Your main quest – and the many side quests that can extend the life of Prey from a 15 to 20-hour run to something more on the order of 40 or 50 – will send you back and forth across the same moderately varied zones repeatedly. I usually had unlocked new abilities that let me access new nooks and crannies. Plus, it’s a pleasant surprise that you’re able to move and climb so nimbly in general, and moreso when it’s upgraded, letting you reach some out-of-the-way places and further encouraging exploration. Even though I didn’t have all the abilities I needed to exploit them, it’s fun just to try to spot all the ways into a locked room and appreciate the thought that went into designing these puzzles.
(Granted, that’s also shown up in recent Deus Ex and Dishonored games, though not on this style of open map.) One character build might look for opportunities to hack into computer terminals to bypass locked doors, while another would use brute force to open doors or remove barricades, and still others might just search the environment until they find the passcode written carelessly on a post-it note somewhere.
What makes Prey feel more distinct is the flexible, semi-open-world level design that allows you to reach objectives by different paths, depending on your strengths. Most of the abilities themselves don’t feel like much of anything special, as things like enhanced strength, repair skill, the ability to move objects or kill with your mind, and even resurrect the dead to fight for you have all appeared in plenty of games lately.
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Prey can take a bit too long to get to the good stuff, though – the psychic power options didn’t open up for me until I was more than 10 hours in, and I never saw any suit mods until even later than that. Equipping the mimic-detecting scope upgrade, for instance, let me change up the task of sweeping a room before it became tedious. Morgan Yu (who, notably, can be either a man or a woman according to your whim) feel like your own, and tailored to your playstyle.
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With all of those options and not enough upgrade items to go around, there are enough meaningful decisions to make your version of Dr.
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There’s complex character development along six different skill trees, plus modular upgrade systems for both your space suit and your scope. Mechanically, Prey follows closely in the footsteps of classic first-person RPGs like System Shock 2 and the original Deus Ex, and puts some of their best ideas to good use. Prey follows closely in the footsteps of System Shock 2 and the original Deus Ex. The jump scares did get old after a while, but I never stopped feeling the tingling sense of tension upon entering a new room. It sets all kinds of cruel traps for you, such as when one of what appears to be a pair of much-needed health packs actually turns out to be a predator lying in wait for wounded prey. The presence of these mimics, as they’re known, gives all of that exploration a looming sense of paranoia: you have to question why objects are placed where they are, which works because just about everything on Talos is meticulously laid out in a way that, for the most part, makes sense. Which is devious, because some of those inanimate objects are actually disguised facehugger-style aliens who will surprise you by abruptly revealing themselves when you get close and trying to eat your face off. That, combined with being rewarded for picking up literally any piece of useful gear or actual trash thanks to a cartoonish recycling system that lets you turn even old banana peels into raw materials for manufacturing weapons and upgrades, made me eager to turn over every metaphorical rock on Talos. I enjoyed uncovering how that history unfolded in bits and pieces gleaned from news articles and tidbits on the brief loading screens. It’s an impressively fleshed-out universe, built around an alternate history of the space race that somehow led to an elaborate orbital station, complete with artificial gravity, where touchscreen computers exist side by side with film projectors and rotary telephones.
There’s so much storytelling treasure to uncover here, ranging from squabbles among co-workers to more personal notes like a scrapped proposal speech, Dungeons & Dragons character sheets, and even hilariously terrible in-universe science-fiction novel snippets. Between terminals containing all sorts of emails, well-acted audio logs, and thoughtful environmental storytelling, developer Arkane has done a fantastic job of making this bizarre place feel lived-in long before I ever met another living human. The most interesting stories were the smaller ones I came across, those of the people who lived on Talos before, during, and after it was attacked by aliens. Arkane has done a fantastic job of making this bizarre place feel lived-in.