I have no idea how this game is going over here at the Codex, but here are my two cents:
It’s Monday morning and time for you to report to TranStar Corporation headquarters for your first day on the job. You’re joining your brother, Alex, at work there, and you’re excited about the prospect of doing work on the company’s centerpiece: the
Talos I space station, in lunar orbit and home to the leading tech company’s most innovative and brilliant minds. You shut the alarm off and get out of bed, the bright sunshine streaming into your modern apartment, circa 2032.
That’s how Arkane Studios’ brilliant new game
Prey begins, and nothing from that point on is quite what is seems or what one expects. Prey marks a high point in Arkane’s already solid and respectable history, and hits a new high hitherto thought unattainable: a cross-platform game made primarily for consoles that speaks to and meets PC gamer expectations. If, as a general rule, there is a world of difference between video games and computer games, Arkane’s Prey has managed to bridge the chasm and deliver to both audiences. It is a remarkable achievement and a stunning game.
I suppose we should not be surprised, given Arkane’s history. Its founder was involved with EA in the early days when it was more closely associated with The Bard’s Tale than with NFL football, and in 2002 the French studio, based in Lyon, blessed the CRPG world with the innovative underground dungeon world of Arx Fatalis. Those of us too damn old to still be playing goddamn games will remember how well received that game was. In fact, to this day I can’t think of another game that made casting spells in combat so much fun or made the player feel more like an actual mage.
Since that time, the studio—which opened a branch in Austin as its French founder moved in an attempt to improve the studio’s viability—went from one game to another in development, suffering the usual small studio challenges of cancelled projects and publishers not willing to take a chance. However, in 2010, in a development that proves decisively that retards, like broken clocks, can occasionally be right, the ZeniMax group (i.e. Bethesda) purchased Arkane. With a big publisher behind it, Arkane was free to properly develop games again, and, boy, did they deliver.
That is to say, they delivered for the modern, console-ized marketplace. Both Dishonored and the Dishonored 2 feature what has become something of a trademark for Arkane: the presentation of the features of a beloved computer game to the new console video game audience, and pulling off that tough updating task with real imagination, innovation, and intelligence. In the case of the Dishonored series, that old beloved game is Thief. Sure, you can play Corvo Attano as a fighting machine, but everything in the game screams stealth as the preferred path. You’ll be thinking about Garrett while Corvo is hiding stock still in deep shadow watching four guards walking a beat and analyzing the pattern and your path to your destination. It also helps, and is clearly no accident, that the brilliant voice actor Stephen Russell breathes life into both stealthy leading men.
But, as innovative and thoughtful as the Dishonored series is, it is badly limited by the uniform requirements imposed by consoles. For every unique quest design or interesting character presented, there are small, cramped zones, limited options with regard to actions and too many cut scenes where the action is literally out of the player’s hands.
Prey not only breaks this mold, it shatters it. From this point forward, computer gamers need no longer make excuses for console-priority games. Arkane has done for gaming what the alchemists promised to do for mere lead and has turned console games into computer gold.
Prey does this by taking Arkane’s formula of innovating beloved computer game genres one step further and incorporating the best features of a number of games, while, at the same time, infusing them with enough innovation and creativity so as to rise above mere copying. When playing Prey, there are times when the gamer will sense a connection a number of its esteemed predecessors, both console and PC. Hitting a hated enemy with a solid steel hand tool brings to mind Half-Life. Slowly peeking around the corner of a laboratory in an empty space station and not quite believing what you’re seeing harks back to System Shock 2. Reading old emails and piecing together the past of a secretive program brings to mind Alpha Protocol. Advancing through a cramped maintenance shaft will have you channeling Deus Ex. Advancing your characters skills across a skill tree that imposes some hard decisions reminds one of Mass Effect. The futuristic weaponry is reminiscent of Halo.
But the sum total of all of these parts is so much more than this grab bag of homage. In Prey, the designers put the player in a place done often but not successfully since that one guy woke up on a gurney and found himself conversing with a floating skull. That is, both the player-as-the-player and the player-as-the-character start from the same position of not knowing where they are, who they are, or what the hell is going on around them.
I have written this so as to minimize spoilers, because I personally abhor them and purposefully do not read threads on games I’m interested in until I’ve played them myself, so I won’t say anything more on this point except to say that the first half hour of Prey is an imaginative, fascinating and immersion-creating as any game I have ever played.
Say good-bye to cramped console game zones, as Talos I is HUGE. Not only is the station a believable setting, its design is something to behold. From dark paneled executive conference rooms to arboretum patios inlayed with a mosaic design of wheat stalks, from massive water treatment decks to the station’s fascinating exterior, you’ll be a bit sad you have to keep your head on a swivel and keep scanning for enemies it’s all so breathtakingly beautiful.
The enemy is not a subject one can speak too much about without spoiling the game, but some general comments won’t hurt. They are a tough bunch and present a number of different challenges that demand flexible tactics and backup planning. I’m sure somewhere someone is fighting his way through the station as Yu the Unconquerable, but for most of us lesser humans it’s more a question of keeping your head down and using what’s inside it to overcome obstacles and opposition. Fortunately, the game gives you a wide array of tools to cover the multiple approaches one needs.
While a limited inventory remains one of the few old console chestnuts Prey doesn’t break, it does mitigate this limitation by having three separate screens for three different pieces of personal equipment, each of which is customizable on the fly before you enter into situations requiring a particular edge. So long as your character uses his head and scouts, you should be able to plan ahead for the biggest challenges.
Otherwise, the game presents a dizzying array of screens, enough to please the nerdiest of nerds. You’ll collect old emails, old recordings, paper notes, paperwork left on desks, maps, downloaded files, scans of enemy creatures, you name it. You’ll use this to piece together the giant holes in your memory and reconstruct what happened; the immensity and horror of the situation will grow on you as this realization ripens.
The central questline will keep you hopping, but there are a large number of sidequests and things to do which can have a real effect on your tactical situation by the end of the game. There is so much to do, and much of it is presented with a twist, refreshing to those of us who have completed somewhere around 17,491 quests in a gaming lifetime.
In short, Prey represents a new achievement in gaming, one in which the hated limitations imposed by consoles, both as a technical matter and as an audience matter, are overcome, presenting us with a game that sparkles with intelligence, wit, design, creativity and challenge.
But, at the end of the day, there are two further reasons to add Prey to your collection and, if you’re anything like me, to actually finish the game.
First, there is the matter of a new type of weapon that is the most fun to play and kick alien ass with since Half Life 2. You’ll use it in a variety of ways, and coming up with new ways to use it effectively is part of the fun.
Second, and really the icing on the very real non-lied-about cake here, is that there is a fantastic side quest that really is an homage to old time paper-and-pen gaming, complete with graph paper maps that need to be analyzed and applied to the space station. The entire quest line is a joy.
I have no idea if my view is widely held or is a minority of one person. But this is my view, and I hope you enjoy this gem as much as I did.
Finally, **and a spoiler ahead**, the following text appears on a poster in an exhibit hall in Talos 1 explaining its history. When one reads it, it is a piece of information about the alternative future the actions take place in. Later, it takes on a whole different significance as you discover more about what is going on. A discovery that comes with a cold chill regarding the Russian habit of giving items simple, descriptive and utilitarian names.
1963 – A top secret Cold War negotiation culminates with Americans and Soviets working together on a research facility named Kletka.
Kletka—Russian for “cage”—produces the skeleton and core emergency systems of what will one day become Talos 1.
Indeed.
