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

[agentorange]

I fucking hate the term "immersive sim." Can we not just call them first person action adventures? Anything else. And yeah, especially now that Arkane is apparently being dismantled and turned into a mobile game/multiplayer game puppet studio by Bethesda, I don't see any similar games in the future. Indie alternatives are unlikely as well, since this genre in particular is one that takes too much manpower and pervasive detail for a very small studio to handle.

 

[Blaine]

Well, thanks to Prey, we could start calling them first-person homosexual adventures, because like in every game now at least 75% of the romantically involved couples portrayed in the story are gay or lesbian.

Yeah, don't think I didn't notice: Two lesbian couples, a gay couple, a possible closeted lesbian couple that shot themselves in a closet (innuendo? YOU decide), and also the main character has at least a 50% chance of being homosexual. Those are just the ones I noticed.

Very thankfully, this seems to be the only SJWing in the game. Then again, maybe it's a realistic future: Decades from now, feminism et al. have made heterosexual relationships so emotionally exhausting and legally and financially hazardous that everybody just swallows a gay pill. Safer that way.

 

[agentorange]

Maybe it's like Forever War and homosexual relationships are encouraged by the government in order to curb overpopulation.

 

[Blaine]

Maybe it's like Forever War and homosexual relationships are encouraged by the government in order to curb overpopulation.

Are you saying that homosexuality is a choice, bigot?

 

[Blaine]

The loot dump from Crew Quarters and now Cargo Bay... hugh literally wot m8?

I'm glad I saved every single round of pistol ammo in Morgan's office safe, because the fully upgraded Artemis with Combat Focus III and Security Weapons II can be used as essentially a pinpoint-accurate sniping minigun. You can even zoom in with the psychoscope, if desired, and I see the devs anticipated this since it reduces the visual accuracy indicator accordingly. Advanced phantoms? More like advanced decomposition phantoms.

Also, I have 1 human kill from somewhere. Don't care about achievements, but it's the principle of the thing. I'm no longer pure. No idea how or where it happened... possibly I hit a puppet by accident at some point?

Finally, the hints that IT'S ALL JUST A DREAM/YOU'RE IN THE MATRIX are impossible to ignore by now. Not sure how I feel about that. Usually, it's annoying. One thing I'm sure of is that Earth is already fucked, because it's impossible that these clowns have prevented all shuttles or debris from reaching Earth.

 

[Jaedar]

Also, I have 1 human kill from somewhere. Don't care about achievements, but it's the principle of the thing. I'm no longer pure. No idea how or where it happened... possibly I hit a puppet by accident at some point?

iirc I read somewhere that sometimes they just glitch out and die from the fall after you deal with them non-lethally (which is surprisingly realistic -maybe-)

Maybe it's like Forever War and homosexual relationships are encouraged by the government in order to curb overpopulation.

Are you saying that homosexuality is a choice, bigot?

With the right knowledge of biochemistry, it certainly can be for the guy in charge of the water supply.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Yeah... be prepared for the ending to go full .

It reeeeeaaaaallly jumps the shark.

 

[Blaine]

Yeah... be prepared for the ending to go full .

It reeeeeaaaaallly jumps the shark.

I bet. It's going to be bittersweet anyway, since we won't be getting any more proper Arkane games ever. Fortunately, I'm one of the (apparently rare) breed for whom regrettable endings don't retroactively ruin the entire experience.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Nah it doesn't ruin the game at all as it literally plays out like a coda/c&c recap, but it's pretty dumb, doesn't really make a helluva lot of sense, and doesn't (imo) take the franchise in an interesting direction. It's just sort of there for no reason.

 

[Blaine]

I long since saw that coming because of the many moral decisions with (usually) no immediate discernible effect and January's inevitable commentary thereof. It's clear there's some sort of test going on, and the vision flash after jettisoning from deep storage removes any doubts I may have had.

Awfully convenient too that the game starts with Morgan Yu stuck in a forgetfulness loop. My initial thought (after getting a ways into the game) was that Alex was essentially using the simulation as a prison loop to keep Morgan contained due to Morgan's opinion about The Truth, but now I think there's more to it than that.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Yeah the game really loses all sense of subtlety in the last third. I think my earlier comparison to James S.A. Corey is pretty apt there.

One thing that the ending does actually explain is

Spoiler

Why my female is a sexy 30ish bombshell and her brother is a 60ish morbidly obese man.

 

[Blaine]

Hey, Benedict Wong is the shit. He's the Chinese/Mongolian (looks proper Mongolian to me, but I'm no expert) equivalent of Danny Trejo.

Yeah, ugly-ass dudes can be cool screen stars. Suck it, women.

 

[Morgoth]

Most importantly, Wong has a great voice.

 

[fantadomat]

Did anyone else guessed the ending?

 

[agentorange]

I got an inkling early on that (real spoilers in here)

Spoiler

Morgan was herself a Typhon double, and that Earth may have been compromised by the time the game takes place, but the extent of the simulation surprised me.

Like any good twist it's one you can look back on and see it being foreshadowed from the outset.

 

[agentorange]

Why did you rate my post citation needed? What do you want clarified.

 

[Blaine]

Probably the foreshadowing you mentioned.

In any case, all of my human abilities are maxed, weapons maxed, shitloads of extra material left, the four turrets in the reactor room that I used lots of spare parts on (first time fortifying anything) were immediately hijacked and turned against me because fuck you we're a useless newbie trap you stupid fuck haven't you realized that by now, and I'm pretty sure I'll be finding out THE TRUTH soon.

 

[RoSoDude]

Probably the foreshadowing you mentioned.

In any case, all of my human abilities are maxed, weapons maxed, shitloads of extra material left, the four turrets in the reactor room that I used lots of spare parts on (first time fortifying anything) were immediately hijacked and turned against me because fuck you we're a useless newbie trap you stupid fuck haven't you realized that by now, and I'm pretty sure I'll be finding out THE TRUTH soon.

This the segment where you have to reboot the reactor? If I'm recalling the order of events correctly, prepare for a very boring backtracking slog through the entire station to perform dull fetchquest tasks and clear multiple objectives which feel like they should be the last thing you do, only to open up to several more hours of tedious running around. My recommendation is to sprint past enemies as quickly as you can and just get it over with, since you didn't take the opportunity to call it quits at the obvious bad ending.

 

[Blaine]

Yeah, well, I'm currently crashing every time I try to enter the Neuromod Division for that one late-game side quest. It's a common bug that was never fixed; the only workaround is to replace the saved game's map file of the Neuromod Division with a file from an earlier save, or a new game save. I've had five or six crashes over the course of the game, as well as various slowdowns that occur if you spend a lot of time in one level (worst was in the reactor, also a very common problem) that you have to reload from the main menu or restart the game to clear, but this one's a showstopper.

Joy. Honestly, at this point I might just read a synopsis/watch the endings on YouTube. It was a great ride while it lasted.

 

[sexbad?]

Probably the foreshadowing you mentioned.

It's very cleverly foreshadowed.

Spoiler

There is at least one hidden log that discusses Alex's attempts to introduce human mirror neurons in a Typhon creature. This is what he ends up doing to the player in the simulation.
The tutorial is also designed to test if the player has any instinctual desire to use their Typhon powers that they'd have outside of the simulation. At first I thought it was to test any powers that may be left over following Morgan's daily memory wipe. However, this doesn't hold that much weight because of how well established it is already that they'd definitely lose their powers. It's right from the start, the simulation is testing the player to see just how alien they are.
There's probably other stuff but I haven't played in a while, so I forget some specifics. I liked the ending for how it judged player choices in the context of the universe. The cutscenes for the ending choices were short and bad, but the sequel hook was pretty neat imo. Of course we'll probably never see a sequel where you play a Human-Typhon augment, but whatever.

 

[Blaine]

Yeah, I distinctly remember the chat/note about MNs, one of the most memorable bits of information you can find.

Anyway... what to play now, what to play... ah, I know!

 

[Blaine]

It's loading for me and remote servers can see it too, u wot m8? Your countries block puush or something? Anyway, I changed the host to shit imgur.

 

[Ash]

Still can't see shit. The Codex must not approve of whatever shit it is you want to play. Possibly Bioshock? I wouldn't be against censorship or nazist genocide of every instance of its name and actuality.

 

[Blaine]

Still can't see shit. The Codex must not approve of whatever shit it is you want to play. Possibly Bioshock? I wouldn't be against censorship or nazist genocide of every instance of its name and actuality.

I actually forgot to change the URL to the imgur URL. Probably puush's fault, as the image didn't load for me when I navigated back to the page just now. Fucking puush. Image hosts, they're a choice between a douche milkshake and a shit sandwich.

 

[fantadomat]

It loads for me fine.