GamesFPSPreyArkane’s sci-fi immersive sim Prey was a shock to the system, for players and its developer alikeWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesFPSPreyArkane’s sci-fi immersive sim Prey was a shock to the system, for players and its developer alikeWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Arkane)
On its release in 2017, Prey burned brightly but all too briefly. A wave of glowing reviews arrived late, thanks to Bethesda withholding code from journalists, and the game was burdened with a title that suggested it was a reboot of a not-very-well known title from a decade prior – a decision director Raphaël Colantonio recently said was forced upon the developer. However, two games released in 2023 have helped to pushArkane Austin’s science-fiction immersive sim back into the spotlight, albeit for very different reasons.
Into the breach
(Image credit: Bethesda)
Subscribe(Image credit: Future)This feature originally appeared in Edge magazine. For more in-depth interviews, reviews, features, and more delivered to your door or digital device,subscribe to Edge magazine.
Subscribe
(Image credit: Future)This feature originally appeared in Edge magazine. For more in-depth interviews, reviews, features, and more delivered to your door or digital device,subscribe to Edge magazine.
(Image credit: Future)
This feature originally appeared in Edge magazine. For more in-depth interviews, reviews, features, and more delivered to your door or digital device,subscribe to Edge magazine.
Such ambiguities make for a cumbersome pitch, but they are also Prey’s greatest strength. Nowhere is that more starkly demonstrated than in the game’s opening. Morgan Yu, a mildly customisable player character, awakens in their penthouse apartment, before taking a helicopter ride to the HQ of megacorporation TranStar Industries. After flying over a cityscape where the game’s opening credits form parts of its architecture, you meet Yu’s brother, TranStar CEO Alex, and embark upon a series of psychometric tests. But these tests are unexpectedly interrupted – and the next thing you know, you awaken once more in your apartment.
(Image credit: Arkane Studios)
It’s a brilliant opening, the one part of Prey to receive the recognition it deserves. But its ingenuity stretches beyond that immediate surprise, serving as your first lesson not to take anything on Talos 1 at face value. This is quickly reinforced on your first encounter with a Mimic, when you realise that virtually any object in the game world could suddenly sprout tendrils and leap at your face. These shapeshifting alien spiders are an impressive piece of enemy design – and not just conceptually. The way their tendrils flow and shift as they move is mesmerising, as is watching them slowly freeze in place when you hose them down with your GLOO Cannon.
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But the crowning achievement of Prey’s understated style is Talos 1 itself, surely the single finest example of 3D level design from a studio synonymous with the phrase. While there are flashier, higher-concept examples within Arkane’s canon, notably the Clockwork Mansion and Stilton Manor of Dishonored 2, nothing in that series can match up to this space station, in which practically the entire game is housed. Every square foot has been accounted for, every sector and shortcut moulded to fit inside a kilometre-long orbital art installation. The accuracy to scale is crucial to making one of the game’s most effective tricks work: the ability to venture outside the station, using a spacesuit to travel between airlocks.
Talos 1’s layout is also where Arkane pays its clearest tribute to Looking Glass. It has the same geometric fundamentals as System Shock’s Citadel Station, both metal columns where operational sectors are delineated vertically. At the peak of each is a verdant grove where the respective infestations are most acute; at the bottom, twin nuclear reactors where you can seal the structure’s fate. Exploring each space plays out similarly too. Both games encourage you to divine objectives yourself, listening to audio logs for clues and, in Prey’s case, using an employee-tracking system to locate specific individuals.
Shifting shape
(Image credit: Arkane)
As its spiritual successor, Prey owes much to System Shock. Yet in replaying System Shock, in its original or remade form, it becomes clear just how far Prey has exceeded it. System Shock remains a key text in immersive-sim design, but does not itself truly fit the definition as we understand it today. It has no real stealth systems, and few ways to interact with or manipulate enemies beyond shooting them. It is, ultimately, a shooter with loftier aspirations, a survival horror on the more mindful edge of the genre.
This feature first appeared inEdge Magazine, whichyou can pick up right now here.
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