This Might Be Crazy But is inFamous: Second Son Canon?

So, let's wind back the clock before the final decision. We have two paths, Good and Evil, Naturally. Depending on which choice you made to end inFamous 2, you would get the Good or Evil ending to the game. Oh and yes, keep reading from beyond this point, it's spoilers if you haven't played this epic series. Now, the reason I go back to inFamous 2 is because there has not been an official statement to say whether inFamous: Second Son is cannon or not. I spent the whole week playing both inFamous and inFamous 2, and whilst playing the ending to the latter, something just sparked in my head, "What if Second Son is actually apart of the main series and we are just not seeing the bigger picture here?". Not getting the point yet? Let me explain.

 Here's the Evil Ending to refresh your memory.

Click here for the ending.

So, Sucker Punch knew that they were going to have to make a sequel to the first game. With another Ray Sphere being let off in Empire and devouring John, and transforming him into the most powerful of conduits, The Beast was introduced only in visions in the first game through visions Kessler sent to Cole. Though being driven by good intention, Kessler's evil actions made it that he was committing mass murder, on Trish, and on civilization itself. Now, I'm going to go all science here, so keep up here kids. Obviously Cole's life would be in some sort of infinite loop where his path only leads to his past self killing his future self, so how does it come the first time around that Cole obtains the powers? How did future Cole know he possessed the conduit gene? So let's call the first timeline, the Kessler timeline, we'll refer to Cole in this timeline as Kessler.

(Red: Kessler Timeline -- Blue: Cole Timeline)

When we were shown Kessler's story in the first inFamous, he had married Trish and had already obtained his powers. We weren't told the story of how he obtained them, as shown in the diagram above with the question mark in the Kessler timeline. I'm only assuming here, Wolfe created the Ray Sphere and had been working with Agent John White, where he had discovered John had the conduit gene. The Ray Sphere was obviously developed in New Marais and originally delivered to John in Empire, where it was there deployed. With the events mirrored in the Cole timeline, the sphere devoured John and gave Kessler his powers. After some time, the Beast was born and killed many innocent's, including Kessler's wife Trish and their children. Now this is the part where I believe Kessler's plan and ambition fell into place perfectly without Cole even knowing it. Kessler sends himself on a one way trip back to the past where he works with Wolfe and the "FIRST SONS" (Cannon?) to develop the same Ray Sphere (that you see in the above timeline, the yellow line pointing to the Question mark from the Cole Timeline to the Kessler Timeline) that was delivered to John, but instead, Kessler hand delivers to Cole, knowingly, what powers it would give Cole. Now whether here Kessler's evilness hoped Cole deploying the Sphere would make him become 'The Beast' was unknown or unexplained, but still gave Cole the same powers he was given in the Kessler timeline, which was obviously a set conduit gene. Now at this time John, who had the set gene to become The Beast, was obviously not close enough to be devoured nor infected by the Sphere, but the main game timeline was then brought on. Still this does not explain how Kessler received his powers in his timeline in the first place? Was he close enough to the Sphere when it was first deployed in that timeline? How did his conduit gene get exposed? This we will never know for sure I guess. Still, somehow Kessler knew it was his destiny to become The Beast, and that's where we fast forward to the end of the Evil Ending of inFamous 2. See, I told you we were getting there.

If you can't remember the evil ending, or haven't seen it yet, scroll up and take a watch of it, then come back down here. Once John reappears in inFamous 2 and exposes to Cole that he is The Beast, he then asks for Cole's help to destroy humanity as the plague is already destroying them anyway, and those fortunate to hold the conduit gene shall survive the massacre. We see that John later submits to being The Beast as the massacre gets too much emotionally for him to deal with.  He then transfers all his powers to Cole which then, once again I believe, fulfills Kessler's destiny of Cole/Kessler becoming The Beast. May have been a different route, but we could have right there seen the birth of the new Kessler. Now with Cole at the helm of being the top conduit, we see they start to take over the world and start killing off humanity everywhere to create new conduits. This is now where we could see some sort of connection between Second Son and the main series. So another spoiler alert, we're about to start talking about the new main character, so click away if you don't want to be spoiled.

In inFamous: Second Son, we're introduced to Delsin Rowe, a 24 year old kid who believes his destiny is to be a "somebody". Growing up in Seattle, he witnesses events of a horrific bus accident which leads him to become a conduit which allows him to manipulate his body into smoke. It is unclear how he was able to expose his conduit gene here, or even if there is such thing as the conduit gene that's allowing Delsin to have these powers, but the assumption is that something on that bus, that is related to the events of the past two games, was there. Now this is where it gets even more interesting. The world is set 7 years after "The Beast" Cole McGrath. That's as far as we know about it. We have not been told whether The Beast was destroyed, how or even if the plague was stopped, as far as we can tell, Cole and Kuo could still be ravaging through the country killing humans and birthing conduits.  But as far as we know it's set in the distant future. Is this city we're seeing in the trailer Seattle? Maybe it's not? Maybe we're seeing a different part of the country? Maybe Delsin was "saved" by Cole and had been sent off to do his own duty? No that doesn't make sense. He found his powers by saving civilians... So how is this all so? Could Cole be going incognito? Could he have gone all Kessler on us? Been on that bus, purposely tried to kill those civilians (I mean we're talking about the evil karma path after all) to plan to expose Delsin's powers? We don't even know yet whether Delsin was a passenger, but there's a good chance he might have been. But how does Cole know if Delsin has the conduit gene? With Wolfe dead, and the First Sons nowhere to be found there was no real way of Cole knowing who has the Conduit gene. But, if we recall, Kessler does go back in time to work with the First Sons to develop the Ray Sphere, Wolfe worked with Kessler, thus Wolfe also telling Kessler who has the conduit gene and how they have it. Could we have a total loop here? Could we see Cole pulling a total Kessler? Could Second Son be referring to Cole working with the First Sons to create the Second Son? I mean, how does Cole's path of destruction on humanity come to some sort of halt? And sit idle for seven years? My belief is that Second Son is Cannon with the Evil Karma of inFamous 2. I think we could totally be seeing Cole jumping timelines again, going back, of course referring to himself as Kessler, and doing the same thing over.  BUT, because of the events of what's already happened we now have 3 alternative timelines. (My God this is getting way too nerdy for my kind of thing).

Now I was about to go back to draw up another diagram. From the break of that last paragraph to this one, I've been going completely mental trying to figure out how and why "Beast" Cole would go back in time to work with Wolfe to find out how, why and what the conduit gene is. I drew the whole diagram up on my whiteboard above my PC monitor and paced around my room here for a good hour. I tell you now, this is one of the most mind boggling articles I've ever put an effort into writing. But I stopped and said "This isn't my universe to be making up all these predictable stories or twists", one can predict, but there's a point where predicting becomes creating your own twist. You don't want to disappoint yourself if you build it up so much in your mind to the point where it doesn't become the way you wanted it, so I've just stopped. I'm just going to skip right to the point here with my Evil Side prediction.  What if New Kessler/Cole/"Beast" Cole is the new antagonist in this game and is trying to destroy humanity in the current timeline whilst going back in the same timeline as his future self trying to save it? Doesn't make sense right? What I'm saying is, what if all the events of Second Son has already happened with "Future Cole" and for some reason he has to come back because something drastic has happened in the distant future? Maybe Delsin has become another "Beast" and Cole goes back after seven years to give Delsin powers to stop the "Current Beast Cole" from killing off everyone and everything before it's too late? There's got to be a reason for that seven year absence. Why would Cole just go quiet for seven years? That's what's racking my brain here. Just wow, cant believe how in-depth I've gotten here. There has to be a reason for Delsin to get these powers, it simply can't be a bus accident, it has to be linked in with the main series, and has to do with Cole's new beast powers on the evil ending of inFamous 2. Well at least that's my prediction. If not, I'll be surprised on how Sucker Punch explains this. Can't wait.

What do you guys think?

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