Prototype 2′s Black Protagonist is a Taboo Issue at Radical
Prototype 2′s hero reminds me of Spawn for more than one reason. He comes back from a war to find himself a changed man, unable to return to the life and the people he loved. He’s got mad crazy powers and he’s out for revenge. Also, he’s black.
Which wouldn’t really be such a big deal, except that for some reason, “no one [at Radical Entertainment] wanted to touch” the subject of Heller’s ethnicity.
According to Ken Rosman of Radical, this decision to make a protagonist of “some ethnicity,” (we’ll let that one slide, but seriously, it’s not like white people are devoid of ethnicity. Everyone has an ethnicity. What you really mean is “an ethnicity that is not white,” so if that’s what you mean, just say that) came about as the result of the natural evolution of the character.
They started off with a (white) Hugh Jackman/Clint Eastwood hybrid which turned out to be too similar to James Marsden from Red Dead Redemption. When that didn’t work out, they went back to the drawing board, and when someone came up with a concept that wasn’t “just the the generic Caucasian guy,” everyone gravitated to that.
Rosman also explains that they liked the black version of Heller not because of racial connotations, but because they wanted to better convey “the stature, the position and swagger of a hero.”
Sounds like the story of a fairly generic, non-offensive character development to me. In any case, you’ll be able to use Heller to “Murder Your Maker” when Prototype 2 drops on April 24, 2012 for PS3, Xbox, and PC.
[via: PlayStation UK]
Wait, is this another rumor? I don’t see any quotes or citations. It seems like someone is trying to make a racial thing of this when it’s not.
Hi. I’m the editor that put this up.
This was from an interview done by the official PlayStation magazine. In fact, if you click the “via” link at the bottom of our article, you’ll see that stated in the lede:
“Radical studio head Ken Rosman admitted Heller’s ethnicity was something, “Nobody wants to touch” when asked if the Prototype 2 hero’s African American origins were a tricky subject.”
This is vapid pandering. Trash it plx.
I think he was talking about journalists, not the devs themselves.
“Even so Radical studio head Ken Rosman told us that this ethnicity was something no other journalist “wants to touch” during an interview in the current issue of Official PlayStation Magazine.”
My above post was a direct quote from the lede of the PSUK story. It’s since been edited (the headline, too).
Those sneaky bastards.