Why Prey Deserved More Attention

around 2010 Arcane Studios was not looking too great having produced no games of their own and only those made for other developers like Ubisoft or valve they didn't have a lot of credibility in the gaming industry and it also didn't help that the games they did make weren't really received well either however not long into the new decade Bethesda would contact them and offer a deal that would change the company forever Bethesda hire them to create a stealth-based game and after years of development this would be known as Dishonored this game had put them on the map as the game had received numerous nominations and rewards across various categories and it gave the team at Arcana platform to stand on within the gaming World almost as high as some of the Giants in the industry today but in 2014 things would change once again as while part of the team was busy working on a Dishonored sequel everyone else was working on something quite bizarre prey will always be known as arcane's first child this is the first game they were able to create that they wanted to make not something they were contracted to make this would lead to the team making this game much differently than the reward winning title instead of having an expansive world only gated off by levels like Dishonored they would opt for a larger Dynamic world that would constantly adapt and change throughout the game where players wouldn't have to just think about the challenges within the level itself but all the obstacles and the map around them however lots of decisions led to the game going down the wrong path in 2011 Bethesda would acquire the intellectual property rights to prey the one from 2006 but it wouldn't be much later until they finally used the IP's namesake for a project at E3 2016 Bethesda would announce a reboot of prey which seemed to generate some hype and Intrigue the problem started to arise though as some were still unaware of the game being a reboot and simply casted it aside While others was still riding the high of Dishonored and were eagerly waiting for the sequel while not paying attention to anything else as if things weren't already bad enough there was disputes over the prey trademark and Bethesda withheld review copies of the game until the release date which led to a lot of the negative assumptions about the game's gameplay and its performance however after some time prey were unfavorable reviews among critics but it still wasn't enough as the sales were 60 percent less than Dishonored 2 and that game was still behind in sales compared to Dishonored one so while we don't know actual numbers they didn't seem very high this whole synopsis brings me to my actual point prey did not receive the love it deserved I've been playing this game for the past few weeks and at least within recent memory it's the best immersive Sim and Story game I've played in a long time it's one of the very few games I regret never playing on release its story player freedom and gameplay all mixed together created this fantastic experience and it's one that I'll never forget so today I want to take some time to discuss my experience with prey and maybe even convince you to give this game a try just like I did without further Ado let's get started prey is a complex and mind-bending game so firstly we need to discuss what it is despite what the steam page says prey is a first person immersive Sim the last word may be a bit foreign to some so think of games like Deus Ex Dishonored and System Shock the point being that the game provides with a plethora of options you can use to complete your current objective Dishonored was universally praised for this style of gameplay and so was prey sadly this is as much as I can say do the nature of the game talking about it anymore would be entering spoiler territory so I'll be adding a warning now and then once again when we get to the story section this upcoming portion spoils the intro of prey arguably the most important part of the game so skip to the gameplay section if you still want to listen but want to avoid story spoilers if you've been watching my content for a bit then you know this isn't the first time I'm saying this and it also won't be the last but the intro which I consider to be the first hour of any game is the most important part of the game and prey might actually have the best opening hour of a game I've ever played after picking our preferred gender we as Morgan you wake up in an apartment deep within the city we get a call from our brother Alex who wants to meet with us the apartment has a lot of interactable objects from bottles to books to our workstation it's getting us acquainted with the game without even telling us what to do we can't leave until we put on our suit so in the meantime the player can test their controls their settings and allow them to get a good feel for the game before they head out too many games seem to just jump the player into conflict or obvious tutorials that it seems like you're being dragged alongside the game prey is all about providing the player with choices and options so it seems quite fitting that the very first objective doesn't start until we're ready we go outside and are told that the helicopter our brother sent is waiting for us the next two minutes are probably the best two minutes of the entire game not only is it because of the unique decision to add 3D in World text to present the studios in-game but it's what these two minutes represent 78 degrees clear skies all the way foreign all about interactivity and creativity one of the most memorable parts of this game has none of that all you do is just move the camera that's all you can interact with but like I said it's what this scene represents that makes it so memorable this small part of the game was able to Captivate the player in numerous ways like the gorgeous views from the helicopter and of course the music the song playing in the background is called everything is going to be okay the song conveys a sense of warmth happiness and excitement like I said I've been playing this game for the past three weeks and not a single day has gone by that I haven't listened to this song this along with the entire soundtrack was composed mostly by Mick Gordon yes the one that created the music for Doom he's clearly a talented composer and his work on prey was no exception we'll talk about that a bit later in the video but for now let's continue after landing the helicopter we take an elevator meet with our brother and then are told to go through a series of tests this is another tutorial disguised as a test simulation like picking up objects hiding and climbing throughout these tests things start to be become a little puzzling while the researchers assure us we're doing fine their commentary is quite contradictory I'm sorry can someone please Isaac Simmons I installed exactly what Tina brought down did you double check speaker's still on I apologize Morgan we're having some trouble with the equipment this comes to a startling halt during our very last test we're nearly through it for this next part I'm going to display an image I want you to take a good look at it in a moment I'm going to ask you what uh with my coffee that's empty oh my God so it was a little unexpected but this is great now as the conflict has started and we can finally get into the game good morning Morgan today is Monday March 15 2032. I lied we are back at our apartment the game is trying to toy with the player what we saw was 100 real but because they sent us back to the apartment it's trying to convince us that everything we saw was fake someone or something is screwing with us what we saw was real and nothing inside this tiny apartment can convince us otherwise since the player has already been here it's quite easy to know where to go next which is down the hall to the helipad except that door isn't there anymore and the lady we saw out in the hallway is now dead this sets in a feeling of tension essentially confirming that what we saw during the test did happen and is in some dream there is some alien creature in the building and were being hunted the issue is that the areas we went down before are gone and the only way out seems to be the balcony foreign this is the reason I said skip this part to avoid spoilers this is single-handedly one of the most powerful and confusing scenes in the entire game anyone who has ever played prey knows about the intro and it's quite hard to forget this entire time you were made to believe that you were in some large apartment when in fact you were in some facility being monitored presumably by the researchers from earlier it's a short but powerful scene that is wonderfully executed as we walk around the facility still coming to terms with what we just uncovered we engage in combat with the mimic for the first time it's quite an easy fight that I'm almost 100 certain the mimic does not hate you but rather just runs away because of how unique the enemy we face is having the ability to turn into other objects we not only have to get accustomed to controls to combat but also with attack strategy for most games the first enemy is slow weak and almost impossible to lose to however prey refused to pull the same tactic and instead put us right into the deep end showing us how these enemies work and attack having them not actually attack us does fall in that same description before where they're impossible to lose to but because the enemy is a bit complex and is constantly toying with us by shape-shifting then running away it's both a perfect display of the basics of Praise combat but also making sure the player doesn't get punished for just trying to learn something new after this we uncover on other Secrets the room and the helicopter we rode on is also fake if we go to the second floor we can further confirm our suspicions once again as the walls created a simulation that made it look like we were in a helicopter being flown across the city it's quite clear this entire intro was made to invoke newborn's feelings from confusion to mystery to even questioning everything we see these emotions and feelings we have will be key as we continue the game into the story progressing further into the level we once again get introduced to more combat except this time it's a little different it's now a 4v1 room filled with a ton of objects these mimics could be anywhere and anything I also like the small detail of the chair in the middle of the hallway as it seems way too out of place to just be a chair however it really is just a chair making you go crazy thinking how is that not a mimic this can continues to bury deep into your mind is now you start expecting duplicates of items assuming that they may actually be real until the mimic finally reveals itself it's also here where the game provides you with a few options of Escape there's a door hatch as well as a regular locked door this is the start of balance the game tries to achieve and this balance will continue throughout the game and other aspects we can head right into the hatch and leave we escape the mimics and live to fight another day but if you face your fears of the mimics you can push into the main office and grab the key card you will more than likely need to face all the mimics to get there but you'll be rewarded with a way out all the items they dropped and the confidence in your combat capabilities but the game doesn't want you to be too proud of yourself as once you escape you meet another alien much different than the one we just faced it's here where we get our first gun the glue Cannon this is by far the most versatile weapon I've ever used the glue gun's primary function is to glue things it touches so now we can freeze the mimics and allow us to get a sneak attack bonus against them while this is great we will discover later it has way more uses than this in typical fashion question we also get introduced to the abilities and skills we'll be upgrading by using neural mods I'll explain this more in the gameplay section but this is where they first appear to our right is the door we need to go through to exit this facility or at least one room of the facility this place is called the lobby so maybe we could use this area to escape out the front doors except for the very final time we are being lied to so not only were we not in a real apartment the helicopter ride was also fake and everything we thought was real was not and to top it all off we aren't even on Earth We're on a [ __ ] space station all of this everything we have experienced from the very second of the game was in space near the moon I'm really hoping that if you haven't played prey you aren't watching this part of the video because the emotions you'll feel in this intro are unlike any other that's why I honed in on that song from the beginning the song was even lying to us painting us this picture that the game was going to be this bright and beautiful world obviously not everyone was going to believe it was as sunshine and rainbows as it seemed but I feel like no one would have guessed it would have been this deep in betrayal and deception I also love the irony of the song title everything is going to be okay when in fact it's the complete opposite as you may expect tons of time went into this part of the game especially with the glass breaking scene there's a documentary from the people at noclip where they talk to the team about this intro specifically I won't say everything is to completely steal from the video if you want to watch it yourself however some incredible discoveries are brought up during the interviews from the very beginning the devs were hinting at this mystery as when inspecting the floor you could find marks as if walls or items were being moved they also placed the fish tank outside the room specifically near the area where you pick up the wrench the devs also purposely made the tank and its fish bright so that the player might be inclined to hit it with the wrench when the player hits the glass it breaks meaning that the other glass will break if it's hit with the wrench which of course leads to the glass breaking scene the one thing the team at Arcane wanted from the very beginning was for us to break the glass the emotional feeling is much more impactful when we uncover the mystery ourselves and something I didn't notice until watching this video that the fish tank was actually a viable option leaving the room you don't get to have the Cinematic feeling that you would get normally but it's another way of escaping one thing that definitely needs to be brought up is the amount of skill that's needed to actually conceptualize and make this thing come to life this whole thing is fake so things need to be made that way and most games and elevator is used to load and remove assets to give the player the feeling that they're actually going up and down in an elevator except prey takes this a little bit too literally the only thing that moves in the elevator is the number counting down everything else is moving around you so that it gives the illusion that you're actually moving down a few floors in a way you could see the researchers as the developers and Morgan as us the devs are trying to convince us that what they built is real just like the researchers built the facility to convince Morgan what he's seeing is real priz intro is by far one of the most iconic intros in gaming due to its ability to deceive the player but also never outright tell the player what is real or not but instead let them figure it out for themselves we didn't need to screw with the workstation and discover that the Looking Glass Technology they used was to full us but it feels better when you're rewarded for doing something yourself rather than when the game motions you towards something against your own volition like I said earlier the intro is the most important part of the game this is the area of time that most players will end up reaching while not many may make it to the ending those who have purchased the game will see the intro and if you can hook them here then you might be able to hook them for the rest of the game and prey's intro goes above and beyond to do just that by letting the player do all the work technically we are now finished with the intro but there is still one last thing to do and that's to go to Morgan's office upon entering the office we watch a message that Morgan left for himself until our brother purposely interrupts it so we don't discover the truth this is where we officially start the next chapter of the game I'll get into that message later in the story section because now we can talk about the gameplay so praise gameplay I feel is more akin to a survival horror game once again something the steam page won't tell you you go around in Looper materials ammo and other equipment while dealing with the enemies in your way most of the time you'll just be barely getting by with the equipment you have which is why I've always considered at least the survival game the horror part is subjective depending on how much this will terrify you regardless it definitely has the elements of a survival game you can even enable certain survival options like traumas weapon integration and oxygen level if you want all this is well and good but what's the actual gameplay Loop what are you going to be doing throughout the game this is a little hard to answer due to the many different variables but at its most basic form you'll be searching desks boxes trash cans tables pretty much anywhere for trash items you can then take these items to the two most important objects in the game the recycler and the fabricator each item in the game has a specific material in it such as organic mineral synthetic or exotic all these items can be placed into the recycler and turned into those materials you can then take those materials to the fabricator to make certain plans you can unlock these plans by finding specific fabricator plans scattered throughout the station this at its core is the most basic form of its gameplay finding items turning them into materials then using those materials to make new items while Scavenging for supplies you won't be just finding random trash there could be things like Med kits neural mods but more importantly new weapons prey has certain weapons that are very standard in games like this a pistol a shotgun and a melee weapon but prey also adds more unique weapons like a stun gun or qbeam but there's also some extremely well thought out grenades and two of the coolest weapons to be put in a game like this the grenades are incredibly unique there is no typical frag grenade or incendiary that does damage they're all situational grenades that are extremely powerful the first one you might come across is the recycler charge it works like a mobile recycler machine anything you throw at it can be sucked inside and turned into materials and this goes for you and the enemies this on the surface is pretty good for gaining more materials you could stack some items together and throw a recycler for some easy materials but nothing in this game should ever be seen as simple what's stopping me from throwing this at a door I can't unlock or a box that's too heavy to move it gets the materials yes but it also opens up New Paths like couldn't before this is what prey is all about using the simple mechanics of an item to do bizarre things and I think that's truly what its gameplay Loop and tails the other grenades while not as creative as the recycler are still worth keeping Typhon lures are used to lure enemies away from an area EMP Chargers can disable power to a box allowing you to not get shocked or disable an electric enemy and no wave transmitters can disable Typhon abilities making mimics come out of hiding or just stopping them from attacking all these grenades can be placed as well so you could even light traps for the Typhon why bother killing the enemy yourself when they could just walk over a recycler and kill themselves and that's truly the fun of this game's combat yes shooting an enemy and killing them using conventional means is still fun but when you use the equipment you have in different ways it's much more enjoyable and they not only encourage this style of gameplay but you could be rewarded for doing so the glue Cannon and the bulk Caster are perfect for this explanation the bull Caster is seen as a utility weapon it literally shoots foam bolts so obviously this won't help us kill anything so it helps us in other ways if you have the right angle you could shoot the workstation screen so that the doors can unlock and allow you to get inside it's a genius weapon that continues to hone in on on the play how you want gameplay but like I said it's quite obvious from the moment you pick it up what it's actually used for the glue gun is a different story the first thing we see of the glue gun is a mimic trapped in glue so this tells us it's a combat weapon however it's way more versatile than that as multiple times we can see these makeshift stairs and walls full of them this is showing the player that what you are seeing is possible to do the best example I can show was when I was at the very top of the station to get into this office you need to take the gravity lift but it was out of power and I couldn't use it but with a little bit of glue I was able to climb up the side and get into the office without even needing the code this is the main reason I love the glue gun so much it's because it's a versatile weapon with Endless Possibilities disguised as a combat weapon another nice display of detail is that every weapon minus the bolt Caster has a little display of ammo and I think that's wonderful as the HUD for this game is very minimal with only the three bars at the bottom being consistent throughout the whole game but it doesn't even stop at the weapons as there are still abilities and chipsets you can unlock the chipsets of these pieces you can attach to your suit and psychoscope that can provide upgrades like discovering where hidden mimics are and adding extra resistance to certain attacks they are minor but meaningful upgrades as they air passive Buffs but the skills originally you start out with three human trees these can upgrade things like Health stamina and strength but eventually you'll get three more trees all of which have Typhon abilities using the power of the Typhon against them you can change the entire situation in front of you I won't go over everything individually but there is a large variety of them like a basic damage ability called kinetic blast or even being able to summon your own Phantom from a corpse called The Phantom Genesis all these abilities work seamlessly into the gameplay allowing for your creativity to shine there are many ways that you can utilize all these abilities and options at the same time and it really encourages you to play your own way all of these abilities though have to be bought using neural mods so everyone will be in different spots at certain points you can either find the neural mods or find the fabrication plan to make some if someone takes the time to scavenge the station then they'll be pretty well equipped to deal with most situations head on but if you didn't find anything you'll need to be more creative in your approach even if you do have lots of neural mods it all depends on what you chose Typhon abilities are nice and very effective at dealing with the Typhon but use too many in the turrets on the station may mistake you for one with that in mind maybe you don't want to use the Typhon abilities but then you're losing out on a plethora of options those abilities give you this is what I meant by that balance earlier choosing to either dedicate more time to search areas for Loot and maybe finding neural mods or skipping it entirely and missing out on beneficial upgrades it makes the experience different from other players and leads to a lot of those I didn't know that moments where even after the third playthrough you might still find new ways to explore a location or take an enemy down however that balance doesn't just affect the exploration but also its combat the game constantly makes you feel inferior then gives you strong weapons and upgrades only to make you feel inferior once again in the beginning we had nothing but a wrench against the Typhon but then we were given the glue gun now we have something to combat them but then the game introduces Phantoms and while you may think it's easy arrange glue gun is not going to be enough but not to worry as the game will give us pistols and shotguns and upgrades but then the enemies will also get stronger with different variations with fire or electricity some can create clones ones that can be invisible you get my point rarely in this game did I actually feel powerful I was by definition a powerful being but because the enemies were getting stronger and more diverse I was struggling at certain points however I think this is a good thing if everything was easy to kill then what's the point of being creative when running and gunning is both easier and faster enemies will also respawn when you load back into an area so if you go from the lobby to deep storage then back to the lobby newer enemies will be there it's not exactly like traditional respawning because it's newer enemies or stronger versions of current enemies so it shows how the ship acts like an ecosystem where enemies will wander into areas you've cleared out on top of not feeling powerful I never really felt safe either games like Resident Evil for example have a safe room hidden away from the danger where no enemies can get inside it also has a save station and most likely a box with all your gear you could keep the game running and walk away from the game without any worry as nothing can enter but with prey I can only think of one spot where I felt this way which was the main elevator none of the typical areas are obviously safe I can't just pick a room and stand there which is to be expected there are lots of areas though that have permanent locks on them you can lock the door permanently and nothing will get inside but this isn't some typical enemy obviously the Typhon are different not only can the mimics be literally any item in the room many Phantoms have hidden behind desks and doors without even me noticing I was originally going to add Morgan's office to this list as well but at least to my knowledge Morgan does not have a lock on his office door and I paid the price for this as a phantom that was searching for me had just walked right in the elevator is the only place in the game where you can feel safe until they spawn a phantom in there to try to toy with you not feeling safe is a terrifying feeling but it's accurate to what's going on you're trapped on a space station where the alien species roaming the Halls outnumber you greatly so you should feel terrified and it's a nice correlation to the game's title prey the Typhon aren't the prey here we are the prey and that's why at all times you never truly feel safe and Powerful when playing many games make the player feel weak by giving them nothing to defend themselves with but not many games can pull this off while also giving the player dozens of weapons and abilities and I think that deserves a lot of respect the gameplay is great but what really ties this all together is the actual station itself Talos one is a wonderfully made setting for the game the station is both beautiful inside and outside and the fact that you can go outside the space station was a great decision as it complements the travel aspect of the game in the very beginning not every area of Talos one will be unlocked but after a few main quests eventually you'll have free access to the entire station however due to its design you can't simply go where you want certain sections are only available from other sections prey combats this problem by providing three fast ways to go around the map you have the main elevator that takes you from the arborium lobby and life support this large tunnel called the guts which connects the cargo base psychotronics and shuttle Bay to the arborium and lastly the exterior that connects a majority of the area is on Talos one together all these ways of travel are beneficial in their own way but also have some hurdles the player must overcome during or before its use the main elevator is by far the preferred option since it's fast and connects the three main sections of the station but to even start the elevator you have to destroy a telepath not only an enemy you haven't faced yet but the arena for the area is so tiny it's hard to find any cover the guts can be very useful especially from the top all the way to the bottom but the guts is filled with enemies and is also very dangerous and the exterior of Talos is quite safe minus a few enemies but you do actually have to find the airlocks in their respective places first in order to enter the area so this isn't for discovering new areas it's for going to areas you've already gone to as you'll notice none of them overpower each other personally I did use the elevator the most but each option does have its benefits and because none of them overpower each other you can simply bypass the issues by just using one for the entire game besides the amounts of options for fast travel if you want to call it that having even one of these would be great the these areas are large and filled with life not literally but you get what I mean there are multiple floors of rooms to explore so it can be quite tedious having to go from one end of the station to the other without any assistance but more importantly they make sense this leads me to my next point which is that the areas are not only gorgeous and expansive but they feel like they belong why wouldn't you have an elevator on a space station if my knowledge is correct the space station is 700 meters tall that's almost as high as the tallest building in the world climbing that many steps would probably kill people from exhaustion before they even reach their destination each of these rooms serves a purpose not only for the player but for the station itself the space station is separated into three main sections the Executive Research and Engineering Branch all the engineering locations are at the bottom this is where all the hardware equipment and maintenance facilities exist there is the power plant which holds the reactor that powers the entire ship the cargo bay is responsible for shipment processing and life support handles all the air and water filtration systems this is the core of the station as nothing can function properly with without these working so you can just look at this place as metaphorically holding the station Together Like Glue the middle is the research division that has the largest number of rooms most of which relate to experimentation my favorite part about this area is that they were made for specific reasons it's not just some science Wing that exists that has everything and anything Talus one has separate areas dedicated to specific types of research it's got an area for neural mods an area for Typhon research and another for hardware and weapons the last section is the executive division where the crew quarters Arboretum and deep storage are deep storage is used for storing all the station's research the Arboretum has Gardens for Botanical experiments and is just gorgeous to look at thanks to the windows surrounding it so you can see the ever expanding Universe all these areas also have at least one fabricator and recycler and even a security station seeing as this station is used to get the best results fast for their research they need all the equipment they need within the same building the security station also has utilities that the security would only need to know like the map of the area the status of the Escape pods and even where the crewmates are on the ship since they're all wearing tracking bracelets the best example though of a believable environment has to be the crew quarters there are crew cabins and recreational Services scattered throughout this area of the station some of the crew have separate rooms but some just sleep in bunk beds but Within These specific rooms are things that complement the person living there a few of the crewmates are actually a part of a d d group so those players will have the game's books or sheets based on their character in their room or on their workstation the game is also displaying a sense of hierarchy that is respected amongst the station's inhabitants as there's actually a gravity lift that can take you to the executive suites I've always said that if a game's setting seems like it could function normally without the need of the player then they did a good job and Arcane really took the time to develop this not only gorgeous but believable space station that doesn't just stop at the locations of the areas but the areas themselves things aren't perfectly in order and are normal there was literally just an outbreak So Random garbage on the floor a door being unlocked experiments left unfinished all of it makes sense and then there's also the amount of effort that went into not only making the locations look great and feel real but also making it fun from a gameplay perspective there are pipes going across the rooms that we can use to spy on the Typhon we can go into events connecting other areas and ignore the Typhon all of this needs to be taken into consideration when making Talos one because it doesn't matter how good it looks if the player doesn't enjoy playing then they won't enjoy the game everything we've discussed so far is great on its own but what ties it all together is the music praise music is simply wonderful I've already talked about the one in the intro and mentioned that praise music was mostly composed by Mick Gordon and this is actually the most depressing part about this game prayer never got any nominations for its music and while Mick Gordon has done press conferences on his music for Doom none of them were made for prey I just wish I was able to understand the thought process behind the instruments and the equipment he used but that sadly won't happen regardless prey has some incredible music that fits for the given situation their exploration tracks and combat tracks like any typical gaming soundtrack and also other songs that you can only hear in game on the speakers [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] thank you [Applause] [Music] [Music] where do you believe [Music] you'll notice for certain songs like Typhon voices or no gravity that the songs aren't strong like a combat theme but they also aren't some calming Ambience they're sort of a mix of bolts the game is creepy and terrifying so the music should reflect that weirdly enough the song semi-sacred geometry while it's sung by a woman in the game it's actually sung by a guy named Matt Pearsall in the official soundtrack I genuinely have no reason why this is the case one big problem I have with the soundtrack though is that it's just too short only having around 14 songs now that number could seem fairly average to some but it's not really the number of tracks per se that bothers me it's a fact that there is a ton of music not put in the official soundtrack and It's upsetting because some of this is arguably the best in the game foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign if you've played prey there's no doubt in my mind that you've heard this music while playing and that's why it makes it all the more upsetting it's just confusing why this is not a part of the official soundtrack but I guess we'll never know the only thing that remains of the original game is its story once again spoiler warning ahead if you don't want to hear stuff about the story then skip ahead to the DLC so instead of going back to where we left off in the intro some background knowledge is necessary this is the typical who what where when why questions that are required to give the story actual meaning and explain how things got to where they are praiseworld is like ours except in prey the space race between Russia and the United States accelerated much faster than ours during an investigation Mission regarding a shuttle that went missing in 1960 two cosmonauts would relay their video feed to the Russian space command and capture the very first Typhon this was immediately labeled the state's secret and was never shared with anyone until 1962 when Russia would ask the U.S president John F Kennedy to assist in containing the threat history Buffs May recognize that in our world JFK would be assassinated a year later later but in Praise universe that assassination was a failure and JFK lived through that day in history eventually the US would start building a giant space station so that they could study the Typhon and while successful for a while the typh had broke out and killed everyone on the ship the station would lay dormant for a while until a newly made Mega Corporation Called Transtar would purchase it and in a few years create Talos won Transtar is led by an anonymous board of directors that no one knows about except the two faces of the company being Morgan's parents who are Katherine and William U eventually his brother Alex would become the CEO of the company and be the head of Talos one he would then eventually convince Morgan to join the tables one research team to which Morgan accepted fast forward to where we left off after getting to Morgan's office we played the video that was saved on our computer working goes on to explain that they've been testing new neural mods with Typhon DNA so that the neural patterns of both a Typhon and a human brain could connect only problems that when you would try to uninstall these neuromods the user loses all the memories during the time it was implanted so hypothetically if you put in the neuroma and then uninstalled it a month later you would lose every memory you had for the past month to circumvent this issue they've developed a method of getting people back up to speed but if they skip that process you could force someone to live one day for their entire life which is exactly what happened to Morgan but for three whole years while watching the rest of the video Morgan goes on to explain something but is interrupted by Alex and refuses to let us finish the video until he can explain himself obviously we're not going to listen so we leave the office and try to reset the power to the Looking Glass it's important when making a story to not only have a strong beginning and end but give the player actual reason some RPGs can struggle with this concept and not give a player a reason to play the story other than the shiny loot at the end because if we think about things from the perspective of our created character what's stopping us from doing the task we were given answers like loot or new armor doesn't make sense because that's what we the player wants not what our character wants fallet is always a great example that I tend to reference a lot since the protagonist wants to find their son they aren't going to ditch their kid and take up a new life as a farmer that's their own on so it's a perfect motive for the protagonist to venture into the Wasteland the good thing about prey is that they have created an environment where the opposite won't ever happen our motive is Morgan is finding our brother and finding a way off the ship prey perfectly displays a current short-term goal and a long-term goal Alex is our brother so we obviously want to make sure he's okay but also question him as assuming he stays true to his word we may discover why he never gave our memories back and if possible our long-term goal could even be furthered if we complete the short-term goal however after this the main story does hit a low point for a while the quests are a bunch of backtracking and retrieving items the whole experience isn't all bad since the gameplay will take the reins for the time being until you get to the quest so when you're playing and going from quest to Quest with combat in between it's great but if we analyze the quest just by itself it's honestly quite boring after we leave Morgan's office we head to the hardware labs to reinstall the Looking Glass then head back to Morgan's office to hear the final part of the message after the message we go to psychotronics to get the psychoscope before going to the guts to the Arboretum and then into the deep storage before we realize deep storage can't be opened without a passphrase as we go to the crew Annex to get the password head back to deep storage except Alex locks Us in so we gotta grab data vaults and try to escape which caused us to get shot in space with the only entrance between the cargo bay where all the crews hold up that was about half the story summed up in a few seconds there are obviously conversations that keep you interested in the story but the amount of backtracking and fetch questing is insane like I said when it works together with the gameplay it's wonderful as the gameplay and exploration may go into all these areas fun especially since most of them are new areas you haven't visited yet but if we just analyze the story by itself then it's clear that it's boring during this time the player will discover that Morgan hasn't talked once despite having a voice actor for the role and these weird cutscenes during certain parts of the game these are quite vital to the main story so keep these in mind for later during this story you'll encounter a few crewmates that you can talk to they all seem fairly nice but there are emails and audio logs that make you and your brother out to be not the nicest of people so given the context why would you help these people at all especially when you realize that they were willing to look the other way while one of their own members was subjected to constant experiments now given the amount of people and how large the ship is it's fair to assume not everyone knew but clearly some people did know and since we don't know who this action sort of labels all of them being the problem not just a few people the game plays into this idea as you'll receive side quests that make you go out of your way to do some random tasks one of the researchers Dr iguay is trapped in a storage device and is running out of air if we save him he's thankful for our help and will be stationed at Morgan's office he'll then give you the task of retrieving a music sample of a famous musician Dr igwa claims it's the last living part of him and with it we could still be able to hear this man's work it's completely irrelevant to the main plot and makes you go out of your way to do so these play into the mindset of how you would see the researchers after discovering what they put you through and it's not only extremely important for the story but an incredible way of giving the player the freedom to choose another wonderful Quest is about the chef and the crew quarters you can find him hiding in the kitchen from some Typhon his name is William Russell but if you search her wrong you'll notice that Will's voice and vase do not the person in front of you originally I thought this was a glitch or an oversight by Arcane until the chef rewarded me with the gear in the fridge and then trapped me inside he is actually an escaped volunteer and is trying to get revenge on us not only is the concept of this Quest great but just starting it is even better once you've escaped the fridge he leaves and you won't find him you'll eventually have to follow a breadcrumb trail of clues that could lead you to him but while doing this and even just exploring the ship in general you could trip a recycler charge and get killed he has left traps everywhere on the ship and you'll have no idea where they are unless you look really close the ending of this Quest was also fairly well done where he tries to get you one last time but it fails and you end his life someone else you'll encounter early in the game is January and December both are operators just like the ones we see throughout the station except these were made by Morgan after he discovered he was being subjected to constant testing there's also a possible October and November According to some notes so it seems like Morgan would discover that he was being tested on then make backups of his mind so he could catch himself speed the reason why there's so many is probably because Morgan has a chance to be different so Morgan made October to catch himself up to speed then when he made November to catch the other up to speed with a better plan and on and on until we get January this is backed up by what December and January's end goals are January's end goal is blowing up the base along with the Typhon on the station but December's is to hop into Alex's Escape pod and leave dooming everyone so that leads me to believe that there were multiple times Morgan changed his plan after hearing the previous Morgan's original plan knowing this we can continue with the plan or the other alternative is to deploy a null wave device this functions like the no wave grenade but will eliminate all the Typhon on the ship after a few more story quests of talking to Alex and retrieving things you're about to choose an ending and finish the game until prey throws one final wrench in the plans which is doll doll was hired by Morgan's parents to wipe out everyone on the station including Alex and Morgan he even comes equipped with his own Army of military operators the decisions you can make during this part of the quest is fantastic and very expensive but it's also so unpleasant there are numerous ways this Quest can end Dahl attempts to deceive You by acting as a hurt scientist named Luther glass this is to lure you into a trap and kill you he'll then try to shut off the oxygen to the ship killing the crew unless you stop him he is actually in the next room and you can not only stop the oxygen from depleting but also kill him if you want to however if you save Dr iGuy he offers an alternative which is to knock him out and wipe his memory since he's the only one with the skills to fly the shuttle he came in on you could wipe his memory and make him escort the crew off the station before he realizes he was being played if you don't find him in the other room you can also find him at the Arboretum trying to kill Alex like I said the quest is incredible and so expansive that you would have to run through it multiple times just to get everything done what ruins this Quest though is his operators doll's military operators not only have the health but they have the numbers they are strong they hit hard and there's a lot of them they're not like the typhoon where you can come up with routes and ways around them they aren't even like the corrupted operators because there is never this many at one time what makes things is worse is that most of his quests involve a time limit so you have to act fast and quick while also being lasered by a dozen operators while I did try to fight back in the beginning I pretty much gave up almost immediately and just ran through the quest trying to ignore them it goes against what this game is about outsmarting your opponent and using the abilities and weapons you have at your disposal to turn the tide of battle in your favor but not once did I ever feel like I had the upper hand in any engagement now that we have covered just about everything we can finally talk about the ending as long as you do either January or Alex's ending which is using the null wave device or blowing up Talos one you will get the ending December's ending with the Escape pod gives you a game over not an ending it also Clues you into what's going on assuming you're like me in didn't do this ending first you're in for a wild surprise after the ending we get the credits then a black screen which transitions into the after credit scene which is the real ending of the game everything we did was a simulation and what we went through was a reconstruction of Morgan's memories when the Typhon actually attacked the crew of Talos 1. we're also being judged based on our actions which are a few key features to get a good review we need to not kill lots of crew members who killed the Imposter Chef spare the volunteer prisoner saved Dr igwe and Makaya and do their respective quests if you did these well enough then you succeed if you fail all across the board they'll kill you immediately I know I haven't discussed a few of these choices so allow me to explain later in the game you'll find most of the crew in the cargo bay they want your help by killing the Typhon and setting up turrets to defend them if most or all of them die then you will fail this part the last one is a toss-up in terms of my personal feelings because we find a prisoner locked in a test chamber we can either kill him and get a lot of exotic material or let him live and he'll give us the code to the Armory you could also save beforehand get the code then revert to last save and open the armory which is what I did regardless you're being graded on your moral compass and if someone like him should die or not you can read his file and discover that he did some illegal things to kids I refuse to elaborate any further on that statement assuming I couldn't save scum I would have easily killed him because of his crimes but that is a bad grade on the test and the only one I received the reason we're being graded is because Morgan did save the people of Talos one through some means but the Typhon still made it to Earth Alex is trying to save Humanity by building a bridge between the Typhon and humans instead of doing what he originally did which was putting Typhon DNA into humans which is the neuromods he wants to instead take the human DNA and put it into a Typhon which is why we are put in the simulation to determine if we showed enough empathy and care for the crew aboard Talos one despite all the testing Morgan went through and the fact that it were technically a phantom if we succeed then we're given two options we can join Alex and the rest or kill Alex and become like every other Typhon dooming the world it's a wonderful ending and something I did not see coming there were some signs that led to this conclusion but nothing was concrete enough for me to know it was extremely well made and planned out so that the breadcrumbs of what's going on like the flashbacks and the numerous discussions about being humans with emotions were shared but in a perfect way that the player did not see coming but only realized what it was when the moment was right putting its simply it's just genius storytelling prey is not without its issues individually the beginning and end were fantastic and some of the highlights of my play time but the middle did sour the experience a bit if you wanted to buy prey for just the story despite what I just said I would still give it my recommendation as the beginning and end are just that good in 2018 with the release of survival mode and New Game Plus Arcane would also release its first DLC called Moon crash there was another DLC released months later called Typhon Hunter which is a 5v1 versus mode where one person is Morgan tries to kill the other five players who are hiding his mimics I was going to cover this DLC as well but not only could I not actually figure out where to play the DLC I'm assuming the servers are long dead by now anyway regardless Moon crash is way different than prey Moon crashes prey but if it was a roguelike roguelike was the last genre I expected to play in a game like this so it came as a surprise funny enough this would also be my first experience with roguelikes I've heard people say death Loop was a roguelike but I've also heard people argue it's a rogue light but in terms of the actual popular roguelikes of the genre such as Hades or risk of rain I've never played any of them and just in case you're like me and haven't touched this genre either it usually encompasses things like permadeath randomized levels among other key features I was definitely a little nervous going into this but I was intrigued to play it because I've never played something like this before and to summarize my play time it was fantastic Moon crash has a lot to go over so instead of going into a long discussion about my thoughts I need to explain what it's about Moon crash starts with us on a shuttle eventually we discovered that our name is Peter and we work with a company called chasma they are a competitor of Transtar and have tasked us with running this simulation as per our contract details we aren't finished until we accomplish all 27 tasks they have given us to do in the simulation this simulation is of a scenario that is believed to have happened on the Transtar Moonbase pythius and where the majority of the content will be taking place we are given five characters from the base the volunteer director security officer custodian and engineer the ultimate end goal is completing those 27 tasks chasma has given us the moon base is split into four sections the main area is the crater that connects all the other three areas in the moon base which are the pythius labs crew Annex and the moonworks each of these sections will be very important for completing this DLC as for the rules of this DLC it is a roguelike areas will be different different and change every time you reset for example this one tunnel was blocked off in one run but on the next it was gone also when I say run I mean simulation run the simulation can be reset at any time you want for whatever reason but when you reset the simulation things will change everything you do as characters on the map will stay but once you reset you get put in a new version of the map the best way to imagine it is if there were thousands of moon bases in front of you each of them has the same sections of the map and the same structures and Floors but each of them has small tiny details that set it apart from one another one could have radiation in the crew Annex but another may not when you reset the simulation you're basically packing up and leaving to go to another moon base it's not the greatest analogy but hopefully that makes sense despite how it sounds resetting is actually a very key part of the game as the longer you're on the moon base the higher your corruption level goes every level it goes up the enemies will get stronger certain enemies that spawn on lower levels like mimics or Phantoms will just be stronger versions of that enemy with a number next to them but other Typhon like Weavers in telepath house will only spawn on the higher corruption levels if things get too hard you can always reset and start back at corruption level 1. since we have five characters obviously the next question is which one is better and there's actually no answer for this as all of them are different each of them has different health and energy levels as well as what they start with and what abilities you can upgrade which is why you need to use all of them because some of the challenges can only be completed with specific characters the very last thing to go over is what resets because at face value it sounds like a complete sweep of everything but that's not entirely true any characters challenges and story objectives that are completed will stay forever the other two things that stay are the known variables occurring in the moon base and any upgrade you unlock I'll get to that first one later but as for the latter the neural mods in your inventory will disappear but assuming you put them into any upgrade across any character then they will stay permanently so what is a typical playthrough of the DLC look like at the beginning of a new run you'll pick a character at the very beginning you'll only have the volunteer but eventually it'll progress and unlock the other four just selecting your character then you can pick the loadout using Sim points Sim points are earned by doing a ton of things escaping killing enemies or discovering dead bodies your Loadout is based on the fabrication plans you've picked up in the world as well so if you pick up the plan for making a silence pistol then you can buy one to put in your Loadout once you select your Loadout for guns ammo and chipsets you start in a small room and are just left to do whatever you want since those 27 tasks do not have to be completed all at once you can take your time completing them more in some cases dedicate an entire run to one objective before resetting the simulation it's recommended that you at least get the characters first but the rest are entirely up to you Moonbase has very similar things to prey so you'll find Fabricators and recyclers as well as Security offices with all the crew members locations in the case of the security officer to unlock him you need to find his corpse on the moon base so you could just go to a workstation and find where he died that way even though you don't get to keep your loadouts and are constantly resetting the game still provides that option of player choice just like the main game albeit in a different way most of your choices will be planned out ahead of time mapping on a route in your mind and what you want to accomplish taking into account where to go how to get there and what to buy for the mission ahead the rest is made up on the Fly since things are random you'll never know what will happen sometimes an area you need to go to has no power so instead of just going to that location you need to make a quick pit stop to the crater and turn on the power like I said the freedom to choose how you want to play is there but it's just a little bit different this time around as I said before the goal is to complete all 27 objectives and now that we've finally got in the description out of the way let's go over those objectives they are split into four sections crew members Escape attempts story objectives and Discovery the crew members are easy as you just need to unlock the characters the Escape attempts Encompass all the tasks involved with escaping so you using every method escaping with every character and by far the hardest one escaping using every character in one run the story objectives are exactly as they sound each character has a story objective that needs to be completed in order to finish the game and unlock this you'll need to First unlock the character then do the requirement at the bottom so it'll unlock the security off officer we need to find his body on the moon base which we already talked about after searching it he becomes a playable character to unlock his story objective we need to escape using the mass driver once that's done we can then do his story objective and fully complete it the last section Discovery is more of a mixed bag of things where you discover all four sections of the moon base do all five Escape Routes scan five unique Typhon find 10 chipsets and Fabrication plans and finally install 50 neural mods across all the characters I know that last one sounds really complex but it's honestly not too bad they mean 50 neuro mods in total so the engineer can have 49 and the volunteer has one and it will still count as a completion also they really mean neuromods not upgrades some upgrades can cost you three or six neural mods unlocking this wouldn't be one of 50 it'd be three or six out of 50 because that's how many neural mods that were needed to install it these are all the objectives we need to complete so that we can finish the DLC an idea that some players have done is to stock up on upgrades that you can be extremely overpowered personally I don't think it's necessary but regardless should you attempt to do this you'll find out that the game still gets harder and I'm not just talking about the corruption levels after certain levels of progress you'll surpass a threshold this is when Peter gets shot out of the simulation to do some random task on the shuttle once you return a note will appear before the next run that updates you on the simulation these are extremely important as they can tell you what you already know and what is new for example early in the game this random entity named the moon shark will randomly appear in the game he's extremely deadly and very similar to The Nightmare however after a couple runs he'll be permanently there every time you come back not once have I started a run since he spawned where he wasn't there this also goes for certain hazards these aren't as specific but the report just lets you know that they exist if we go back to that early example one of my runs had a radiation Hazard at the crew Annex after a while the idea became permanent the radiation wasn't always at the crew Annex but the report was telling me that a hazard like radiation fire or no oxygen would appear in my games permanently from now on this is where that Randomness comes into play so while I'm might not have the same hazard in the same location a hazard will more than likely appear somewhere on the moon base but by far the most annoying variable in this report is that the corruption level can be two times then three times as fast this means I need to get things done faster than usual or I'll be dealing with enemies a lot quicker than I'd like as hard as it sounds this was extremely fun as it made me constantly come up with better routes and ways of accomplishing my tasks while making the completion of those tasks really fun because they were hard it made me feel rewarded for my effort but it's clear from what I just described that this DLC is definitely an acquired taste if anything I've said in the past seven minutes sounds too hard or not your style you're not going to like this DLC however if you are up for the challenge you'll have a fantastic time with it the story for this DLC while light compared to the main game still has the same good quality that the original storyline had you don't get to learn too much about Peter other than that he works for chasma and was assigned to investigate what happened on the moon base the other pieces of story we get are that he has a wife and daughter the issue with this is I just felt no reason to care about him as we didn't even really get to know why he was even here but our five playable characters are much different each of them gets their own bit of background and story objectives so we can see what really happened all five of them have names and are addressed in game by their job title so there's already established background information the volunteer is a man named Andreas who was just like the other volunteers on Talos 1 and was subjected to experiments because of this he was able to master these new abilities he acquired making him a dangerous yet intriguing subject however his story objective isn't as exciting from his inner monologue it seems that Andreas just wants to see his son again our first scene from the story objective is him being mind controlled by a telepath the telepath is pretending to be his son Alexi and tries to get Andreas to retrieve his toy for him the game automatically shoots up to corruption level 4 but don't worry as none of the Typhon will attack you only The Operators if you're starting to question how his son even got into the moon base you're on the right track once we get his toy we are then instructed to get inside the Escape pod and a certain thought starts to settle until it's confirmed almost right away that the toy was just a mimic and Andreas was being deceived the volunteers have always gotten the short stick of this game and I was hoping for One Happy Ending but that obviously didn't come the next character is the director Dr Riley you she's the cousin of both Alex and Morgan whereas Alex became the leader of Talos 1 she became the leader of the moon base she also has the most unique way of escaping the moon base which is uploading her Consciousness to an operator then presumably shooting that operator back to Transtar since she's the director and leader of the base she's a very cold and by the books woman she got mad at one of her colleagues for not addressing her as either Dr U or Madame director so she clearly holds herself to a high esteem and her family's work reinforces that mentality her story objective is meeting with one of her other crewmates on the moon base during the outbreak and activating the Typhon Towers throughout the crater completely eliminating any of the threat nearby even the moon shark based on the timing of when this took place it's assumed that she did the story objective first then escaped by uploading her conscious as opposed to Andreas where the story objective was his Escape Vijay Bhatia is the chief of security at the moon base and also our third playable character he is somewhat of an easy job compared to the people back at Talos 1 since his base isn't 700 meters long but I'd argue in fact that he has a much harder job than his colleague since he was told by Dr Yu that there was a casma mole in the base sometime earlier he received the terrible news that his son was killed by Bengali Pirates during a raid in an attempt to hold back the emotional trauma he was going through he tried to drink the pain away and ended up passing out he awakes to hear a very upset doctor you yelling at him about the chasma Spy named Claire Whitton she seems completely unfazed by the fact that there is an ongoing outbreak and still insists that he kills Claire before she escapes as she has some other things to deal with eventually through some Clues we find the spy's Hideout when investigating her terminals we are poisoned the game then tries to sell us this option of stopping her but sacrificing herself or saving our life but she goes free except they gave us way too much time to do that so so you just end up doing both anyway once we reach the control tower we can decide to intervene and blow up or Shuttle or let it take off because we completed his story objective we also unlocked the custodian whose requirement was to be unlocked as vijay's story objective I love the way this ties in together because Clara Whitten is the custodian but she's also the Spy she was a custodian on the moon base but that wasn't her official title I also love how they purposely gave her a broom for her Idol animation whereas when you unlock her she gets the plasma cutter it was a small yet a great design decision to keep her identity a secret until the very end Claire's story objective starts with her stabbing some Transtar Personnel before being contacted by basilisk from chasma that her identity has been made her instructions are then to destroy all the listening devices and plant her command key in doctor use operator then Escape but it's a nice little neat touch that all the listening devices can't just be shot they have to be recycled after finishing our taskmo promised to extract her but they said it'd be too costly to do that so she needed to escape on her own our very last character is Joan the engineer she's an extremely skilled technician and actually comes with a spawnable Turret to help her fight her story objective starts with her killing a man with a wrench we discovered that she was in a relationship with a man named Brian Chung she was trying to find out what happened to him but the man she killed Ken wouldn't tell her it may seem strange to resort to violence like this but an early transcribe can provide context to what we're about to uncover in the same room that we stopped Claire's shuttle as Vijay a transcribe between Ken and Jonas found and it's discovered that because of the combined Construction in the moon works and the constant rumbling in the caves Joan was mining some rocks and a large piece fell on Brian Ken promised to deliver him to the trauma center and get him some help except Ken had other plans as he had previously worked with another employee called Diana and owed her a favor she cashed in the favor and Ken gave her Brian so she could run tests on him the results of those tests are that he is a phantom so now things are starting to make just a little bit more sense after discovering this she went to Brian's quarters to find a bird that he was sculpting for her and decided to put it on the Finnish statue he was going to make of her it's a really sweet and depressing tale all of these stories are wonderful as it shows that there was actual things going on within the moon base it also managed to tie in other characters giving context to other actions and further providing more story content for us to uncover the question Still Remains though what actually happened and we really don't know we do know some concrete details but the rest are up to interpretation to explain we also need to discuss the five Escape Routes seeing as there's only five characters and five Escape Routes it starts to settle in that only one Escape is allowed per character which is why that last objective of doing it all in one run is all the more difficult the first option is the shuttle and this is by far the easiest one to complete all you need to do is get the data to Pilot the shuttle and the neural mods become a pilot and you can fly off the moon base a similar one to this is the escape pod due to the convenience of Escape pods many of them are gone in fact only one of them is left you'll have to check which location has the last one before hopping in and escaping later the game will require use installation Keys which is a whole other objective except I never did that because I just purchased them in my loadout moving on up in difficulty is the mass driver this is a storage bin that's usually filled with cargo but you're going to launch yourself to Earth with this to survive the trip you need some food water and some anti-rads which once again can either be purchased ahead of time or found pretty much anywhere on the base after putting in the food you need to activate the mass drive from the control tower then Sprint all the way down before it takes off without you our fourth option is uploading our Consciousness this can only be done by Dr U and is the only escape with a required character to do this we need to visit dru's computer and contact Alex from here we need to upload some data to this operator before we put ourselves in the chair except the data is incomplete to get this data we need to summon a fandom using the Phantom Genesis ability once again an ability only available to doctor you after we scan it and compile the data we can set up the operator and upload our Consciousness except we don't remember when I said we had to put Claire's key in the operator well this comes into play as it actually kills doctor you I think this is how the DLC started as the operator we used to start the simulation with Peter has the command key inside of it already our very last Escape is easy but requires a lot of setup and that's the mimic portal for some reason a mimic keeps teleporting shoes from Earth and the researchers before the attack were trying to figure out why to us we don't care as it's a way off the Moon to complete this we need to hack the computer as there's no password available then repair the actual chamber before stabilizing it then jumping through the problem is we need the hack and repair skill Claire's the only character in the game who can hack and Jonah is the only one who can repair so this requires at least two people to do and becomes one of the biggest hurdles in the final objective so with all the information out there what happened like I said there isn't much concrete info but from what I can gather Dru uploaded her Consciousness and died thanks to Claire which means Claire was discovered as the mole and completed her story objective in fact I think all these people completed their story objectives except maybe Visa depending on your choice it can seem that Claire killed Dr U Vijay killed Claire then Visa died somewhere later Visa story objective has different ways of ending it so this is the one that is up to interpretation we do know from a transcribe that he possibly died from a moon shark since he was being attacked by one before it stopped recording however that doesn't explain how he ended up inside here this is probably my main gripe with the entire story with the moon base is that it's intertwined with so many different options that coming up with a plausible ending doesn't even seem possible as opposed to the story though the gameplay was well worth the effort I had multiple notebook pages of ideas and notes written down during the entire playthrough and one whole page dedicated to doing the final run since there were five characters and five escapes one character would be assigned to each Escape but minus Dr U and her Consciousness everything else can be done by anyone meaning people won't have the same ending as everyone else this is actually my main gripe with death loop as the final run for the game was the exact same one as everyone else's and could not be changed but Moon crash even in its final moments allows for that player choice so the first thing to consider is who goes to what escape and in what order it's also important to remember that any Hazard or variable the game throws at me will probably screw up my entire plan so I need to also make sure the Run isn't down to the letter after like 20 minutes of writing my plan went as follows I started as the custodian and ran to the pipees labs to hack the computer afterwards she would then run to the crew Annex and take the shuttle I could have also taken the Escape pod but that was another random variable I would need to get out of the way and wanted to get going as soon as possible after the custodian we moved the engineer and finished the mimic portal before doing so she'll check to make sure where the last pod is for the volunteer then hop inside the portal I got super lucky that the Pod was also in pythius so I just made my way there with the installation key and hopped in the pot and left even though the volunteer has 75 Health he has a ton of evasive tactics like going underground temporarily so I wasn't too worried about the difficulty my biggest fear was up next as Dr U would then upload her Consciousness I planned on going to the lounge just underneath her office because of the plethora of food and drinks in the room I could then use the robot companion given to all the characters earlier in the game to transfer my items to everyone when I needed to I also thought that since Dr Yu goes passed the mass driver for escape objective I could just drop off the food on the way but apparently once you get the data from The Phantom the first time you'll never need it again which was quite bizarre I didn't know if this was intended or a glitch and it definitely really didn't help my decision when the device for the operator never appeared until after placing it so I thought I bugged my game out still I was coasting around corruption level 2 and I was feeling Uber confident and it still ended up working out okay as I placed the items in immediately activated the driver then shot bija to space this whole sequence took around 40 minutes including the actual gameplay and the planning ahead of time and it was some of the most exhilarating gameplay I've experienced in a long time it was probably the most fun I've had playing this entire game after this is completed you're most likely finished with every other objective with all of our objectives complete we can finally talk to chasma about our contract and now is a good time to talk about Peter's story Moon crash's story is best described as okay it's not mind-blowing but it's not terrible either because the simulation takes priority we don't get to see Peter too much besides the times we hop out of the simulation those first few times we do hop out of the simulation we're just told to do some random tasks like fixing something or putting something away eventually we will overhear a conversation between basilisk and a director of chasma named Teddy it seems that Teddy is going to do what they did declare and leave us to die when we're done with our contract so instead basilisk helps us by instructing us to set aside an oxygen tank just in case this comes in handy as when we finished Teddy does exactly what we thought then attempts to suffocate us so we grab the oxygen tank and go to the command console and events of the shuttle sadly after trying every option we're only able to decommission the ship and crash it into the moon which Peter does surprisingly though he is alive and after leaving the rubble of his shuttle he finds a potential way off the moon before the credits roll but not too fast we are playing prey after all and once again get another post-credits scene that plays the sound of ocean waves and seagulls which applies Peter made it to Earth but as you probably expected another mimic also made it to Earth since on the dashboard is a a duplicate of his daughter's toy Moon crash ends on a cliffhanger-like prey as we don't really know what happens afterwards but given the ending of the story it's more than likely it leads to the Typhon attack on Earth as a whole Moon crash is one of the best DLCs I've played in a long time and despite the DLC being completely different in gameplay as the main game it was honestly just as fun most DLCs are a continued storyline with the same mechanics this is seen in just about 99 percent of DLC and there's nothing wrong with that if people enjoy the gameplay of the main story they're obviously going to like the DLCs as they're the same but Arcane took yet again another risk in doing this and at least for me it was worth it the same cannot be said for others however as completing the DLC is an achievement that only 0.24 percent of players on Xbox have completed even getting all the five characters was an achievement 0.43 percent of players completed I know Xbox's achievement percentage isn't always perfect but that means that an overwhelming amount of players didn't even buy the DLC and even the ones that did didn't make it very far the DLC seemed to suffer a similar fate to the main game and it's mostly the reason DLC didn't gain any traction because who the hell buys a game only to play the DLC I understand that Moon crash's gameplay is not everyone's cup of tea but just like the main game I still wish it got more attention finally though we've made it to the outro thank you all for making it this far in the video praise a game that despite its flaws deserve more recognition than it got while I am a part of that problem since I didn't buy the game on launch I guess I'm still kind of doing my part by sharing my experience with all of you if it wasn't obvious by the length I had a lot to say about prey and a lot of that was good things that I really enjoyed about the game like its exploration the ending and its DLC regardless thank you for taking time out of your day to watch to the end of the video and if you did let me know if you've played a prayer or not in the comments down below and whether or not you enjoyed the game yourself as always like the video If you enjoyed And subscribe if you're new if you want to see more video essays like this I encourage you to check out my other videos like the one on Fallout New Vegas if you want to watch some other style of content then you could watch my recent reviews on both writer's Republic and Far Cry 6. to my returning viewers thank you for always coming back and with that everyone take care and goodbye foreign [Music]

Channel: Gingy

Views: 490,532

Keywords: prey 2017 gameplay, prey 2017 review, prey, prey 2017, video essay, prey 2017 video essay, gingy, review, prey review, prey 2017 dlc, prey mooncrash, prey 2017 story, prey story, prey ending, immersive sim games, immersive sim 2021, immersive sim

Id: XGVxlblxW84

Length: 68min 47sec (4127 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 05 2021