Just goes to show you can’t always rely on a studio to catch lightning in a bottle twice. Though, as history has shown it was probably the Publisher that was at fault rather than the developers.
Usually I don't like amnesia stories, but Prey pulls it off. I also like the idea that the reason we can choose Morgan's gender is because Alex was curious whether the phantom would have a preference, because obviously he'd know whether he had a bro or sis
“Hmmm, well Morgan is dead…” *gets mom and dads DNA to make a template egg to then add the Morgans DNA to so you can get a cloneish thing without any Typhon contamination and to avoid DNA damage via age or at least mitigate it, then do Metal Gear Solid 4’s cellular memory* Clone: *can’t tell if its a boy of a girl due to the DNA from both of the parents.* Alex: uh… *quickly patches the problem.*
Something NOT talked about enough is how good the AI is. So many instances of phantoms or robots scouring and area looking in every nook and cranny to find your ass
It does have its quirks though, a nightmare watched me walk through a UNLOCKED DOOR into a room, he could’ve had my ass, but decided to taunt me by sitting just through the wall, in the hallway. Had me shitting bricks😂.
@@Red_Russki91 The Nightmare can't actually move through every door, so odds are it WANTED to pursue you as the Nightmare will do so relentlessly but it isn't allowed to go through that door, there are a ton of little areas where the Nightmare should be able to go but isn't allowed to.
@@Red_Russki91 I remember the Nightmare was waiting for me right at the entrance of room, and the room outside of the entrance had two fans of phantoms that could see me immediately, with not really any place to hide and if I could they would find me very quickly. The AI was so good it had me soft locked for like 2 hours 💀💀
I can't stop watching content on this game, or even playing the game, or trying to put into words WHY I love the game so much. I think WAY too hard, about everything. So when I have a game thay studies/presents the mind, ethical quandaries, the 'human condition' philosophy or putting that nagging feeling of "Am I doing the right thing?" It immediately goes towards the top of my list of favorites.
@tickledpickle5671 I agree 110% it's one of my favorite games of all time now. I love it to a degree it's hard to explain, but I tried in one of my videos on the game here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9zRzPbpCM3U.htmlsi=u50_az_uT54ZHjRx
Sadly, despite how fondly it's remembered, I don't think we would have gotten one anyway. It was expensive to make and didn't sell well. I think the latter point is due to a lot of issues Arkane didn't get to make though, but it happened anyway. Regardless, it sucks we lost them because Bethesda wanted them to make a live service open world action game (which is not something the studio had ever done nor were they interested in doing) because it'd look good to buyers and they wanted someone big to buy them up.
They were a shell of themselves. Companies don't act like individuals, they're made of individuals, and the great people who made Arkane great left or were chased out by others who wanted to wear their skin, the same people who drove its name to the ground. Arkane's old veterans are still around in the games industry, keep your had on a swivel and take note where the same names reappear.
my favourite weapon to upgrade has to be the stun gun, just because of quickly you can melt corrupted operators and technopaths. out of everything, being able to quickly incapacitate and enemy in one shot (unlike the gloo gun) and doing major damage against robotic enemies is so much more powerful than a bioshock level shotgun or a rapid fire artemis pistol. i wish the wrench could have been more powerful outside of chipsets, but i still love grabbing the disruptor from the hidden package in the neuromod division first thing
@@tiaanvanrensburg1032 I agree with you on that, I also love the stun gun in this game especially when fully upgraded. And funny, the first stun gun I get in the story is the one located on the second floor of the Neuromod Division lobby area. I choose to leave the one you mentioned in the secret package alone because of the side quest with December later. But yeah, the stun gun in Prey is amazing and very versatile
I love when anyone gives this game the credit it deserves. I'm truly saddened by the fact that this type of game tends to sell badly, thus giving studios no incentive to continue making them. Yet they have some of the most passionate cult followings of any games out there
n a world where even "monopoly go" a smartphone game which outsells even Witcher 3. its most likely that the new kind of "gamer"doesnt like to think too much. therefore. we can be happy if we even get a new Prey or Nier Automata. the chanches are very low.
@@wahtari8653 dont be so reductive. No one ever talks about "monopoly go" or other popular mobile games, unless if its about how much money they can get from suckets
@@vladimirakovarova8179 you missing the point what i was trying to say. an im not compairing. they are no even the same genre. but thats beside the point. which you didnt understand
I agreed on not liking the ending until i saw a video of someone talking about prey and eldritch horror and now i love it, maybe it wasnt intended but thinking of it from a point of alex's hubris in thinking if he just keeps testing and keeps making little changes he'll get what he wants eventually. one day after a a couple, no a dozen or even maybe a hundred terminations he finally creates a typhon with empathy. sadly its first act of consciousness after learning it's whole life was a simulation and none of it's memories are real is to return to those base instincts and kill. now alex has created the final monster, one smarter and with real intelligence and empathy that can now fully utilise all of its natural abilities to end humanity in it's entirety
I think it's just angry that it's life is a lie. Maybe it could be human but you have nothing, your brother isn't your brother, your gf isn't your gf, no one would care, even if you could integrate into humanity who would you have? They clearly see you as disposable and worth killing if need be. I hate that they try to take the high road when they did everything the previous morgan did to you but it's okay because you're a dangerous alien right? Nah GTFOH
That is a nice feature, I love how it's incremental too so it doesn't happen straight away with the first install, but shows that Morgan is losing more human essence over time
On a pure Typhon build, use force or electric arrow on those turrets to either disable/destroy them. But this also increases the Nightmare Typon to hunt you more that the Pure Human build. Small spaces like vents or closets are your safe options to kill it, since this game is close to 7-years old, that monster WILL glitch through to eat you!
@@XSilver_WaterX no such thing as age when talking about bugs and glitches. Bioshock 1 from 2007 has less bugs than Prey from 10 yrs later, simply one game was made by competent people while the other is made by arkane under bethesda. Bethesda games, the only games were roofs and walls are merely a suggestion. You can literally vault over shelfs in prey and end up out of bound, cuz most ceilings got no collision at all.
The game in various places references mimics being able to well, mimic people. It was originally going to feature in the game as well, though the result was too buggy and prone to AI problems, which lead to the devs cutting the feature in the final hour. They did not remove the references to it existing though. It leads me to believe that there was indeed a mimic aboard the shuttle to Earth.
My favorite comparison for Prey is Metroid. People don't often think of horror when they think of Metroid (or at least they didn't until Dread), but I would argue that cosmic horror was at the game's earliest roots (just listen to the main menu theme!). In the very first game, the eponymous creatures didn't appear until near the very end of the game, but they were absolutely terrifying. These creepy, floating, vampiric jellyfish things would appear out of seemingly nowhere and beeline straight toward you, latch onto you immediately, and rapidly drain your life as you helplessly tried to remove them. The only way to remove a Metroid was to morph into a ball and frantically plant bombs until one managed to blast it off. They were also virtually impervious. The only way to kill them was to freeze them and immediately follow up with five missiles before they thawed out. It was a lot like the feeling of encountering a new Typhon far beyond your capabilities. Metroid also had that same feeling of cloying isolation - this was the reclaimed ruins of a dead alien civilization after all - and mastery of your environment as you gained new traversal abilities and grew more familiar with the layout. It also had, in its own primitive way, a sense of problem solving as you discovered how your abilities unlocked new and hidden areas you might have been confounded by or missed entirely before. It even had the same sense of being inside a thriving ecosystem, as creatures would emerge from holes in the walls and floor, and rooms you left would become repopulated. I see a lot of Metroid influence in Prey. Heck, the box art even looks a little like a smoky Metroid floating in the back ground above Morgan.
I've never had a chance to play any of the Metroid games, but you do make it sound very apt. I'm familiar with the term 'Metroidvania' that it coined as well and in some ways, I'd class Prey under this banner - having to revisit areas with new powers to unlock new things and places.
@@thegavinside tl:dr you should play SOMA next, even if you dont end up talking about it. Do it. I'll become a Patron or whatever to pay u to do it. As far as games like PREY, I always think of SOMA. The questions of consciousness and humanity are nearly mirror image to PREY but SOMA doesnt allow much player choice. And the choices it does offer are pointless (not in a bad way, but the choices you make... are like 50 50 shot they matter... I will not say anything more). Its still a FANTASTIC EXPERIENCE though.
@n8zog584 I watched someone play Soma years ago but never got round to playing it myself, I'll pick it up when it goes on sale on Steam and play it on my gaming channel for you!
"Immersive sims"/Shock games can be considered in some aspects as an evolution to Metroidvania. The main aspects of metroidvanias are included into the comprehensive design of the settings, the backtracking, the upgrades providing new means of traversal, even the occasional sequence break.
1:07:00 love that framing, actually 1:15:00 actually you can repair or gloo up an elevator shaft next to the fabricator/recycler and just leave without fighting any of them. 1:46:55 also what's so interesting about the Dahl choice to me is its basically asking if you're willing to be Alex. it's asking if you're willing to do to someone what Alex did to you with the neuromod wipes because you deem it's for the greater good of saving people. it's essentially asking you if you'd gaslight someone on the potential of saving human lives. and does them being an enemy make it easier for you? like of the game's 5 endings (you either destroy and escape, you destroy and don't escape, you set off the nullwave and escape, you set off the nullwave and don't escape, Alex's secret ending), all the 4 real ones tell Alex the same thing (see: the next paragraph). the Dahl choice is also a reflection of the story (just like the Fake Chef story is a reflection of the actual story) that's asking you questions about itself and what you're willing to do. 2:00:12 I mean, it's partly there for role-playing purposes but also, it's giving you the ability to judge people one last time, and finally decide how you feel about Alex at the end of it. this is because of the clever way and deeply unscientific way that Alex has set up the simulation in the first place. the reason the fake escape pod is not a legitimate choice is not because it's just a funny haha ending, it's because Alex won't allow the typhon that he's experimenting on to have an out from the experiment, it's inherently unscientific, the only option for you to get to the ending is to let Alex win one way or another. if you kill every human, it's telling Alex that you're willing to do whatever it takes and that you're capable of following orders, especially ones you deem as saving people (also love how Dahl actually praises you for doing his job for him if you're killing everyone). if you don't kill everybody, it's telling Alex that you're willing to do what it takes for science and helping people advance to a better society. the first option tells Alex that you care about people on a larger scale and you're willing to sacrifice the few for the many, the second option tells Alex that you care about people on a more intimate scale and think about the future and won't let humans die whenever you can save them. either way, Alex wins. because the only way to get to the ending is by making sure Alex's experiment is successful. that's why the characters at the end tell you that your motivation for doing something are impossible to judge because no matter why you did something, Alex wins either way and he gets what he wants either way, it gives you a moral quandary at the end to decide how you feel about Alex and decide if everything that he did was justified. the whole reason humanity was doomed in the first place was because people like Alex wanted to play god and transcend their place in the world and he is just doing that again by experimenting on typhon again. he is just repeating the same thing in a different way hoping for a different result. you get to decide if his experiment worked or not. you decide if humanity survives, even if there's some bad people in it like Alex. that's why there's the question about the fat man in the opening quiz, the fat man is Alex. the simulation that Alex designed is asking you if you will kill him to save humanity. no matter which way you feel about the trolley problem, the game presents it to you one last time as a culmination of its themes. i can see why some people don't like it because it's a little too gamified but the whole game is a self-reflexive statement on the nature of games (and all fiction at large) and how seriously we take them even though we know they're fake. like a lot of people assume it's a simulation within a simulation as soon as they break through the glass in the opening but they still try to save people where they can and if they don't, then at the end they get given another opportunity, this time reassured that it's real and lives are actually at stake. it's asking you the same question the game has asked you with every choice so far and this time with actual consequences because this is the last decision you make in the game, it's the culmination of your entire experience. also the way Alex has set up the whole experiment tells us so much about his character like he's depicted himself as the bad guy in the story very clearly and he's even portrayed Talos 1 as a nightmare scenario and where the huge alpha eventually comes and kills everyone and like if the Talos 1 incident was anything like what we experienced, them escaping is what could have unleashed Typhons onto earth and caused what we see today. but we don't know if Talos 1 was like that or if it was even worse, Alex clearly managed to escape given his position of power, but what about the hundreds of crew working there? hell, Alex literally otherizes people in the simulation itself where he sees Russian prisoners as less than human and deems them worthy of being experimented on bc clearly nobody cares about them and they're expendable. and were all the characters we meet at the end actually people on Talos who uploaded their consciousness to their operators like Morgan did with October, December and January? was the only way they could escape the station by not being biomatter: something the Typhon clearly want? are they less than human because their consciousness is no longer attached to their body now? but also like the arrival of Dahl is literally asking you if you're willing to set aside your differences to work with Alex!! like will you unite to fight a common enemy or will you kill both enemies or will you just get the obstacles out of your way to your goals? I mean basically every choice in the whole game is self-reflexive and about the themes and a comment on both the game itself and games as a whole like it's extremely well done. 2:07:14 except you couldn't really sell that given the mental health implications. That was a marketing department decision. It just brings up images of electroshock therapy and no marketing department worth its salt would touch that. fun video tho!
8:13 thats so crazy, thats not how i got out at all. I smashed a window, but it was this small painting or something at the end of the hallway outside my room, and I was able to jump through that instead. I was still convinced my room was real, so i searched for the exit in the hallway and got out like that
To defend the kill all ending its only really unlockable if u are moral, I think it’s suppose to be the last bad ending that says yes they succeeded in giving a Typhon empathy but in doing so sent it into a killer rage cuz they tricked and deceived it with simulations with the other option being more or less the same but the Typhon forgives them, so in the end the Typhon always gets humanity you just have to decide if it is a positive or negative outcome for the personal characters.
"Colony" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published in Galaxy magazine, June 1953. The plot centers on an expedition to an uncharted planet, on which the dominant, predatory alien life form is capable of precise mimicry of all kinds of objects. The size and complexity of the mimicked object can vary from simple doormats to whole spaceships with the larger objects usually attempting to trap and "absorb" humans similar to carnivorous plants.
Dahl and his infinite military operators were nice with my many turrets. I go to the database room, set up 4 fortified turrets, shoot the military operators to distract from the turrets, and once I have a pile, I strip them of spare parts, and then attach a recycle grenade until I have enough raw resources for a while. The most fun I have, haha. When I find a way to get a LOT of desirable resources, I go on and on. The infinite neuromods is great. Just getting the better extracting skill I can collect a lot of exotic material.
But exotic material wasn't an issue for me... Mined material was the issue since I used it for shotgun shells and gloo...I had way too much of the other materials
I listened to this whole video trying to fall asleep but the narrative you gave and your personability have kept me awake till 4 in the morning. Imagine my surprise when I visit your channel and see the criminally low recognition you receive for these projects. You make incredible work, and I hope you're doing well out there
That is huge praise, thank you! There's more to come for sure, I'm SO CLOSE (less than 2 weeks) until my next vid is done. I love making these vids, I just don't get as much time as I'd like to do it, hence the long upload gaps.
Excellent, very insightful video. Great job! This might be the push I needed to remake my own old Prey video. As a side note, if you hack the fake cook’s freezer door and discover his secret before you’re supposed to, he cowers in a corner. That’s what happened in one of my playthroughs. I usually just smoke the fucker as soon as I gain access to the kitchen
Really loved this recap and breakdown. I just finished Prey for the first time and have been binging video essays about it - this has been one of my favorites. My thinking about the Shuttle: I was doing a “save as many humans as I can” playthrough and figured that if there was any chance that the humans onboard were ok they should be given the chance to survive. Moreover, I figured that the earth folks would be able to deal with any mimic outbreak anyway since I had no trouble dispatching them with my wrench :P
I've played through Prey nearly half a dozen times now, both on PC and Xbox. Yet this review showed me new things I hadn't discovered before - both the trick with Calvino's mug and the bullet stash under the entrance to Life Support. This game is still full of surprises.
Well, I disagree with your sentiment about the two choices ending, although I understand your viewpoint. I played this game only once and I am mostly playing as a nice gal, but as soon as I realizes it is a trick by Alex Yu, I decide my character felt so tricked, outraged, and decide to kill them. There are other reasons why a creature may be nice to each others beside empathy.. the typhoon attacks my character in the simulation so they are enemies, but the humans seems not and my character looks like one of them. For survival reason, it is better to stick with them, maybe they have more ideas of what been happening or perhaps my character have gone through this more than once and subconsciously learned what didn't work. Also, in the simulation my character have to kill a lot of typhoons, her actual people, and learn how humans been exploiting her race, a big reason to feel enraged. Anyway, keep doing what you are doing, I enjoyed the essay from beginning to end!
That's an interesting perspective that I've never thought of before. These are my favourite kinds of comments, thank you! Perhaps only because the typhon Morgan now also has the emotional humanity of Morgan, but still identifies as a Typhon, it causes this middle ground of an emotional response in favour of their typhonkind. Interesting thought!
The greatest aspect to the game in my opinion where the many things u could do in it. From harvesting materials, choosing ur build, choosing how u fight. The fact that gloo could be used for environmental changes aswell as combat. The fact that u could control turrets. And the cool ways to fight using the typhoon powers. Don’t get me wrong the atmosphere is good but i find the gameplay overwhelmingly more present in the back of my head is what i remember most about it.
It is really good for play variety, that's another reason why I'm 7 playthroughs in. It's just got the variety to be fresh each time. The DLC seems to add to that a lot as well and really make you think outside the box.
@@thegavinside i didn’t know there was dlc, atleast i didn’t remember so thx for telling/reminding me :). Also i came from reddit, and i liked ur video.
Thanks for coming to watch :) and yeah, I'd never played the DLC either, it has some really interesting roguelike elements though. It's called Mooncrash.
The last few characters corpses I have to find are the ones in the IT room that is Locked unless you kill literally everyone in the game. I cant do that. I cant let any characters die by my hands in any game lol.
@@sam11182 I remember not realizing how to get into that room but then found a method of glitching inside by using a bunch of gloo on the door and then throwing a recycler grenade. In clearing the gloo it somehow also removes the door itself
@@EvilTim1911 XD that is hilarious! I have the PC version and that method was removed in the updates and I spent countless hours trying over and over to get in using that method but no. I had to give up. The Cheat Engine got me in! But it was not really worth it. I expected to find the bodies of the crew members but it was just their Id's. The countless hours and the 10 refills of the Gloo gun and the recycle grenades were wasted.
I think that it would be beneficial to up the video resolution from 720P to 1080P, but overall the video is of superb quality and hope to see more from you in the future :) also to just add to this video. I think that the scene after the ending is also a simulation. You can see the same "white flash" (a bug in the simulation) in the ending that you can also see in the helicopter ride which could be used to signal that it is also just a fake to make you think that you finally got out of the sim and can either still side with the humans or kill them all after finding out that you've been tricked/the human neuromods didnt work and your nature overpowered them. What do you think about this? also you very overhyped the limited O2 setting as it is extremely inconsequential and does basically nothing. And you also asked about what type of comments January would make about the nightmare on a no neuromod run/if a nightmare would even appear and the answer to that is....... that he makes no comment about it and nightmares still DO appear just at a significantly lower rate (I had just a single actual nightmare spawn on my no needles run)
Thanks for giving such in-depth feedback! Unfortunately my computer really goes to pot trying to export at 1080p, otherwise I would've really liked to, especially seeing as some of my other essays were exported at 1080p when my PC was new. I never considered that with the ending, interesting! 🤔 I'll have to go back and watch it again with that in mind. Thanks for the fresh perspective!
I love Prey. I recently played it again, with the New Game + options. I think it's better than other games that inspired it because of how alive it feels. Talos' inside matches the outside. They have different interior designs based on the purpose of the department. If you go to a worker's station and see an email chain with X, if you go to X's station, you will see that very chain from their point of view, aside from other emails that could give further context. If you find a corpse, you can quickly realize how they probably died, especially if they are linked to the main quest. Finding the GLOO snow man in hardware labs is also heart warming. The nerf huntress bolt caster is not just a told, but a toy for the emplyees; you can find stashes and areas were someone clearly was trying to annoy their co-workers with it. You can see romances starting between some of the employees, grudges or friendships. You mentioned the escape pods story line (there's also one of the employees trying to rig the giant screen outside to warn others, but who died attempting it. You can finish that for him) and the smuggling ring, but there's also the black box story line, where one of the employees accused his co-worker of basically stealing his work and later murdered him. Talos was alive, and it connected with me since it came out. BTW, regarding the ending where you can help everyone, but still murder Alex, I always read it as the Typhon realizing what was going on, actively learning how to use empathy to manipulate Alex and the surviving consciousness, to then be able to get a chance and murder them. The Tyhon is born to kill, and learning how to lower a person's guards to get the kill, is basically Alex making the situation even worse. I did have a couple of glitches, not as much as you, but the one I always had was the side quest involving Kirk Remmer. He almost never spawned, so I could never get his corpse to confirm he was turned into a phantom. I realized I had to quick save every once in a while and enter the area were he spawns in a specific time frame, otherwise, it bugs out. I love Mooncrash as well, it gives even more context and world building. It shows that regardless of what happened in Talos, Transtar had doomed the planet. Mooncrash shows how the Typhon canonically arrived to Earth.
Fun fact! Limited Oxygen isn't entirely limited Oxygen. As long as you keep your suit integrity high(out of yellow range), you won't end up like Danielle.
Man, this has to be the most entertaining and informative Prey recap/discussion video I`ve seen. This game is truly a gem, love it! Great video, thank you!
I think that one of the worst things about this game is the enemy design, especially the aliens, Just these Black blobs and spikes (the exeption of the mimic with its cool and scary fast movement), in my opnion they are not Very scary or interenting (like the necromorphs for exemple) after the First time you meet them, still Very good (and scary asf) game. Btw great video too, cant belive you dont have more popularity, cant wait for the DLC video (Sorry for any bad english 🇧🇷🗿)
That's actually a really good point, and I'm inclined to agree. What I do like about their design is the heavy use of darkness and how they lean into that sense of dark unknown that space is made of too, but for such flexible creatures there's really only five designs - the mimics, phantoms, telepaths, technopaths and weavers (the nightmare is basically just a giant phantom.) I like to think the phantom looks kind of humanoid because it's a mimic evolving as it tries to imitate a human. But their variations are basically just electric and fire versions. It'd be cool if they imitated different looking humans over the course of their destruction, like early cosmonauts in gooey spacesuits, or zombie-like US researchers.
@@thegavinside yeah they do feed into the fear of the unknown and blend Very well into the enviroment, but the potential was kind of wasted by making just 5 creatures, i didnt played the DLC but i Hope they have more cool desings in there. The Idea of mimics evolving like that is incredibly cool ( and disturbing) maybe If they evolved to try imitating big machinery, making something like that boss from RE Village, that uses that kind of organic gell combined with metal parts (i cant realy explain my Idea but in my Head It sounds Nice💀)
@@AndreSilva-oi5ug There are new enemy types in the DLC, unfortunately so far it seems they follow the same basic design pattern. It's mostly just their behaviour that changes (like one that burrows underground)
It is possible to get many neuromods early, before going to hardware labs or even watching the first video. Once you acquire a recycler charge in the lobby, you can go back to the neuromod division and recycle the crates blocking the back entrance to Halden Graves office, where you'll find the neuromod fabrication plan and plenty of exotic materials. You will have to deal with the technopath guarding it, but that can be done.
kingdom come deliverance has a great blacksmithing minigame, but its accentuated by quantity, you dont need to make it every time, and you can completely ignore it. You can do it to make interesting upgrades, but you will only do it A LOT if you want to, to make money or different styles of weapons, to become a better blacksmith or whatever objective. And its not your only (or even the best way) to make money, but its a fun way to do it that immerse you in the game. Kingdom Come is very fun in the sense you literally do what you want with a lot of options, the closest to a medieval simulator I've seem.
I got that free on Epic Store and have been meaning to play it, I liked the opening that I did play but didn't have free time for an RPG at the time. Will have to revisit!
Prey is one of the most important games in my life, because it lead to me finding out I had and being diagnosed with autism. See... It was so immersive, that the big choice you make regarding whether or not you sacrifice yourself and others hit extremely hard for me. I realized during this game that I would doom the entire world if it meant the survival of myself and those I cared about. This terrified me. I genuinely worried that this made me a psychopath, some kind of monster. After all, everyone else I talked to would have saved humanity. So, I talked to my therapist about those feelings, and that's when he suggested I got tested. Learning that I wasn't in fact some kind of evil person, and instead centered my world around those I knew and myself was perfectly normal for those with autism. Anyway, unrelated, but the point you make about the difficulty is something I never ran into because, uncharacteristically for me, I played the game on the absolute hardest setting (due to a recommendation from a friend.) It makes it such an intense and terrifying experience the entire way through, and I genuinely think that it's how the game is "supposed" to be played. :D
Mind if I pin this as top comment? It's a great experience about how well-executed the idea of morality is in the game, as well as the impact games can have. Also, I'm planning on revisiting the fame on hardest difficulty with the survival setting turned on very soon!
@@thegavinside Uhh my comment got deleted because of the links I guess, so here's the video titles for what you asked: The System Shock 3 we never got. - The Nth Review Prey (2017) - The Best Immersive Sim? - Mister No Life Prey - A Critique of the Mind Game - Joseph Anderson Why Prey 2017 Deserved More Attention - Gingy Why Prey Is Arkane's Masterpiece - Boulder Punch
if you haven't seen them, a few of my favorites are: Critical Values: In Defense of Prey and those who made it by Ludocriticism Prey | Fictional Empathy by Leadhead Prey | Designing Meaningful Choices by Leadhead Prey: how an ending no one picked contextualizes eldritch horror by NewtC Arkane Lore: Prey and the power of Empathy by Eric Crosby Prey vs Prey by Noah Caldwell-Gervais. highly recommend the one by Ludocriticism especially (and all his other videos), it's the one i feel gets the game the most out of anyone i've seen discussing the game's ambitious metatextual ideas. Noah's video is also great in that regard, and just a great exploration of the Points™ of the game.
I bought this game in January of 2018... Played an hour of it and then stopped. Didn't play it again until Feb of 2024 and I can't believe I passed on this game for so long.
One of the stories that touched me in ways my uncle never could, was in looking through Calvino's transcribe records, I know most people think he was dealing with some mental issues but he got some neuromods removed and he forgot a lot of stuff including how his wife looked like plus he constantly had a lot of nightmares because of the phantom material residuals in his brain and had to seek psychological treatment on the base but because he was soo scared of them he stopped getting therapy.
The way our earlier self ended up in the mental head space where it was deemed necessary to destroy the station is the exact same way they deemed it necessary to abandon the station and the exact same they they deemed it necessary to use the nullwave. Personality drift. The nightmares. Being an 'outside' perspective into your own work. All of it leads to different conclusions as time and research goes on. First backup plan was simple. Nullwave the typhon if they escape. Second plan was escape with the data to explain what happened. Third plan, blow it all up. Nothing can survive. Remember removing the neural mods resets your memory to the point you put in the neural mod. So the process is usually; install the mod, go to bed, wake up, do the tests, get truth bombed, read your notes from your self and understand. You never remember but you understand. You do your work, repeat. Sometimes you set up your backup plan in case the typhon escape, remove mods, repeat.
OH MY GOD THE BEGGINING BIT WHEN YOU SAID HAPPY HALLOWEEN WAS SO SMART AND CRAZY!!!! Also you talk about how underrated games are, we need to talk about how underrated you are. ❤💯
i think that no matter how many times someone has played prey, they will have missed atleast one thing. i learnt quite a lot from this video even after 4 of my own playthroughs, and i saw some things that you missed too. a game that can have not only replayability through upgrade choices, difficulty options, playstyle changes, pathing, AND meta knowledge, but also all of the little missable secrets on top? that’s something i will cherish forever
I've learnt, not just a ton of missed stuff from the commentors to this video, but also a ton of missed perspectives on the scenes and themes that i didn'trealise. I'm extra glad I made the video even more now because of the extra knowledge and discussions it's brought my way!
@@thegavinsideone of the biggest things i’d thought i’d mention is that i dont think halden graves tried to kill himself with those scissors. he knows what they’re made of, but i dont think he’s scared of the cells spreading, atleast not to that extent. with all of the writing and transcribe logs, i believe he was essentially trying to remove them himself. you know what the machine looks like that removes them, it’s not something you could do on your own, and surely alex would never authorise he do it and give up the head of neuromod development. dahl had the beta neuromods installed before the seizure of talos I and was able to have his memory wiped, but what if every single transtar crew member aboard the ship had something similar intentionally put in place. halden uses those scissors in an attempt to reverse lobotomise himself (?) praying it gets out all of the typhoon stuck in him, because that’s his only chance to do it without losing himself to the memory wipe, or worse, if alex thought he would have been too much of a threat
Prey is easily in my all time top 5 favorite games. I'm a sucker for shock-like exploration immersive-sim RPGs, and I don't think any of them have crafted a more cohesive world with such flexibility in the number of ways you can approach every challenge. Prey 2017 is GOAT. In fact, I'm almost certainly going to do another play through after watching this.
I love Prey 2017 so much, it has become my favorite casual game at this point. And even though I have played this game many times , I never get bored of it as every single play through for me ends up being unique and I always seem to find something new about the game each time.
You know, I dunno how I did it but in my playthrough(the only one I ever did unfortunately), I somehow managed to miss like, every single trigger for the memories and 'flashbacks' and whatnot to the point that when the "real" end of the game happened I had *NO IDEA* what the context for what the fuck was going on with Alex and the Operators. I had done a 'good' playthrough to that point and saved everyone(except the cook, I figured out he was an impostor and shot him before he could trap me) so I got the good ending but it was *BEWILDERING* to end the game and be like "wait who the fuck are you people". Still not sure if I just played the game 'weird' and missed all the trigger points or if they were bugged, but yeah. Wild.
yes the nightmare will only appear once per main level and the aggressiveness of it's spawning will be decreased. another interesting fact is if you acquire many typhon abilities the gibberish that phantoms speak will start to sound like English.. your essentially becoming a typhon. stuff like that is why i love prey
2:07:30 I saw someone suggest Psychoshock as a name, and while im partial to Neuroshock myself, thats a good alternative. Still much better than 'Prey but not really'
This video is terrifyingly underrated thank you. See what I did there used your own gag. Great video definitely deserve more views and subs. Having just finished prey for the first time myself I dived into online discourse about it and im glad to see im not alone in calling a masterpiece of a game.
Thank you! I've seen thos game get a lot more recognition lately than what it got at release, thankfully. From what I've played so far, I've enjoyed the Mooncrash DLC too and would recommend it!
Thank you mate, I hope to! Life's changed quite a bit in the past 6 months but I've got a handful I really want to make over the next while when I get chance
1:32:54 Its not just that, but if you check the crew tracker log, you'll see that only one person is not on the stations, the only survivor of the incident you never see. You can read in an email later that its a pregnant woman. The ship with the charges, is almost guaranteed to be the same ship that holds the only inhabitant of the station who isnt actually on, or floating around, the station, and its a pregnant woman. If this is not a literal trolley problem of 'save humanity but kill a pregnant woman' then i dont know what is.
Have I played Prey and Mooncrash to 100% completion? Yes. Did I watch this to 100% completion? Yes again, great video! I do think some of your complaints are resolved in Mooncrash. It introduced the traumas system and fixed the Nightmare issue with the Moon Shark
Great video, been binging Prey video essays ever since i finished the base game around a week ago. Interestingly enough, prior to playing Prey, i thought id never enjoy playing fps games simply because it just wasnt my thing, but the immense enjoyment i got out of this game and its worldbuilding and immersion has proven me otherwise :) Also, a bit of a tip regarding the Nightmare satellite lure/repellent transmissions for your possible future runs of Prey, you can actually listen to both of them while out in space after setting up the satellite and it will neither use up any of the limited uses, nor attract the nightmare (probably because you're out in the vacuum of space so where the hell is that thing gonna spawn, right?) while also letting the game know you've listened to those "unlistened" transcribe messages
Damn, that's a really good tip! 😁 I'll remember that for next time, thanks yo! And glad you enjoyed the vid. I'm not super into FPS's myself, so if you like Prey I suggest looking more into the immersive sim genre. I think it's first person more for the effect of immersing you more, but very often it's more about story and variety, with shooter combat being secondary to the player choice.
@thegavinside Yea, I'll certainly have to look at that genre more, seeing as Prey was my first imsim. For starters, i still have Mooncrash to try once the winter sale hits Steam on the 21st of Dec
Head of The Production Department: "Hm, I wonder where those exotic materials, we use for creating neuromods, come from?" Tanks full of Phantoms in the room next to his office:
honestly this video is one of the best made video essays. you aren’t just reviewing a video game, show this to me before i bought prey and i damn well would have felt like i had played it. your choice of music and how you present the gameplay matches the tone of the game so well, and with how well versed you are in the story, you told it like you were there. just wanted to show my appreciation for this masterpiece of a video, because out of all of the prey reviews, none of them do it justice like you have. …also i really need to know how you got a high quality recording of Danielle’s Semi Sacred Geometry (the song in the bar), i can’t find a clean recording and wouldn’t know where it would be in the files
Those are such incredibly nice words, thank you. I do always want to inject more than just the lateral information on stuff in my essays and give them the subject matters the heart that I feel they had put into them by the designers. On the subject of Danielle's song, it's been a while so I can't remember exactly, but it was either A. There's a clean play of the song during the game's credits, without much sound effect or combat interference, or B. So tines when I want to capture music for a game to use in the background, I'll turn the SFX volume all the way down and the Music volume all the way up in the setting, if the game has the option. I know it's one of those because I too struggled to find that version! The version I listen to regularly is the production copy, with the male vocals instead, but I prefer Danielle's version!
@@thegavinside mind games plays during the credits, so i think it’s B, but i am also looking for danielle’s version because i too prefer hers. good tips for getting it though！ oh and dont sweat it, you really do deserve it, and i’m sorry your video isnt more recognised. out of all the prey video essays, i guess you were just late to the party? doesn’t feel like a good reason, with how good it is, should still have popped off in my mind. probably just the algorithm. but yeah, i know you’re probably busy, but i look forward to anything you might make in the future, you’ve set a high standard for yourself！
i dont think prey is underrated, it is a good game, but that ending just undo so much of the game for so many people. its basicalyl another "it was all a dream". and like most of those, it doesnt feel like a good twist. on the contrary. it kinda kills any desire to replay it. at least for many people. the game as a whole loses ALOT with that. all for a twist that doesnt offer much beyond "look guys! arent we deep!". also, im gonna be honest, i dont think the gimmick of the enemies hold as long as it need to. on the contrary, the novelty kinda dies not that much long after the game gets going. the choices also dont really offer much to the player. in a way, it kinda reminds me of dishonored's morality system, that is too "black or white". as Yahtzee said, you are either hitler or madre teresa. with no real reason to go in between. which is also my main issue with the mass effect and pretty much every game that tried to force that duality. it doesnt make me want to play knights of the old republic a second time. or any other game that does it. if i picked a choice, its either because of the reward, or because i agree with it. adding a morality system is not really going to make me want to replay it.
The best thing about this vid so far has been the differing perspectives on the ending which have made me realise why some people like it, or frame it differently to myself, but I agree that morality systems overall in games are WAY too black and white. There have been a couple of instances in Fallout and Mass Effect games where your decision has come down to choosing a NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE outcome depending on your outlook - someone will always be affected badly for the sake of a benefit elsewhere - and those are the more interesting choices. Honestly, it would be so much more interesting to get those choices to make, without a slider telling you that you're good or bad for it, like in Skyrim (you can steal, and are only negatively affected when you're caught, etc.)
@@thegavinside ironically enough, this is something replaying mass effect 1 actually offer, since your paragon/renegade can be mostly ignored due to some of the starting bonus. even though ME 1 is the one in the franchise that i least liked(even saying liked is wrong, i actually found it so boring, i could never finish). i also feel like ME andromeda wanted to do, but with most of the choices having consequences in the sequel. that never came.
It always kills me when people talk about breaking the window to the balcony because I went for the aquarium fish in the hall instead so I actually missed such a big moment that was for a smaller but still trippy moment in its place.
A contender for what may be the only great hacking mini-game is Half-Life: Alyx. Great video, by the way. Prey is something special -- a work of art. I also loved the presence of philosophy in the game. The ethics, of course, but also reference to panpsychism and transhumanism. It's a tragedy that they shut the studio down.
Hey, thanks for the reply! It actually occurred to me after posting that it might've been from Moon (I love that movie too btw, but it's been quite a while since I've watched it). I'm still watching the video so I still have a lot to go through, but let me tell you that I've been thoroughly enjoying it, and will certainly watch it all in these days! Spoiler alert: your like count will go up by one 😉
The problem with Prey is, that there was a Prey before Prey and while it was good, it wasn't so legendary that it would shine a good light on the other Prey. I did not care about Prey 2017, because Prey 2006 wasn't my jam. Reboot gone wrong
I feel like the original System Shocks inspired Bioshock. That then inspired Prey and Prey on the other hand inspired the System Shock Remake. The circle of life basically :D
I love the final choice at the end. You still get validation for all the choices you made in game, through the operators' commentary. And then you get offered new context about how YOU feel about those choices and the environment in which you made them. How can you trust that any of that was true? And even if it was, it's still being used to essentially brainwash you. Maybe you do feel more human, but maybe instead of empathy, you feel rage. I did a 100% non-typhon, pacifistic playthrough and that made it an even more interesting decision. I killed them. Maybe, in an imaginary epilogue, my typhon feels guilt about it. Maybe Alex succeeded after all and I've been irrevocably altered, infecting the rest of my species. It's fun to think about the ripples.
Fantastic review, very in-depth and thorough, picked this game up on sale recently myself and had an absolute blast with it despite the flaws (that third act..... my god 😔does it drag) such as: having to go through 4-5 different loading screens for the hubs just to get to a PART of a side quest to complete it and then having to trek all the way back to carry on with the rest of the quests. Coming hot off something like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (I'm on a bit of an im-sim genre dive yeah 👀) where you only REALLY gotta load once through an enormous, equally richly detailed and stuffed hub world that you can otherwise run thru with no load times, this was a buzz kill yeah, as was the hacking mini-game which I frankly felt was quite terrible. However on an aesthetic, visual and audio level I thought this was one of the best games in the genre that I've played and even as a first-person shooter mechanically it functions very well and once you have some of the more powerful upgrades unlocked and at your disposal, the dynamics of predator/prey become quite blurred, as you gain this immensely satisfying feeling of overcoming odds and going toe to toe with foes that gave you trouble at the start. Which I am aware, is a very classic im-sim/upgrade skill tree based element in games but honestly ? played many games like that in the past that did not come anywhere close, to the feeling of creative agency and power that Prey offers. I think it's a damn shame this game underperformed as this is some of Arkane's finest gameplay and mechanics I've seen from them and had they had the opportunity to make a sequel or a similar game in this genre, I think you'd see a refinement of ideas and concepts here, but presented in a much better, more well-rounded experience that doesn't completely drop the ball in its last half building to what I think is still one of the most anti-climactic endings for a story that otherwise kept me pretty engaged throughout. Still very good game, very good video sir ! You've earned a sub !👍
The abigail-danielle relationship and its grim conclusion hit me hard emotionally, piecing all together. I found Danielle's tracker removed and hoped, even despite the vital signs being negative, that maybe abigail was alive and just removed her bracelet. While at the computer, i checked the cook and confirmed he was indeed dead. Then i saw with sinking feeling that abigail's tracker led into the kitchen and just knew at that point. Towards the end of the game, i returned and found the key card to abigail's room, as well as some more audio logs. Standing in her room, listening to one of their last audio logs end with "i love you," evidence of two people habitating the room, playing games (two controllers), I'll admit I got teary.
I disagree on the ending. Think of it this way. If you're humane, and you play the whole way through and choose the kill them all ending, you could: A) Be the typhon lashing out in rage. You were tricked into feeling empathy, and after seeing all those innocent people get killed and Alex getting away with it, you kill him out of spite. B) Be the typhon, with a new ability to hunt down its prey (no pun intended) and be more efficient at it, thanks to being able to trick it with empathy. C)It was all a ploy. It knew the entire time and was just tricking Alex. And if you choose the good ending, it's: A) The test worked, and the typhon and humans could co-exist. B) The test was successful, the typhon understands empathy and can save humanity. And as for the title, i think Prey actually works for it. The typhon dont have mirror neurons, at least for humans, is because we're their prey, the whole game they are hunting humans and either using them to multiply like with the mimics or to control and feed off them like the weavers, apex and telepaths. They cant feel empathy because we're a food source to them and if they empathize with us then they starve and can't multiply.
I think talos 1 is quite possibly the best environment I’ve ever explored in a video game.. it’s either that or night city, but as much as I love night city, talos 1 leaves me in awe every single time I play this game.. the station exterior itself is something you’ve never seen and never will see again in a video game, and the station itself is just so well realized and feels so lived in and real it’s just unmatched by any other game I’ve ever played
This and Kingdom Come Deliverance are two of the greatest games I've ever played. Both pleasant surprises that I knew nothing about until actually booting them up
Prey was by far the best game I've played in awhile, I had this on my wishlist for about 6 years and never got a chance to buy or have the idea/motivation of buying it. Until 1-2 months ago. Digging up a 2017 game and playing it after it being out for 8 years. My thoughts on the game are just amazed, the gameplay, story, the Lore and the tragedy behind it, it's amazing. They game is by far amazing. I was told there was suppose to be a 2nd Prey, but it got shot down. Highly recommended, still a great game.
i find it funny people say they want new games like prey but do you really i bought dishonored 1 and 2 an prey on release alot of people come like 5 years later and say man this is a master piece yea man thanks a few years to late all people that not bought it and know it back then your part of the proplem why we will not get immersiv sim again
Mimic Typhon Cacoplasmus. Reminds me of two greek words: "Ka-koh" and "plasma". "Ka-koh plasma" means "evil being". And as for the Phantom Typhon Anthrophantasmus, well Anthrophantasmus is a mixture of the greek words "anthropos" (human) and "phantasma" (ghost).
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about the atmosphere of Talos is reminiscent to me of the Zariman 10-0 from warframe. As a teenager playing warframe (before the Zariman itself was added to the game), I would make up stories about what the Zariman was like as I played through warframe. Even wrote some extremely mediocre fan fiction about it. Warframe and Prey are about as close to polar opposites as you can get in terms of playstyle and genre (other than the shared sci-fi theme), but they both did a really excellent job of making their respective semi-abandoned ships feel eery yet intriguing
Ohhhhhhhh THATS WHAT ITS CALLED!!!! I played this game during the summer and couldn’t figure out what it was called after deleting it ( for some reason ). Damn.
I think your analysis of the ending missing a core concept of the gameplay itself, and one of the important concepts of the game as a whole. Gameplay wise, it would stand to reason that as the player does multiple playthroughs of the game, the Typhon are potentially growing ever aware of Alex's experiment to instill empathy into a Typhon to bridge the gap between them. It could be reasoned that Alex and the Typhon are racing eachother. Alex is racing to instill empathy into a Typhon, and the Typhon are racing to discover Alex's plot quickly enough to cinvince a Typhon to "fake it" by being empathetic during the experiment only to turn around and kill him when finally given the opportunity. Otherwise, I personally find Bioshock's endings to be the epitome of terrible endings. Firstly because you are obviously making a choice throughout the game, knowing full well tgere is a different ending in store for you depending on your choices, and at the end of the game you don't get to choose. The ending is chosen for you based on your actions. I don't think it would have been too much to ask to get the choice at the end, and to see potentially 4 different endings based on whether you harvested the little sisters or not, and what you decide to do at the end of the game. Roided out on Adam and chose to be peaceful anyway? I'd love to see how that might have failed. Choice is always important. Because at any point, you can choose. Your ability to choose is never taken away, and any time it IS taken away in a video game, it always feels bad. Chosing to kill Alex at the end after playing altruistically? I find that rather poetic. Alex is potentially the cause of all of this suffering and he tried everything he could to save humanity AFTER damning them, only to have it blow up in his face, proving to him that his ability to destroy on accident exceeds his ability to protect on purpose. I could wax poetic about the ending for hours, but my point is that I believe the ending was fantastic, whether you choose to kill Alex or not.
