Welcome to a breakdown of Infamous Second Son and how a lot of the writing is terrible in this game, in fact it’s hard to believe there was a team of professional writers behind this game.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a rock-solid fun game, even in my review I gave it a pretty high score. Keep in mind that in my review there are no spoilers. However, in this post (and video) there are very heavy SPOILERS below, including items from the game ending. You’ve been warned!
This post and video were made for fun as I found it strange that no one on the internet covers just how poorly written some parts of Second Son are.
First Bad Steps
The game starts with an intro into events and takes place 7 years after the event of Infamous 2 in a different setting and with completely different characters. Following the events of Infamous 2, the government feared more people emerging with powers (people with powers are referred to as conduits) would cause mass destruction and chaos so they created a new military division called the Department of Unified Protection (DUP).
The DUP’s main responsibility is to capture conduits since they’re branded as “Bio-terrorists”, even if the conduit hasn’t done anything wrong.
The game shows bio-terrorists being transported through a small town which leads into the intro of the main character, Delsin. He’s a delinquent and often chased by the police. In fact, he’s chased by one cop in particular, his brother sheriff Reggie.
The bio-terrorist transport vehicle crashes. Reggie chases after two of the conduits while Delsin tries to help the 3rd conduit who is trapped. Reggie returns and attempts to arrest the bio-terrorist that Delsin touches, but in doing so, Delsin copies his powers. Up until this point, Delsin didn’t know he could copy powers.
This causes Delsin to go unconscious, he wakes up to find the bio-terrorist gone and his brother missing. As Delsin tries walking to find his brother, he starts teleporting everywhere and is unable to control it. He even almost teleports off a cliff by accident. He hears Reggie calling for help as a flipped over car has him pinned down and Delsin simply blasts the car away with his powers.
From this point forward, Delsin would be considered a bio-terrorist. There’s a deep sympathetic moment here where Reggie shows concern and compassion for Delsin and that no matter what, he won’t let Delsin be considered a bio-terrorist. Except immediately, Reggie tells Delsin to help him catch the bio-terrorist.
Delsin being the idiot that he is doesn’t even tell Reggie, “Hey, I can’t control these powers. I almost teleported off a cliff and the car I blasted off you could have exploded and killed both of us. Also, a DUP truck crashed so more DUP will come looking for it and the DUP might run into me and consider me a bio-terrorist.”
Threat to the Village
But nope, they both go after the bio-terrorist who has headed to the local fishery warehouse which has a crowd gathered outside. The gate to the entrance has been damaged by the fleeing bio-terrorist. At this point, Reggie being the local sheriff could wave his badge to the crowd and tell them to flee the area for their own safety as a bio-terrorist is inside. Instead, Delsin and Reggie decide to test Delsin’s powers if he can teleport through the gate, in front of the crowd. So, he does and members of their village flee in a panic that Delsin is a bio-terrorist, after that Reggie tries to calm the crowd down…
The writing here is even worse because Delsin could have simply climbed over the fence to get in, it’s what he did in the intro cut scene at the beginning of the game at the same warehouse!
Evil Stupidity
A little while later Delsin chases the bio-terrorist outside the warehouse and runs into the DUP and the main villain (Augustine, she has concrete powers).
We see her using her concrete powers on the bio-terrorist Delsin was chasing (he has smoke powers and can turn his body into smoke and teleport). At this point the bio-terrorist is being in cased in concrete, why doesn’t he just teleport out of this situation and escape?
Then the main villain says one of the stupidest things in the game to Delsin, “You seem nervous. It’s been my experience that there are only two reasons for people to be nervous; either they’re cowards… or they have something to hide.” The main character being the dummy that he is, has a terrible rebuttal telling her that it’s funny because she’s a bio-terrorist.
The writing here makes no sense. What if the DUP head goes on her rant about being nervous, Delsin could have replied with, “Hey, I’m actually scared and nervous because the warehouse behind me is on fire and I chased I bio-terrorist out of it. I was trying to save Betty, that old lady behind you that’s being treated like a prisoner even though she’s completely innocent. Oh, by the way, when I run out of the warehouse I see you and your goons behind you with massive machine guns, so yeah this is all pretty scary to me”.
But no, nothing makes any sense.
At this point the DUP head makes concrete grow out of Delsin’s leg, remember this as it’ll be important later on.
Delsin: Sociopath
Several events later (this isn’t a game recap, so we’ll skip the details), Delsin is chasing after another bio-terrorist with laser powers.
He finds his first murdered corpse hung upside down with laser powers. Instead of being disgusted, he jokes about the corpse as he takes a picture of the victim for his brother to track any clues against. He states while taking the picture of the murdered body, “Kay, sending you the picture but I think he blinked.”
Now this might not sound like a big deal, but the game has a karma system. So even if you play as a “good guy” it makes no sense for him to make such a morbid joke.
Reggie’s Moment
Going further into the game, Delsin and his brother Reggie come up with an idea on how to find another bio-terrorist. The plan involves Reggie running around the town shouting and claiming to be a bio-terrorist as the bio-terrorist they’re looking for is picking up conduits.
But Reggie runs around town shouting and waving his hands franticly that he’s a bio-terrorist, he eats kittens and can melt people’s faces with his pinky (believe me it’s worse in the video above).
I think the writers were trying to be funny with this, but this might appeal to twelve-year-old kids maybe? The writers were just trying too hard here.
Delsin the Idiot
Fast tracking a bit, Delsin does eventually meet the smoke bio-terrorist (the first one Delsin copied powers from).
The smoke bio-terrorist claims to know how to defeat the DUP boss, however Delsin finds the situation bizarre. He even asks him, “Can you explain what happened? I saw Augustine kill you back in—.” In which the smoke man replies that Augustine merely shut him up and that’s it.
The smoke man continues to ramble about Delsin upgrading his powers, things that the smoke man shouldn’t know. Delsin asks how he knows about it, but the smoke man ignores him and tells Delsin to follow up without answering any questions. Delsin just follows along like a complete fool with no common sense which leads into a trap and the next point.
Smoke is Useless
Reggie ends up dying as Augustine (DUP head) kills him. Delsin realizes that the smoke bio-terrorist did in fact set up Delsin in a trap (what a surprise).
Delsin eventually finds the smoke bio-terrorist and wraps his chain around his neck and starts choking him. You then get a choice in the karma system to kill him, but this makes no sense.
How is a smoke man getting choked by a chain? He could just teleport through. We’ve seen it countless times throughout the game that Delsin and the smoke man can teleport through interlocked metal like a fence (which is just like a chain). How is this possible? Killing the smoke bio-terrorist in this manner didn’t have any logic.
Evil Master Plan
In the final confrontation with the head of the DUP it’s revealed that in the prison she manages, she purposely left a paper clip available for the smoke bio-terrorist to use and release his restraints and allow him to escape. That’s why the DUP truck crashed at the beginning of the game.
She did this on purpose to allow the three bio-terrorists in the truck to flee into the city and cause havoc. The DUP would come in and arrest them which provide great publicity and the DUP would continue getting more funding for years.
Except… What if the three bio-terrorists didn’t go into the city and cause havoc? What if they just fled into the woods and went into hiding forever? This would have back-fired on Augustine greatly and she would have probably been punished for such a failure.
The writers would have been better off not mentioning this part at all and simply made it that the bio-terrorist escaped the truck on their own.
Powers are Useless
Remember near the beginning of the game when the DUP head made concrete grow out of Delsin’s leg? Well Delsin eventually absorbs Augustine’s powers and uses it against her by growing concrete out of her limbs and incasing her in it. How is that possible? Augustine controls concrete, couldn’t she just nullify it?
Evil Ending
If you complete the game in evil karma mode, there’s an evil ending. Now I know a lot of people like this ending because it was just so “evil”, but it was poorly written.
Delsin returns to his village to cure people of the concrete growing out of their limbs but they reject his help (even though it means they’ll die). Their reasoning is that they saw on the news how many innocent people Delsin killed and they would never accept his help.
Instead of leaving Delsin blows up a chunk of the village, even though the entire plot was revolved around him saving his tribe. This just seemed like a lazy terrible ending. Did Delsin really have to throw such a tantrum and blow everyone up and then roll end game credits?
A more poetic and ironic ending would have been if Delsin cured everyone’s concrete issues (even if they refused) and assigned bio-terrorists to protect his village but kind of like under martial law. Almost like a dictatorship as he becomes overprotective of his tribe.
This would have been ironic because he would have been an authority figure (like his cop brother and the trait of Reggie he disliked) and someone who abuses his powers over weaker people, just like Augustine. He basically would have become the thing he hates a figure of authority and abusive to others but wrapped into a single package. He still could have been the guy you love to hate.
Conclusion
Now this might seem like a rant post and, it is. I love this video game, it’s a solid game but I’m really disappointed at some of terrible writing and items that just lack common sense.
I just felt like sharing my thoughts as I found it weird no one mentions these outstanding items of one of the most popular PlayStation games ever made.
