Prey – Or, Three Reasons Why I Think More Action RPG’s should be more like BioShock. Or Maybe Not.

Ok, so hands in the air: I know Prey isn’t really an indie game. I’m cheating. I just wanted to do a review of Prey because Extra Credits did a whole video about how great this game is.

When Extra Credits devotes a whole episode to your game on a channel about game design topics, you know your game is good. Well, maybe not all the time, but still.

BUT Extra Credits “Games You Might Not Have Tried” segment is where I first learn about a lot of the indie games on my Steam library, and if it’s good enough for Extra Credits to dedicate a whole video to it I’ll bend the rules just this once.

So, this is my rundown on Prey, an Action RPG made by Bethesda and Arkane Studios.

Summary

In Extra Credits’ “Games You Might Not Have Tried” series they give the spotlight to games that do something interesting or new, even if they’re not actually that good.

The interesting and new concept that Prey brings to the table are mimics: an alien sub-species that can disguise themselves as any ordinary object in your vicinity. This leads you, the player, to distrust everything in your surroundings and treat every seemingly innocuous object as a potential hazard or threat.

You think that’s just an innocent box of cornflakes sitting on that shelf, don’t you?

Well think again Buster Brown, because the second you reach out to nom it down: BAM, THAT FACEHUGGER JUST ATE YOUR NOSE OFF!

When I first learned that I thought it sounded like a neat idea that made Prey worth checking out, and then eventually I did.

Prey is Basically BioShock in Space

Thematically and gameplaywise, Prey reminds me a most of BioShock (or System Shock 2, if you’ve ever played that).

It looks like BioShock. It feels like BioShock. It plays like BioShock. It sounds like BioShock.

It’s an action game with RPG elements from a first-person shooter perspective but where you can upgrade your abilities by putting points in different skill trees.

Just like BioShock.

Prey’s aesthetic has a retro feel to it in spite of the sci-fi setting. From the art-deco travel posters to the employee billboards.

Again, just like BioShock.

Prey trades the fast pacing of run-and-gun gameplay for atmosphere and worldbuilding. You pick up context and background information about the space station the game takes place and the people who live there from audio logs and notes as you piece together what happened before shit got ruined.

Just like BioShock.

It’s basically BioShock with a golden-age sci-fi skin painted over it.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing either. I LOVED BioShock. So did a lot of other people. If you’re a developer taking cues from another game, I could think of worse.

Here’s what else is good about Prey.

How Prey Sucked Me in with its Worldbuilding – Just Like BioShock

One of the reasons I loved BioShock is how it does worldbuilding and atmosphere. Action RPG games aren’t really my genre of choice, but BioShock really gripped me with how it told a story of a failed utopia.

It doesn’t shove its message in your face, rather it gives you little bits and pieces about the history and eventual decline and fall of Rapture one piece at a time, and leaves you to put them together yourself and come to your own conclusions about why it failed as a society.

This is something Prey does really well too.

I would walk into a cafeteria, look up at the weekly menu and see what the residents of the Talos I space-station ate for dinner, and recognize a lot of the same consumable items you pick up to regenerate health.

I would hack into a computer, read the emails on it and find out about how they communicated with their families back on Earth.

You research the alien Typhon using your scanning helmet device and learn more about how they use their psychic powers to dominate other species and used that to break free and take control of the space station.

That’s how you weave story and gameplay into an interactive narrative.

You know what else BioShock does really well? Getting you to use your surroundings and environment to your advantage.

Think about going up against a Big Daddy, for example. Do you remember how it was easier to string explosive trip-wires through a hallway leading to a pool of water you could then electrocute with your lightning powers rather than face it head-on guns a-blazing?

Again, Prey executes this really well. I’ll illustrate that with one of my early stand-out experiences with the game.

I was a few hours in. I needed to go into the Trauma Center to complete a side-quest mission objective. Only there was a really powerful alien in the next room.

Here’s me thinking to myself: “Hmmm. That thing is engulfed in flames and shoots fire. I don’t think a one-on-one gunfight is a good idea. But I need to get into the next room. How do I do that?”

Then, I thought about the gun-turrets I saw in the last corridor, and a lightbulb appeared above my head like a cartoon character. I had an idea.

I took two gun-turrets and carried them up to the adjacent hallway. This took a little time because your movement speed slows down when you pick up heavy objects unless you upgrade.

Then, I set them facing the fire-Typhon.

Deploy the turret. Wait for the alien to round the corner.

And BAM! What was once a super-intimidating threat became eviscerated into enough bite-sized pieces to put in a mason jar and call alien jam.

“Ooooo just look at me. I’m so smart!” I said while gloating.

The moments where you find ways to outsmart or otherwise sneak around your opponents rather than confront them head-on are where Prey shines brightest.

Again, another thing Prey and BioShock both do very well, which is another point in Prey’s favor.

I had a lot of fun with Prey overall. It starts off on a strong note and really sucked me in for a good while. Over-time though, Prey lost me about 3/4ths of the way through and I wasn’t able to finish it.

Here’s why.

Where Prey Started to Lose Me – a Discussion of Moral Choice Systems in Action RPGs like in BioShock

Despite the influence Prey takes from BioShock and to a certain extent the Deus Ex series, Prey carries its own unique identity. It has some interesting design choices and some really well-done atmosphere and world-building.

However, there’s one thing about Prey that bothered me and still kind of does. Among the other things it lifts from BioShock and other modern action RPG games is a mechanic that I think has been overused to death and then some.

It has a binary moral choice system with a good ending and a bad ending. And it still kind of bugs the shit out of me.

Here’s what I mean: about 1/4th of the way through Prey you have the choice to use your upgrades to infuse the same telekenetic psi abilities the aliens have into your own body.

The twist? By using the alien’s genes in your own body it’s implied that you risk the safety of the human race when you should be focusing on blowing up the space station to eliminate the chance that they’ll land on Earth and wipe out humanity.

There’s another trade-off too: if you absorb too many of the alien powers the turrets on the space station will mistake you for one of the aliens and begin shooting at you.

That last part is actually kind of a clever twist.

But – and this is what made me facepalm – using too much alien genetic enhancers give you the bad ending.

I’d like to use this as an opportunity to talk about a trope which I think is sorely overused in action RPG games: binary moral choice systems.

This is a trend that seemed to become prevalent in AAA games corresponding to BioShock’s popularity. There were a few games that did this before and a LOT more that did it after, and I think it’s no accident that this happened after BioShock became successful.

But see, here’s the thing: in BioShock, it made sense. I’m not convinced that it does anywhere else.

Having a binary moral choice system made sense within the context of BioShock’s in-game universe because BioShock was made to explore an ideology, namely Objectivism.

Objectivism – a philosophical system developed by Ayn Rand, the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged – is a system of thought that reduces all moral choices into good and evil, black and white.

It’s the philosophy around which BioShock was built around, from the plot, to the world-building, to the characterization. It deconstructs objectivist thinking and logic to point out its inherent flaws.

I didn’t really like it when BioShock did it either, but it still made sense within the context of the in-game universe and the story it was trying to tell.

BioShock uses its moral choice system to make a statement that Objectivism has an overly-reductionist view of human nature. I don’t think it really works, but I respect what it was trying to do.

I don’t get that impression from the games that came after which do this. Really, I see AAA games with moral choice systems as doing it just because “that’s what BioShock did”. That’s the impression I get from Prey.

And it sucks because the alien superpowers are actually pretty fun to use and they make the game MUCH easier.

I really don’t see what tacking on an unnecessary good and bad ending adds to Prey, if anything it cheapens it a little. It’s really a shame too because Prey is otherwise such a good game at its core.

Maybe I’m just biased because I see this trope used in modern action games a lot, and seeing it in a game I want to like rubs me the wrong way.

At first, I was going to knock Prey down a few points for doing it, even if it’s kind of petty. But then, I added some back in because Prey did something I didn’t expect it to: it gave me a third option.

You know the drill: SPOILER WARNING SO SCROLL DOWN OR STICK YOUR FINGERS IN YOUR EAR AND GO LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA I’M NOT LISTENING until the big bad spoilers go away.

At one point in the game, it’s revealed that you have an alternative between you have an alternative to either blowing up the space station to save humanity or escaping to save your own skin: study the aliens further so you can use their own psychic powers to stop them.

Prey redeems itself here by offering a grey-area moral choice.

In 2011 Yahtzee Crowshaw talks about moral choice systems in his 2011 BioShock review. He talks about how he’s sick of moral choice systems that make you choose between two extremes (Mother Teresa and Baby eating), and it would be nice if more games had a middle ground.

I think options like this are what Yahtzee was going for. It’s refreshing to see, and it’s so nice to see a mainstream AAA action game not limit itself. It was an option that simply hadn’t occurred to me and really threw me for a loop, and that intrigued me enough that it ended up being the option I pursued in my own playthrough.

I wish more AAA games did stuff like that.

Why I Couldn’t Finish Prey – Unlike BioShock

Sadly though, Prey lost me about 75% of the way in and I couldn’t finish it.

The reason? Well, Prey differs from BioShock in one respect at least: I breezed through BioShock in a weekend or two. Prey, on the other hand, is VERY difficult. Often prohibitively so, and after about 22 hours of playtime, it became so frustrating that I gave up and lost interest.

It’s really a shame, because Prey is a good game at heart and it gets SO much spot-on. I don’t necessarily think it’s really the game’s fault either. It might be mine.

Take this with a grain of salt because it’s been years since I’ve played an action RPG like Prey and even more since I played BioShock, but from what I remember it didn’t take more than a few tries for me to get through any particular challenge.

Prey, by contrast, is much more unforgiving. It often took me a couple of hours of repeated attempts trying different solutions or just launching myself at it Dark Souls-style before I could get around an obstacle or a difficult enemy.

I almost rage-quit in frustration a few times because I found myself in situations I just couldn’t sneak, brute or think my way out of. A couple of chapters before the end of the story though, I hit a wall.

Ammo had become MUCH more scarce because I had explored most of the space station and scavenged pretty much everything I could. It became a struggle to find the materials necessary to fabricate the ammo and medkits I needed to survive and I escaped every fight only by the skin of my teeth.

My character was a little imbalanced and I chose to have a few points in a variety of skills rather than be really buffed in one particular area. That was probably a mistake. It meant my character could only do a lot of things mediocrely rather than a few things really well.

I chose to put my Neuromod upgrades into a few different skill trees that I didn’t realize I didn’t actually need until later, and kind of wasted them at a crucial part of the game.

That ended up being the killing blow. I don’t want to spoil anything, but let’s say that story events happen which make it extremely difficult to make any progress if you don’t have one or another set of upgrades.

Now, I don’t know whether I gave up because Prey is a challenging game to begin with, or because I didn’t upgrade my character correctly, or just because I’m garbage at action RPGs like this.

This might also speak to my own needs as a gamer. As I discussed in my Subnautica review, I like a challenge sometimes but I mostly play games to be immersed in a story and a world. I like to be challenged enough to be stimulated, and that’s it.

I don’t like it when a game gets to the point where I repeat the same scenario over and over. I got to that point and that’s when it became flow-breaking for me.

Then I gave up and switched to another game. It’s a shame too. I had intended to play Prey through to the end. Maybe I still will at some point.

For now though, I’m done.

My Recommendation

Be thoughtful about how you upgrade your character. Try to think of all the ways you can resolve or avoid a situation. Do that, and Prey is well worth your time.

You may bail at some point like I did, but you will still leave happy that you experienced it. It rewards you for coming up with creative solutions to problems. It borrows the best qualities of other games I admire but has enough original ideas to have its own thing going for it.

The story and pacing make Prey feel like a once living, breathing world. The mimic aliens that put you on edge every time you turn a corner and see an object you don’t remember was there before is a brilliant design choice.

I won’t watch the Extra Credits video until I come back to Prey and then beat it this time. But I’ll say the same thing they did in the “Games You Might Not Have Tried” horror Halloween special.

Go play Prey.

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