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PREY Previews thread - A Shock to the System
- Thread starter Rexatality
- Start date
nortonff
Hi, I'm nortonff. I spend my life going into threads to say that I don't care about the topic of the thread. It's a really good use of my time.
Sold.
This right here is what gave me doubts about the game.
I'm really not feeling this transformation thing.
Rexatality
Member
One of the unique features of PREY and it gives you doubts?
If its really about the tone, then let's be honest, its not the aspect of Mimic ability that makes it funny, its how the players make it funny.
Chris_Rivera
Member
I predict the PC version runs and looks great on strong machines, yet gets widely panned as a garbage port for not running the same on weaker machines.
Se_7_eN
Member
It doesn't sell me on it either... This game really should have gone with a different name, because this isn't what I think of when I think of "Prey".
The enemy design also bothers me, they look like placeholders... I am having a hard time finding anything very interesting about this Prey TBH. Unless it gets a high praise from GAF, I will most likely pass.
I don't see anything System Shock about this either.
Melon Husk
Member
I feel like this is the second best thing to a new Valve FPS, this game owes so much to HL2 and Portal 2.
Of course I'll wait for the reviews on PC first.
Of course I'll wait for the reviews on PC first.
How...?
Rexatality
Member
Something something no SHODAN something something.
But to be honest, System Shock is more than just SHODAN for me.
Jawmuncher
Member
Well I mean, Theyre talking about fighting shadow monsters in and transforming into coffee cups. So that's already gonna kill interest on people wanting something more similar to SS.
Finale Fireworker
Member
I will say that Dishonored 2 affirmed for me that Arkane knows how to make games with incredible and immersive level design, complex power systems that lend to varied styles of play, and distinct and inspired art design. Dishonored 2 is the kind of game only Arkane seems to be making right now and they made it extremely and supremely well.
But their stories are bad and their writing is worse. Absolute C-Tier narratives, which is a terrible shame given how excellent their characters are. Even minor characters are given multifaceted traits and they have lots of unique personality and in-game history. I would love a talented writer to give Arkane a great script to do justice to their characters, worlds, and mechanics.
Prey will probably be like Dishonored 2 in that sense. Great world, abilities, and characters. Story written by a sixth grader.
And while this post sounds particularly scathing... I love Dishonored 2 and I love Arkane. Like, they're one of my favorite studios right now and there are many more things I give them credit for than I could possibly complain about. It's only because they've set the standard so high for so many of their game elements that I have to complain so vehemently about their stories. Their games deserve better storytelling.
EDIT: All these Prey impressions are from my armchair. Obviously this is all conjecture based on videos and interviews until I can play it myself.
But their stories are bad and their writing is worse. Absolute C-Tier narratives, which is a terrible shame given how excellent their characters are. Even minor characters are given multifaceted traits and they have lots of unique personality and in-game history. I would love a talented writer to give Arkane a great script to do justice to their characters, worlds, and mechanics.
Prey will probably be like Dishonored 2 in that sense. Great world, abilities, and characters. Story written by a sixth grader.
And while this post sounds particularly scathing... I love Dishonored 2 and I love Arkane. Like, they're one of my favorite studios right now and there are many more things I give them credit for than I could possibly complain about. It's only because they've set the standard so high for so many of their game elements that I have to complain so vehemently about their stories. Their games deserve better storytelling.
EDIT: All these Prey impressions are from my armchair. Obviously this is all conjecture based on videos and interviews until I can play it myself.
HeisenbergWW62
Banned
Super excited about this, shame it isn't getting much attention. Hopefully word of mouth will carry it. Arkane is one of my favorite studios and we need them to continue making immersive sims
For what's worth - Bethesda's 'PS4' footage is 60fps:nextgeneration said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2ndRGP5bMs
More_Badass
Member
I may have mentioned this in another thread, but I really hope there's a way to turn the alert/awareness meters off. Check out this part from the Eurogamer vid. This little room is supposed to surprise you with the amount of Mimics in it, and the player gets attacked immediately and backs up to fight/heal before truly going in. Despite that, he can see through the wall how many Mimics there are, their exact position in the room, how aware they are of him, and it appears to last for a long time. I believe this isn't an upgrade and it's just in the game too, so it's not just for stealth builds or whatever.
That's really my only worry with the game. Part of what made System Shock 2 so tense was that you only ever had audio to give you a hint about what was around the next corner. I worry that unlike SS2, this game is going to be designed around giving the player too much information (like most modern AAAs) like these alert meters and objective markers.
Everything else looks great though, it's currently my most anticipated release.
That's really my only worry with the game. Part of what made System Shock 2 so tense was that you only ever had audio to give you a hint about what was around the next corner. I worry that unlike SS2, this game is going to be designed around giving the player too much information (like most modern AAAs) like these alert meters and objective markers.
Everything else looks great though, it's currently my most anticipated release.
Rexatality
Member
Dishonored games allowed you to turn off objective markers and alert meters, so it should be fair it's gonna be the same case with PREY.
7DollarHagane
Banned
another game that looks awesome and I'd like to play, but just too much backlog, and too easy to see it dropping in price quickly, unfortunately.
Dishonored games are stealth games though (for the most part) so those indicators are critical, and the games weren't particularly designed well around having objective makers turned off in my opinion. In the Dishonored 1 DLC for instance, there are quite a few times where you need to stand in an exact spot to continue the main quest, and they don't make much sense/are too obscure without the markers.
I'm not worried about the ability to turn them off as so much as how well the game is designed with them off.
It kept hearing people mention this game and instantly thought of the 2006 game. I had zero interest basically.
This is an instant buy for me. Good stuff.
EDIT: Yikes. Thanks for the heads up Stoze.
I'll wait for some impressions. I really hate the constant hand holding in video games.
This is an instant buy for me. Good stuff.
EDIT: Yikes. Thanks for the heads up Stoze.
I'll wait for some impressions. I really hate the constant hand holding in video games.
GlassAwful
Member
Ditto. It's gimmicky. And their focus on it as this great unique thing is the kind of thing that gives me pause.
Is there any good reason to have this ability? Is it to just inhabit random items and make then magically bounce around cause it looks funny? How is it I am able to bounce around as a coffee mug or stack of towels anyway?
If it's merely to maneuver around tight spaces literally anything could be made up as an excuse to give you that ability. Like teleporting, shrinking yourself with a shrink ray or a remote control car or something.
If you can do anything actually unique with this then show me an example instead of just some gimmick of letting the player run around as a sofa for no fucking reason.
Maybe I can deliver a mug of freshly brewed coffee to a tired shadow enemy? How's that for immersive sim!
I mean it's just an observation, no need to deflate your hype. Like Rex said I'd be damn surprised if there's not a toggle on that stuff. The problem happens when say if you turn the indicators off and combat becomes too messy and confusing, or objective makers off and you hit a point where something becomes overly obscure when it clearly shouldn't be.
Rexatality
Member
Let's assume you wanna escape from a tense combat situation, Mimic would be a good option to hide away from your enemies.
Or you maybe you want to get a locked room or there's an environment hazard that you want to pass through. Mimic can help you with that.
Also, Stoze, I'm not really worried that much whether being able to play PREY without objective markers without getting confused. I'm pretty sure Arkane would have some means to give players cues to get through areas without objective markers (Like a name sign for an area, for instance)
flaxknuckles
Member
You hit on the same reason I don't care for the feature. Like it's just a gimmick version of the morph ball or shrink ability. It would be cooler if when you turned into something, a human enemy would take you into a bathroom because they thought they were picking up a towel to dry off with or into an evidence room because they saw you laying there as a firearm. Or maybe as a way to spook an enemy out of a room by moving stuff around while they aren't looking.
Rexatality
Member
I'll never understand why some people are trying downplay Mimic ability. It has a lot of uses other than turning into an object.
Maybe there's a door that got messed up and you can't fit in there, so you have to Mimic as a smaller object to get inside. Or like I said before, you can use it to hide away from enemies.
You can even Mimic as turrets and Operator bots as you upgrade the ability
You guys need to think outside the box
Maybe there's a door that got messed up and you can't fit in there, so you have to Mimic as a smaller object to get inside. Or like I said before, you can use it to hide away from enemies.
You can even Mimic as turrets and Operator bots as you upgrade the ability
You guys need to think outside the box
Yeah, I agree with some of the people here about the mimic ability being kinda 'meh'. It's an ability id be much more interested in having in the type of game that has many more interactions with non-enemies. But in this a majority of the abilities use will be navigation and evasion, which is fine, but doesn't do enough with the idea of picking what items to turn into.
Hopefully they work it into some very interesting puzzles or sommit.
Hopefully they work it into some very interesting puzzles or sommit.
I get exactly what you mean.
This is a fairly common problem these days. Most recently for me its in the Witcher 3. Turn off the POI markers seems like a great idea but there is no way to find them without them.
GlassAwful
Member
Why would I hide from a mimic? They aren't going to raise a security alarm, or hurt my morality level for fighting them.
Your other points are exactly what I touched on before. You could control turrets and bots by "hacking" them as in other games. Mimic mostly seems to exist as a gimmicky way to get around.
I agree with the poster above that it would make more sense in an environment and game where you are incentivized to hide from enemies or infiltrate places your aren't supposed to be and not be recognized by humans.
Anyway, I don't want to harp on it too much, it's fine that it's in there I just don't buy it as a groundbreaking feature.
Rexatality
Member
Mate, there's more to the Typhon than Mimics. I'm talking about bigger Typhon creatures like Phantoms (and other enemies that I can't be bothered to list atm)
Yes, you could hack the turrets if you want, but it's much more convenient to Mimic a turret than going through a hacking mini game to hack a turret. And I'm pretty sure you can't hack the Operator bots.
They wouldn't design the ability without giving players to go through an area or puzzle solving.
Its about thinking outside the box.
Mimic is designed to be an alternate method to hacking in that scenario just as hacking is designed to be an alternate method to Mimic. And you would hide from enemies if you didn't want to fight them, or get closer for a sneak attack that does extra damage. It clearly has multiple uses.
I also don't know where you get them claiming it's a main focus or a groundbreaking feature. On the Bethesda youtube page it has a one minute video advertising it by itself among over a dozen other Prey videos, and it barely shows up in all in the footage released so far otherwise. It's something cool worth advertising.
veloxStrix
Banned
I dunno, it's pretty groundbreaking as far as shooters in the last decade go. Not that you have to get that creative to start doing new things as far as they go.
We'll see, like I said I've had problems in the past regarding that stuff with Dishonored. For the most part their environmental artists do some fantastic work though to help with that, and Talos specifically has a very clean and bold art style that should work for good readability.
nextgeneration
Member
No clue. Never played it. Well, if it was running on Cryengine and was a mess, then yeah, I guess it's possible that Prey could have performance issues as well. Hopefully, that's not the case.
Yeah, looks smooth here. Maybe it's the pro version.
More_Badass
Member
Pretty much
- Fit through small space
- Turn into a turret/other robotic unit
- Hide from enemies
Such a big focus on this ability as a diverse "think outside the box" thing, but I've seen or read nothing that indicates that it actually allows for any more than those behaviors.
Now if individual objects had unique actions and properties, that would be different
SmartWaffles
Member
Homefront later got patched and run pretty well on consoles now. CryEngine is quite CPU intensive and doesn't really work that great on current gen consoles.
Cow Mengde
Banned
Does anyone remember that game Messiah, where you played as a littler cherub angel thing and could inhabit the bodies of (I think) any living thing in the game?
This game reminds me a bit of that. It was an interesting game for it's time but super buggy if I remember right.
That reminds me, we need a DF retro on Messiah. It was herald as the next big thing in video game technology. I don't remember being very impressed when I saw screens of it in the magazines.
I'm positive there's more than that, but ultimately I think having those as the core traits is fine because the game isn't centered around it. It's just one of many abilities you can put points into, and you can't put points into everything. You have to pick and choose.
It's obvious why they would highlight that a bit more over the other abilities, but once again I don't see where they are pushing it as the big focus. Bethesda/Arkane seem to be giving fairly equal due to all the other aspects of the game, except maybe story for spoiler reasons.
I really don't dig the shadowy enemy design. Rest of the game looks promising though.
Uh oh. The PC us my main gaming platform, no buy for me then. Especially no preorder, but thats a nobrainer anyways.
Rexatality
Member
You're better off waiting for PC impressions before jumping in, if you ask me.
You're also sending the message that shit
dr_rus
Member
Dishonored 2 is not a "shit PC port", it's a bad iteration of id tech 5, on all platforms.
It also has pretty much no relation to Prey as this one is using CryEngineV (at least I hope that it's V).
SomedayTheFire
Member
why is this running cryengine and not idtech anyway?
Yeah, that would be great.
If I remember correctly, Shiny's engine for Messiah automatically scaled the graphics depending on your hardware. I'd love to hear more about it.
Finale Fireworker
Member
If Dishonored is anything to go by, you will be able to complete the entire game without using it. Mimic isn't the only ability in the game.
These games are "immersive sims". A genre that prides itself on always giving the player at least 2-3 approaches to any given situation.