I fixed the lore of inFAMOUS: Second Son
Beware spoilers for the inFAMOUS series.
So the biggest single plot hole between inFAMOUS 2 and inFAMOUS: Second Son is, how were there still conduits after the RFI went off? Based on the information from Second Son, some of the conduits survived. But according to infamous 2, the effect of the rayfield inhibitor sucking the radiation out of conduits and out of the atmosphere should have killed all the conduits. Well, as I said, I have fixed the lore and here is how it could have and should have gone and probably should become canon. I'm looking at you, Sucker Punch.
As a bonus, after fixing the in-game logic using the... In-game logic, I'll introduce you to some of the headcanons I fully believe in and subscribe to.
Everybody knows that when the RFI went off at the end of inFAMOUS 2, every conduit on Earth was supposed to die. The reason for this is that the RFI sucked the rayfield radiation out of the atmosphere and out of everyone it was inside of. Conduits changed by rayfield radiation would have had their entire molecular structures recoded and would be dependent on that radiation for their life. So the rayfield inhibitor sucks the radiation out of them and therefore their lives. But in the plague ward, Cole was shown a girl who had the conduit gene but it was inactive, and she also had the plague.
So the RFI sucks rayfield radiation out of conduits and kills them? Well then it couldn't kill conduits who hadn't been activated yet. They wouldn't have rayfield radiation inside of them. They're just like regular human beings until they're activated.
Now suppose that very soon after the rayfield inhibitor went off both Celia and Augustine got their powers. They wouldn't have known about what happened in New Marais, nobody would have, and when they went back to Augustine's unit displaying conduit abilities like those they were already actively fighting, they wouldn't know that the threat had passed and would only see Augustine and Celia as part of it. That would have set off the events of Second Son.
Augustine would have made it her mission to capture conduits to keep them from being killed by the military, so on and so forth. But now let's get to gameplay events.
Delsin is basically a chameleon. By touching somebody hand to hand, he learns the form of their powers. But it makes no sense except for the gameplay narrative for him to need to learn to use the same types of skills between different power forms. When Cole got ice ability from Kuo, He already knew the basics. And it makes sense. It was upgrading the powers that was the issue. And even then they had a system in place where he didn't so much have to learn the powers themselves as to unlock them by, as Kuo stated, practicing with them.
So for as far as the blast cores, which should have been called rayocite, and the shards as well, because most people wouldn't have known about the blast, but they might have known about rayfield radiation from government leaks, the blast cores would have simply been shortcuts to learning new ways to use the powers and the blast shards would have been shortcuts to powering them up. Which he would have needed to go up against Augustine. And then the logic wouldn't be so much that he needed a more powerful ability to go after her as that he needed a different ability that wasn't as weak against, say, concrete. Now certain forms of the power might have certain advantages even over and above weakness or not, such as the ability of video to stream and light to beam, But that aside it feels like the only purpose in learning new ways to use certain powers is because there are certain things certain powers might be able to do the others may not.
But that's all from a narrative perspective, allowing the game to need to be played with an impetus and all of that, but let's move on to how the game could have been repaired. Let's start with impetus. Delsin's impetus was that Augustine had buried her concrete daggers in his friends and, according to his brother, who got it according to the doctors, the only way to get the concrete daggers out is with the same power that put them there. So Delsin is trying to make himself powerful enough to go up against Augustine, and let's assume that he needs to activate each power individually. So just because he knows how to fire a smoke shot doesn't mean he can do a laser shot. Alright, fine.
Anybody remember the audio logs from second son? One of the audio logs described Augustine pulling up to a DUP protest and grounding the protesters. This means in casing them in concrete. According to the man who created the logs, once those concrete daggers go into your joints, you'll do anything to get them out. So Delsin is going around the city, figures out how to heal somebody and starts healing the people who get injured in the protests and the people in the suspected conduit lockup jackets that cause them to get targeted and beat up by citizens. Then he comes across one of those protests that were described in the audio logs and sees the same thing happened to the protesters as what happened to his loved ones back home. Desperate, he tries to heal them... And it works.
So it's here that he realizes he doesn't need Augustine's concrete power to heal his people, but he also realizes that Augustine is ruthless and she's hurting innocent people in the name of what she believes needs done. So now this creates a shift of impetus: He no longer needs her power to heal his people, but she does need to be stopped from doing to other people what she'd done to his people, as well as to the people of Seattle that she's supposedly protecting, and if he takes the time to try to go home and heal them before that happens, she'll just move on, he'll lose track of her, so he needs to have it out once and for all and have her brought to justice.
He still figures out the reason behind the selection of conduits who were the first to be transported to a military facility, about Brooke trying to make Fetch and Eugene look like monsters just so she can play the hero. The death of his brother only cements his convictions, assuming you follow the good karmic path, and so while he does not need concrete powers to heal his people, it's the strongest power among the conduits available so he needs to be strong enough to get close enough to her to get her power and then use that power against her. Yes, she's had seven years to practice, but his power allows him to absorb the form of another conduit's power. So he already knows all of these wonderful, beautiful tricks for using these powers and they translate across all of them. It's just whether he wants to use concrete, neon, video, or smoke. So he gets the power, he takes her down, brings her to justice.
And that is how I would have fixed inFAMOUS: Second Son.
Now let's move on to my favorite head cannons.
- Let's go back to inFAMOUS 2. Cole was a player. After losing Trish, love would have been off the table for quite a while. But he had a reputation for liking the ladies. Such as when Nix calls him to tell him about her past, he tells her to be careful with her feet in the water because crocodiles aren't the worst thing. She says, "Too bad. It's a nice day for a skinny dip." Cole responds, "Ooh. Don't let me stop you." The way he describes New Marais in itself leads you to believe that he and Zeke were involved in more than just parkour training and urban exploration. So it's not unreasonable to believe that Cole might have had one or more affairs while he was there. There is absolutely no evidence that Cole is interested in men, so all of his affairs would have been with women. He also strikes me as being fairly careless, so assuming he would have used a condom it wouldn't have bothered him too badly if the condom broke.
It was early June when he left Empire City, and they left by boat which means it would have taken a while. About 8 and 1/2 days according to my Amazon echo. Even if Festival of Blood is considered fanfiction, it does create a time frame, meaning Cole would have still been alive in October. Plenty of time for him to have gotten his freak on several times, probably with numerous women because of commitment issues due to the loss of Trish. At least one of those women might have gotten pregnant, and if my speculation based on the RFI not harming anyone who wasn't an active conduit or, perhaps, a conduit activated by the Ray Sphere itself, than any unborn children with certainly be safe. The youngest activated conduit seemed to be about 12 or 14? I have no idea how old Celia was. Of course, Fetch contradicted her own story. In her recollection of events to Delsin while they're chasing down the drug truck, she says she was in Curdun Cay for 7 years. In first light, she says it was 2 years. In Second Son, Reggie says her brother died due to a puncture wound of unknown origin through the chest 2 years before. So I think she would have been... 17? Cuz I believe she's 19 during the events of Second Son?
So this particular headcanon is this: Cole McGrath has one or more conduit children running around out there. Inactive conduits to be sure, since they would only be six around the time of the events in Second Son.
This one is tenuously based on Delsin's narrative at the end of second son. They brought down the DUP and tore down their tower and all of that. Delsin gained the love and trust of the powerless population. The headcanon here is that Delsin became the head of a new agency tasked with the policing and protecting of conduits. Yes, most conduits are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, but that doesn't mean that they should have to. It also doesn't mean that all conduits are. So he would have an agency that would monitor conduits living in America. If the conduits are being harassed, then he makes sure, perhaps coordinating with local law enforcement, that the harassment stops. But if a conduit is misusing their power, he goes with a task force a la the old DUP to arrest and imprison them pending trial and later punishment, probably even reusing Curdun Cay. Only this time he makes sure the conduits that go there are conduits who actually deserve to be there, such as Hank Daughtry. Fetch and Eugene would follow him into the bowels of hell, so they'll probably be right there with him.
Even without absorbing the material their power is based on, conduits heal extremely quickly, at a very visible rate. This, of course, would make them stronger, because the path to building muscle is breaking down the muscle, rebuilding it, and it coming back... Stronger. But it would also make them age more slowly because it would keep them in the absolute best possible health. I don't compare their healing abilities to Logan's, aka the Wolverine, from Marvel Comics because his is perfect regeneration. But they heal too quickly to scar, they go from being normal to being able to fall from literally the height of an airplane without taking any kind of fall damage. Hell, Delsin took bullets in the chest and healed immediately from them. So, yeah, my head cannon is this colon if you see an old or deformed conduit, then one of a few things happened: One, they got their powers late in life. Two, they are very freaking old, potentially upwards of 150 or more. Three, they use their powers for evil, which creates the kind of rot you saw in Sasha from the first infamous game and in Cole during any of his evil karma campaigns.
I can probably think of several more, but these are the primary ones. Let me know of any headcanons that you've thought of, as well as anything you think I might have missed in fixing Second Son. The caveat is that I did my vest to use only the rules and the physics of the world of infamous.