December 8th, 2022

Beaten 1st time on difficulty – Hard
Mods/fixes used: Tweaking visual settings in .ini file
Favorite OST:
02 – Everything Is Going To Be Ok
09 – Alex Theme
14 – Mind Game

Another Arkane game. While Dishonored was an immersive sim heavily inspired by games like Thief, Prey is more similar to System Shock, where player is stuck on one giant station where they can roam freely. Some sections are closed off at start, for story reasons obviously. The Talos I station is massive and so is its exterior that we can use to travel faster between sections, after we get equipment to survive in space.

Prey is set in alternative future, where the soviets first discovered an alien called Typhon after one of their satellites orbiting the moon stopped responding. They sent an investigation team, after it looked undamaged from outside, they tried to breach it and got wiped by aliens. Couple years later they contact US and explain the situation and ask for help, which results in joint program called "Kletka" (cage) where they build a station around the abandoned satellite to contain the aliens and maybe learn something from them. That same year, Harvey Lee Oswald attempts to assassinate President Kennedy. He fails, after which Kennedy's administration decides to take full control of the station and focus on researching Typhon for military and commercial purposes. It didn't took long for Typhon to breach the research station. They killed entire US research personnel and since no major discoveries were made the US decides to abandon the station and let it orbit the moon. In year 2030 the TranStar corporation takes control of the abandoned station, transforms it into a gigantic Talos I station and makes major discoveries, one of the results of that is production of Neuromods. That's our backstory. The year is 2035 and we play as Morgan Yu, vice president and Director of Research of TranStar Industries, and after picking either female or male Morgan, we go through a very impressive intro/tutorial. It’s one of the more memorable parts of the game and quite weird at first, but it makes more sense as you learn about the world and Yu’s past.

Calling it FPS is weird as while there are firearms and you do play for first person perspective, you don’t have to solve every problem with a gun or by killing something. There’s almost always an alternative path for sneaking or a spot to hide in rooms with one entry/exit. Though sometimes the game forces you to kill something, which is different from Dishonored where you could finish the mission without killing anyone, you can be stealthy most of time. But when you have to kill something, it’s Typhon, not human. But if you want to kill every human you meet, you can and this game takes that into account.

Prey has similar character look to Dishonored characters, but they are a bit more grounded in this game – no more guards with oversized shoulders and hands for example! As for station, living quarters and sections meant for guests and visitors have this very luxurious look and something called “art deco”. From rooms to normal items like lamps and chairs, they all have a very strong art deco look. As for more industrial sections and sections focused on science, they have the looks you’d expect. One section that stands out is Arboretum built at the very top of the station, an artificial park with lush greenery and where most food is grown for station inhabitants. The only thing separating this section from outer space is a giant transparent dome.

But even with this art direction the game does not look good at maximum settings. Draw distance is very low and you can see slight texture popping, the Lobby is a perfect example as it is a big and open space and you can see some exterior through its giant window. Texture quality on its own is just not good, like from first Dishonored game but Prey is from 2017, not 2012… Anti-aliasing doesn’t work and you have to force it via text edits. This was a game I wanted to play for a long time and I thought it would be a great test for my new GPU but honestly I could probably run this easily on my old 660Ti, very disappointing in this regard. I know screenshots on store page are usually made to look slightly better but this is criminal what Arkane/Bethesda did, the game does not look at all like it does on official screenshots.

Besides picking if we want to fight every enemy or sneak around them, we also get to pick what kind of Morgan we want to be. A good Morgan who helps people, even if it’s something insignificant that will only make one guy feel better, or a selfish Morgan who only focuses on more important goals and doing perhaps morally questionable things? It may not be an easy choice as we learn more about Typhon and get mixed messages from past Morgan who tells us one thing but then a different thing via video messages and robots with his/her voice. After all, as Vice President and Director of Research, Morgan is one of the people “in the know” so maybe we should listen to past ourselves even if it may seem like a bad idea from our point of view? Oh and did I mention Morgan has amnesia when we get to play him/her? A cliché, but not the worst sin this game commits, but I won’t spoil the game’s story further 😊

And back to choices, I made a choice to not inject myself with Neuromods that give you Typhon powers. In general I decided to stay human through my playthrough, saving every human I can and staying “clean” but I still used Neuromods that give you more human powers. This however resulted in me missing out on some very cool combat powers and made fights less fun and more repeatable over time. I don’t think most players will do that on their 1st playthrough and the punishment of acquiring Typhon powers is that deployable turrets will think you’re a Typhon. Sounds bad but turrets deal so little damage and are easily destroyed or disabled that it’s a small trade-off.

There’s a good dose of horror/dread in this game, not enough to call this a horror but couple jump scares and situations that made me feel uneasy. Typhon themselves can give you few scares by just their natural behavior, especially mimics who are spider-like creatures that can turn into anything smaller or slightly bigger than them. You get a tool to detect them later on (which I hate because it ruins that enemy imo) but before it you have to either check everything with wrench or pay attention to your surroundings. Maybe it’s that second chair next to the desk or extra cup… their AI makes decision what to pick and it’s never the same, but sometimes they make dumb decision like turning into a garbage can on top of a desk, but it’s rare. Phantoms are tough humanoid creatures and even late in game having to fight two at the same time was a bit stressful, at least on hard difficulty and with my choices. And they come in different flavors, fire Phantom that can burn you, electric Phantom that disables everything in close vicinity (some of your weapons included), ethereal Phantom that can make a perfect copy of itself… Telepath and Technopath are just giant floating blocks of Typhon matter, former can mind control humans and will send them at you, latter can hack any AI and likes to attach hacked turrets to itself while also spawning balls of lightning near you.

I won’t spoil the ending but it is disappointing… Like I said before, it’s another cliché, it is not as bad as it could be in other games given the context and some implications buuuuut it is still disappointing. And you have to wait for credits to end before you get to see it, I wonder how many players have missed that xD

Best Arkane game? Nah, I think I liked Dishonored 2 a bit more. But overall I had fun with this, great world, great characters, great level design, okay-ish combat. Recommended!