Prey 2

Overview

Prey 2 is the sequel to the 2006 first person shooter, Prey. It has very few things in common with the first Prey and is an open world first person shooter. Players take on the role of bounty hunter Kilian Samuels as he hunts down targets on an alien world. The world offers parkour similar to Mirror's Edge as well as alien technology.

Plot

The story starts off in a plane that has crash landed on an alien vessel called the Sphere, where the first game takes place (you see the plane crash in the early parts of the first game). You are Kilian Samuels, a US Marshall unlucky enough to be on the plane when it crashed. The game starts you off with searching for survivors and fighting off aliens. Despite Kilian's best efforts, he's eventually captured at which point the game flashes forward a few years.

Samuels is now a bounty hunter on an alien planet. It is unclear how he made it there or how he escaped the aliens. He now hunts down some of the deadliest of the galaxy as sport. The game switches your role compared to the first game: in Prey, Domasi "Tommy" Tawodi was being hunted, now you are the hunter. However, it has been confirmed that Tommy will make numerous appearances in Prey 2, apparently working alongside Pierce, whoever that is.

The game is set on an unknown alien planet. Although the planet itself revolves around a sun-like star the actual planet itself does not spin meaning that the planet is composed of three distinct areas pf light-roughly equivalent to daylight, dusk and night-time. In the final games these three areas will act as various hubs for the missions you take on. . The first and only environment that has been revealed is the city and the developers have called the story in the game to be "Alien Noir".

Gameplay

The game features a reputation system as well as choices. You are free to do whatever you want in the game world, be it mug people or search for bounties. The way you interact with the environment ultimately decides how the environment reacts to you. For example, you get a job that consists of retrieving weapons. You can choose to bring back the weapons or keep them for yourself. Instead of long term consequences, the developers have opted for consequences that are felt immediately after the choice is made. In the case where you steal the weapons, the alien who gave you the job will send mercenaries after you to get them back.

Prey 2 trades the linear progression of the first game for a janky open world environment centred around verticality. To get around in this hostile environment, the game has a "parkour" system where you orient the stick in the direction you want to go (like in Brink) and the game will automatically vault Samuel over objects or climb walls. The developers have stated that in video games, climbing up things has always been easy but the part where you have to climb down has always been hassle. That's why they've given Killian a pair of rocket boots that he can trigger right before hitting the ground making going down buildings as simple as jumping off them.

Being a bounty hunter, Samuels must hunt and capture his prey. The player will be able to choose how to take out enemies, be it through stealth or brute force, while some bounties will trigger scripted events such as chases. To make hunting easier, Samuels has access to a special view mode where he can scan groups of people to see if any have bounties over their heads. This can be done outside of missions while exploring the environment.

Rumours of Cancellation and Delay

Following E3 2011, where the game was shown behind closed doors and a trailer was released, Prey 2 disappeared for nine months. When most of the Prey 2 panels were cancelled at GDC 2012, some assumed that the game had been outright cancelled.

On April 20, 2012 Bethesda sent out a press release stating that Prey 2 was still in development and had been delayed due to the fact that it didn't match Bethesda's quality standards:

Development of Prey 2 has not been cancelled but the game will not be released in 2012 as planned. The delay is due to the fact that game development has not progressed satisfactorily this past year, and the game does not currently meet our quality standards. Prey 2 has shown great promise and we regret disappointing our fans. We have made a substantial investment in game development to deliver the experience fans want. We are determined only to release the AAA game that fans rightfully expect, and are unwilling to compromise our quality standards to meet a release schedule.

It was further revealed that development for the game had been stopped in November 2011. Human Head wished to re-negotiate their contract with ZeniMax, believing that the terms of their current contract were not fair. Many members of Human Head were laid off during this strike period which lasted at least until March 2, 2012. It is unclear if Human Head and ZeniMax have come to any sort of agreement.

Alien Noire Website

In February 2013 a new website launched called Alien Noire, and offered nothing more than a countdown in an alien language. However, looking through the source code of the website several noteworthy clues can be found. The countdown is set to end on 1st of March 2013 at 6 PM. Keywords in the meta code are:

<meta name="keywords" content="Prey, Prey2, Prey 2, FPS, Bethesda Softworks, Human Head Studios, Alien Noire" />

Some believe that Prey 2 will be a next generation title considering the countdown is ending shortly after Sony's press event on 20th of February, where most are expecting Sony to officially reveal the next PlayStation.

It would turn out that this would be mearly a fan website and have no offical link to Prey 2.