So no evidence, gut feeling, and projections..... All based on controlled marketing material, and no access to the game.
Most definitely the greatest game ever made.
I played it daily. The demo rolled around at E3, Pax, and QuakeCon was more of a true demo than a timed demo you see with other titles. If you wanted to say fukit, storm the stage, and rip the control from their hands, you could've run around the Bowery to shoot people, go into bars, or climb up things.
It was certainly a gem that had a tremendous potential of grabbing a major market share while being damn exciting to play. The raw mechanics were there... it was satisfying jumping from cover to cover or hand holding while shooting. The open world aspect was there... go anywhere and do what was available to you at the time. You did have to portal or transport to different regions. This was a limitation of the tech... however it should be said the tech wizards at Human Head made this the most open world Id Tech game ever.
It was a small lean and mean team doing something huge. If Bethesda had only embraced the unique gem it had --- supported the effort instead of looking at some long term property ownership checkmark -- you'd would've played Prey 2, all the DLC it had on the last-gen, and seen what how much bigger, badder, and better Prey 3 would've been on next-gen today. Arkane's new Prey would still be coming out called something else instead of being shoehorned under the Prey license.
The closest I can equate it to is how Arkam Asylum came out of the blue and created a whole new genre for Warner Brothers. Rocksteady was a similar small team at the time bending an existing technology to be an open story experience. It was tight, creative, and memorable.
Now you instead have a lost creative experience because some corporate ego got hungry and will never admit it to you.
