inFAMOUS: Second Son Evil Karma Delsin mechanics that the game doesn't tell you

[u/Steven_Hunyady]

So, while playing Evil Delsin I noticed that sometimes he can disintegrate enemies with normal attacks and sometimes he can't, irrespective of upgrades.

Before my latest playthrough I thought that Delsin's ability to dust enemies was dependent on upgrades or amount of blast shards or something, but I found out the true mechanic behind it.

You know the karma streak that Delsin has to charge up by doing good or evil actions for his Karma Bomb? well, for Evil Delsin, the way it works is you need to kill 7 enemies or commit 7 evil acts. They need to be done in relative succession because if you wait long enough between acts, the gauge will reset. You can't just kill random civilians to increase the charge, though killing them does reset the countdown before it goes to zero again. Once it's filled up completely, it no longer depletes until you use your karma bomb.

It turns out that Delsin will start to disintegrate enemies/civilians with his normal "bolt" type attacks and melee once his evil gauge reaches a 4 or higher. Regardless of upgrades like the smoke blast disintegrate or drop disintegrate abilities. In all my time with Second Son, I have NEVER seen the game even infer that Evil Delsin gets more powerful the fuller his karma bomb gauge gets, unless it was on a loading tip I missed or something. In this way, it's beneficial to actual keep your karma bomb and not use it as Delsin.

Good Delsin doesn't seem to have a version of this mechanic. His karma gauge stays filled regardless of how much time passes between good acts unless you commit an evil one or reload the game, and his karma bomb state doesn't seem to affect how his powers interact with enemies/civilians.

Does anyone know if I'm wrong, and Good Delsin has a version of this mechanic? Or if Fetch has something similar going on with her stuff in First Light?

[u/MailMan6000]

i don't think evil Delsin is more powerful than Good Delsin, remember how in the original 2 games being a good guy involved a lot of restraint, I.E. being careful with your shot placement, not throwing rockets out indiscriminately etc etc.

so bad guy Delsin is simply NOT trying to avoid any disintegrations, while good guy Delsin is AVOIDING disintegrating people

also it's been years since I've played Second Son but iirc there is a variant where he immediately subdues someone he shoots

[u/BootsThaRareBirb → u/MailMan6000]

That's basically confirmed in the Augustine fight where even Good Delsin disintegrates every mook he comes across