Cole facing Ground Zero days after the blast.
Ground Zero is the name given to the area where the Blast created by the Ray Sphere that devastated Empire City was activated, killing ten thousand innocents and destroying six blocks.
Story
inFamous protagonist, Cole MacGrath, wakes up injured in the middle of the crater generated from the explosion and is told by the police and his best friend Zeke Dunbar, to head over to Fremont Bridge and escape into the Neon District. Utilizing his parkour skills, he weaves his way through the parking lot adjacent to Ground Zero that now lays in ruins. His newly-discovered electrical powers go haywire. He accidentally destroys the bridge connecting the Neon District to the Historic District, using an as-yet uncontrolled form of Lightning Storm and falls into a coma for two days, as outlined in the Prequel Comic.
In the climax of the game, Cole confronts Kessler in a final duel at Ground Zero in retaliation for the latter's murder of Trish Dailey. When Cole downs Kessler, he shows him one of his advanced forms of the Psychic Vision power. Kessler is revealed to be Cole himself from the distant future, when he married Trish with Zeke as his best man only to have a powerful Conduit called The Beast kill his family and devastate Earth. He used his newest power of time travel to far back in time to take take over the First Sons, engineer and create the Ray Sphere, organize The Blast to give Cole is powers and prepare him for his ultimate battle with the unstoppable Beast.
There are also numerous Blast Shards hidden in and around Ground Zero, including the immediate area like the parking lot that Cole traverses in the Introduction.
In Infamous 2, Nix leads you out to the swamps where as quoted by Cole "A little piece of Empire City", fitting as it is a smaller version of Ground Zero.
Trivia
- Ground Zero (which may have been known as Cathedral Square before the blast) appears to be the only part of the city with a dead-end road. Looking at the city map in-game or the three district maps in this Wiki will show that all roads in the city, including bridges and tunnels, lead to an intersection or roundabout/traffic circle. The road within Ground Zero doesn't appear on the map but can easily be found in-game between the Staton Building and the bridge to the Neon. The raised section in the middle of the crater, where Cole wakes up, has a single yellow line that lines up with the others on the larger section of road leading to the bridge. It appears as though this road led directly from the bridge to the base of the Staton Building but it can't be properly determined where it went from there, as there are no other road markings within the blast area. There are no other roads leading in or out of Ground Zero and the only other gap that appears wide enough for a road, is next to the entrance ramp to the parking garage but that area is fenced off.