control.
 * Too bad the Transfer Device was destroyed after being used by Cole and his "friends." But even then, would still have his powers, so the RFI would have to be used on him anyway.
 * So, from the Infamous 2 dead drops, we learn that Kessler knew that
 * Technically, the wording is ambiguous enough that Kessler could be referring merely to the fact that
 * That seems to be the proper suspicion that Kessler had.
 * We also know from the evil ending that
 * According to the comic, Kessler knows that John is an NSA agent, and he knows that the NSA is at odds with DARPA and the FBI over the First Sons' research. He may simply realize that since John isn't on his side, it will put him on Cole's side post-blast, and since Cole is supposed to save the world, being what is a essentially his sidekick is worth referring to as an important destiny.
 * Considering that Kessler seems to know that John is a potentially powerful conduit, it's possible he wanted Cole to have a potentially great ally.
 * So Cole can use Kinetic Pulse to throw cars at bad guys. Cars that may have had people inside. Still Good Karma. When a power other than a minor shock is used on a car, the driver inside instantly dies. As Good Cole, I was trying to clear a block in civilian traffic during an escort mission and lifted a car just to put it out of the way (no throw). To my surprise, the moment I lifted the car, the driver just slumped dead against the steering wheel. It happens every time, no karma loss!
 * The writers just don't think of everything sometimes. Besides, throwing cars and such can be an effective method of fighting the larger mooks in the game.
 * Or, you know, they didn't die but were just knocked out? Stress, shock, having a thousand volts of electricity going through their very metal car, the reasons are endless. If you do end up throwing them and blowing up the car, you did so with the driver being unconscious so they didn't suffer, which as far as the things evil Cole can do in these games go, probably isn't worth a negative karma point.
 * But isn't the inside of a car a safer place to be in a lightning storm than outside of it...?
 * Why is it that Cole is seemingly the only Conduit who can't fly, Flash Step, or teleport? Just about every Conduit (Including the nameless mooks) can, but you get stuck with Le Parkour and other crappy substitutes.
 * Cole compensates by having WAY more firepower than pretty much any other conduit, up to and including the Beast, when he is at full power. He also has a much bigger variety of powers. Beside that, it's probably a matter of gameplay: they just couldn't figure a control scheme that could work well with either flash steps, short range teleportation, or true flight.
 * Kuo and Nix seem to be the exceptions more than the rule. And gameplay-wise, they were given those powers to keep up with Cole. We see only two conduits outright fly, and of the three boss conduits that can teleport, Sasha might be faking it, Kessler seems to have gotten his ability from the Reapers, and the third is the Beast. The Reapers and Vermaak 88 are the only mook conduits with some kind of enhanced mobility, and the Vermaak are using ice slides and towers. Cole just seems to have drawn the short straw, because he spends a lot of time around the two conduits with the best travel powers. Most conduits actually have less travel powers than Cole, with his static thrusters and Lightning Tether.
 * Think of it this way: Nix and Kuo are FragileSpeedsters, Cole is the Lighting Bruiser. He's got the best of both worlds, but can't do everything (though if Kessler is anything to go by, he will eventually get teleport powers.)
 * Actually
 * The Plague was caused Forgive bad grammar, English is not my first language.
 * Kessler has no idea these things are related in the way that they are. He would have no reason to suspect the plague is caused by the Ray Sphere; all of his experiments are about making the Ray Sphere work better, he doesn't care what effect it has on normal people other than using normal people to fuel it. Any non-conduit in his experiments would only be there as fuel for using it on the test subject, so they wouldn't live long enough to be poisoned by it. In the interquel comic, we see Moya watching a Ray Sphere test and she doesn't get sick (nor is she killed by the Ray Sphere's activation, for that matter,) so a lab environment with a properly isolated test chamber must be enough to contain ray-field radiation and keep it from causing the plague. Also note that having a strong mind has little bearing on the Beast in the long run; John's mental strength would be meaningless if his conduit powers didn't give him the ability to put himself back together. His ability as a conduit is essentially "become the Beast," and this is the crucial piece of information Kessler doesn't know.
 * If Kessler didn't knew, then why to teach John to have a strong mind in the first place? Kessler is a Chessmaster, it's not exactly logical to teach someone to mentally overcome you for nothing. Seriously now, if Kessler hadn't taugh John those mind tricks, Cole probably wouldn't have to worry about so many things. Except the Plague, of course. That would eventually destroy the world, and you can't exactly zap a virus.
 * I think you're misremembering the first game. There is never any indication that Kessler trained John as a mentalist. Again, John's mental strength is simply inconsequential to his being the Beast; it's his Conduit power. In fact, he even admits that he was so shaken by the process of restructuring himself that he had no idea what was going on around him at first and he didn't realize what he was doing when he attacked Cole. This suggests he doesn't have extraordinary mental resolve.
 * Also, it seems that John's appearance seems to have happened rather sudden, possibly a last minute rewrite? Aside from that, it's never implied that a Ray Sphere created Kessler's beast, or that John was Kessler's Beast. It's only implied that he was a powerful conduit. Another thing is that Kessler never knew who the beast was, where it came from, or how it came to be, and the two games have some ambiguous writing that allows for them to happen, even if they don't make perfect sense. It's almost set up as tragic irony that Kessler becomes the facillitator for the Beast's creation, but personally that doesn't story doesn't sit well.
 * So, Cole's powers, in the first game, go on a spectrum of light blue, red, and black... I understand the first, but with the latter two, do they even occur in nature, or are they just for Rule of Cool? I mean, perhaps red could be from the intensity burning certain airborne molecules, but black?
 * Almost sure it's Rule of Cool. Black Lightning is not even on the sequel, it just sort of... happens... if Cole decides to blow up the Ray Sphere again.
 * There is an inherent problem with Ray Sphere Radiation and the RFI in general. Specifically, RFR is something that a conduit can absorb that activated their conduit genes faster making them into a power user. This is caused and facilitated by a Ray Sphere Event, which generates the stuff when it pulls the bioenergy and other goodies from normal humans forcing it with a dose of RFR into the conduit. Problem is, dormant conduits seem to be perfectly normal humans when affected by it, ie; dying, and a Ray Sphere Event shouldn't be any different. Seeing as apparently 1 in 10 is a conduit, shouldn't there be more power users after a Sphere Event? Aside from that, if dormant conduits are no different than normal humans, then how would the RFI affect people who have zero RFR in their bodies. The RFI was made to inhibit RFR and stop the plague, with the side effect of, in this case so far, killing the conduit via what seems a nervous system blowout. If anything shouldn't it kill their powers rather than kill them entirely, or more importantly, shouldn't it not affect dormant conduits, non RFR poisoned, as there is no RFR in their bodies to react to? Basically, even of the RFI were to actually use RFR to lead the cleansing effect, there shouldn't be enough there to kill dormant conduits in theory. Especially worldwide, when much of the world lacks RFR exposure. Unless a conduit is a natural generator of RFR, then the plague is entirely inevitable, but a person can live their whole life without becoming a power user without getting sick, due to RFR not killing them being that there is seemingly none, nixing the RFR generation theory.
 * The gangs of Conduits in the first game are the result of the Ray Sphere Event. This doesn't happen in New Maria because the Ray Sphere was detonated out in the swamp, where nobody except Nix was close enough to get powers. Since they weren't holding the Sphere, only some potentials luck into getting powers like that. John, for example, didn't.
 * This also implies that using the RFI in the good ending in part 2 kills up to 10% of the world population, while the bad ending should in contrast kill about 90. But the game leads you to believe that that number is much higher as many dormant conduits seem to die from Ray Sphere Events. -This is mainly based on the sheer ambiguity the second game has on facts, which blur the numbers from the first game which had more consistency-
 * Where did you get your numbers from? As far as I know, the game didn't state that 10% of the population are conduits. It states that (at most) 1 out of a 1000 people carry the conduit gene, making them potential conduits. Where did this "10% of the world's population" come from?
 * It was during the ending, I may have forgotten the exact number since Zeke didn't seem to know himself, but it was stated that up to, possibly, 10% of the world were potential conduits that would have been killed by the RFI. Also, there are a lot more than 1 in 1000 conduits running around when you use Beast-Vision in New Marais. Could just be the randomness of the civilian generation, but the second game isn't totally clear on how many conduits do exist, though yeah, the first game gears towards the 1 in 1000 more so.
 * Having just seen both final missions and both endings, I don't see where this is indicated. In the good ending, Zeke says that some people overseas died, and that they must have been conduits without even knowing it. He also says that the death toll was in the thousands, while millions were cured of the plague. And in the evil ending, Cole explicitly states that odds of someone carrying the conduit gene were "only one in a thousand". So again, I don't see where this '10% of the population are potential conduits' actually comes from.
 * Not going to argue it, you are right. Checked back with the game again. Probably picked up that nugget somewhere and it stuck in mind, so a 10th of a percent is correct.
 * The RFI didn't kill everyone with the Conduit gene. Regardless of whether the gene Cole's number or the ratio of people you see with it on the street is a better estimation, only thousands die in the good ending. Either way, not enough to account for all the people with the gene.
 * That's more likely an error on the writers' part.
 * Biggest question of all. Ok so John is a conduit with sucky powers. Cole activates ray shpere with sucky powers and becomes lighting man. John activates the ray sphere and become a GOD? WTF?
 * I don't think that was a consequence of John "activating" the Ray Sphere so much as a consequence of the Ray Sphere exploding and fusing with John. Any other conduit probably would have gotten the same level of power.
 * I was in a rush when I wrote that. So let me try to elaborate. As I said above, when a conduit activates the ray sphere, he becomes about ten times more Badass. Cole used it once, and he went from messenger boy to Lightning man. That establishes the parameters of the levels of power that the raysphere could impart with one blast, to the person who activated it. John doesn't even use it, and yet he gains enough power to be considered a Physical God.this is way more power than we have been lead to believe that the Raysphere could impart. plus WHERE DID IT GET THAT MUCH POWER. might I remind you that a) if you are evil and activate it again, there arn't nearly enough people nearby to steal from to get enough power to give cole another Level in Badass AND create the Beast, also the explosion should have been as big as the blast from the begining of the game or B)(good Cole) ??? I have no idea at all how it could get enough power to create the beast. and of course, did John absorb the power instead of getting destroyed by it? I get what he was trying to do as the beast, with his power. What I don't get is basically everything about how he became the beast.
 * Cole using the Ray Sphere once doesn't establish anything. Just because he got a certain level of power does not mean that the Ray Sphere can only give that level of power. A person could get more power, or less, depending on the circumstances of when it's activated and on the specific person who activates it. John had the Ray Sphere explode and fuse with him, so comparing how much power he got from that, to how much power someone gets from using it normally (which again, varies due to circumstance), is pretty much meaningless. They're aren't equivalent situations, so trying to say John should have gotten more or less power based on what happened to Cole doesn't hold up. And finally, yes, John absorbed the Ray Spheres powers instead of being destroyed by it. That is why he has the Ray Spheres powers and isn't dead in the second game. The process tore his body apart, but he could eventually put it back together again.
 * Ok so John fuses with the ray sphere. How? cole was the one who activated/destroyed it, so why did john become the beast. Also what I was trying to say before is that cole used the ray sphere once, and it does what is supposed to do. It killed at least hundreds of people and drained their energy into cole to make him Badass. But when he activates it again at the end of the game, there is no explosion, and it doesn't kill anyone. If the power the sphere gives is derived from how many people it kills in the blast, than how come john got more power when the ray sphere did'nt kill anyone except HIM, and it didn't even drain him. Why does he fuse with the sphere? and While we're at it, why did he come back as an insane, titanic fire monster? Why didn't he just re integrate his old body to go around snapping conduits incognito?
 * John was the closest person to it. If Cole uses the Sphere, then John grabs it from him. If Cole destroys it, then he does so at a distance. Either way, John is closer, gets pulled in and Cole runs when the Sphere breaks open. And you need to check the scene again, because there is an explosion and people do die if you activate it. The Sphere normally gives power by killing people. What happened with John was not a normal activation of the Sphere. The fusion with the Sphere seems to be an unintended accident caused by the Sphere's nature. It awakens and increases Conduits powers, and John was a Conduit. When the Sphere was destroyed, that ability transferred to John, and gave him numerous other abilities. And John says that coming back as an insane monster was basically a mistake. He wasn't really in a state to know what he was doing, so he formed an approximation of a human body trying to get back to normal and appeared like that. Later on, there isn't really a need for him to go around incognito since everyone's already seen him and he's basically immortal anyways.
 * Did John fuse with the Ray Sphere? We know it was destroyed when he got his powers, but we don't know if he assimilated it at any point.
 * It seems a logical assumption based on the evidence - especially John's powers. It makes more sense to me that he fused with the Sphere/its contents and is thus constantly fuelled by and emitting its radiation, rather than his becoming a Conduit gave him every superpower ever. But granted, it is just an assumption.
 * Also If John has the power to snap conduits, thats the reason that he's causing so much death and destruction right? is it like, every time he snaps a conduit, he lets out a ray sphere blast? (that would explain the spread of the plague, unless he radiates ray sphere radiation just from existing) Also, I think the epilogue said something about the plague going global. How did it get across the oceans? The beast only terrorized the east coast of the US.
 * Yes, John can use his powers exactly like a Ray Sphere to create new Conduits. The Plague wasn't only spread by him, however, as it's indicated that the initial Blast in Empire City created the Plague and that the infected zone was growing larger even without anyone setting off more Blasts. John probably carries it with him, but it's actually been spreading out from the initial Blast zone faster than he can make new Conduits. I'm not sure where it's indicated that the Plague spread globally (I didn't see anything like that in the ending), but if it was it wouldn't need John to do it.
 * The plague was in New Marias because a Ray Sphere was used close by. It was also implied that the quarantine failed to contain the plague in Empire City.
 * How much do you think Kessler altered Cole's life when he traveled back in time? It's said that Kessler altered Cole's life so that he would be prepared, but how much do you think he intervened? Was Kessler a really successful guy in his time? I only ask because Kessler seemed to develop his powers earlier/quicker than Cole did.
 * Given that Kessler was able to accurately predict Cole's responses, it seems unlikely that Kessler intervened, or that only intervened to make sure that Cole's life was changed as little as possible. Well, up until the Ray Sphere detonation, anyway. We don't know when Kessler developed his powers, we just know that he had something like Static Thrusters at a point at least a few (relative) years in Cole's future.
 * Did Zeke even realize that he should have re-covered up the nuclear missile from the truck BEFORE he drives away with it? I'm pretty certain the Militia wouldn't attack if they couldn't see the nuke.
 * Let's say you're in the Militia and you're aware a nuke has been stolen. Next thing you see, the "Electric Man" is riding alongside a truck with cover the size of a nuke on the back. What would you think was under there?
 * Also, Zeke may have initially assumed that if the militia could see it, they wouldn't shoot at it. Of course, that assumption would prove incorrect.
 * Why is it okay to kill enemies (who are what, serial killers?), but not to bio leech them?
 * Bio-Leeching looks like a drawn-out, painful way to go, and it means you're using living, breathing human beings as a power source (or a prey animal) when other, less morally-objectionable sources are available. Same reason you get good karma for restraining enemies rather than killing them. You're going out of your way to cause extra suffering for your own benefit (in the former case) or to avoid appointing yourself executioner despite how much easier that would be for you (in the latter), so you get extra kudos one way or the other. Whatever crimes those guys committed, your actions remain your responsibility.
 * Why did Kessler focus so much on giving Cole powers when he could have been doing that and also developing a device designed specifically to combat the Beast? Alternatively, why did Kessler focus so much on giving Cole powers when he could have tried to activate and prepare as many conduits as possible?
 * Kessler believes unquestionably that he could've beaten the Beast if he'd tried when the Beast first appeared, so as far as he's concerned, "build up Cole" is a solution that will definitely work and anything else is a waste of time. As for making other Conduits, he doesn't know of a way to accelerate Conduit development outside of handing one a Ray Sphere in a populated area. He couldn't do this until he has a working Ray Sphere (at which point he's putting his attention towards Cole) and it would also require needlessly killing a lot of people. While he's certainly shown to have no problem sacrificing lives for the greater good, it goes back to the fact that he doesn't believe he needs anything more than Cole, so there wouldn't be a point.
 * Kessler is pretty damn old by the time he fights Cole, and says himself, as mentioned above, that he could have beaten the Beast in his prime when it appeared. The reason he didn't was that he didn't want to lose Trish and his kid, so he ran, and by the time he realised he should do something it was pretty much too late. Then the Beast tracked him down, his family died, and he basically has no more reason to try. So he goes back in time to fix things, it's a one way trip and he overshoots his goal, so he figures he may as well beef up Cole to the level that could beat the Beast. That being to take over the First Sons and make sure Cole gets his powers sooner than later. By that point Cole should have had plenty of time to get stronger, but things happened faster than Kessler thought, so yeah.
 * How is it that the RFI, a device no bigger than the Ray Sphere, could possibly affect the entire continent and more?
 * By being made of Applied Phlebotinum, same way the Ray Sphere can give people super powers by stealing electricity from the brains of others.
 * Kessler believes unquestionably that he could've beaten the Beast if he'd tried when the Beast first appeared, so as far as he's concerned, "build up Cole" is a solution that will definitely work and anything else is a waste of time. As for making other Conduits, he doesn't know of a way to accelerate Conduit development outside of handing one a Ray Sphere in a populated area. He couldn't do this until he has a working Ray Sphere (at which point he's putting his attention towards Cole) and it would also require needlessly killing a lot of people. While he's certainly shown to have no problem sacrificing lives for the greater good, it goes back to the fact that he doesn't believe he needs anything more than Cole, so there wouldn't be a point.
 * Kessler is pretty damn old by the time he fights Cole, and says himself, as mentioned above, that he could have beaten the Beast in his prime when it appeared. The reason he didn't was that he didn't want to lose Trish and his kid, so he ran, and by the time he realised he should do something it was pretty much too late. Then the Beast tracked him down, his family died, and he basically has no more reason to try. So he goes back in time to fix things, it's a one way trip and he overshoots his goal, so he figures he may as well beef up Cole to the level that could beat the Beast. That being to take over the First Sons and make sure Cole gets his powers sooner than later. By that point Cole should have had plenty of time to get stronger, but things happened faster than Kessler thought, so yeah.
 * How is it that the RFI, a device no bigger than the Ray Sphere, could possibly affect the entire continent and more?
 * By being made of Applied Phlebotinum, same way the Ray Sphere can give people super powers by stealing electricity from the brains of others.