I wanted to make a thread on the Prototype topic when I have the opportunity.
Its regeneration is clearly overrated, as well as temperature resistance.
The profile suggests that it was burned to the ground and recovered from the ashes, however, we have two problems with this:
1)We were just shown that Alex caught fire, but his body could just be charred, that's all. We don't have any evidence that all that's left of him is ashes.
The one who proposed the Mid-High Regeneration, RisingIons, suggested that it was most likely the case that Alex got incinerated based on practically the half of his body being reduced to visible vapour on the first exposure of the nuclear fireball. If you want to debate with RisingIons about that scale of Regeneration, you can feel free to do so if he's online - although, his profile seems to indicate that he hasn't been active since 2 years, so I'm not sure how he would be contacted by that point.
If you want to make a thread about such once you have the time, then feel free to do so, though I hope RisingIons would get notified about such a thread later.
2) Alex took the nuclear bomb far out of the city. The city was not affected by the explosion, therefore it was outside its affected area. This means that Alex was ten kilometers from the coast when the explosion hit him.
Considering that we do not see fragments of the helicopter near the place where the bird flew, we can assume that this is not the biomass that remained after the nuclear explosion. This is similar to what Supreme Hunter did when he regenerated from a puddle into which a person stepped.
I mean, there's a virus raging in the city and Mercera DNA here and there.
This looks more reasonable than the fact that Mercer, who actually did not burn to the ground, magically overcame ten kilometers and waited for the bird.
But I would like to hear the supporters of the verse
It's
10 to 15 miles offshore of southern Manhattan - I don't know where you got the 10 kilometers from.
And you're telling me Alex Mercer "never survived" the nuclear fireball, and that he "reformed from viral biomass that
he left in some nearby garbage surrounded by trash bags"?
That actually seems even
less reasonable than assuming that what's left of Mercer was drifted to the shores of Manhattan's coast. And it isn't magical, because there were clear time-cuts between the nuclear bomb exploding and Mercer being found near the trash bags.
There is even a
building of that pier after the nuclear explosion scene (with the yellow light flashing on the street light on pier,
which Mercer regenerated near due to the crow taking him there before it got absorbed),
and when Mercer looked from that pier, we saw huge bodies of water that indicates that it is connected to the ocean... I don't know about you, but Mercer drifting to the shore from the waves (and that he was clearly near the huge bodies of water based on him being below that pier on top of the garbage and trash bags, with a person on that pier only seeing the huge bodies of water when looking off from it) looks more supported by the visuals of the scene here.
And even if we go by your logic, why would Mercer want to leave a piece of himself near a bunch of
trash bags (nevermind the issues with hygiene, we haven't even found any explicit statements or scenes that suggests that he is willing to leave a piece of himself so close to the trash bags)? You're proposing that he essentially has combat applicable Type 6 Immortality that he spams near constantly, and that he left pieces of himself all over Manhattan, when there is zero indications that Mercer did that - and unlike the Supreme Hunter, Alex didn't get into a situation where he was beaten into becoming liquid biomass, so there is
no indication that he even so much as got injured to such a state where liquid biomasses of himself was left in certain areas of Manhattan.
If anything, your assumption takes
greater leaps of logic than the Occam's Razor of Mercer's body merely being dragged to one of the shores of Manhattan. Water waves exist, and the ocean definitely has them - and given the time cuts, it's not very unlikely to assume that what's left of the slowly-regenerating Mercer was eventually taken to one of the shores during one of the time-cuts.
And who's to say that the electronic equipment and metals present near Mercer's biomass weren't from the helicopter itself? Helicopter chassis aren't exactly light (and I doubt the attack helicopter Mercer was piloting was an Amphibious helicopter), and given their weight along with a good portion of the metals they are made of (which are naturally quite dense compared to water), it sinking but having small pieces of its metals and equipment eventually drifting to the shores from the waves aren't impossible and takes less leaps of logic than this un-implied Type 6 Immortality feat you've suggested (which Mercer has not implied or stated of ever doing, neither in the games or even in the comics from what I can recall).
Also, Mercer himself having DNA is also quite arguable, considering his entire body is made up of Blacklight Viruses and all (and we haven't been given any information of what the Blacklight Virus is even made out of, and for whether it's made of DNA or RNA, just that it's a strain of the Redlight Virus). And the virus raging the city isn't from the Blacklight Virus, it's from the Redlight Virus - the Infected only came in after Elizabeth Greene was freed, and the people who got infected by the Blacklight Virus in the Penn Station were reduced to corpses (where they are nothing more than dead bodies with the Blacklight Viruses lingering within their bodies, not even able to become Infected in Prototype 1. And since the Infected only came in after Elizabeth Greene was freed... It's far more likely that the Infected in Prototype 1 were from the Redlight Virus, and we only have Blacklight Infected in Prototype 2).
You can argue and question the Mid-High Regeneration however you want, but assuming he regenerated from mere pieces himself that he left in Manhattan before the nuclear bomb scene (and that he left one of the pieces near garbage with the trashbags for some reason) seems even less likely than the Occam's Razor of Mercer drifting to shore (which more closely fits the visuals in comparison). You're better off with arguing about Mercer surviving the nuclear fireball but not having Mid-High Regeneration than to argue that Mercer
somehow didn't survive the nuclear fireball and that he regenerated from some random pieces of biomass he placed on Manhattan (which Mercer has not suggested to have been doing or being stated to do
anywhere).