The concept behind Prototype is an intriguing one. You’re Alex Mercer, a shape-shifting character who is able to assume the identity of anyone within the title’s open world.
Unfortunately, it looks as if you’ll remain Alex Mercer the entire time, despite the various forms you may assume. When talking to TeamXbox, Executive Producer Tim Bennison of Radical Entertainment revealed that multiplayer won’t make the cut for the 2008 title.
"Naturally, with Alex’s genetically mutated shape-shifting abilities, we started to explore what would happen if he were to sub-divide into two PROTOTYPEs and what kind of multiplayer gameplay we could create around that concept," he commented. "We’ve been looking at this potential multiplayer idea much more closely as PROTOTYPE’s development has been progressing, and while it’s a great concept and gameplay bonus, our conclusion is that we won’t be able to pull it off with the same level of quality and polish that we’re aiming for with the original single player story."
Bennison then goes on to discuss how the team always visualized Prototype as a single player open world title, and as the goal is to launch in 2008, they simply can’t sacrifice the time. He discusses the possibility of adding multiplayer as DLC, but that’s been said time and time again and no developers have stepped up to the plate thus far. We expect that trend to continue with Prototype.