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

[RepHope]

Just finished it. Pretty solid game until the last quarter. I loved the art design, I loved the Gloo gun and how it opened up different exploration options. The Typhon were not at all "scary" though. I liked Mimics a lot although the Slowmo mod made them rather trivial to beat.

I'm a little mixed on the ending. I guessed that Morgan was going to be some kind of Typhon after that first "vision". I think a sequel has a lot of potential to deliver but it's not even a sure bet that a sequel will happen, so it pisses me off that you're left with a cliffhanger. It is funny though how history repeats itself though. First Prey never got a sequel and now the game that shares nothing but its name might share its predecessor's fate.

 

[LESS T_T]

Art Production of "Prey": https://80.lv/articles/art-production-of-prey/

It's very technology and production oriented article.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

I quite liked it. I think it's better than SS2 in most respects - better levels design, there are actually multiple viable builds instead two right "correct" builds and a bunch of junk, crafting is better, the Gloo gun is awesome, etc.

That said, it hews so close to SS2 that it feels like a clone. A very good clone, but a clone nonetheless. Not having interesting characters doesn't help its case either.

 

[Perkel]

Started it.. Does that game ever becomes good ? I played like 1 hour and honestly i am pretty bored. Graphics does look nice but other than that i feel like i am guided everywhere. Mimics are more of annoyance that legit enemy (which is really bad). What drives me off completely is that this game is basically memo reading simulator and garbageman simulator in one game.

Start of the game is great but everything after you arrive in main hall seems boring. Worse of all game completely lacks atmosphere.

I played SS1 recently and it kept me bolted to screen, here i struggle to not close my eyes and go to sleep.

Skill system seems nice but it is completely obvious in what it does. Oh you see non working something ? There is huge icon telling you may fix it. Oh conveniently placed huge box that you can pick up.. etc.

I think i will change deficulty to easy. Those mimics are just annoying to even look on.

And that black screen when you fight... uhh.

 

[Zakhad]

Started it.. Does that game ever becomes good ? I played like 1 hour and honestly i am pretty bored. Graphics does look nice but other than that i feel like i am guided everywhere. Mimics are more of annoyance that legit enemy (which is really bad). What drives me off completely is that this game is basically memo reading simulator and garbageman simulator in one game.

Start of the game is great but everything after you arrive in main hall seems boring. Worse of all game completely lacks atmosphere.

I played SS1 recently and it kept me bolted to screen, here i struggle to not close my eyes and go to sleep.

Skill system seems nice but it is completely obvious in what it does. Oh you see non working something ? There is huge icon telling you may fix it. Oh conveniently placed huge box that you can pick up.. etc.

I think i will change deficulty to easy. Those mimics are just annoying to even look on.

And that black screen when you fight... uhh.

Mimics die to one shotgun blast, even on harder difficulties, I think. Shotgun plus the fabrication plan for ammo available before you even get to your office.

In most cases you can get round obstacles in other ways (e.g. jetpack over, or climb over with gloo cannon, or recycle the obstacles with a grenade). So skills aren't that obvious. But you'll get them all anyway if you're any kind of min-maxer.

Most places become open to explore after you return to your office from hardware labs. You'd have to go through psychotronics to get to some parts, but from then on basically everywhere is open to you and you can do a bunch of sidequests etc.

But is it fun? I liked it. Others didn't. Main issue is that it's too easy after the first few hours. Plus it gives you lots of options for what order you finish things, or how you do them, but that can result in scripting errors (like with New Vegas, which also had too many variables to deal with when scripting quests).

 

[Darth Roxor]

I'm p. sure it's fair to say that if he doesn't like it from the onset, he won't like it later either.

 

[Jasede]

That's generally true; who has time to waste?
Do play SS2 and tell me if you felt it was linear, too.

You should, coming from SS1 which is incredibly free.

 

[Mynon]

Started it.. Does that game ever becomes good ? I played like 1 hour and honestly i am pretty bored. Graphics does look nice but other than that i feel like i am guided everywhere. Mimics are more of annoyance that legit enemy (which is really bad). What drives me off completely is that this game is basically memo reading simulator and garbageman simulator in one game.

Start of the game is great but everything after you arrive in main hall seems boring. Worse of all game completely lacks atmosphere.

I played SS1 recently and it kept me bolted to screen, here i struggle to not close my eyes and go to sleep.

Skill system seems nice but it is completely obvious in what it does. Oh you see non working something ? There is huge icon telling you may fix it. Oh conveniently placed huge box that you can pick up.. etc.

I think i will change deficulty to easy. Those mimics are just annoying to even look on.

And that black screen when you fight... uhh.

I rate this post "Edgy"...

 

[Perkel]

That's generally true; who has time to waste?
Do play SS2 and tell me if you felt it was linear, too.

You should, coming from SS1 which is incredibly free.

Yeah it was but at least it had other strong factors that keep me bolted to screen.
Here i struggle to find one good reason why i should play it more.

Doesn't have atmosphere.
Story so far seems to be interesting but i totally rolled my eyes when i moved into supposed my office and i was watching tape and super mysteriously tape was shut down just in second when i was to learn something.
After which i go out of office and like shitstain that doesn't want to come off new mimics appear and once again i need to fight those headcrabs which is absolutely annoying.
Don't event talk about gameplay itself which is 99% searching for trash so you can maybe get some parts and fix something.


I mean Let us take deus ex for example. Hacking gave you access to locked parts of building which usually unlocked you secondary route. Here you unlock doors, watch some artsy pictures on walls and collect garbage AND 50% chance there will be annoying mimics around.

Honestly it feels like Bioshock which had same issues but at least gunplay wasn't entirely bad.

 

[LESS T_T]

"Building Prey: how artists shape video game worlds", with quotes from Arkane's artists.: https://www.theguardian.com/technol...eloper-arkane-artists-shape-video-game-worlds

 

[DonaldM]

Finished it. Complete and utter disappointment.

How did you finish it lol? It's taking me forever as the enemies kill you so easily. I'm really not impressed with PREY.

 

[Zakhad]

I'm p. sure it's fair to say that if he doesn't like it from the onset, he won't like it later either.

True, I guess. Not like it's one of those games with an enjoyability speed-hump.

 

[Zarniwoop]

How did you finish it lol? It's taking me forever as the enemies kill you so easily. I'm really not impressed with PREY.

It's VERY long for a modern game targeted at the goldfish attention-span millennial crowd.

But it does have an ending. Which SUCKS. It's like the writers had this idea for a story, fleshed it out in meticulous detail, and then didn't know how to end it. Like they just went, lol it's done now, money's up.

What do you know, maybe it IS like SS2 after all.

 

[Zakhad]

How did you finish it lol? It's taking me forever as the enemies kill you so easily. I'm really not impressed with PREY.

It's VERY long for a modern game targeted at the goldfish attention-span millennial crowd.

But it does have an ending. Which SUCKS. It's like the writers had this idea for a story, fleshed it out in meticulous detail, and then didn't know how to end it. Like they just went, lol it's done now, money's up.

What do you know, maybe it IS like SS2 after all.

Pretty sure they planned it carefully. There are suggestions all the way through (not just in the "visions" you have at various stages) about what's really happened/happening. Particularly in January's and Alex's dialogue (incidentally the two mains who I think were written by the main writers and not Avellone).

Didn't much like the ending but I can see what they were trying to do--it's similar to PS:T's elimination of player death (Or Bioshock's) and KotOR2's revelation about why you've been levelling up near the end game: you take a formal element of gameplay and turn it into a central plot contrivance... in this case, the way you can be a completely new person each time you restart a game: they give character's reactions to this, just like PS:T imagined what a savescumming un-killable protagonist would actually be like if that was part of the gameworld rather than outside it.

I agree they didn't do it as well as they could have done, however. Pretty hard ending to pull off and not feel a bit cheated.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Saying that they fleshed out the story in "meticulous detail" is fabulously optimistic to say the least. Even the basic premise of "The Typhon Broke Containment" (tm) doesn't hold water when you think about it for a few minutes. And it gets even worse when you consider that the BIG STATIONWIDE TRUBBLE that made everything go to shit has happened over like 8 fucking hours, or just one day at the most.

Also, "planned the ending carefully", please muh nigga. Sudden Steve Blum followed by sudden Space Cthulhu are anything but "carefully planned", it's obviously visible in the way the first one is handled and by the fact that the second one even appears to begin with.

 

[Zakhad]

Not saying planned well. Just that they had put some thought into it and had already foreshadowed a lot of those things. Might not be good thought. But thought.

 

[DeepOcean]

Arkane obsession with boring characters and shitty stories is really harming the long term insterest on their games.

 

[RoSoDude]

http://www.nexusmods.com/prey2017/mods/1/?

Hi All Yu's
This is a "Hardcore Mod" for Prey. It's a conglomeration of ideas that I have been experimenting with and requested features from the community.
This set of mod plugin's makes the following changes to the base game:

• Survival Traumas
  Reactivates the previous cut Traumas from the game (Blindness, Bleeding, Burns, Fractures, and Concussions) and increases the types of hazards which can cause these.
  Each type of trauma (except "blindness" which is actually vision impairment not total blindness and clears on it's own like being drunk) can be cured with a specific medical cure that you can collect and/or fabricate.
  Medical Operators clear ALL conditions and there is a new skill which also allows conditions to be cleared with a standard medical kit.

• Items
  Various new items have been added - a mixture of cut content and new items. Most of these are "junk" to clutter up your inventory.
  More standardized inventory limits on stacking. Inventory management is more of a thing now. If you find this frustrating do consider that the game allows you to store anything anywhere and will not delete or remove it. Hint - there are brief cases and other storage containers all over Talos that can be lugged around.
  Ammo, weapons, grenades and other useful items have been removed from Typhon as loot drops. You will have to depend on what you scavenge from the environment and more importantly what you fabricate.
  Much of the random useful loot (ammo, hypos, etc) on human bodies has been replaced with fabrication licenses so you will need to construct what you need to survive (or scavenge it from the hand placed items the devs have put around the levels.)

• Fabrication
  Limited licensing has been restored. Now when you pick up a fabrication plan it gives you ONE license to fabricate ONE item. Some costs have been adjusted slightly to use more organic and exotic material which is not used very much in the base game (beyond PSI Hypos and Neuromods)

• Abilities
  Increases the overall skill cost and requirements of upper tier mods. Costs start around 1-2 neuromods more for the bottom tier abilities and ramp up to x2 - x3 for upper tier powers depending on how powerful they are.
  Re-activates the previous cut Field Surgeon skill which allows players to heal traumas with normal med kits.
  "Nutrition" healing benefit from food drains away faster. Food is less of an effective replacement for medical treatment. Water no longer heals (why would it?!?) and gives much less PSI making it a much less effective replacement for PSI Hypos. If you want to stand around the water cooler all day be my guest
  

• Enemies
  Typhon get a very slight buff on health. This is very, very minor (around +20%) and does not effect low level Typhon (mimics, cystoids, etc). Mechanicals remain unchanged.
  You no longer automatically obtain the mimic detection chip so mimics are more of an ever present and unnerving threat.

• HUD
  Removed crouch and flash light icons from the HUD. Also removed enemy alert and indicator markers as well as most music cues to alert you of enemies. You will need to use good situational awareness and listening to find your enemies.
  Items no longer glow, glisten or glitter to draw your attention to them. Besides immersion breaking it's too much hand holding.
  Improved the Options Menu to include a HUD toggle which completely turns off ALL HUD elements (warning this is an extremely immersive, but also EXTREMELY difficult way to play)

NOTE - Unfortunately this mod does NOT enable Oxygen use nor weapon degradation. I have been unable to get these features working and am hoping that Arkane releases a future Survival Mode update that will bring these back.

Looks like the fan community has done Arkane's work for them. I'll admit I'm still sorta holding out hope for oxygen, weapon degradation, and maybe that talking Disc gun thing for more weapon variety. But even then, I doubt they'd also make the sensible changes to the resource economy that this gentleman has.

There's also this one that just focuses on the HUD:

http://www.nexusmods.com/prey2017/mods/2/?

Hi All Yu's
This is a series of mod plugin's to disable various immersion breaking features of the game. You can mix and match these and use whatever you like (or all of them!). You can use them with other mods, the base game, etc. They should not affect your saves in any way/
Currently it includes the following plugins:

• No Crouch Icon
• No Flashlight Icon
• No Enemy Alert / Spotting Yu Gauges
• No Enemy Markers Over Their Heads (or bodies or whatever... Typhon are weird )
• No Enemy Music Cues When Enemies Are Close
• No Item Glinting / Glimmering
• No Stamina or Jet Pack Bars

Also included is my Options Menu enhancement which allows you to turn off motion blur and toggle the HUD on or off (as well as some additional QOL keybinding fixes)
WARNING! Playing with the entire HUD toggled off is very VERY difficult as it completely shuts off all HUD elements including things you might want like loot container contents. You will have to use your PDA to examine the map and inventory frequently in order to check your health, armor, PSI and items you collect from containers.

 

[Ash]

http://www.nexusmods.com/prey2017/mods/1/?

• Ammo, weapons, grenades and other useful items have been removed from Typhon as loot drops. You will have to depend on what you scavenge from the environment and more importantly what you fabricate.

This mod looks like it fixes a number of problems, except this. There's already a problem with enemies/combat/pacing in the game that you'll find yourself just running past enemies. This encourages that further (though all the other stuff makes gameplay more meaningful, maybe it'll counter it).
But still, you need incentive to spend resources in dealing with enemies. Why use Health/Psi/Ammo when you can just run/sneak past? Everything else looks solid though.

Items no longer glow, glisten or glitter to draw your attention to them. Besides immersion breaking it's too much hand holding.

Also not sure about this due to Arkanes obsessive art and clutter focus, but certainly not a deal breaker. Would be nice to have as an option though.

Arkane obsession with boring characters and shitty stories is really harming the long term insterest on their games.

Eh the neutered gameplay is the biggest problem. the story is mostly linear, hence not holding a ton of replay value. Gameplay is rather open, but lacking. Not to mention the gameplay can be fixed in a patch. You can't really patch the story, or well you could, but it's far from common practice to retcon yourself.
The stories of both Prey and Dishonored are unfulfilling, but the gameplay could forgive all if it weren't lacking.

Speaking of neutered gameplay and stories, I'm playing Fallout 4 right now. For fuck sake the decline just never stops.

Spoiler

 

[Jaedar]

Speaking of neutered gameplay and stories, I'm playing Fallout 4 right now.

Why would you do this to yourself?

 

[Ash]

Gotta keep up with the contemporary gaming space. I'm usually old school gaming. Besides, it's no better or worse than Prey. Boring declined story, neutered gameplay.

 

[Multidirectional]

Gotta keep up with the contemporary gaming space. I'm usually old school gaming. Besides, it's no better or worse than Prey. Boring declined story, neutered gameplay.

"No better or worse than Prey" would mean it's a massive improvement over Fallout 3. Not buying it.

 

[Mynon]

Speaking of neutered gameplay and stories, I'm playing Fallout 4 right now.

Why would you do this to yourself?

What a silly question to ask on goddamn RPG Codex.

 

[Morgoth]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/480490/announcements/detail/1433686932742798001

Prey - New Update v. 1.05 Coming Soon - Patch Notes
2 August - JessBethesda
We're happy to announce that the latest update for Prey -- update 1.05 - is arriving soon. We will update once it's confirmed live.

The patch includes 30+ fixes to a variety of bugs and crashes.

From all of us at Arkane and Bethesda, thank you for the support and continued feedback.

Patch Notes for Version 1.05:

• Player can no longer become blocked from rebooting Power Plant for the "Reboot" mission after killing the Technopath in Life Support.
  
• Fixed crash when mimicking bass guitar in the Yellow Tulip.
  
• Extra items gained through passive neuromods, such as organs and tumors from Necropsy or spare parts through Dismantle, will now properly stack in the player's inventory automatically.
  
• Loading a save from a previous version of the game will no longer remove all quests and inventory, or break the HUD.
  
• Fix for some AI-related crashes.
  
• Various combat tweaks/fixes for mimics.
  
• Opening the TranScribe will no longer disrupt FoV settings.
  
• The light on top of a turret will no longer become detached when the player jumps and glides while holding it.
  
• Approaching areas with Coral should no longer cause the client to stutter and eventually freeze.
  
• Operator corpses from saves made on previous builds will no longer cause performance issues.
  
• Repair II and III increase efficiency with suit patch kits. Reduced suit damage from enemies on easy and normal difficulty.
  
• Increased wrench range and strength of melee aim assist. Wrench now always staggers mimics (interrupts attacks). Mimics stand further back to prevent players having to look down too much.
  
• Stun Gun now tells the player when a target is out of its effective range. Weapons will display a "Weapon Offline" when disabled by EMP.
  
• Hepatocytic Amp S-m186 chipset now properly only removes the negative effects of the "Drunk" debuff
  
• Player will now spawn in the correct location when traveling from Shuttle Bay to other locations.
  
• Fixed rare crash when level transitioning to Life Support.
  
• Reployers no longer lose collision when recycling them, and then loading a save where they were present.
  
• Player can no longer bypass ceiling collision by mantling GLOO.
  
• Danielle now voices the correct response to the player's actions with the Cook during the endgame sequence.
  
• The fabricated coral detector chipset and the quest-given chipset now both function correctly to scan the coral when installed
  
• Fix for rare freeze/crash when in combat with Phantoms.
  
• The Luther Glass quest will no longer incorrectly complete and fail after the player has already completed the quest in Trauma Center.
  
• Lights are no longer sometimes incorrectly 'on' when the player enters the Cargo Bay for the first time
  
• Igwe will no longer be found in Cargo Bay when the 'meet January' call is triggered.
  
• Mimic's wall jump attack animation is cancelled if they are stunned.
  
• Treasure Hunt now lists an objective and marker to return to Abigail's workstation once all the maps are investigated.
  
• The nightmare in the Arboretum is now able to get into the greenhouse and use ranged attacks on the player from the doorway.
  
• Turrets can now be hacked properly if they've been previously controlled by the Technopath.
  
• If the player manages to fully GLOO the greater mimic while it is in mid-lunge toward the player's face, the facegrab animation will no longer play and trap the player.
  
• Hitting a stunned Phantom with the wrench no longer breaks their animations
  
• Raised phantoms and operators will no longer become hostile to the player
• Various crash fixes
  
• Various text fixes.

 

[ciox]

• Repair II and III increase efficiency with suit patch kits. Reduced suit damage from enemies on easy and normal difficulty.
  
• Increased wrench range and strength of melee aim assist. Wrench now always staggers mimics (interrupts attacks). Mimics stand further back to prevent players having to look down too much.

Survival DLC might have to wait a little while they make the game easier for streamers.