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

[LESS T_T]

Standalone expansion like Death of the Outsider, I'd guess.

 

[JBro]

pls no more lesbians

 

[Hines]

This tweet was liked by a few Arkane employees.

 

[LESS T_T]

Yeah, it looks like some kind of ARG thing: https://www.reddit.com/user/kasmacorp

 

[conan_edw]

Who would handle it? I mean Raphael has already left and I was under the impression that Harvey is handling whatever online thing they are planning to do

 

[Morgoth]

Standalone expansion like Death of the Outsider, I'd guess.

I'd actually hope it ties neatly into the main game, perhaps even rework some of the Talos I sections and the story itself.

 

[ciox]

It looks like there's something weird on the moon's surface, I wouldn't mind at all a DLC that adds a moonbase campaign and new gear, and lets you use that new gear in the main game too. Survival mode DLC is a must though.

 

[Durandal]

Glad to see it's not dead, they still have to release that Survival Mode with all the cut content they mentioned in a video interview.
Moonbase campaign seems like it could make better use of zero-g environments.

 

[ciox]

Or rather, low-g, which is a lot more exciting than zero-g in my opinion. (you still have to plan your jumps/course to get somewhere vs. just flying and richocheting your way there sooner or later)

 

[Talby]

What was the survival mode going to be? Just a higher difficulty?

Glad that it doesn't seem to be abandoned. Prey was the best game I played last year, much better than the Dishonored games.

 

[conan_edw]

I really hope we see more enemy types. The re-skinned phantoms became boring after sometime and while mimics were exciting to encounter they were always easy to kill and the other types aren't seen as much as those two

 

[Junmarko]

What was the survival mode going to be? Just a higher difficulty?

Assume they'd just flesh out the unfinished Mental Status elements. IIRC, alcohol quenched your Fear state, but the status/debuff was so short & insignificant, you forgot about monitoring it anyway.

 

[ciox]

I assume it would have these removed elements:
- weapon degradation
- oxygen ticking down in areas without air
- traumas (these were modded in)

 

[Ash]

Don't forget one of the most important: fabrication licenses. So that you can't spam-craft 1000s of neuromods and shotgun ammo.

I highly doubt it's gonna be survival mode though. They love their gameplay decline at Arkane.

 

[RoSoDude]

Considering how unimpactful the difficulty settings were in the base game (see my breakdown here for why the damage received/taken modifiers don't meaningfully add any challenge due to combat centered around stunlocking), I wonder if they should have gone for just two difficulty settings from the start: Normal and Survival mode. The former would be the game as it is on Normal now with 100% damage received and taken, while the Survival mode would feature all of the cut features that meaningfully add to resource management, build diversity, and tactical combat depth.

The casual "So it's Bioshock in space?" crowd would be appeased by their watered down version of Prey, and would feel validated by the game calling it Normal difficulty. Those of us who want to be forced to think, plan, and execute to overcome tough challenges (which I'd argue is the core gameplay loop in the LGS-like genre) would be treated to weapon degradation, fabricator limits and higher material costs, trauma effects, and tense zero-g sections with limited oxygen. To that I'd probably add more frequent enemy repopulation, real-time menus, food items refreshing a slow heal-over-time status effect rather than an instant spammable health boost, no more degenerate nonsense like healing/psi recovery from drinking fountains, larger inventory sizes for weapons and ammo, and (if possible) respawn stations with harsh penalties like near-full enemy repopulation to grant permanence to every wasted bullet and medkit. If done properly, no "160% damage taken, 80% damage dealt" modifier need be added, since true challenge would emerge from having to intelligently select neuromods and make careful use of the resources you've scavenged to defeat your enemies and unlock more of the station, and we'd be looking at a legitimate System Shock successor in spite of its failings in level design and narrative.

...also more weapons like that cut Disc Gun with a depressed AI guidance system would be nice.

 

[DeepOcean]

The single most feature I want is really shorter loading screens, I won't replay this game for the DLC because of that, was too much.

 

[Don Peste]

I wonder how the ending can fit on this... Maybe it's a prequel?

 

[Hines]

https://www.reddit.com/r/prey/comments/82658e/dlc_theories/dv8hd1y/

A Morse code message: Relay from m13 says they've intercepted our messages. Heat is coming your way. Get out.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

So I recently played and completed this, and although I loved it and thought it was easily the best AAA game of the last decade, this:

*snip*

is all 100% spot-on. Lack of o2 consumption rate, infinite licenses, and VATS-esque stimpak spamming were the biggest decisions for me.

I think the game's performance was likely hindered by two main factors:

1) It should never have been called Prey. Whatever coke-addled nepotistic beneficiary made this decision should be sentenced to flipping burgers for life. It confused both franchise newcomers and longtime PC gamers, it created toxicity and ill will towards the game on the part of the original's fanbase, and it had fuckall to do with the game's gameplay, story, or lineage. FFS, they're bsb sci-fi titles, but Space Shock, Neuro Shock, Mimic, or Prometheus are all better titles for the product in question. Prey? What the fuck?

2)The story was spoiled prior to release (or at least I think it was?) I remember reading this leak that (afaicr) turned out to be pretty accurate and thinking "Wow. That sounds fucking dumb. Pass." And you know, it is pretty dumb, but it's well-written dumb (think James S.A. Corey or Orson Scott Card well-written dumb), and I was surprised by the end how much I enjoyed the game's plot. One notable caveat here would be

Spoiler

the post-credits "twist". I'd already assumed based on the HEAVY hinting that Morgan was a typhon, but, and this may in part be the nature of the beast with post-game C&C debriefs, I found the writing in the entire sequence to be absolutely dreadful, and the typhon invasion of Earth seems like a pretty uninteresting direction to take the (likely DOA) franchise.

That said, Prey DLC? Sign me up! D1P!

 

[Zarniwoop]

It's much closer to System Shock 2 in gameplay terms, than it is to the real Prey with the spirit-walking injun.

Story-wise, it's halfway between The Matrix and SS2.

Art style is pretty much pure Bioshock, all Art Deco and whatnot.

TL;DR:

This game is closer to Sysytem Shock 2 than the "spiritual successors" Bioshock. And it's got absolutely nothing to do with the game it shares a name with, apart from being shooters set in space. They should have called this a System Shock game instead.

I'm willing to bet it will turn out to be more like SS2 than the new SS3 will be. You heard it here first.

 

[Daedalos]

So here's a mini review:

Good stuff:
- Great writing and great storytelling. The introduction, holy fuck that was great. The-what-the-fuck-is-going-on? moments in the first and medium parts of the game. Interesting ending that will leave you with a few more questions and thoughts. I love the 1950s era twist, where Kennedy wasn't killed.
- Pretty good graphics and artstyle, especially with mods that make the graphics really stand out.
- Well optimized and runs on most potato comps
- Mostly interesting sidequests that doesnt get too boring and provide something extra to the main story so they are worth doing
- Good exploration that doesnt feel all too liniar, and a very atmospheric cool setting. I absolutely loved exploring Talos I, finding new stuff, new stories and notes, feeling all alone after shit had hit the fan. I like those kinds of games (very half-life/dead space)
- Great sound and music design. Lovedt the futuristic sounds with all the robotic voices, and computers n shit. I also was quite fond of the music, for the most part.

Bad stuff:
- The combat and shooting aspects of the game are pretty mediocre to downright bad. Prey is not really an action shooter, but perhaps was mismarketed as such. It's fun to shoot the mimics for a while, but it gets stale fast, and the enemy variety is not that great. Prey is at heart really more of a survival horror type of game, and would have played better as such, think Alien Isolation. The combat kind of gets in the way of that, because its half-baked.
- The crafting system and the loot hoarder mentality is kind of dumb and doesnt fit the game that well. First of all, you find way too much shit littered everywhere, that your OCD compels you to pick up, and then you have that little crafting mini-game, which is fun at first, but annoying later on. I know there are mods that fix part of the crafting and loot problems. The inventory management alone from all the shit you collect is very annoying and bothersome. Feels like D:OS 2 all over again!
- The in-space/no gravity part of the game could have been handled better. As some have said, there isn't really alot of danger, isn't all that realistic, and it gets boring at times, because of how big it is, and how annoying it is to navigate.
- The balance of the game is kind of off, you find too many typhon mods to install, and it dosent feel limiting, because u can get most of the stuff. This can be fixed by mods, though.
- The last 1/3 of the game felt abit rushed, and wasn't up to par as the 2/3 of the game. It's not bad, but it's noticeable enough.

Conclusion:
In the end and despite the flaws, Prey remains one of the best exploration/"open world" based sci-fi games I've played in a long time, with a fairly interesting and fresh story and writing and alot of background info and tidbits to read up on that are interesting. I'm a big sucker for sci-fi games, so naturally I'm heavily biased, and the game does have noticeable flaws, which most can be fixed with a few mods, however. The game feels like the perfect mix of System Shock 2, Half-life 1, Dead Space 1 and Deus Ex 1. I simply loved exploring the Talos I space station, sucking up every little bit of info and wandering around wondering wtf went on, discovering the story little by little with the twist and
turns it provides. If there's DLC on the way, I'm buying it right away! ;-)

Rating: 8.5-9/10

 

[polo]

Been playing this, really good so far, combat is getting kind of boring and i just picked up my mimic powers. Also the ability to manufacture neuromods feels like cheating. And as daedalos said up here, the hoarder system does not help my ocd disorder at all, inventory management because of banana peels is kind of retarded.
And then, there is the thing with enemy variety, up until now everything was mimics, phantoms and ocassional corrupted shit. Hey a mimic!, hey a purple mimic!, hey that mimic is on fire!, hey that one is shocked...

 

[Multidirectional]

The hoarder system does not help my ocd disorder at all, inventory management because of banana peels is kind of retarded.

What inventory management? You pick all the shit up, go to recycler. Hold button to transfer all the junk, recycle, pick up materials. You go to inventory, press autosort button until your weapons end up on top. It's about the least inventory management I ever had to do in ARPGs. It can get annoying until you upgrade inventory size though.

 

[Blaine]

Unfortunately, Ultima 7 was peak inventory management. It's only been downhill since then.

 

[polo]

The hoarder system does not help my ocd disorder at all, inventory management because of banana peels is kind of retarded.

What inventory management? You pick all the shit up, go to recycler. Hold button to transfer all the junk, recycle, pick up materials. You go to inventory, press autosort button until your weapons end up on top. It's about the least inventory management I ever had to do in ARPGs. It can get annoying until you upgrade inventory size though.

That exactly. I updated it once only and most of the time is me just thinking what to drop or pick cause backtracking just for the recycler is annoying.


Btw, are psi powers OP? Fun? idk, i will prob try most of those cause im already tired of shooting everything. Also i've found out about sneak attacks really late, would've invested more in sneaking earlier otherwhise.