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

[Siel]

What? There's already a few mods, mainly difficulty/balancing/cut-content (like reimplementing trauma/fire/oxygen stuff)

Yeah but I mean a real community with mod tools and maybe a map editor.

 

[Jasede]

Stalker had a map editor? That's pretty cool.

 

[baturinsky]

Fair point. Though you ARE kinda rollerskating rocketjumping around Talos station with a light machine gun quick firing toy pistol and a rocket rifle derpy laser rifle in the end game of Prey...

You run out of ammo for weapons very fast if you actually use them them regularly. Unless maybe you craft a lot of ammo, running out of minerals for Neuromods.
On the other hand, PSI is virtually free and you can kill a lot of enemies by just looking at them sternly.

 

[Hines]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-05-25-the-cancelled-prey-2-had-an-incredible-plot-twist

There's some bad hombres at Bethesda.

 

[Dexter]

Wow maybe I was wrong about this game; when its on sale for 95% off I might play it!

After a 48-hour mega-playthrough using only human abilities (and subsequent less-constrained playthroughs), I think it's safe to say that Prey is one of my favorite games of the year, and in 2017, that is saying something. I've gone into detail about how I've felt weirdly catered to in the game—being an immersive sim in space, with plenty of queer women characters, and a delicious, anti-corporate dystopian overall storyline—it feels like a game for me, and that's exceedingly rare in big-budget video games.

It's inclusion of queer women characters isn't without complication: the tragic lesbians trope rears its head in the game, for sure—although that, in itself is complicated by a revenge subplot that let me take the only vengeance I think I've ever really felt 100% awesome about in a game.

I spoke with Arkane's Lead Designer Ricardo Bare about writing and designing Prey in this fashion, taking a slightly more subtle approach to character-building and story. I also asked about those lebians, tragic (and/or vengeful) as they may be.

...

I personally really love the inclusion of queer women in the game, and how much it seems to be a non-issue in their lives. I think Morgan is one of the only queer woman protagonists in any AAA game (possibly the very first woman of color), and that a really sweet romance (between Abby and Danielle) is a part of the main quest really struck me.

What was the thought process behind writing these characters, and the specific approach? Do you have LGBT team members who helped steer those decisions?

I suppose the best way to put it would be that we try to include things that we find interesting, no matter what. Personally, it's interesting for me to learn about characters and people that aren't like me and to represent them in games as best as we can. At the same time, we value diversity. I think it's healthy and stories are better off for it, so it's a filter we apply as we work. An 'international space station' with only white dudes would have been boring and dumb.
For the Abby and Danielle storyline, I believe our lead level designer, Rich Wilson took some inspiration from Gone Home when he initially conceived of the idea. The gameplay conceit was to spoof a voice lock, but in order to do so you needed samples of the user's voice. So, in collecting Danielle's audio logs to synthesize her voice, you'd invariably learn about her and her relationship to Abby (and others).

On that note, what is your response to the idea that the characters play into the stereotype of "tragic lesbians" in fiction?

I think my response would be that it's a fair point to make, broadly speaking; it no doubt sucks to look around various storytelling media and find a dearth of 'happy endings' for LGBT relationships.

So, in Prey here is yet another queer couple with a doomed relationship. But, going a little deeper, I think the critique is not particularly incisive in this context. Danielle and Abigail's deaths have nothing to do with their queerness, nor is there some encoded message to be had in it that is specifically hostile to LGBT-ness. It's just that 99% of the people aboard Talos are dead and some of those people happened to be gay. That's my take on it.

One of the things I love about writing, and afterwards interacting with people's critiques and reactions, is the opportunity to learn. This is a topic I think about a lot, but like everyone else, my perspective is limited and I have some blind spots. In the circle of 'things I could possibly know about' there's the subset of 'things I should know about' and then there's the even smaller circle of, 'things I actually do know about.' Anyway, your question has led to some interesting reading, so thanks for making those circles slightly more congruent.

 

[rezaf]

You run out of ammo for weapons very fast if you actually use them them regularly. Unless maybe you craft a lot of ammo, running out of minerals for Neuromods.
On the other hand, PSI is virtually free and you can kill a lot of enemies by just looking at them sternly.

I actually did that ... if you do a non-psi run you are pretty much forced to spend an hour or two combined throughout the game just watching the printer print. Not to mention scavenging and recycling shit.
I'd never do a non psi run again were I to replay the game. I hope I'll remember this at the time.
I also only printed neuromods until the license ran out. Did the quest, but with the three psi trees out of the picture there's enough neuromods if you're thorough.

 

[Durandal]

You should be able to do most sidequests at the start of the game, rather than getting a significant portion of them past Cargo Bay which forces you to backtrack all over the place alongside uninteresting enemy encounters and completely messes up the pacing of the game, both story- and gameplay-wise. At the very least you should get to Cargo Bay from the outside before getting to Crew Quarters so you can save Dr. Zumbalele and get his piano sidequest, though pushing Mika earlier into the game would prove to be trickier. I guess the Drastic Choice and Consequence Moments were pushed much later into the game so the devs had less consequences to consider. The difference between pre-Cargo Bay sidequests and post-Cargo Bay sidequests was that pre-Cargo Bay sidequests encouraged you to explore your current area more thoroughly with additional side objectives, whereas post-Cargo Bay sidequests make you run around the station to places you won't be visiting or revisiting during the main story and fall into Errand Boy Syndrome (even further). At that point your sidequests become padding, with no fun combat or completely new side-areas to existing areas to explore, unlike when going for the Neuromod DRM sidequest in Fabrication in the Neuromod Division which was largely locked off during your first visit there.

 

[Parabalus]

Kinda sad reading that I'm about to enter quality free fall, I've just finished up crew quarters, exploring all of the levels except Deep Storage. I hope it's not all doom and gloom as you guys describe it, the game had really a good feel so far.

 

[Durandal]

I did like Life Support quite a lot, though at that point in the game I was growing stronger at an alarming pace and the enemy encounters simply could not keep up with my ascendancy to godhood, even if I were to restrict myself in several ways.

 

[Ezeekiel]

Can it really be a clone with no atmosphere and no real danger of resource shortages?
Also there's nothing comparable to Shodan... (though I guess she was better in the first game by a large margin)

I feel like calling it a clone, if a poor one, kind of implies more similarities than are actually really there.

It's a shooter with stats about a guy stuck on a science vessel in space where something has gone terribly wrong who goes on a grand tour of reading emails and listening to people's podcasts. Saying that it's not supposed to be a System Shock 2 clone is dumb.

By that standard COD MW is a rainbow six rogue spear clone, battle brothers is a TFTD clone, dead space is also an SS2 clone and prey'17 is a half-life 2 clone as well as an SS2 clone, somehow.
Too general imo, as you're ignoring some really key parts that set the older games apart, but that's just my opinion.

 

[Ezeekiel]

Curious what folks think about the weapons in the game? There were a few posts on that already, but perhaps more have formed opinions on the matter by now.

 

[Siel]

I did like Life Support quite a lot, though at that point in the game I was growing stronger at an alarming pace and the enemy encounters simply could not keep up with my ascendancy to godhood, even if I were to restrict myself in several ways.

Life Support has the most SS2 atmosphere in the game and level design was fairly good. Liked reactor level too but it felt really Half-Life for some reason.

 

[Ezeekiel]

Aaaaaaand finished.

Conclusion: This is a 15 hour game stretched to 25 hours.

Up until derp storage I was on the verge of saying this might be Arkane's best game to date, better even than Arx. But everything after derp storage (okay maybe after cargo bay) is total, and I do really mean total, shit.

Still best system shock 2 clone to date. But that still doesn't say much :/

Can it really be a clone with no atmosphere and no real danger of resource shortages?
Also there's nothing comparable to Shodan... (though I guess she was better in the first game by a large margin)

I feel like calling it a clone, if a poor one, kind of implies more similarities than are actually really there.

You're going to have to elaborate on how it is an inferior clone.

Roxor implied that first unless I misunderstood him ("Still best system shock 2 clone to date. But that still doesn't say much") btw, not me.

Anyway, the big one is the same reason I think the original ufo defense was (in retrospect) inferior to TFTD even though they're otherwise almost the same, the lack of atmosphere. That's just personal preference though, but it's huge for me. Atmosphere tends to stay with me after many years (see arcanum with it's initial overland track, or TFTD's underwater missions, from the graphics to the OST, or most of Thief one and two, or even Diablo 1 to some degree) and lets me forgive a number if issues a game has, sort of making up for those.

Other things are just nitpicks mostly and of course the dodgy endgame.

I would also expect a game from 2017 to have evolved substantially more in terms of general mechanics, fun of combat etc. There's some new stuff but also some genuine downgrades. It's not a bad effort, but I don't see it as genuinely better, no. Not even really close. It feels more like a mish-mash of SS2, HL, nuDX etcetc. I repeatedly thought "hey they took that straight out of game X". It feels rather soulless.

I had just as much resources by the end of Shock 2.

By the end, yeah. But imo in-between the game just lets you go too overboard. Or maybe you were a more experienced player than I when you played SS2, IDK.

I agree about the villain,

Kind of a major thing. Sure they didn't need to necessarily make a similarly weighty/creepy villain, but *something* else in the game should have been similarly awesome.

but can't you admit that the increased freedom of approach and exploration make it on par, if not better?

The game does not do enough with it for me to consider it a real upgrade, and the lacking things are too much. Again, personal preference. I also didn't really care about exploring the place as the loot is generic and plentiful, the hoarding just gets on my nerves these days and again the lack of atmosphere made the place uninteresting for me. Just didn't care. I take it it was the opposite for you if you preferred the more half-lifey feel of the place?

Plus, a lot of the writing is by Chris Avellone himself, something nobody seems to talk about much.

Can't say the writing stood out to me in any way, but then I mostly don't care about that unless it's just too cringey like MEA or whatever.

Hope I didn't mess up the quotes...

 

[Ezeekiel]

I did like Life Support quite a lot, though at that point in the game I was growing stronger at an alarming pace and the enemy encounters simply could not keep up with my ascendancy to godhood, even if I were to restrict myself in several ways.

Life Support has the most SS2 atmosphere in the game and level design was fairly good. Liked reactor level too but it felt really Half-Life for some reason.

The game in general feels like it's cobbled together from bits and pieces of others pretty much directly imo.

 

[Jick Magger]

I've gotten about 5 hours in the game, and so far I'm enjoying it quite a bit. The only real bugbear I've got with it is that the monster design is pretty weak. A lot of horror and pseudo-horror games released recently have gone for the "anthropomorphic blob" monster designs, and I don't know if this is indicative of a lack of creativity in modern game devs, but it doesn't really work and hurts the game overall, especially in comparison to System Shock 2, which had a large variety of well-designed enemies to fight. This wound up killing a lot of my interest in RE7 too, where in a series which has always prided itself in its variety in creatures to kill the shit out of, you spend the entire game killing either walking snot monsters or crawling snot monsters. Not fun.

 

[toro]

Kinda sad reading that I'm about to enter quality free fall, I've just finished up crew quarters, exploring all of the levels except Deep Storage. I hope it's not all doom and gloom as you guys describe it, the game had really a good feel so far.

Personal advice: Stop reading this thread.

I never read a game's thread when I'm playing that specific game. Occasionally I post some first impressions but then I tend to go away until I finish the game.

Basically you are robbing yourself of a good experience which means: go in blind and figure out things on your own. On codex there are too many min-max poseurs which can spoil the game. Fair warning.

And yes, Prey end game is unbalanced and it falls apart somewhat more badly than SS2. On the other hand, you can rush the main story and just end it if it's too much for you.

 

[toro]

Curious what folks think about the weapons in the game? There were a few posts on that already, but perhaps more have formed opinions on the matter by now.

Imho the existing weapons are good but the arsenal is limited. There should be at least 2 more weapons in the game - maybe an assault rifle and the disc thing.

Also some damage dealing grenades besides recycler charges.

 

[Jasede]

About the weapons...

A) There's not enough variety for sure.
B) The ones that exist aren't exactly the most fun. They aren't horrible either. 'Adequate' describes it.
C) While, yes, the fun with the weapons in this game comes from picking the right one for the job and combining them, you still sort of miss getting some big gun, or variety of big guns. Yes, I know about the beam.
D) The weapons that are there - the pistol and the beam mainly - feel pretty terrible, unless highly upgraded. They feel good then, but that's quite the investment. I imagine in a no skills run, they will always feel sort of piddly so you avoid combat.
E) The weapons feel 'realistic' in a sense - why would a research station have tons of dangerous weapons on board, after all? It would hardly make sense. The only weapons you do get are weapons you get as justified by in-game lore, such as from security stations or maintenance/peacekeeping tools.
F) The shotgun feels great but perhaps suffers from essentially being great against everything. This does mean I was always low on shells as it was my go-to weapon. However- near the end game, using it so often meant that I ended up with 4000 (!) Q-Beam ammo. 4000. Not that I ever found anything to use it on...

Compared to Shock 2, the weapons feel similarly weak (no weapon in Shock 2 feels 'satisfying' to me except, perhaps, the wrench and the grenade launcher and the crystal shard) but with less variety but more interactivity and combo options. The lack of weapon durability kind of hurts the game but I see why it's not there: the Repair skill is already amazing, if you had durability it'd become mandatory and even better - or you'd forego upgrades.
Shock 2 essentially has 3 big weapons for each category: Standard is pistol/assault rifle/shotgun/wrench, Exotic is crystal/worm gun/other alien gun, Explosives is grenade launcher / grenades, Energy has a big energy gun, a small piddly laser gun and the laser rapier. I used to think that was a small variety - but in Prey you get these and only these weapons: Wrench, Gloo Gun (deals no damage), Shotgun, Pistol, Beam, Taser. That's it. It's not as bad as it sounds as it combos with environmental damage, psi powers and with each other (glue 'em up and blast them to bits, or zap them to stun them, then wrench them to death, etc.) but it's still not all that satisfying.

 

[Ezeekiel]

About the weapons...

A) There's not enough variety for sure.
B) The ones that exist aren't exactly the most fun. They aren't horrible either. 'Adequate' describes it.
C) While, yes, the fun with the weapons in this game comes from picking the right one for the job and combining them, you still sort of miss getting some big gun, or variety of big guns. Yes, I know about the beam.
D) The weapons that are there - the pistol and the beam mainly - feel pretty terrible, unless highly upgraded. They feel good then, but that's quite the investment. I imagine in a no skills run, they will always feel sort of piddly so you avoid combat.
E) The weapons feel 'realistic' in a sense - why would a research station have tons of dangerous weapons on board, after all? It would hardly make sense. The only weapons you do get are weapons you get as justified by in-game lore, such as from security stations or maintenance/peacekeeping tools.
F) The shotgun feels great but perhaps suffers from essentially being great against everything. This does mean I was always low on shells as it was my go-to weapon. However- near the end game, using it so often meant that I ended up with 4000 (!) Q-Beam ammo. 4000. Not that I ever found anything to use it on...

Compared to Shock 2, the weapons feel similarly weak (no weapon in Shock 2 feel 'satisfying' to me except, perhaps, the wrench and the grenade launcher and the crystal shard) but with less variety but more interactivity and combo options. The lack of weapon durability kind of hurts the game but I see why it's not there: the Repair skill is already amazing, if you had durability it'd become mandatory and even better - or you'd forego upgrades.
Shock 2 essentially has 3 big weapons for each category: Standard is pistol/assault rifle/shotgun/wrench, Exotic is crystal/worm gun/other alien gun, Explosives is grenade launcher / grenades, Energy has a big energy gun, a small piddly laser gun and the laser rapier. I used to think that was a small variety - but in Prey you get these and only these weapons: Wrench, Gloo Gun (deals no damage), Shotgun, Pistol, Beam, Taser. That's it. It's not as bad as it sounds as it combos with environmental damage, psi powers and with each other (glue 'em up and blast them to bits, or zap them to stun them, then wrench them to death, etc.) but it's still not all that satisfying.

Your thoughts there mirror mine for the most part. It's not enough of a survival horror game and too much of a shooter to distract from the weak and relatively un-fun arsenal. The encounter design probably isn't helping all that much.
I'm normally all for sensible ingame reasons for things (such as the weapons here), but in this case imo fun really takes a hit as a result, so maybe "security guards in the future have carbines" would have been better. Then again the enemy design would have had to change to compensate.

 

[Jasede]

I was actually thinking that myself. Here, realism is not as important as a good experience. Either make the encounter design so that these weapons are sufficient (which they tried, to be fair, just not as well as they could have) or contrive a reason for there being better weapons. Maybe there's a terrorist or rebel cell or something planning to take over and they had some assault rifles shipped. Anything. If your combat is all FPS-style, you can't have Survival Horror weapon loadouts.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Speaking of realism...

Can anyone actually tell me why the security pistols are SILENCED?

 

[ciox]

I was actually thinking that myself. Here, realism is not as important as a good experience. Either make the encounter design so that these weapons are sufficient (which they tried, to be fair, just not as well as they could have) or contrive a reason for there being better weapons. Maybe there's a terrorist or rebel cell or something planning to take over and they had some assault rifles shipped. Anything. If your combat is all FPS-style, you can't have Survival Horror weapon loadouts.

The issue for me is that

Spoiler

you're kept from too many guns because of the story, so you accept that, then you find out the story is taking huge liberties where you were living in a dream within a dream anyway.

The disc gun alone would help a lot since it provides one thing I would have liked, high damage per hit at a range for sneak attacks / crits, they kinda planned it to be casual though with some kind of lockon/homing mechanic iirc, I would prefer a slow-moving unguided projectile since it would be the only weapon that works that way. (GLOO doesn't do damage)

Speaking of realism...
Can anyone actually tell me why the security pistols are SILENCED?

Reasons could be that it's not as deafening to fire it in confined spaces, and that it slows down the bullet so it's less likely to pierce the hull. The shotgun isn't silenced along with it because I don't think it works that well to silence a shotgun.

 

[baturinsky]

Playing SS2 now. It has two go-to weapons: Wrench and Assault rifle. Shotgun, laser pistol and grenade launcher are useful to save on Rifle bullets maybe.
In Prey all weapons are useful and distinct in it's use. SS2 limits your weapon use by tiny inventory space and separate skills for weapon types. If you specialise in anything but Standard you cripple yourself, because each other type is very limited.

 

[Ezeekiel]

Speaking of realism...

Can anyone actually tell me why the security pistols are SILENCED?

So that the sound guys had an excuse to make them sound wimpy af.

 

[Jaedar]

In Prey all weapons are useful and distinct in it's use. SS2 limits your weapon use by tiny inventory space and separate skills for weapon types. If you specialise in anything but Standard you cripple yourself, because each other type is very limited.

Not really true. The grenade launcher has ammo options for everything and mega cannon is good against all as well iirc. It's certainly true for energy (anti mech) and exotic (melee + anti bio) though.

Can anyone actually tell me why the security pistols are SILENCED?

Because if someone resists firing and getting their brain sucked out while the corp recovers their bonus neuromods, it's good if you can take them out without waking up the entire space station?

E) The weapons feel 'realistic' in a sense - why would a research station have tons of dangerous weapons on board, after all? It would hardly make sense. The only weapons you do get are weapons you get as justified by in-game lore, such as from security stations or maintenance/peacekeeping tools.

The station also has molecular assemblers. You'd think after shit went bad, someone would have the idea to email someone on earth/moon/internet to give them the plans for some assault weapons. Or just some scientist tinkering with a plasma cannon on their free time.