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

[Lyre Mors]

At this rate I'm starting to think Bethesda is considering shutting Arkane down.

Wouldn't be surprising, considering Bethesda is going the way of EA. Time to take the under-performer behind the shed. Wish Arkane would have never become attached to such a horrible company.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

At this rate I'm starting to think Bethesda is considering shutting Arkane down.

...?


I think the writing has been on the wall there for quite some time. Mooncrash was very likely Arkane's 'Hail Mary' and it flopped.

 

[LESS T_T]

Why would they shut Arkane down? Arkane are competent studios that can put out games with high production quality. Beth must have invested a lot in building up two Arkane studios. (And they're still actively hiring.)

If anything, recent underwhelming performances (and departure of Raf) give Beth more reasons to meddle with them, to make more marketable games, rather than outright shutdown.

 

[Big Wrangle]

Beth must have invested a lot in building up two Arkane studios.

What are you talking about? Arkane Austin was established in 2006 way before Zenimax grabbed them. You make a fair point on the other aspects, though I suppose Harvey Smith wouldn't like that and depart as well. Not that they'll care much, anyway.

One could say that, ironically, Fallout and Elder Scrolls making too much money is what helps ensure Zenimax subsidaries to stick around despite commercial "failures."

 

[LESS T_T]

Beth must have invested a lot in building up two Arkane studios.

What are you talking about? Arkane Austin was established in 2006 way before Zenimax grabbed them.

They were smaller (and on verge of collapsing) before the acquisition. They become two studios capable of making two AAA games in parallel after the acquisition. (Also both Lyon and Austin studios moved to new offices.)

 

[Big Wrangle]

Oh, so that is what you meant. That one's on me, my bad. Kinda makes it funny when people wish Arkane never met Bethesda after the 3 scrapped projects.

 

[Don Peste]

But who are they looking to appeal with hats and skins? Youtubers, streamers?

 

[Big Wrangle]

Actualy, I do recall Harvey Smith posting about hiring engineers a while back for a new project. It's likely they're just keeping the art people active to an extent, and not really banking on something.

 

[Zakhad]

Skins are very cheap to make and the constant updates remind people that prey exists?

and yea, I'm sure some streamers will like it.

Honestly I'm surprised that they didn't do multiplayer with Mooncrash, since they're doing a multiplayer mode anyway... Would have helped sales, I'd think.

 

[Hines]

and yea, I'm sure some streamers will like it.

Streamers will start liking it 16 months after launch? Fuck that's optimistic. I can't see how a late addition prophunt multiplayer mode to a DLC that, judging from the meager amount of coverage and Steam reviews, didn't sell well will be anything other than DOA. Arkane won't be shut down (they have heaps of senior positions available across both studios), but Mooncrash was clearly a way to safely test a style of immersive sim they can build upon for their future multiplayer-centric games.

 

[Arnust]

But who are they looking to appeal with hats and skins? Youtubers, streamers?

I found the skins pretty neat as another unlockable for the roguelite mode, and especially there where you'll have a use for different copies of the same weapon, I used the skins to distinguish what were they for and whatnot so I didn't have to memorize. And as Zak said, they're sonething to keep the artists busy with to a relatively low effort addition that doesn't really take away from it.

 

[Zakhad]

and yea, I'm sure some streamers will like it.

Streamers will start liking it 16 months after launch? Fuck that's optimistic. I can't see how a late addition prophunt multiplayer mode to a DLC that, judging from the meager amount of coverage and Steam reviews, didn't sell well will be anything other than DOA. Arkane won't be shut down (they have heaps of senior positions available across both studios), but Mooncrash was clearly a way to safely test a style of immersive sim they can build upon for their future multiplayer-centric games.

I didn't say, "this is a smart tactic that will really reverse the game's fortunes", or "a load of really popular streamers will play it now". Just meant that some streamers probably will, because some already are, and it's the kind of thing they like to comment on, funny skins etc.

 

[Hines]

There was a Quakecon panel today discussing Prey's recent Mooncrash DLC and the upcoming Typhon Hunter update, but I'm unsure if it was streamed anywhere.



IGN interviewed Bare about the DLC:

Prey’s Mooncrash DLC randomizes its rooms and item placements to turn Prey into a roguelike experience, but developer Arkane Studios tells us some of that procedural generation was almost in the base game as well.

Speaking with IGN at QuakeCon 2018, Prey Senior Game Designer Ricardo Bare said that Mooncrash’s randomized room conditions were initially designed to be part of Prey’s campaign. They would have made it so different rooms along your path would have random states, like being on fire or out of oxygen.

“It wouldn’t have worked as well in Prey because most people don’t even play a single-player game all the way through,” Bare explained. “Most people just wouldn’t even get the payoff for that. They’d just be like ‘oh, it’s on fire, and I’m never going to see this room ever again.’”

He continued by saying that it works well in roguelike experiences like Mooncrash because “you walk through the same space many many times, so you get the payoff of like ‘oh my gosh, this time the power is off! Oh my gosh, this time it’s on fire!’”

http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/08...ized-levels-were-almost-part-of-the-base-game

 

[Big Wrangle]

Prey Senior Game Designer Ricardo Bare said that Mooncrash’s randomized room conditions were initially designed to be part of Prey’s campaign.

This certainly explains why Mooncrash was so smooth.

 

[Nano]

Speaking with IGN at QuakeCon 2018, Prey Senior Game Designer Ricardo Bare said that Mooncrash’s randomized room conditions were initially designed to be part of Prey’s campaign. They would have made it so different rooms along your path would have random states, like being on fire or out of oxygen.

“It wouldn’t have worked as well in Prey because most people don’t even play a single-player game all the way through,” Bare explained. “Most people just wouldn’t even get the payoff for that. They’d just be like ‘oh, it’s on fire, and I’m never going to see this room ever again.’”

I hate this approach to game design. Why do you some developers have to make sure players see as much of their game's content as possible? Can't they just have these details in for the players who would notice it?

 

[Ash]

Well, not when it comes to a game like PREY in this context. It's a 13-18 hour game. Having heavy procedural elements would be shit (highly optimised hand-crafted level design is better) and take a lot of time to implement across the whole game, only for 90% of players to not benefit from it. I agree not all content should be for the majority and only for the observant hardcore or fanboys, but the procedural gen is one of mooncrash's design focuses and selling points, which therefore should definitely be for all players. We're not talking minor elements here, procedural generated level design to a high degree all across the whole game is a big deal.

It's the procedural shit that puts me off playing Mooncrash. My preference is that they just made a longer, more wholesome DLC than a short, dynamic "replayable" one. Especially for an "Immersive Sim" with RPG elements and a heavy focus on exploration. But maybe I should jump in regardless and see if they were conscious of the pitfalls and had a solution. I may do that today actually, only because I want some friends of mine whom are Bioshock fanboys/girls that would never play SS2 to see a closer glimpse of how shit is actually meant to be done.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Well, not when it comes to a game like PREY in this context. It's a 13-18 hour game. Having heavy procedural elements would be shit (highly optimised hand-crafted level design is better) and take a lot of time to implement across the whole game, only for 90% of players to not benefit from it. I agree not all content should be for the majority and only for the observant hardcore or fanboys, but the procedural gen is one of mooncrash's design focuses and selling points, which therefore should definitely be for all players. We're not talking minor elements here, procedural generated level design to a high degree all across the whole game is a big deal.

It's the procedural shit that puts me off playing Mooncrash. My preference is that they just made a longer, more wholesome DLC than a short, dynamic "replayable" one. Especially for an "Immersive Sim" with RPG elements and a heavy focus on exploration. But maybe I should jump in regardless and see if they were conscious of the pitfalls and had a solution. I may do that today actually, only because I want some friends of mine whom are Bioshock fanboys/girls that would never play SS2 to see a closer glimpse of how shit is actually meant to be done.

I think at the very least you would appreciate that they were trying to do something new and innovative with Mooncrash. There is nothing else quite like it out there.

That said, as I noted in mini-review earlier ITT, there are some boneheaded design decisions that compromise on and often hamstring Arkane’s Ambition, most significantly the total joke that is Simpoint economy and the subsequent lack of any meaningful difficulty in the DLCs second half. Give it a try though, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

 

[RoSoDude]

Mooncrash's procedural elements aren't just there for muh replayability, at least not in one sense -- one full playthrough of Mooncrash will necessarily involve a good few resets, and this is a good thing. Arkane's clearly been wanting to do this for a while (f***ing randomized bone charms), but this time they really go all out on it and stick the landing. By incorporating some of the roguelike formula into hand-crafted Immersive Sim level design with the existing gameplay systems, Mooncrash is procedural enough to fill every reset with a unique set of challenges but not so procedural that it's clear no one actually bothered to make levels. All the hazards are still hand-placed, but their combination is randomly determined. It actually reminds me of the combination of scripted and respawing enemies in the System Shock games (oh yeah, enemies repopulate rather frequently as the timer goes up in Mooncrash, by the way), and the reuse of space recalls the better moments of backtracking in those games. The DLC should really be thought of as a single overarching experience with dynamic level obstacles and hardcore player respawn, rather than as a procedurally generated mini-level with permadeath that only warrants a replay to try get your money's worth.

...but it's also true that viewed cohesively, the latter half of a Mooncrash playthrough is too easy. It's why my own interest started to wane after unlocking all of the characters and doing most of their side objectives and why I still haven't finished it despite my praises during the first half (that and I've been busy and have had limited access to my PC, as I've not played any other games in the interim either). It's not really the fault of the level or encounter design stagnating or becoming too predictable -- as you complete objectives, more hazards are added on top of the fact that you end up spending more time on the higher corruption levels trying to get multiple people through on a single reset. Rather, as several of us have noted, the meta-level player progression is excessive. Thankfully this is the part that's easiest to self-restrict, but as always, WHY. At least I never found the fabrication plan for the timer delay, which is what really messes things up. It's very fair as an in-world item to find in loot caches or by killing tough enemies, but it's broken as a purchaseable item because the prices are so damn low. It's weird, because the crafting resource economy in Mooncrash is scarcer than ever.

 

[Zakhad]

At least I never found the fabrication plan for the timer delay, which is what really messes things up. It's very fair as an in-world item to find in loot caches or by killing tough enemies, but it's broken as a purchaseable item because the prices are so damn low. It's weird, because the crafting resource economy in Mooncrash is scarcer than ever.

Agree with this. Simply making the loops non-craftable would fix a huge amount of the late-game balance.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I disagree that the fabrication for the time loop is the chief problem. I barely used it (maybe once?), and still found the second half way, way too easy.

 

[Morgoth]

https://www.vg247.com/2018/08/14/prey-typhon-hunters-multiplayer-mode-exists-garrys-mod/

Prey: Typhon Hunter’s multiplayer mode exists because of Garry’s Mod

By Kirk McKeand, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 15:24 GMT

Prey’s upcoming DLC, Typhon Hunter, is about as experimental as DLC gets.

First off, it will be available to anyone who already owns Mooncrash, another piece of Prey DLC that messes with the immersive sim by mixing in roguelike elements – when you die, you die, and the resources you gathered are gone for the next run.

Secondly, Typhon Hunter is actually two modes. In one, you are immersed in VR inside memorable locations from Talos 1, attempting to solve puzzles. It’s a VR escape room, essentially, and it’s a great time, judging by the segment I played at QuakeCon, without audio and with someone on hand to stop me smashing my face into a wall.

In Typhon Hunter’s other mode, five players take on the role of Mimics – shapeshifting aliens who can turn into various props, such as mugs and lamps – while one player takes the role of Morgan Yu. It’s hide and seek on a timer, where Morgan must track down and kill all Mimics before the clock counts down.

“As a Mimic, you can either play defensively and try to stay out of sight, or you can play aggressively and try to get close to Morgan,” Arkane lead designer Ricardo Bare tells me. “If you get close to Morgan, you have this little meter that charges up, and once it fills up you can do a jump attack.”

It’s a multiplayer immersive sim – perhaps foreshadowing Arkane’s upcoming projects – in bitesize format. As well as retaining the freeform gameplay of Prey – Mimics can mess with props to make them look unnatural before taking their place as a totally normal, totally not-alien catching mitt – it also keeps hold of the jumpscares.

“If you do that, you knock him out for ten seconds or so – it’s penalty that runs down the clock – but it’s a risk because he could bust you and smash you with the wrench first,” Bare explains. “When you’re [a prop], you can roll around to different locations. You’re not stuck being the second mug next to this other mug.”

So, how exactly did this experimental DLC come to be?

“It’s kind of funny because when we were working on Prey, the Mimics became one of the more signature elements of the game,” Bare says. “They became super popular, and people love streaming getting scared by them. But when people started seeing how the Mimics worked, a bunch of them were like, ‘Oh, this is like Prop Hunt’. I was like, ‘What the hell is prop hunt?’.”

Prop Hunt is a popular Garry’s Mod game mode where players disguise themselves as furniture while another player hunts them down.

“We looked into it and were like, ‘This is a great idea, the Mimics are well suited for that kind of gameplay idea’,” Bare remembers. “So once we finished Prey, we were like, ‘Remember that thing everyone kept saying? Let’s try it’.

“One of the things I love about DLC is that you can turn things around really quickly and you can take more risks. I guess one of the reasons [it’s more experimental] is, after we shipped Prey, the team was broken up into different things. But first we did a little game jam. We were inspired by the Bethesda Game Studios thing – they do this thing occasionally where the team gets time to work on whatever they want to work on.”

Most recently, the BGS game jam gave birth to a photo mode for Fallout 76, allowing players to take goofy selfies over the corpse of a defeated player.

“So we took two weeks to work on whatever we wanted,” Bare continues, “as long as it has something to do with what we actually work on here. So everybody went off and came up with cool ideas, and some of the ideas are things that ended up in Mooncrash and Typhon Hunter.”

 

[Morgoth]

 

[A horse of course]

Stole this game at agentorange 's recommendation because I wasn't a fan of Dishonoured (particularly the writing) and gave it a whirl. I'd say I generally enjoyed it overall with notable exceptions (particularly the last couple of hours), but I've read about fifty pages of this thread and don't have anything more to add that hasn't been fought over already, so I'll just leave at "pretty good" and drop some bullet points of my complaints:

- It's not scary
- Enemy design is extremely dull
- Too many "throwaway" NPCs. There should've been far fewer survivors on Talos with more meaningful side-quests, and they should've been more reactive to your choices. I saved every single telepath puppet in the game, and for what?
- Spacewalking was pretty boring
- Didn't mind the sidequest lesbians as they were pretty well written and voiced but it seems like homosexuals are like 70% of the population according to this alternate reality?
- I deliberately gimped myself because the game explicitly said "you're fucked if you start upgrading Typhon stuff" - which wasn't even true. It didn't make the game any harder (I had like 100 medikits by the end) but it did remove some of the more interesting combat possibilities. This is exacerbated by how worthless the security robots are after the first level. It wasn't as idiotic as Dishonoured forcing you into its mediocre stealth gameplay if you wanted a good ending, but still.
- A little glitchy, including a couple of sidequests bugging out because I had the temerity to explore thoroughly before advancing the main quest. The overlap between audiofiles, people speaking in front of you, AND being contacted from afar also got maddening near the end.
- The whole sequence from when the military robots turned up right until the finale was poor and just made me want to get it over with. This is a common problem with games that encourage exploration but also want to go out with a bang, and I don't really know how to solve it.
- Post-credits sequence was probably the least interesting scenario they could've gone with (I read Avellone saying the ending was changed halfway through development) and the visual reveal combined with the verbal checklist made everything that happened feel pointless. I know there are certain points that telegraph this ending, but there are plenty of hints that could easily have been used for alternative explanations. The one they went with was a huge step in the wrong direction and removed any interest in replaying.
- The psychoscope or whatever the fuck it was called AKA the camera from Bioshock was a drag on gameplay and should never have been implemented

I don't think I'll bother with Mooncrash and if there's a sequel I'll probably steal it again.

7.5/10 before the last 2hrs, 6/10 overall. You're welcome to disagree with me but I'm smarter than most of you so it'd be a waste.

 

[A horse of course]

Oh I forgot to mention, anyone in this thread who uses the term "immersive sim" - please fucking neck yourself.

 

[Hines]

Raphael Colantonio appeared on the Splitscreen podcast with "press sneak fuck" Jason Schreier to discuss Prey's development delays and the rushed final act.

https://kotaku.com/preys-director-on-the-polarizing-final-act-there-was-d-1828390333