Arkane PREY - Arkane's immersive coffee cup transformation sim - now with Mooncrash roguelike mode DLC

[ciox]

I feel the game lacks a "cannon fodder" enemy type that would drain your resources while still being fun to fight.

Just wait...

You're talking about the military operators you can knock down like ragdolls with unupgraded melee attacks?

 

[Israfael]

Well, it's just O2 and weapons breaking that is missing for full experience, hopefully Arkane would release a patch or even a DLC that brings everything back. It's actually really interesting why they cut all that out, it seems game was designed around that (multiple licenses, lots of mats, O2 bottles and so on) and then they had to cut it and get this weird difficulty curve.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Honestly, I'm pretty sure the game is better off without the O2 limits, whatever they might have been originally.

 

[Hines]

Well, it's just O2 and weapons breaking that is missing for full experience, hopefully Arkane would release a patch or even a DLC that brings everything back. It's actually really interesting why they cut all that out, it seems game was designed around that (multiple licenses, lots of mats, O2 bottles and so on) and then they had to cut it and get this weird difficulty curve.

Someone recently uploaded a video of the various weapon jamming animations, so I would imagine a mod that enables them shouldn't be too far away.

 

[Jaedar]

Well, it's just O2 and weapons breaking that is missing for full experience, hopefully Arkane would release a patch or even a DLC that brings everything back. It's actually really interesting why they cut all that out, it seems game was designed around that (multiple licenses, lots of mats, O2 bottles and so on) and then they had to cut it and get this weird difficulty curve.

Someone recently uploaded a video of the various weapon jamming animations, so I would imagine a mod that enables them shouldn't be too far away.

At least some of those are not unused. If you get hit by electricity from a technopath, it can make your weapon jam. Happened to me plenty of times.

 

[SharkClub]

Honestly, I'm pretty sure the game is better off without the O2 limits, whatever they might have been originally.

The EXPLORASHUN outside of Talos 1 wouldn't be nearly as satisfying if you were on a timer every time you went outside, would probably be kinda shitty like Doom 3 rushing you through those outer areas, but I think it could work if it was only when your suit was damaged and leaking air and you had to get back inside before being allowed to use a suit repair kit or something like that.

 

[ciox]

Honestly, I'm pretty sure the game is better off without the O2 limits, whatever they might have been originally.

The EXPLORASHUN outside of Talos 1 wouldn't be nearly as satisfying if you were on a timer every time you went outside, would probably be kinda shitty like Doom 3 rushing you through those outer areas, but I think it could work if it was only when your suit was damaged and leaking air and you had to get back inside before being allowed to use a suit repair kit or something like that.

It would be a hell of a lot more balanced given the outside is full of goodies, that are often marked for you to boot (the corpses). I imagine it would be possible to upgrade your air consumption rate if you favor exploration with neuromods, with some professional swimmer's neurons or something.

For the oxygen consumption rate they had in mind originally, check this video, it always looked fine to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QCR6nOPOLc#t=6m45s

 

[Kem0sabe]

The EXPLORASHUN outside of Talos 1 wouldn't be nearly as satisfying if you were on a timer every time you went outside, would probably be kinda shitty like Doom 3 rushing you through those outer areas, but I think it could work if it was only when your suit was damaged and leaking air and you had to get back inside before being allowed to use a suit repair kit or something like that.

The space walks were satisfying?

I found them to be pointless and annoying, with little actual content.

 

[ciox]

They were ok once you had ARTX Propulsion Gen 1, faster speed made it not as boring and easier to crash if you weren't paying attention. Fights felt kind of stupid though, very easy to run away from the largely non-pursuing AIs and it felt pointless to fight them outside of the few that guarded something.

 

[SharkClub]

It would be a hell of a lot more balanced given the outside is full of goodies, that are often marked for you to boot (the corpses).

Wasn't entirely sure why the game automatically marks corpses for you, especially considering the existence of the in-game security computer tracking system which would have led to a more "organic" method of discovery of the floating corpses/loot caches, it would probably be a bit better if it was handled more realistically that way (the corpses being hard to find without use of the computer tracking system). It's also possible that the reason the corpses and hull breaches are marked in this way is because of the old oxygen system, they probably didn't want the average gamer floating around outside forever looking for shit they can't find without the 3d radar and losing all their oxygen.

For the oxygen consumption rate they had in mind originally, check this video, it always looked fine to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QCR6nOPOLc#t=6m45s

This sort of system tends to be a turn off/frustration for people though in that the player could seriously fuck up and be unable to continue playing the game if they didn't manage their oxygen correctly or quick saved while on low oxygen outside or something like that. In Doom 3 or Dead Space you are usually just funneled through these sorts of areas on a short oxygen-based time limit and are expected to get back inside before continuing the game but Prey actually has a number of objectives (including one of the final ones that is mandatory for one ending) that take place outside the station and you have to spend time flying around out there.

I think I'd like to try it along with the planning element of using the security computers to mark your objectives/floating corpses because it'd feel kinda strategic in that sense, though.

The space walks were satisfying?

I found them to be pointless and annoying, with little actual content.

Well the main purpose of them was for quicker movement around to different areas of the station but to say there was no content out there is a little disingenuous I think. There's quite a few hull breaches, floating corpses, jettisoned containers, shuttles, maintenance tunnels and other junk floating around out there, with some of the more powerful enemies hanging around these loot caches/hull breaches making for some more difficult zero-G fights. As a fan of jetpacking in video games I found the movement to be quite fresh, though I started encountering some weird bug/issue after one of the patches that made my jets just abruptly stop from time to time while maneuvering outside (it felt a lot better before that started happening, not sure what caused it because I don't think this happened to everyone when that patch dropped).

 

[Black]

Boy, I sure am glad that bethesda stepped in to deliver QUALITY and handed the game over to already neutered Arkane! Now just slap denuvo on it and watch as many Codex flies devour it.

 

[LESS T_T]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...ng_storytelling_and_player_choice_in_Prey.php

Developer Q&A: Balancing storytelling and player choice in Prey

Talos-1 runs on eels.

This large space station, setting to Arkane Studios’ recently released emergent sim Prey, deals with its residents’ effluent by sending it to large vats where it’s consumed by the things. When they’ve grown large enough, the eels are caught and butchered and their flesh is sent up to the station’s restaurant to be served back to the crew as sushi, setting up a self-sufficient cycle of energy.

“The way the station is laid out and the way you go inside and out of it, we really tried to think through the things it would actually need,” says lead designer Ricardo Bare. And this particular detail, well, it was inspired by Bare’s experiences with having a septic tank installed for his house, which opened up to him a world of drainage and seepage, and how it’s all founded on a careful balance of biological organisms to break down his own household’s waste.

“Of course, if you were a NASA expert you’d probably say that technically we didn’t have this and that in Talos-1, but we spent a lot of time on that level of detail,” Bare says. And the eels, as entertainingly gross as they are, are indeed emblematic of the thematic coherence of Prey’s world. This is a real place that makes sense. And it’s crewed by an equally coherent set of characters, most of whom are recently dead.

To play Prey is to pick through their last moments, as well as their lives and relationships with your character, Morgan Yu. Throughout Talos-1 lies a tangled web of timelines that record the events of the alien attack that has laid it to waste. And overlaying them is the web of keycards, clues and items that lead you through its different divisions and areas, from HR to the power plant, the cargo bay to the crew’s quarters, as you seek escape, or the station’s destruction.

“There were several junctures along the development of the game where we had to stop and get the timelines sorted, like, big time,” says Bare. “It’s not the kind of game where you come into the area months after the terrible thing has happened. It’s happening as you’re escaping, moments ago. You’re moving through the space station right after the wave of the alien terror, and it’s not even finished happening in some places.”

Talos-1 was destroyed with the same imaginative rigor with which it was put together. The level designers would sit with Bare and other members of the team to talk about exactly what happened when the aliens attacked, explaining precisely how that body ended up lying over there, and why that person hid over there. “We had level designers put timelines down for many of our spaces like that. Five minutes in, this guy did this; ten minutes in, this guy sounded an alarm; 15 minutes in, the security guard tried to set the turrets up.”

Consistency like this would be important for a game that can never know exactly when a player will come across things, and, indeed, whether they’ll ever notice or if they’ve made a choice that makes it irrelevant. For any conversation that a player can hear, Bare and his team had to work out what the player might have done before that point and how that might affect it, leading to many different permutations of situations in what seem like simple scenarios.

Take, for example, the three characters who can potentially be in Morgan’s office during the game. The robot January is there from the start, and later Mikhaila Ilyushin and Dr. Igwe can travel to it. Either could be first to arrive, and you may have decided, for whatever reason, to destroy January. So when they call you to give you an update, they might announce that there’s a wrecked robot there and ask what happened. Or there might be an operational robot and Dr. Igwe already arrived. Every permutation needs to be considered and written for.

Though it was greatly inspired by System Shock, Prey is a lot more open, its quests defining pathways that criss-cross the station. The main storyline takes a methodical route that visits each area in turn, but various side quests make interesting additional connections between locations, injecting them with storylines and character relationships.

To encourage these quest lines, each level designer was tasked with coming up with side quest that began in their level and ended in someone else’s. “One designer, Steve Powers, who’s been around since the Ultima days at Origin, came up with two characters from different departments who are stealing company secrets and selling them to competitors,” Bare says. “In order to do that, they’ve made a number of dead drops where one can make requests of things and the other hides them so they can be smuggled off the ship, and you can pick up on this and steal all the loot out of all the dead drops yourself.”

But Arkane never knows how a player will approach any given quest, when during their playthrough they’ll receive it, or when they start engaging with it. “You can have radically different experiences based on when you decide to go find the smugglers’ dead drop, and you can be anywhere on the space station when you take it on, and it might feel like you had to travel across the whole station, or you might be standing right on it,” says Bare.

And even then, the quest will feel different depending on the player’s general attitude. A completionist might view it as yet another fetch quest to be overcome before they can tick it off their list, but another player might find it an opportunity to revisit areas, encounter new monsters and discover they can get into areas they didn’t realize before. Some players might feel overwhelmed by learning about new characters and others might disregard it and feel there’s barely any story in the game.

But as much as Bare says he has no idea whether he and his team did a good job of managing the pacing of it all, it was all part of the plan. “We deliberately went for a strategy of allowing the player a lot of leeway and freedom in when they consume story bits,” he says.

And Arkane went a long way with this strategy. Some major elements of Prey’s overarching theme and storyline are seeded across Talos-1 in such a way that many players might never come across them or fully understand their meaning. But the sense of discovering these secrets for yourself and realizing that Prey’s narrative timelines are even more tangled than you thought is one of the game’s biggest delights.

One of the most impactful is in the Who Is December? side quest, which explains Morgan Yu’s true background. By the time it begins, we know that Neuromod experiments have been performed on her (or him, depending on which Morgan you chose at the start of the game) in the hopes of learning more about how they give humans new abilities. And we know that removing a Neuromod will wipe a person’s memory back to when it was installed, and that in the past she made an AI called January that’s fitted with her memories and personality in order to help guide her in the future.

But then December appears. Here’s what we discover during the quest (beware, spoilers follow in this and the next paragraph): December is another AI, built by Morgan before she built January. While January is guiding you to destroy the space station in order to prevent any chance of the aliens invading Earth, December wants you to simply escape. And since they’re both imprints of Morgan’s own personality, they’re illustrations of the way it’s been drifting between Neuromod experiments, at one time towards selfish behavior and at another towards sacrifice.

The quest leads you to several locations where clues to this history are hidden. In Morgan’s living quarters, there’s a computer where she’s been noting her relationships with other crew members in an effort to remember them between experiments. There are unfinished robot chassis in her office and room that show that she’s potentially made several AIs. In her brother Alex’s room there’s a safe with a series of recordings of her, and in the station counselor’s room there’s another recording in which you hear an evaluation of Morgan’s fractured psychological state.

Initially, this revelation was going to be made through a single audio log. “But then, as we started to play the game, we realized we weren’t driving home this theme hard enough; it wasn’t present enough,” says Bare. “Raf [Colantonio, Arkane president] was like, ‘Hey we should take that December idea, not just an audio log and a broken robot. Let’s put December in the game. You think you understand it’s just January and Alex, and then December calls you and you’re like, what?!’”

The details grew organically over the game’s development. Level designer Albert Meranda realized that Morgan’s office could be the location of the key to her quarters, and thought there could be a bag with supplies in to to suggest that she was preparing to escape. “You have to set aside the fact the player can do this at any moment, and instead just – at least the way I work – sort of flow-chart out the ideal path,” says Bare. “If I wasn’t distracted by anything and I had access to everything and I was following the clues, what are the five steps I would follow?”

Then from that skeleton they wrote the dialogue and set the objectives so they could follow it from start to end. “Now we go back to the beginning and throw in the permutations. What if January’s dead? What if I shoot December as soon as I meet it? What if I skip meeting December and instead discover the safe behind Alex’s Looking Glass first? And then you just have to start accounting for all those crazy out of order, sequence-breaking things the player might do and make it still work.”

Prey embraces the principles of the emergent sim, putting player choice above everything. But while that comes with the risk of players missing or forgetting key points, Prey’s world is built with the kind of consistency that allows you to trust in it, to relax, and know that if you want them, the answers are sure to be found in the details.

 

[Carrion]

Finished the game, liked it a lot. Maybe it's because I was mostly playing it for no more than an hour or two per day, but I didn't get the feeling that it dragged on for too long. The last few hours did feel very rushed, though, and the ending could've used a lot more build-up. The game tried to throw a couple of new things at you right near the end, but that stuff felt rather anticlimactic and something they came up in the last minute just to spice up the endgame. Endings are difficult to do well, and Prey's wasn't exactly terrible, just underwhelming.

Spoiler

Wasn't a fan of the post-credits twist, but I suppose it was more interesting than generic ending slides.

I guess the same could be said of the plot as well: it's not bad, just not that great either. I liked the writing overall, and all those little stories contained within the game were pretty interesting. I never felt bored by the audio logs or e-mails. What the game lacked was a proper plot hook that'd get you interested, or a really menacing villain, or an interesting mystery — just some kind of a driving force behind it all. You know almost right from the start what you need to do, and the initial mystery loses most of its impact right then and there. I also got the impression that the neuromods were there for exploring some central theme (like "what defines a person?", or even "what can change the nature of a man?"), but they never delved all that deeply into that. Still, the writing's definitely adequate for a computer game and very enjoyable all the way through.

I felt that the game was at its best around the middle (Arboretum, Crew Quarters), after you get out of the whack-mimic-with-the-wrench phase and get to fight stronger and more interesting enemies. That's when it managed to momentarily really grab me and keep me playing, and it lasted until Power Plant or so. After that you've seen most of what there is to see, so the exploration aspect inevitably wanes out a bit.

Mechanically there are definitely some missed opportunities. You have critical effects like fear and radiation poisoning, but those things are completely trivial. While healing items are relatively scarce (at least if you don't savescum too much), suit repair kits are abundant. Psi hypos I almost never used, although that's related to another issue that I'll go into shortly. Traumas and long-term injuries definitely would've been a welcome addition to the game. You can craft weapons multiple times, but why would you ever want to or need to? As it is, the survival elements are more of a spice than a central element in the game, which is a bit of a shame, because this would've been the perfect game for them. The psychoscope was also probably meant to be something more than it is, and the chipsets don't add a whole lot into the game.

A bit more could've been done with the different abilities as well. I think that security systems eventually turning on you is a pretty good tradeoff for acquiring alien powers, but the problem is that few of those powers really seemed worth it. The only one I really used was Mimic Matter, which got me pretty much anywhere I wanted to, even though I never even upgraded it. I also got Kinetic Blast but found it pretty much completely useless. The abilities definitely should've been more tempting in order to create a real dilemma for the player, because sticking with the human abilities seemed like a no-brainer to me.

Seeing other people on the station was refreshing, as I was initially expecting the game to take the System Shock 2 route and kill everyone. It's a bit of a shame they chose to go with a silent protagonist, though, as some NPCs have quite a bit to say, especially later on in the game.

The game seems really well optimized. I was running the game with a computer below recommended specs, and there was only one room in the entire game (the reactor) where the frame rate dropped noticeably. Aside from that it ran smoothly and without issues except for some rare and almost unnoticeable texture popping. The game never crashed either, and I only encountered a couple of minor bugs or issues, the only annoying ones being NPCs sometimes talking over each other and certain inventory items not stacking properly (although you could fix it manually or by autosorting). Can't really ask for much more from a technical perspective, but that's just my experience.

All in all, I don't really have any major complaints aside from maybe the rushed endgame. There are things that could've been developed a bit further, of course, and the game probably would've been better off without certain modern features. The quest compass isn't really necessary, and arguably there are some places where its use is justified (tracking down crew members), but I wish they had taken the old school route without compromise. I also don't know why every game must have a goddamn hacking minigame. It doesn't add anything to the game, especially since it stops time and the punishment for failure is almost nonexistent. It should've worked like repairing does.

The game is solid all around, but it doesn't do anything exceptionally well. The classics that influenced it are in many places more flawed, but they usually either do something better than anyone else or are based on a highly original idea that no one has done before. Prey doesn't rise into that category, but it's still a lot of fun and in my books certainly one of the best first-person games of the last decade or so.

 

[Grotesque]

is the bug where the game is resetting after visiting the Arboretum fixed?

 

[DeepOcean]

I guess the same could be said of the plot as well: it's not bad, just not that great either. I liked the writing overall, and all those little stories contained within the game were pretty interesting. I never felt bored by the audio logs or e-mails. What the game lacked was a proper plot hook that'd get you interested, or a really menacing villain, or an interesting mystery — just some kind of a driving force behind it all. You know almost right from the start what you need to do, and the initial mystery loses most of its impact right then and there. I also got the impression that the neuromods were there for exploring some central theme (like "what defines a person?", or even "what can change the nature of a man?"), but they never delved all that deeply into that. Still, the writing's definitely adequate for a computer game and very enjoyable all the way through.

Felt on a similar way but I think this game has serious problems in terms of pacing and storytelling, it was so bad that pretty much killed alot of my curiosity on keeping playing. I played Prey on short bursts too but, on my case, I just couldn't withstand the blandness. Not that Arkane was ever known of creating the best stories or characters around, they are pretty bland with their robotic monotone characters but this wasn't that mostly made me bored, I expected Arkane to be shitty at this and they delivered on my very low expectations, I was just disappointed with another thing...

Playing as Mr. Repairman was boring as shiet, compare this game start with some game like Dishonored 1, you had the very first assassination with you: a)Doing nothing and letting the Overseer Campbel to poison Callista's uncle, b)Changing the poison on the glass cups and making the overseer getting poisoned with his own poison but then Callista's uncle is assassinated by Campbell's bodyguards that enter on the room right afterwards, c) Getting rid of the poison entirely forcing the overseer to try luring Callista's uncle into his secret sanctuary to murder him, d)Capturing Campbell and branding him with the heretic's brand. Is all of this filled with amazing, well written characters? No. The characters on Dishonored 1 suck ball big time, however the options available to deal with them are pretty interesting.

Not mentioning that on the way to the Overseer HQ, you can explore the house of a mad doctor experimenting on the plague, try to raid the safe on an abandoned house that belongs to an artist, meet a crazy cat Lady with very strange powers, meet with the totally not irish gang boss and his gang, all optional but pretty great little moments.

What you do on Prey? You go to the Hardware labs because your brother is tying to fucking you up by sabotaging the computer system, you get there and press a button, computer system fixed, now you need to go to the psychotronic section, why? Because you need to go through there to reach the maintenance tunnels. You get on the Arboretum, why? Because you need to get to the Deep Storage but to get to the Deep Storage, you need to go to the crew quarters and collect multiple voice samples of some random scientist you really don't know anything about...

Mah God, so much busywork that can drive you insane... I know that Prey isn't a mission based game like Dishonored 2 but ohh boy, doing all this busywork for hours with the only things happening is your brother sending you messages that boil down to "Sorry bro, fucked you up for SCIENCE! You really is misunderstanding me even if I don't bother explaining myself to you!". Why nothing noteworthy happened on about 10 hours of gameplay?

I felt that the game was at its best around the middle (Arboretum, Crew Quarters), after you get out of the whack-mimic-with-the-wrench phase and get to fight stronger and more interesting enemies. That's when it managed to momentarily really grab me and keep me playing, and it lasted until Power Plant or so. After that you've seen most of what there is to see, so the exploration aspect inevitably wanes out a bit.

Did you notice the big difference on quality of the level design between the maps? Some levels like Hardware labs and psychotronics are very straightforward, way too linear and without much creativity while other levels like The Arboretum are just crazy packed with detail and verticality. It is a pity that the Arboretum and maybe a few other maps are the only ones that come even close to the complexity of a Dishonored 1 and 2 level. Many levels on Prey felt more like incline Bioshock than something on the same level of Dishonored levels, especially on the mimic whackamole phase on the start of the game.

 

[Astral Rag]

 

[Darth Roxor]

My favourite mirrors in Prey are the ones in med bays, or the visor of the astronaut helmet in the lobby museum, where there's just a smudgy static "reflection" of the room applied to the surface and that's it.

 

[ciox]

My favourite mirrors in Prey are the ones in med bays, or the visor of the astronaut helmet in the lobby museum, where there's just a smudgy static "reflection" of the room applied to the surface and that's it.

Those are just cube maps which have been standard in games for a long time, I also thought it was a really token effort since it didn't add anything to the immersion.

I recently noticed Bioshock 1 ACKSHUALLY had accurate reflections on stuff like water, everything that could move around or particle effects etc were all reflected, obviously the game was still weird about mirrors because you didn't have a character model let alone any character animations, so it relied on only very distorted reflections like water to hide that

 

[Ash]

OK, yeah, I also recommend this game so far. It's still rather compromised and missing the true design of the classics, and there's a lot of wasted potential, yet it's a lot better than all the other neutered Immersive Sims from LG's descendants of the past decade, from Dishonored to the truly abysmal Bioshock.

Regarding mirrors: the game actually seemingly has a animated third person model to some degree, presumably solely so it casts a shadow? Anyhow, the reason mirrors are not used must be simply because rendering everything twice is potentially far too costly, perhaps in addition to skimping out on fully animating the third person model and all possible interactions in great detail. Very reasonable. What's not so reasonable is how often they throw non-functional mirrors in your face, but it's really a minor thing.

 

[LESS T_T]

Interestingly Harvey Smith recently talked about the paradox of mirrors in modern games (12:14):

 

[Israfael]

I recently noticed Bioshock 1 ACKSHUALLY had accurate reflections on stuff like water, everything that could move around or particle effects etc were all reflected

Bioshock 1 had forward rendering system, so nothing actually prevented it from using the actual mirrors. Why they did not do it, it's a mystery, but Levine seems to be a sort of irrational person when it comes to non-narrative things, eh

 

[Ash]

Well that went downhill fast. This game is pissing me off now.

1. All the neutering is very apparent. Fabrication license limits removed. Wep degradation removed. Suit integrity influencing oxygen levels removed. Status effects removed. Such things would have made the game generally a lot more engaging, and make all this constant loot micro-management and exploration actually worth it. Speaking of:

2. Micro-management and exploration gets tedious. 95% of the game you're looting trashcans and supply crates and reading boring emails...for nothing. I'm starting to avoid content because there's no need, and that's just not how it should be. There's operators everywhere. I have 120 food items, 30 medkits (not even upgraded med kit efficiency once), and 60 suit repair kits. The general gameplay is not working in tandem due to a lack of challenge, neutered game systems and a lack of pacing. Where's all the enemies at? No pseudo-random respawns like Shock 2? Aside from the nonthreatening mimics and the invisible phantoms this is so predicable and bland. It's the same every time: there's a Typhon or two patrolling the centre of a large room/corridor, you kill it in five seconds, then spend the remainder 95% of the time reading all the emails and looting all the garbage, rinse and repeat. The game never even surprises you with scripted enemy placement, like say a typhon locked in a cargo container that jumps out when you hack it open.

3. RPG systems and replayability: modern RPG design strikes again. With the ability to be able to get all or nearly the neuromods and all the upgrade kits in one playthrough, in addition to all this other bullshit I predict very little reason to play the game again, unless they release a fulfilling patch or someone with good design sensibilities mods this game and makes it wholesome. And of course you become an absolute god quite fast and it wrecks challenge.

4. The hacking mini-game? Surely they had the idea to include moving obstacles, target areas that shrink in size, maybe a pacman style ghost that chases you around? Do you just hate fun and derive sadistic pleasure from boring players to death, Arkane?

5. Art direction excess/excessive clutter. Ultra detail + cluttered levels + primary focus on loot whoring and micromanagement is so draining. New Vegas gets it right so it's not purely a old school vs modern thing, it's a result of art obsession and ultra detail in every damn level. Major Exception: the Arboretum. This level is not a maze of crates, trashcans, lockers and whatever else. Still a visual splendour, but it was 100% enjoyable to explore due to clear intuitive visual communication of what is worth hovering your crosshair over and what is not.
As a result of this obsessive art approach object highlights and objective markers arguably become necessary. And my god the markers are extra annoying in this game, such as disappearing when you get close, there's hundreds of them yet they're vague in the information they provide (textually) so it can be confusing which is actually relevant...there can be so many quests active at any given time that you feel like you're playing shitty borderlands or Elder Scrolls.
So, they're needed Arkane? Why not make them actually meaningful? Say a limited inventory item you can use that provides quest tracking temporarily when used? This would avoid bombarding the player with so many markers and encourage actual use of his or her own navigation skills while still offering the occassional free pass should the player feel they need it. Definitely an interesting middle ground, though also perhaps only interesting on paper.

6. Weapon variety or lack thereof. It's been said before. Another reason not to replay the game. I'm finding them boring even on my first playthrough.

7. The enemies in concept. It's been said before. Horror multiplies immersion substantially, and adds something special of its very own. You wanted to innovate/not tread old ground with the failed biological experiment route and the like, fair enough. The result is just a little underwhelming.

8. The plot. Also has been said before. This isn't like Shock 2 or Deus Ex where you're on the edge of your seat completely engrossed from start to finish. This is like in Dishonored or a Bethesda game where NPCs are so bland, boring and meaningless that you do not value them as virtual entities; they talk and you find yourself filtering them out.
Who else was thoroughly enthralled and engaged by the cutesy lesbo love story? The Cook subplot? The every day lives of half the staff in general as told by email?
Remember those people held up in the cargo bay? They were boring me, the gameplay was boring me, so I cut the leading lady off mid-sentence with a shotgun blast to the face and then murdered all the rest. I could not care less for their plight. It's mostly the gameplay's fault though. I put up with anything happily if the gameplay is rock solid.

9. Audio design and music. I went into this before. The music is at times bland, other times downright annoying. The audio cues can also be just too much, but that is also something that has seen plenty criticism already. Many sound effects in general equate to ear rape.

Second take on the recommendation: play up until you complete the Arboretum, then just quit because it goes from a 8.5 or 9/10 to 6.5/10 pretty quickly. Challenge declines, shit gets repetitious, all the wasted potential becomes apparent. It's better than most garbage these days, but honestly though? Think I'd rather replay Dead Space over this. It's all about design and execution. Complexity doesn't mean much when it's intentionally neutered with poor execution and/or pandering design, the prime example of this being Bioshock or Skyrim. Dead Space may be simpler than both, but the game design is synergistic. The king is still Shock 2 though, and Arx Fatalis still the best Arkane game.

Bear in mind this is an angry write up which I rage quit late in the game out of disappointment to post. And this is without going into all the little design intricacies that make the likes of Shock 2 plain superior. There's lots of things about PREY I'd love to praise too, but I'm not in a merciful mood. Overall it's more good than bad, and the recommendation to play probably still remains. The first 1/3 of the game in particular was great, but much doesn't hold up to scrutiny and Arkane wouldn't deny it without considering themselves disingenuous.
Yet another game not living up to the legendary classics all things considered. What's it going to take?

Many gameplay problems can and should be addressed with a patch, if they're very thorough. A lot of games have been doing that lately, patching in actual brain engagement. Better than nothing and an improvement over the last decade of utter disregard/disrespect for gameplay in general, I suppose.
Story, music, non-threatening atmosphere etc is probably unsalvageable, but the gameplay probably is salvageable and is also probably worth attempting to salvage. Do it Arkane.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Remember those people held up in the cargo bay? They were boring me, the gameplay was boring me, so I cut the leading lady off mid-sentence with a shotgun blast to the face and then murdered all the rest. I could not care less for their plight.

We failed. This isn't the one.

Start over.

 

[Ash]

I actually am aware

Major spoiler:

Spoiler

It's all a simulation and I'm meant to empathise with humankind. Which I quite like. Shame the concept is let down by the boring characters, boring gameplay, lack of immersion etc...

oh, speaking of I never went into immersion and how all the annoying audio design constantly takes you out of the game (e.g objective complete sound effect. Operator deployment machines which don't shut the fuckup and are really loud), the annoying objective markers, the constant non-functional mirrors, the annoying prompts which you inevitably disable...and 100 other things nagging you which prevents the game being as immersive as it could be. Sad that there are plenty third person games (e.g Dead Space) that are more immersive than something actually striving to be an "Immersive Sim".

 

[Ash]

Remember those people held up in the cargo bay? They were boring me, the gameplay was boring me, so I cut the leading lady off mid-sentence with a shotgun blast to the face and then murdered all the rest. I could not care less for their plight.

We failed. This isn't the one.

Start over.

You know, that's a good point.

Spoiler

If you kill all those people in the cargo bay surely they'd consider the learned empathy experiment a failure and pull the plug on the simulation? They do so if you enter the escape pod and abandon ship, which is possible before even entering the cargo bay. Surely mass murder equates to worse/a complete lack of empathy than simply abandoning ship cause you're a pussy/don't care? Inconsistency much? Of course Arkane in LG tradition are against plot-derived fail states if they can help it but here it actually makes sense to do so.