I admire some parts of the hacking system, but it has two very poor aspects.
1: in DXHR it gives its own xp rewards, meaning you're incentivised to hack stuff even if you've already found another way around. It's the old, "don't use the easy way to open that door, I'll lose the XP from opening it the hard way" trap, a trap that Prey avoids. DXMD fixes this by giving XP for using passwords, although it's still not perfect. But DXMD doesn't fix...
Absolutely, which is why I praised the hacking minigame individually but not its greater utilization in context -- this is what I meant by XP micro-rewards, and they're antithetical to DX design principles by
incentivizing certain playstyles for non-organic reasons. MD did a much better job balancing the rewards, but it's bandaids on a broken system as far as I'm concerned. I'd also criticize the over-use of the hacking minigame, as the removal of lockpicking/electronics means that EVERYTHING is opened by hacking, so even a non-hacker build will be playing the minigame quite a bit. Still much better than Bioshock though, both in the actual minigame and its frequency.
2: RNG. It's just a huge invitation to savescum. This kind of mini-game should be based on skill, not RNG slightly lessened by stats and consumables.
Another issue of utilization. On its own, I actually think the RNG is great. I have played through HR/MD with no upgrades to Hacking: Stealth or Fortify, relying completely on strategic use of softwares to complete the harder hacks. It actually works quite well, and I only had to buy softwares a handful of times. The RNG adds a dimension of dynamic strategy rather than pure puzzle solving, legitimizes differential character investment, and creates some genuine risk/reward especially when the real-time hacking puts you in danger of being spotted (this is all HIGHLY similar to what I like about SS2's hacking system). That it encourages savescumming is an unfortunate consequence of Save Anywhere more broadly speaking, as many more of the game's systems encourage and are destroyed by savescumming than just hacking (see: mashing F8 when spotted). This feature is endemic even to the classics to various degrees.
Speaking of hacking minigames, I think one area where Prey definitively loses to its competitors is its hacking minigame. God, it's so friggin' boring. They should have put some Pac-Man ghosts in there or
something. Plus the "difficulty" makes no sense, Level 2 hacks are actually the hardest by far because the doubled timer wasn't balanced for the tighter layouts, while Level 3 and 4 hacks are the easiest because the layouts had to be more open to accommodate more nodes while the timer was only scaled up linearly. Really backwards stuff.
I think those were maybe my single biggest dislike... the frozen time, the unskippable mini-cutscene, and the fact the resulting body position was randomised so it made stealth runs frustrating.
They're easily the worst part of the gameplay. I think I could happily recommend HR/MD otherwise, but the takedowns are such an embarrassment that I can only be lukewarm at best. The devs noticed very late how badly takedowns unbalanced the experience that they had to slap on a huge energy cost (they've literally
admitted as much), but this doesn't fix the enormous underlying problems. I could go on and on about the flaws of these games, but none put a damper on the experience like time-stopping fade-to-black canned animation win-button goddamn takedowns. Ugh.
That I am more eager to discuss and tepidly praise the systems design of modern AAA fanfiction/tributes to games like Deus Ex and Thief over that of the new indie release from the
original developers of those games engenders a profound numbness in me.
