Game-play
Prey is a
first-person shooter with
role-playing game elements and strong narrative. The player takes the role of Morgan Yu, a human aboard a space station with numerous hostile aliens. The player will be able to select certain attributes of Yu, including gender, and decisions made by the player will affect elements of the game's story. To survive, the player controls Yu to collect and use weapons and resources aboard the station to fend off and defeat the aliens.
[2] According to creative director Raphael Colantonio, the station will be completely continuous rather than having separate levels or missions, at times requiring the player to return to areas they previously explored. The player will also be able to move around the outside of the station in zero gravity and find shortcuts connecting parts of the station.
[3] Colantonio also stated that the aliens have an array of different powers that the player-character can gain over time; one such alien has the ability to mimic everyday items such as a chair.
[3]
Setting
Prey takes place in an
alternate timeline where United States President
John F. Kennedy survived the
assassination attempt in 1963. As President, Kennedy directed more funding into the
space program, allowing it to flourish. Drawn by humans' activity in space, an alien force made up of many different species, collectively called the Typhon, appeared and started attacking Earth.
[4] The United States and the U.S.S.R. banded together to fight off and capture the Typhon. Together, they crafted the space station
Talos I in orbit around Earth's moon as a prison for the Typhon. Over time the station grew out by various groups, several different decors across the station ranging from
retrofuturism to
Art Deco.
[5] The United States eventually took full ownership and created research labs atop the prison spaces to study the Typhon. After a fatal incident between the scientists aboard the station and the Typhon, the United States shuttered the project.
Some years later, the TranStar corporation acquired the station. With advances in neuroscience, they were able to harness and control the Typhon, and then studied their physiology to create Neuromods that can restructure a human's brain to give them new abilities including super-human ones. TranStar grew financially successful from sales of Neuromods on Earth. At the time of the game's setting, about 2032, TranStar has further expanded the station to make for suitable living quarters for its staff that spend up to two years on the station between regular shuttles to Earth.
[6]
Development
The success of the original
Prey lead to the announcement of a sequel
Prey 2 in August 2006, with continued development by
3D Realms.
[7] However, the project faced a number of issues, including the transfer of the IP rights to
Bethesda Softworks (under
ZeniMax Media) sometime by 2011. By March 2011, Bethesda announced that
Prey 2 will now be developed by
Human Head Studios using a modified
id Tech 4 engine.
[8][9]
On 31 May 2013,
Kotaku reported rumors that development has moved to
Arkane Studios and that the development has been rebooted scrapping all of Human Head Studios work on
Prey 2 with a targeted release of 2016.
[10] After about a year of further rumors, Bethesda officially canceled
Prey 2, though as described below, Arkane had started working on a
Prey game that would be considered a reboot rather than a sequel, using the
Prey concepts but none of Human Head's previous development.
[11]
On 12 June 2016, Bethesda officially announced at their E3 press conference the
Prey reboot. The game's development is currently led by Arkane Studios CEO and director Raphaël Colantonio and his team in
Austin, Texas.
[12] Chris Avellone has also confirmed to be working on the project.
[13] The new
Prey is not a true sequel but instead a "a reimagining of the IP", according to Colantonio.
[14] The teaser trailer shown during E3 2016 showed the game's protagonist in something like "a space horror version of
Groundhog Day", according to
CNet's Seamus Byrne.
[15] Bethesda's vice president of marketing Pete Hines explained that the new game has no elements from the canceled
Prey 2 outside of the player facing against aliens.
[16]
This version of
Prey came out of Arkane Studio's own ideas; as explained by Colantonio, after they finished
Dishonored, they split their team to work on two projects, one being
Dishonored 2 and the other a new IP based on similar gameplay ideas which would be "in first-person, with depth and simulation and narration".
[11] This new concept was set aboard a space station and involved aliens, and would require the player to consider the "full ecology" of the game's world.
[11] As Arkane started developing this, they recognized the similarities to the original
Prey. Realizing that coming up with a name for a new property can be difficult, and that through Bethesda that they would have the ability to use that name, they opted to go with calling the game
Prey.
[11] Hines explained that Arkane evaluated the
Prey property to its core and built up a new game around it, calling it more a psychological game rather than a horror one.
[16]
Prey incorporates numerous gameplay conceits from
Dishonored, which was itself inspired by the
Looking Glass Studios's games
Thief: The Dark Project and
System Shock, where players are encouraged to find creative solutions to overcoming obstacles.
[17] Borrowed elements from
Dishonored include giving the player enough agency to determine how they want to proceed at the game, having in-game consequences for certain actions taken by the player, developing a game world based on a pre-established lore that can be learned by examining notes and computer terminals throughout the station, and a simple user-interface.
[17]However, Colantonio said that
Prey will be less focused on stealth as
Dishonored was, and will provide a more
role-playing game-style improvement system through in-game chipsets that allows the player to customize their abilities for more tactical fast-paced action sequences in contrast to
Dishonored's bone shard system.
[17]Arkane also considers
Prey to have more in common with
Metroidvania-style of games, where they consider the game to be one singular mission across the interconnected game world, rather than having separate
game levels for each distinct mission as they had for
Dishonored.
[18]
Prey was built using the
CryEngine; whereas
Dishonored 2 was developed with a new game engine and had been released with some noted technical problems on the Windows side, Colantonio anticipates that the use of the established CryEngine, along with additional time for
quality assurance testing, will help make the Windows version "really flawless" on its release.
[19]
The game is scheduled for release on 5 May 2017.
This game is not like other games
ReplyDelete