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

HanoverF

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Prey is competently-executed :decline:. Sort of a cut-rate mashup of Deus Ex and Bioshock. Doesn't do anything at all new or interesting, just rehashes old, well-worn tropes and gameplay elements.

Someone didn't get a free copy...
 
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Narratively, it's pretty much the whole story which is affected. Basically you were in a sim and it ended with your jury giving you a verdict. Did Morgan Yu really exist, did things realy go as the sim suggests, were the characters you meet in such sim real or just based on gaben's sexbots ? It pretty much fucks everything up for no reason.

Isn't it spelled out by Alex at the end that Morgan and rest of the people really did exist and that simulation is based on actual real events? As far as which events really took place and which didn't is about as important to me as worrying which story branch is cannon in any game that gives choices to make within the narrative. I wasn't really bothered by the ending but then I'm not really invested in the story of this game either. When I play it I'm too busy killing/looting/upgrading to even pay attention to audiologs or read through all the emails. That part of the game just didn't grab me at all, unlike in SS2.
 
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I've always assumed that the point of the ending was as a sort of framing device/4th wall supporting reason to explain multiple playthroughs. If the Typhon fucked up they'll try again, if it did it "right" they'll see if its replicable.
 

Berekän

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It's the reasoning they use in the DLC where multiple playthroughs are mandatory, so it might not be that far off, but maybe they came to that realization afterwards.

My guess is they just wanted a shock ending, everything's fucked, that also tied nicely with the possibility of a sequel, already anticipating the shitshow of having to deal with the multiple possible endings of an earlier game.
 
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MajorMace

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Isn't it spelled out by Alex at the end that Morgan and rest of the people really did exist and that simulation is based on actual real events?
Yes but the whole thing being an experiment which aims at turning me into an ambassador for the humans, conducted by a dude who apparently was okay with sacrificing prisoners in order to create his neuromods, it's fair to assume the reality might have been slightly ajusted.
Don't tell me that sounds weird to you when learning that this whole thing was a simulation.

My guess is they just wanted a shock ending,
I believe the ending was also open enough for a sequel, but ultimately, if you remove this oh snap revelation, the ending is just you escaping/cleaning/destroying the station. I mean, yeah ok.
Wouldn't be surprised if it was also motivated by a certain will to hide the extreme misery of this final, very anti-climactic situation.
 
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Zombra

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Yeah, gonna go ahead and unsubscribe to the thread if y'all insist on posting unmarked spoilers. This "skimming the first 3 words of every post to see if it's safe" gets old.
 
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MajorMace

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Yeah, gonna go ahead and unsubscribe to the thread if y'all insist on posting unmarked spoilers. This "skimming the first 3 words of every post to see if it's safe" gets old.
My bad :oops:
If it does you any good, know that the gameplay makes the game worth it by itself, and the narration and freedom of exploration are more interesting than the actual story itself.
 
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Yeah, gonna go ahead and unsubscribe to the thread if y'all insist on posting unmarked spoilers. This "skimming the first 3 words of every post to see if it's safe" gets old.

If you simultaneously care enough about a game to get upset over spoilers and yet haven't played it in 2.5 years since it was released then you've made a mistake somewhere.

Darth Vader is Luke's father.
 
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Yeah, coming to a thread about a game that's been out for years and then getting upset about spoilers - 3000 IQ stuff right there. If you give a shit about things like that then just play the game before reading the thread.
 

RoSoDude

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It's unfortunately a casualty from the same good ol' plague affecting some seemingly interesting games, which I'm suspicious MCA is partly responsible of, here : a motherfucking narrative twist.
I can't even. Why ? Why are good settings, plots and stories thrown out the window for the sake of a ridiculous "oh snap" moment ?
In this case, it's even more baffling, as you can completely remove that fucking twist and IT WORKS JUST THE SAME.
Actually no, it works even better, because on a subsequent playthrough you're not convinced that none of this shit matters because it'll end with GabeN and his sexbots telling me what I did during the game.
I mean, it could be worse. Bioshock Infinite decided not to have characters or a logical plot after its great twist. Its twist was so powerful and oh snappy that it broke the whole narrative...
sigh

I disagree about the twist ending ruining the rest of the game's narrative. In fact, it was one of the few interesting moments in the entire story after the breaking of the glass in your apartment, which was promising but led nowhere. Once you watch the first half of your video diary in your office, you already understand the nature of the tests, the purpose of the Typhon, and the likely fate of the crew aboard Talos 1. All you learn after that is... more of the same? Alex teases the player with some potential character nuance but it all boils down to "I trusted your old self dawg it was you who told me to do this stuff idk". The setting and fiction are all super well-realized, but it's scant development and drawn-out intrigue for over 20 hours with minimal payoff. The stuff with Dahl wasn't too bad but the the game's pacing has already grinded to such a halt that it ends up as more of a chore than anything. The twist ending recontextualized the events in an interesting way with a metanarrative about the nature of player choice in games that's at least less hamfisted than Bioshock's and with an actual dose of self-awareness (it didn't break the fourth wall to call attention to the banal ultralinearity of contemporary first person shooters only to feature four more fucking hours of banal ultralinear mindless shoot 'n' loot that borders on self-parody). The premise of the commentary is that players tend to lack empathy for fictional entities in games just like the Typhon lack mirror neurons, and so the purpose of the Talos 1 simulation is to engineer situations that prompt and test the player's empathy for doomed characters who may even deserve their condemned fate. This video makes the argument better than I can:



I can agree that it can feel a bit deflating for a game focused on immersing the player in a fictional environment to call attention to the fact that you're just engaging with simulacrum, but I think Prey deserves some credit for what it tries to make of the idea. I'd much sooner criticize the the dull audio logs and lackluster story beats prior to the ending, because I struggled to engage with Prey's fiction over any of my three playthroughs, while games like Deus Ex still capture my attention with details that I overlooked even after I've thoroughly dissected that game.

Prey is competently-executed :decline:. Sort of a cut-rate mashup of Deus Ex and Bioshock. Doesn't do anything at all new or interesting, just rehashes old, well-worn tropes and gameplay elements.

False, Prey is :incline: with middling execution. The level design, weapon arsenal, and enemy roster give up halfway through, but the core of the game is a relatively principled Shock successor with a ton of emergent complexity and some genuine gameplay depth at times. There are a number of minor innovations with e.g. the Mimics, the multipurpose GLOO gun, and various systems interactions that I would have liked to see taken further, but still brought some fresh ideas to the table. A shallow eye candy romp through a haunted theme park it is not.
Yeah, that's what it wants to be seen as. :M
An it obviously is. There's shitton of direct parallels between Prey and SS2 (and that's even without the fanservice nudge nudge wink wink stuff like looking glass tech or gravshafts), but not really DE or Bioshock. Well, ok, with Bioshock there are, but that's only by proxy.

Prey's level design is very obviously inspired by Deus Ex, with a large degree of vertically connected spaces and paths through the levels gated by optional player abilities. I've previously argued that I don't think this hybridization was actually that effective since you don't make exclusive choices about how to carve a path to your objective like in DX, but rather scour an entire level for loot and key progression items like in SS2, whose levels were built with challenging choke points, hazards, and scripted ambushes to put the player on edge. I like that Prey gives the player the freedom to scout out obstacles and form plans to tackle them, but I think it could have pulled the rug out from under them more often, which is easier done when you know the path players will take.

What do you mean by "solid reactivity?" I agree about the first two but am less sure about the third, although I did only complete the game once. In my second run (as typhon) I didn't see much reactivity at all, but I only got about a third of the way through so it's likely I missed it.

(FWIW I don't consider a different epilogue sequence as reactivity.)

Prey keeps track of nearly every relevant permutation of interactions with NPCs in the story. If you pre-emptively kill January, December will be your guide through the game instead (though not as fully implemented as I'd have liked). You can fail to rescue Mikhaila and/or Igwe and dialogue will change. Go to the Cargo Bay early through the G.U.T.S. and Elazar will contact you to say the area is on lockdown. Most of it builds up to the presence or absence of some dialogue or event (e.g. you have to have rescue Igwe and incapacitate Dahl in order to escape on the shuttle, rescued characters will be on the shuttle, etc.), but the game still manages to make every accessible NPC mortal without breaking the story. Admittedly, they cheat by locking Alex in a panic room, but it's a nice effort towards handing the player the reigns.
 
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Zarniwoop

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After being critically hit for 300 dmg by that wall of text, all I can say is fuck you.

Prey's lame ass ending is the vidya game equivalent of How I Met Your Mother.
 
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MajorMace

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I think Prey deserves some credit for what it tries to make of the idea.
I wholeheartedly agree, and like you noted, what got me during the game was the focus on empathy. I didn't make the parrallel with the typhons then, read something on the web about it and went "but of course" later. But I did like the focus on empathy in regard of how the crew's fate was presented. The audio logs were dull, but I was avidly listening to any new one I'd find, because they also felt very believable. I do find most characters to be well written, and in the case of some well delivered as well (Alex Yu comes to mind). I do believe there was a choice at some point about these logs (and notes etc) : should we emphasize the atmosphere (horror or urgency etc) or the characters. And in the end they may have opted for the characters, which I greatly appreciate.
True that the story doesn't advance past the realisation of what's happened, but I felt it did leave place for another form of curiosity : as I progressed, I got more accustomed to some names, some crewmembers sticked out and as I met them, I really digged knowing more about what the fuck they were doing, how they reacted to the Yu's experiments etc. Same goes to the fate of that poor alcoholic fellow from Life Support who apparently fell in the eel tank while cleaning it following a strict procedure.
It's weird because I usually don't really care about these aspects of "world building", probably because Bethesda and others have fed me too much skeleton sitting in a rocking chair after the apocalypse, which is only there to make you think "hm this dude died in his rocking chair during the apocalypse" I mean yeah ok cool. But in Prey I took my time to explore the station and really appreciated all the details that went into designing it and into the crew's writing. I feel these two aspects really mesh together very well and Prey makes for an interesting first playthrough for me because of that.

Which is why I don't like the ending. The pathos I have for the station itself, as its own cosmos, kind of immediately vanished.
I'm not too much into meta-game design and mise en abime. I saw a post from Colantonio on reddit where he basically says that this was put at the very end of the development, that there were discussions in the team about whether it was too edgy or quite enough. He didn't say so ofc but, I still believe their motivation with this was mostly to pally the otherwise meager material for the "actual" ending.

Anyway thanks for your post, I appreciate the time you took good sir
 

JDR13

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The ending was disappointing. I'm surprised anyone would even attempt to argue otherwise.

That doesn't keep it from being a good overall experience though. Quality immersive sims are few and far between. We need more games like Prey. Unfortunately, the mosty-retarded mainsteam made sure we're unlikely to get a sequel.
 

LESS T_T

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I don't understand. Prey and Typhon Hunter are completely separated apps. (This is an update to Typhon Hunter/) There's no reason to update Prey to add something to Typhon Hunter. And Xbox One doesn't even support VR headset but got an 1.3GB update on the base game.

Maybe community manager confused or misinformed?
 

Lutte

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Maybe they removed denuvo? They removed denuvo from Dishonored 2 after all. Prey had yet to get the cleaning treatment.
 

Zenith

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Turns out the patch added some spyware.

Reminder that Bethesda were really fuckin' shifty regarding RedShell, when they said that it was in TES Online "erroneously" and made it harder to find in Quake Champions. In both cases when caught they removed it to save face, but said they were gonna enable it back anyway after the stink died down.

Literally, back then they said: "When/if we do add it back to the game, we’ll give everyone a heads up and explain what it is doing and how it is doing it". You be the judge if stealth-adding it under the guise of a "VR patch" for a dead MP mode and only editing in any mention of it two days later fits with the previous promises.
 

LESS T_T

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What's the point of adding telemetry to a commercially underwhelming game that only gets hundreds of concurrent players these days? As if they're making Prey 2.
 

Modron

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What's the point of adding telemetry to a commercially underwhelming game that only gets hundreds of concurrent players these days? As if they're making Prey 2.
Who knows Civilization 6 added a bunch of telemetry as well maybe publishers are getting good deals to add them to their entire catalog moving forward.
 

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