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

copebot

Learned
Joined
Dec 27, 2020
Messages
387
I mean, they should have known that people would react negatively to an ending of "it was all a dream." It didn't bother me that much because I had low expectations.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,395
I mean, they should have known that people would react negatively to an ending of "it was all a dream." It didn't bother me that much because I had low expectations.
It really did bother me because I had my fill with the game more or less by 50 - 70%, after that point, the game pretty much goes down hill in terms of game mechanics and I was just wasting my time with all that nonsense to see the end and when I got there, it was a lame cliche 2deep4you "It was all a dream." bs. I really did want to murder that fatso so hard and make him my surrogate for Raphael Colantonio for some Typhoon tentacle raping, I would totally damn the entire humanity just for that. The first half is amazing, the second half is half finished/boring as fuck and the end is just salt on the wound.

If the game was 100% amazing, consistent to the end, I might forgive a shit ending but that wasnt the case. However, the first 70% are still very much worthy playing but it loses steam so hard after that point that after the Crew Quarters, it sort of lose any carrot for keeping you going as the story is just nonsense.
 

V_K

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2013
Messages
7,714
Location
at a Nowhere near you
...which is exactly how it should be.
Narrative designers should care about the fuckin' narrative. That's what they were hired to do.
There's a lot more to a game's narrative than the story - the sense of progression through the levels, the way mechanics connect to the setting, gameplay pacing, immersion and environmental storytelling etc. The story/plot is the least relevant of those. A good narrative designer for a game should care about it as much as it doesn't hinder gameplay.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,267
The most blatantly broken power in the game (combat focus) is a human power, so I’m pretty confused that people would consider a human run to be the hardcore mode. At least with typhon powers you have to manage PSI resources (trivial as that may be).
Also the difficulty options as implemented in the base game add little beyond HP-bloat, so I have to disagree there as well.

Prey did a lot of things right, but its balance is absolutely 100% fucked; the skill trees are chock-ful of “IWin” buttons, and it doesn’t really matter which one lets you win more efficiently because they all make sure you win.

Yeah that's my thought. Combat Focus absolutely destroys hard enemies while the stealth damage multiplier skill (ontop of normal weapon damage bonuses) makes common enemies effortless. Even without beelining combat focus its hard not to be OP if you are going human-only while there are some stinkers in the psi trees that you could screw up a psi build with.
 

RoSoDude

Arcane
Joined
Oct 1, 2016
Messages
730
The most blatantly broken power in the game (combat focus) is a human power, so I’m pretty confused that people would consider a human run to be the hardcore mode. At least with typhon powers you have to manage PSI resources (trivial as that may be).
Also the difficulty options as implemented in the base game add little beyond HP-bloat, so I have to disagree there as well.

Prey did a lot of things right, but its balance is absolutely 100% fucked; the skill trees are chock-ful of “IWin” buttons, and it doesn’t really matter which one lets you win more efficiently because they all make sure you win.

I have no idea why they thought Combat Focus needed a (multiplicative!) damage bonus on top of slowing the world down and speeding the player character up relative to it. I guess it's because players might have a hard time comparing its qualitative utility against raw damage upgrades, but the ability is plenty powerful even with the damage bonuses removed (and the time dilation rebalanced). Agreed on the crap difficulty settings too, as you know.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,395
...which is exactly how it should be.
Narrative designers should care about the fuckin' narrative. That's what they were hired to do.
There's a lot more to a game's narrative than the story - the sense of progression through the levels, the way mechanics connect to the setting, gameplay pacing, immersion and environmental storytelling etc. The story/plot is the least relevant of those. A good narrative designer for a game should care about it as much as it doesn't hinder gameplay.

Problem is that on the rare occasions Prey actually bother trying doing enviromental storytelling, it goes this way: "Hey, the crew liked to play DnD, they are nerdy like you, do you feel sad now?", then you say meh and move on then "Now it is the obligatory nod to inclusion about the tragic lesbo romance, are you sad?" then you say meh, and the game goes "Do, you know there is a crazy dude that killed the lesbo and you need to avenge her for her now slowly dying partner, are you sad?", you say meh and goes on.

Then in the end the game goes: "We counted here the amount of mehs you gave and based on our scientific calculations, you arent a human."
 

Silverfish

Arbiter
Joined
Dec 4, 2019
Messages
3,224
The ending is hilarious if you play the game they way I do and skip sidequests. Everyone just sort of hovers around and can only offer up a "we never met" or "I don't know why you didn't do my specific thing."
 

V_K

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2013
Messages
7,714
Location
at a Nowhere near you
...which is exactly how it should be.
Narrative designers should care about the fuckin' narrative. That's what they were hired to do.
There's a lot more to a game's narrative than the story - the sense of progression through the levels, the way mechanics connect to the setting, gameplay pacing, immersion and environmental storytelling etc. The story/plot is the least relevant of those. A good narrative designer for a game should care about it as much as it doesn't hinder gameplay.

Problem is that on the rare occasions Prey actually bother trying doing enviromental storytelling, it goes this way: "Hey, the crew liked to play DnD, they are nerdy like you, do you feel sad now?", then you say meh and move on then "Now it is the obligatory nod to inclusion about the tragic lesbo romance, are you sad?" then you say meh, and the game goes "Do, you know there is a crazy dude that killed the lesbo and you need to avenge her for her now slowly dying partner, are you sad?", you say meh and goes on.

Then in the end the game goes: "We counted here the amount of mehs you gave and based on our scientific calculations, you arent a human."
It's called "tough moral choices".
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,395
The moral lesson I learned from Prey:
"If you arent a stunning and brave post modernist man and didnt care about this tragic minority love story, it means you are an alien tentacle monster."

And I was there, "Goddammit gaem, that was harsh, are you at least gonna give me some japanese girls on school uniform?"

"No, you can only have half ethiopian, half israeli, half scandinavian, half egyptian ugly short hair lesbos, do you want that?"

Man, being a tentacle monster these days is so sad.:cry:
 
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Silverfish

Arbiter
Joined
Dec 4, 2019
Messages
3,224
The moral lesson I learned from Prey:
"If you arent a stunning and brave post modernist man and didnt care about this tragic minority love story, it means you are an alien tentacle monster."

I have to disagree. I thought Prey came off as pretty redpilled. It's about Chinese-owned megacorporations dooming the planet and how a technologically advanced, diverse society was easily overrun and dismantled by a horde of black monsters.
 

Ismaul

Thought Criminal #3333
Patron
Joined
Apr 18, 2005
Messages
1,871,810
Location
On Patroll
Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech A Beautifully Desolate Campaign My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
The moral lesson I learned from Prey:
"If you arent a stunning and brave post modernist man and didnt care about this tragic minority love story, it means you are an alien tentacle monster."

I have to disagree. I thought Prey came off as pretty redpilled. It's about Chinese-owned megacorporations dooming the planet and how a technologically advanced, diverse society was easily overrun and dismantled by a horde of black monsters.
B-but, wouldn't that mean we were niggers all along?


:philosoraptor:
 

Spukrian

Savant
Joined
May 28, 2016
Messages
685
Location
Lost Continent of Mu
I've had a lot of crashes with the randomizer mod recently. I think the problem lies in how randomizes items, so I'm gonna try without item randomization to see if it's more stable

EDIT: If you're gonna use the randomizer, turn off cloud sync, otherwise it might mess with your savefiles.
 
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Sunsetspawn

Arcane
Joined
Feb 10, 2013
Messages
1,049
Location
New York
Shit, I never posted about this game? So, beat it two months ago and my 3 big impressions are

- Incorporates the Hameroff and Penrose Orch OR theory
- Should've been called NeuroShock
- It's like System Shock with the Mankind Divided interface (much like SS used the DE interface)

Buy it, play it; it's probably the last "immersive sim" we're ever going to see and it's surprisingly well done.
 

Latelistener

Arcane
Joined
May 25, 2016
Messages
2,594
What's the deal with the gun viewmodel? Why it looks like it is trying to show me how well the side of the gun was modeled, rather than actually aiming at the center of the screen? And why they didn't fix it?

lc5mgP4.jpg
 

Lutte

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
Joined
Aug 24, 2017
Messages
1,969
Location
DU's mom
Red Orchestra is the only FPS that ever truly got side view aim right.

Zh6XWhe.jpg


No RNG circle garbage, no crosshair and the weapon would move a little along with your camera movement so while the weapon retained non-RNG, precise side aiming, it required skill on the part of the player to be able to correctly align their view of the weapon along with the target since it didn't exactly always shoot at the center of the screen.

Best hitscan system ever implemented in a video game but game designers were too retarded to take inspiration from this legend.
 

Latelistener

Arcane
Joined
May 25, 2016
Messages
2,594
Okay, I have another issue with this game and I'm of confused how this wasn't even addressed by official patches or even modded.

Logically, if you open containers and then move away from them or loot them, they should probably close itself but they do not. This is most likely the core of the issue.

So, when you reload a saved game all looted containers will be closed again. But when you get close to them or even look in their direction, they will open by itself on the other side of the level (but you will hear this shit like it's right beside you).

And that's basically my experience in Prey: you're running around a level listening to the orchestra of opening containers of any kind, drawers and trash cans. I mean, what the fuck?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IJqs-gGQj4LaVjSYKx8RC96DMal1xVaI/view
 
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Latelistener

Arcane
Joined
May 25, 2016
Messages
2,594
Found a thread with a video on reddit about this issue. Steam forums has a few threads about it too.

I think most people either didn't notice it or don't give a shit about it. That's just how the game works and devs didn't give a shit either.

That's the first game in my memory that has that kind of a problem though.
 

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