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Heroes Question about Sylar's powers

So, did we ever find out if Sylar had partial healing powers prior to gaining Claire's regeneration abilities?
 
You know, I really wish Peter didn't absorb other powers so easily. Common sense would have him single-handedly solving every problem without breaking a sweat. But they have to dumb him down to move at the speed of plot.

Maybe allow him to keep powers of relatives, that's one thing. But what if he only got to keep other people's powers if he was around them when they died? That might bring about an interesting Syler-esque scenario. He needs someone's help for a crisis but the superhero won't go along with him... would he kill him to take his power to save people?
 
I just don't get how Syler can rewire himself; there's a big difference between knowing how something works and actually rebuilding yourself to mimic that knowledge.

That's why I think he has to have a shapeshifter ability, even if it's limited to his own brain.
I don't think there's any physical reconfiguration of his brain involved--I think it's more a matter of psychosomatically tapping into the part of the brain that activates a certain power...once he "sees" how to do it in someone else's brain, he can fire up the right neurons to do it himself. Think of it as if he has Peter's power, but he has to know how the power works and consciously activate it, rather than unconsciously absorbing it.

Remember, he was talking about the untapped potential of the brain with Claire.
 
You know, I really wish Peter didn't absorb other powers so easily. Common sense would have him single-handedly solving every problem without breaking a sweat. But they have to dumb him down to move at the speed of plot.

It's worse than that, with Hiro's Time Travel and Claude's Invisibility, he should be able to aquire anyone's power, at any point in time. Just go back to the Vegas Hotel when Linderman is in the kitchen and you got Healing.

Of course I can imagine his mom going over the company files; "Doesn't anyone have Super-Intelligence and Super-Comon Sense Peter can mimic?"
 
You know, I really wish Peter didn't absorb other powers so easily. Common sense would have him single-handedly solving every problem without breaking a sweat. But they have to dumb him down to move at the speed of plot.

They need to bring back the idea from S1 that Peter's health deteriorates if he gains & uses too many powers. That will inhibit him from using them except in true emergencies. "Big" powers like time travel and controlling people's wills, which would allow easy solutions to problems, should have the biggest cost. The solution is staring the writers right in the face! I'm not sure they're even aware they have a problem...

I don't think there's any physical reconfiguration of his brain involved--I think it's more a matter of psychosomatically tapping into the part of the brain that activates a certain power...
"Psychosomatically" sounds like what I mean by shapeshifting - he wills something in his brain to change to get the powers to work. There has to be something physical happening in the brain for the brain to do anything. Either he changes the neurons physically or possibly, he already has the "right" neurons, which are normally dormant and just needs to activate them.

So he could activate powers simply by thinking about them, once he recognizes them in another person's brain and realizes he has the same neurons. In that case, there's no shapeshifting but it would require that he have the "right" neurons already in his brain for every possible power, but is there a finite number of possible powers? And it's awfully convenient that he happened to be born with them. Plus, he'd still need an "additional power," a form of remote viewing (so he can view his own brain and know what's in there) in lieu of shapeshifting, so why not just ditch all the complication and give him shapeshfiting as one simple ability.
 
Like I said, I think he's basically wired the same way as Peter, but with the limitation of having to "see" how the power works in someone else.

In computer terms, his hardware is already there, he's just downloading software.
 
If they had kept Peter's powers to proximity borrowing, that would've been better for storytelling purposes, provided of course they were actually capable of telling the story.
 
^He would have been useless and season one couldn't have worked if he'd had to be around Ted Sprague and Claire at the same time.

Having a character like Peter is like the Justice League having Superman or The Sentry being an Avenger - what do you need the rest for when he can beat them all ? Yet, somehow it works.
 
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