Prey is a bit of an odd one. Even removed from the lineage of the Prey name (which I can only imagine was forced upon Arkane by a man in a suit from Bethesda), it's an odd one. Not on the surface, but the more time I spent with the game, the more something about it just felt...either off, or missing. I'm still not exactly sure. But I'll get to that later, once I get into the story spoilers. I don't want to ruin it for anyone that hasn't played it yet, and I think it's a game well worth playing.
I've never played the System Shock games, but I know that if I start this by comparing Prey to BioShock, a game I have played, someone is going to jump down my throat for it. Instead, I'll mention System Shock. Prey is the most "Shock-ing" game I've played since BioShock 2 (Infinite was much more linear, with little exploration). I know that multiple Deus Exes and Dishonoreds have released since then (and likely a whole host of indie games I've never heard of), but those are more focused on stealth, and Human Revolution is the only one of them that I thought was an overall great game (note that I didn't play Dishonored 2).
It's been a long time since I played BioShock 2, and it's a style of game that I wish was more prevalent these days. Prey evokes those same feelings of being stuck in this enormous structure, trying to survive by scrounging whatever is lying around, and using the environment against the enemies. Whether that's sneaking by, setting up some sort of trap, going head on, or whatever else you can think of. And that's the key that sets this style of game apart from the aforementioned Deus Exes (at least the Jensen ones; what I've played) and Dishonored. Those feel like level based sneaking missions, whereas the interconnected singular structure of Talos I in Prey feels like a place, and it feels like it's trying to be BioShock in that way. Or, System Shock, probably, as it does feel like it goes farther with that stuff than BioShock ever did.
Talos I is an intriguing place. A decades old research station, which has swapped hands between the Soviets, Americans, and finally the most evil of all, private investors. There isn't an enormous amount of variety in the environments of Talos I, but there's just enough where it really counts. The main lobby has a grand, clean "space-deco" feel, as do the other "public facing" areas. The parts where only the main crew and workers go? Definitely a lot less of that facade. Well, that's not entirely true, the work areas aren't as friendly and inviting, but spots like the crew quarters are. Echoing the real evil corporations of today, at least they try to make the employees feel happy while they're conducting human rights violations in international waters space. And of course the game takes place after everything went wrong, so there's the added layer of broken things, corpses, and sufficiently strewn about debris on top..
Which brings me to one of my favorite things about Prey: its attention to detail. This is a game where a lot of people spent a lot of time thinking stuff through, figuring out not just how this stuff would happen, but why it would happen. Determining the logic behind everything, and how to best present that information in a way that feels natural, rather than for the sake of exposition. The sort of stuff that most games (or fiction in general) would gloss over, or not even mention. For example, in proper video game form, there's all sorts of junk and assorted items that can be looted and hoarded.
When I say junk, I mean things that are literally garbage. Banana peels and eel scraps. Yes, eel scraps. And cans of jellied eels, which can be eaten for health, like many other food stuffs. For much of the game, I thought the eels were only in there as a joke. I know the main studio that worked on Prey was in Austin, Texas, so it couldn't be some weird British thing where eels are normal to eat. So I just kept laughing at all the eel items in the game, because it seemed like a good joke.
Then I got to the water treatment facility on Talos I and realized they used eels served an actual purpose. There's a tank full of them, where they eat a lot of the "waste," which I assume we all know what that means. But then at a certain point they harvest the excess eels for food, which is both kind of gross (because they eat "waste"), but also, the attention to detail. They didn't need to explain how "waste" got dealt with on the station, nor did they then have to explain how they dealt with the thing that dealt with the "waste." But they did, and I love that they did. And they did it without involving "electric eels powering something," because that would be too silly.
And that attention to detail is in every other facet of the game too. If you want explanations for how the oddball weapons work, how they were developed, those are there. Every NPC (and corpse) in the game has a name (or a number, for some of the research "volunteers"). No, they're not all fully developed characters, but there's just enough to make it feel like glimpsing into the lives of real people. The usual suspects of hacked emails, and found audio logs are there, but the places the people existed in prior to everything going wrong bare their marks like real places would.
My favorite ongoing examples of this were the knock-off D&D game and the shenanigans involving off brand Nerf® guns. This wasn't a station of faceless scientists droning away on evil research. These were regular people living their lives, playing games, making (and breaking) relationships with coworkers, and most importantly just trying to be happy. It's a lot easier to empathize with them when they feel like they could be real people, and that's not a feeling most games instill in me. It makes the whole of Talos I, the people living there, and what was happening feel more like things that could exist than most other games I've played.
Discounting the science fiction part of the game, but that's what science fiction is all about. This is the sort of sci-fi where, like with those silly eels, there's an explanation for everything. I love it when probably impossible things are given just enough grounding to seem plausible. And some of it, like the ghostly alien Typhon infesting the station, I think are firmly in that "there's no way this could actually exist" territory. They almost look like dark clouds of smoke trying to take corporeal form, and not quite getting there. Visually, it makes them feel distinct, but like I said, they're rather implausible.
In many ways, that's also to the game's benefit, because the Typhon are a really fascinating set of enemies. Despite looking evil, the game states numerous times, in dialog and various bits of research that they don't appear to be evil, or really anything other than just creatures trying to survive. No empathy, but no malice. They just are, and they do what they need to, which seems to involve killing a lot of people. At least that's what some of the NPCs say, whether or not that's true is one of those things you'll have to play the game and figure out for yourself.
How interesting the Typhon are to engage with in the game, however, is hit or miss. Some, like the Phantoms, just dart around and attack, and aren't that interesting, even when they come in elemental varieties later on. They're fun encounters, but nothing exceptional. But the Mimics? One of my favorite all time enemies across all games. And it's such a simple concept too. Any odd object scattered about a room might be a Mimic in disguise. It creates a tension and paranoia toward harmless things like coffee mugs that I've never seen any other game do. What would merely be window dressing elsewhere might be an enemy lying in wait, completely indistinguishable from what it mimics. The "classical" video game Mimic only ever takes the form of treasure chests, and all that does is teach you to attack every chest you find. Unless it's Dark Souls, in which case you just have to learn the visual difference between the two, because they're consistent.
For those first few hours of Prey, you can't trust anything that you come across, because any object could be a Mimic. Well, at least any small or medium sized object, so far as I know they can't turn into fridges, or big things. But what if they could? If there's anything I'd want from a Prey II (not to be confused with Prey 2), it'd be even more variety in what the Mimics can become. For better or worse, Prey does eventually present a way to scan objects to see what ones are Mimics, which causes them to lose some of the fun tension. There still were times where I forgot to scan a room before entering, and it doesn't work for their cousins, the Greater Mimics (at least not without an upgrade). I definitely got caught off guard by them more than a few times, even late into Prey. Games almost never make me "jump" in the horror game sense of the word, but I did here a couple times when they un-mimicked right in my face.
One last thing about the Mimics is that even if you discover where they are, that doesn't mean they go instantly into fight mode. Sometimes they'll attack, then run away and Mimic something else. Sometimes I would go through a room, think it was clear of Mimics, then return five minutes later and feel like something was...off. The next thing I knew the second wastebasket I swore I hadn't seen before was no longer a basket, and trying to kill me. They're fantastic. I almost wish the whole game was just about dealing with these ingenious fiends, though I suppose they might get old after a game the length of Prey if there weren't other enemies to mix it up.
My second favorite enemy type, the Telepath, isn't terribly exciting on its own. It's a big, kinda blobby looking specter that floats around lackadaisically, shooting psychic blasts as its main attack. Psychic is just one of the damage types in the game, so there isn't anything especially creative about that. It's when they get a hold of some NPCs that it gets interesting. Telepaths have the ability to turn humans into their mind slaves. Okay, that's not quite true, I just like the sound of "mind slave." What they actually do is gain the ability to control what the humans do, but not actually their minds. You can see them struggling against the control as they meander toward you, and they warn you to stay away because when they get close...their heads explode. Explode big enough that it'll damage you in the process.
If you don't care about those NPCs, they're easy enough to deal with. Prey has more than enough in terms of weapons to just kill them. A few pistol shots from afar will pop their heads at a safe distance, or a well placed recycler charge will suck them up, and turn them into handy crafting materials with ease. But you'd have to be heartless to just let their heads explode without even trying to save them. So, any time I encountered a telepath with a group of humans, I took it upon myself to save those humans. Sometimes that meant methodical uses of the stun gun, and sometimes that meant severing the connection to the telepath by killing it, or using anti-psychic grenades. There is an ability that can be used to sever that connection as well, but for reasons I'll get to later, I didn't have access to that.
I want to mention the weapons before I get to that. The pistol and shotgun are standard video game fair, as is the stun gun, but the rest of the arsenal isn't. Okay, and the wrench too. But several of them don't even do damage. The Huntress Boltcaster is useless as a weapon, because it shoots Nerf® darts. But those darts work on touch screens, and being able to use touch screens at range is useful when this is a future where touch screens are all over the place. The GLOO Gun won't hurt enemies, but it will stick them in place for a few seconds, and it can be used to create makeshift paths around the environment. Nothing is out of reach if you have enough GLOO, and know where to shoot it. It reminds me of the foam gun from Shadow Complex, though it isn't quite as robust or explosive as that was. There's a lure that is supposed to attract Typhon (it was hit or miss for me), and finally the Q-Beam, which slowly turns the enemy's health bar green. When the green reaches whatever their current health is, they just explode. Not a fiery, damage other enemies explosion, for better or worse.
Then there's the powers, which is where I think the game makes a misstep. Not in the powers themselves, because I didn't use any of them, outside of one. Aside from the slow motion power, they're all considered alien powers, and the game not so subtly suggests that getting the alien powers might be a bad idea. Or rather, a character in the game calls you and says doing so will cause the station's automated defenses (turrets) to attack on sight, and could have other complications. What complications? The game didn't say, which only increased my desire to play the game without getting any of the Typhon powers. This led to what I would probably say isn't the best way to actually play Prey.
Neuromods, in fiction, are used to augment people in a variety of ways. References are made in game to people being able to learn entire new languages, how to play instruments, and a whole host of other useful skills through neuromods. In game, they're used for passive and active powers: more health, bigger inventory, faster movement speed, etc. That last one in particular is irksome because the default movement speed is just too slow. It's a perfect example of an upgrade that should be a part of the base experience. Aside from the aforementioned slow motion, all the human upgrades are passive abilities, or things like higher tiers of hacking. They're useful, but all straightforward.
The Typhon powers are where things get a bit different. Why let Mimics have all the fun when you can mimic too? You can even mimic a mimicked Mimic! Other powers include trapping enemies in an upward draft thing, lighting them on fire, electricity, and what seems like this game's equivalent of the Dishonored Blink, for darting into safety. But I didn't use any of them, because the game made me think it'd be a bad idea to do that. Was it? Well, given that I feel like I missed out, I'd say it was probably a bad idea NOT to use any of them.
The flip side is that the number of neuromods in the game (especially if you craft A TON of them like me) feels like it's balanced for using all of the skill trees, instead of half of them. By the end, I had almost every human upgrade. I was over-powered. Did it ruin the game? No, I was still having fun blasting my way through the Typhon, but there's something disappointing about an enemy called "The Nightmare" that is easy to dispatch because of the way I've upgraded.
The Nightmares channel the idea of Nemesis from Resident Evil 3, where they're massive, scary things hunting you. When one is on the hunt, the game activates a side quest with a timer. Either you evade The Nightmare for three minutes, or you find a way to kill it. And it does that every time. My first encounter with a Nightmare resulted in my hiding in a maintenance tunnel for the full three minutes. The second time was the only time I think it went the way Arkane intended. Creeping around, staying out of sight, and just narrowly avoiding detection. After that I completed a side quest which gave me the ability to force it to leave the area I'm in, or call it directly to me, with a limited number of uses. But before I tried that, I wanted to see how I'd actually do in a straight on fight with it.
Using the slow motion ability (fully upgraded, which gives a decent bonus to damage), and a heavily upgraded shotgun made short work of it. I didn't even have to reload. I think I'll have to play it again, and play a much stealthier, more power focused character than I did the first time. And when I say "have to," I mean want to. I really enjoyed Prey, and I think I might enjoy it even more playing that way. Plus, I want to see how certain things play out differently based on choices through the game.
I don't mean choices in the usual video game sense. This isn't a game with "Push A to do the virtuous good thing or Push B to do the evil mean thing." People ask for help, and you have the choice to help them, ignore them, or outright kill them, if you truly lack that much empathy! There's a Trophy for killing literally every NPC in the game, and from what I've read on a Trophy guide, that means you need to deal the killing blow. Letting mind controlled humans explode won't cut it, you need to pull the trigger and kill them. And as the story progresses, these situations get more dire. Instead of being asked to go find a trinket, you're being asked to save a lot of people. Time limits get imposed, and if you're not fast enough, they will die.
About all that's left for me to write about is the story. Don't spoil Prey for yourself, go play it. Without further ado: SPOILERS.
So that's Prey. It has issues, I know I could've spent time harping about the technical side of it (the load times are too long, being my biggest gripe), but I really think this is a game worth playing. We don't get many games like this, both in terms of the general game design of it harking back to the Shock games of yore, and those spoilery things it was really about.
Now if you excuse me, I'm going to go start it up again and check out those Typhon powers. I wish it had a New Game Plus so I could see it a bit earlier, but it is what it is. Thanks for reading.
Log in to comment