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[uncredited male]

Another possibility for Morgan's fate was the excessive neuromod usage basically destroyed their mind like Lorenzo Calvino's.

I also think the shuttle going to Seattle is the obvious vector for the Earth takeover if we take the memories as accurate. Logs show it left 30 minutes before the known outbreak but other logs indicate that the Typhon had infiltrated the facility much earlier and were waiting (mimic that got fried in power plant).

Thinking back it was kind of dark that everyone you saved in the cargo bay dies going to the shuttle except for one person. And then that person kind of shrugs it off.

 

[selfnoise]

Did anyone else read those books in the game that had to do with some kind of apocalypse happening in a city and people fleeing? They were quite vague and I was wondering if some of the actual reality was bleeding through there. Or is that supposed to be a reference to some other kind of calamity.

 

[OBias]

Did anyone else read those books in the game that had to do with some kind of apocalypse happening in a city and people fleeing? They were quite vague and I was wondering if some of the actual reality was bleeding through there. Or is that supposed to be a reference to some other kind of calamity.

I don't quite remember all the details but I think this was an accident with the recycler technology, which caused it to be allowed only on space stations. Sarah Elazar was involved in it before getting on board Talos-1.

 

[ilium]

Did anyone else read those books in the game that had to do with some kind of apocalypse happening in a city and people fleeing? They were quite vague and I was wondering if some of the actual reality was bleeding through there. Or is that supposed to be a reference to some other kind of calamity.

I assumed it was an account of what happened after they had introduced neuomod technology on earth. I remember there was fighting involved and the soldiers not knowing what was going on.

 

[Rexatality]

Did anyone else read those books in the game that had to do with some kind of apocalypse happening in a city and people fleeing? They were quite vague and I was wondering if some of the actual reality was bleeding through there. Or is that supposed to be a reference to some other kind of calamity.

As said by OBias, "The Evacuation" was about a man-made disaster involving Recycler technology that happened on Earth (Which is why its only used on space station after the incident).

Sarah Elazar was involved before she was stationed on Talos-1

 

[Barry Burton]

Finished it over the weekend. 40 hours well-spent, and I explored pretty much every inch of the station. Great game and definitely my favorite of Arkane's thus far. It really does achieve the "System Shock meets Metroid" design that was promised.

I'm totally in agreement with those that felt that the game starts to go downhill when Dahl shows up. I had done all of the available side quests and explored all of the areas, and it just felt like your meeting with Alex was the natural point for the end game to kick off. The Dahl portion felt tacked-on and unneeded and like many others, I also just sprinted all the way through that part until the end of the game (and this is also when the unbearably long load times on PS4 really became a problem).

As far as the twist goes, I'm feeling pretty mixed on it overall. I was really enjoying the storyline up until seeing the "December ending", and at that point I started to check out of the main story in a "does any of this actually matter?" way, which is probably the opposite of what the designers intended. The twist itself I am okay with, but I think it could have been handled better over the course of the game. I think it would have been better if the early escape sequence w/ the dead giveaway wasn't in the game, and rather if they went for a more psychological bent throughout which left open a lot of possibilities as to why everything felt a bit off.

Instead, aside from the aforementioned "December ending" and the occasional flashes that you experience, the story is largely played straight up until the post-credits. The final scene felt largely detached from everything else in the experience like the ending of Metal Gear

Spoiler

Solid V

did, and for similar reasons the ending fell a bit flat for me in Prey as well.

 

[swearing-circle]

Game was pretty good overall. I was pretty intrigued by it when it was first revealed and I can't say i'm disappointed but I didn't love it.

The core level design and amount of ways to approach something was really great but the core game play was a bit hum drum for me. The combat was fine, don't understand all the hate for it. The zero G sections felt awful to control on a gamepad though. The acceleration just felt off whenever I was out in space and it felt like a chore.

I never felt like I really got the layout of the ship by the end. The art style is interesting but the different areas aren't distinct enough to be memorable. I found it hard to navigate places especially when I was missing a map. The amount of backtracking also put me off from doing side quests as the load times were pretty bad.

Also, I feel like this is another case of a game that was longer than it needed to be. I appreciate the effort of giving as much content as possible but the last stretch of the game felt like it was arbitrarily extending the playtime for no real reason. Everything with Dahl just wasn't interesting and his damn operators were not fun to fight at all.

In regards to the plot. It was intriguing throughout but again, it had it's issues. The twist is telegraphed well enough but I really struggled to care for what was going on. The only character I was really interested in was Morgan himself. The fact that the ending is dictated by how empathetic you are doesn't really work for me as the side characters are so utterly uninteresting. I still did everything right though as I was aware that there was a bad ending. The writing was so so and the pacing overall felt off.

I know it seems like i'm super down on the game but i'm not. I actually enjoyed my time with it and I really enjoyed exploring new areas or figuring out how to get past certain obstacles. Combat became more entertaining the more powered up I became which was good to. I also enjoyed all the stuff with fabricators, recyclers, chipsets etc.

It's still my second favourite game from Arkane and I'm definitely interested in a sequel. I just hope they tighten it up a bit.

 

[renzolama]

Finished the game at 40 hours. I spent the first 25 hours wandering around through every area I encountered and ignoring the main story, and I really think I did myself a disservice with that strategy due to the game's respawn mechanics. By the time I started chugging through the main story, I was feeling pretty tired of the combat, and the game proceeded to push me back through every single area I had already cleared multiple times with fully restocked enemies (by which I mean, the game pushed me through the areas a dozen times and they respawned a dozen times). It makes perfect sense from a design perspective, because they don't want you to be doing main quest missions in empty maps, but at that point in the game the enemies just felt like annoying resource sinks. In the back third when they respawn weavers and cystoid nests in every map/direction I was thinking "fuck, not again, when is this game going to be over" every time the game asked me to backtrack 7 maps through the station again for a different quest.

I also had a really interesting moment about halfway through the game where January made a random comment (in Morgan's office) along the lines of "you've been in the simulation three weeks this time, usually it's only for a few days" or something similar. It seemed like a massive spoiler, but I couldn't find any posts where other people mentioned it happening. Am I still in the simulation, is this real life?

 

[Teggy]

Question - when I met the chef I figured out he was an imposter from the info in the crew quarters and killed him before going in the freezer. But then I changed my mind and reverted my save and went through the whole segment of getting knocked out.

What happens if you kill him prior to the woman asking you to kill him?

Also, I must have missed something - why doesn't she just come back inside if she is running out of oxygen?

 

[OBias]

EDIT: wrong thread

 

[Purkake4]

I really liked the human/typhon duality. I wish they had taken it further, especially in terms of reactivity, the humans, January etc. could have different reactions as well.

It does really play into one thing I wished System Shock 2 had done, which is make you actually choose between the Machine Mother (cybernetics) and the Glory of the Many (organic upgrades, gross stuff) and staying pure obviously. Each would have gameplay and story consequences and end badly if you went too far in either direction (slowly becoming SHODAN's puppet or getting subsumed into the hive mind).

 

[Rexatality]

For those interested, there's a pic that shows the Typhon's life cycle on the subreddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/prey/comments/6jupng/a_fun_page_from_the_art_of_prey_spoilers/

 

[Kazuhira]

OMG that ending blew my fucking mind,i actually stood up and started clapping and yelling "YES! BRAVO!!
The excitement and hype i've felt when i shook Alex's hand with that marvelous soundtrack in the background,Prey is the best sci-fi horror game i've played in recent years since the original Dead Space.
This guys had my exact reaction to the ending: https://youtu.be/sGpDnWCIMw4?t=5m11s
What the fuuuuck! that was an ending!!

For those interested, there's a pic that shows the Typhon's life cycle on the subreddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/prey/comments/6jupng/a_fun_page_from_the_art_of_prey_spoilers/

I've never felt so invested into every single story detail/lore of a game since dark souls/Bloodborne,i... fucking need a sequel,dlc,whatever.

 

[Dance Inferno]

Finished the game over the weekend. I have... mixed feelings.

The first half of the game was phenomenal. The mystery is doled out in ever so small chunks, crawling through the massive ship feels scary yet also empowering as you start to accumulate more weapons and abilities, and you're constantly encountering new Typhon which only heightens the suspense and mystery surrounding the plot.

Then a few things happen that make the whole experience go sideways.

First, once Mimics are no longer the primary enemy you no longer have to creep around the station slowly, and instead of walking around with my wrench at the ready, I was walking around with my shotgun drawn. That's also the moment when the game stops being a tense survival game and more an action game, which is a shame because combat in this game does not feel good.

Second, you start doing some serious backtracking. The Talos I lobby should be the freaking Arboretum given how many times I had to run back and forth through that area. You have to go out the airlock and chase down objectives all over the damn station, retreading areas until you're sick of the whole station. At this point I enabled an unlimited health and unlimited ammo cheat on my PC version and just shotgun blasted every enemy I came across because I didn't want to deal with Prey's combat system and awful encounter design anymore. I just wanted to get to the end of the story.

Third, the ending was dumb. I figured this out once I pursued the December objective and realized my character was starting at a Looking Glass device all along. Another couple hours and it turns out, just as I expected, that everything was a dream and none of it mattered. I know the post-credits scene is supposed to make it look like everything did matter, but it didn't. It was a dream; a simulation. Morgan is dead, the station was overrun, Earth is destroyed.

Honestly my biggest issue with the ending is that it invalidates itself (and this explanation gets a bit mind-bendy so stick with me). The simulation only works if you think you are human. In other words, as the Typhon organism sitting in the simulation and being judged by Alex and the operators, when you wake up in the fake apartment you have to believe that you are human, that it is normal to be human, and that everyone you have ever known is human. And this makes sense when you, the real human player, are playing Prey the video game, because you are actually a human and you expect everyone you interact with to be a human. However, if the game is saying that you are actually a Typhon organism in a simulation, wouldn't you expect everyone you know to be a Typhon? Wouldn't it be weird for you to wake up in a human being's body? The whole premise of the simulation would fall apart once you realize you are a human. At the end Alex very clearly says that they have started putting parts of humans into the Typhon, so you are clearly Typhon first human second, and your true nature is a Typhon. So how would you ever believe that the human world you are waking up to is business as usual?

Anyway all of this to say that the first half of Prey is an ingeniously designed experience, but it falls apart at the halfway mark and never really regains its footing. Classic example of a game that doesn't really know what it wants to be.

 

[Turin Turambar]

About the game's story. The game makes you doubt who is the real Morgan Yu, the one who built January, or the one who built December, if the things you hear from Alex about you are true... but eventually I 'got it', and in fact before the game ends it also spells it out in the last ten minutes, confirming it. There isn't a 'real' you, or better said, in a way all of them are real, it's just that at different points of time you believed in different things. The decisions that you make in the present (like if saving or destroying the shuttle, and all those moral conundrums you have in the game that seems to have no impact), they form your actual self and that is a valid as any other past yourselves, so wondering endlessly what decision would have taken Morgan before the neuromods is pointless philosophical wank.

There were little hints, a cryptic message here, a weird flashforward cut there, or what happens when you try to escape in Alex's capsule before time, that served a setup as a real end. There was a moment that in fact it made me thing "what if M. Yu did never exist, and I'm a pure lab rat, an alien/human thing they are experiments with". I was close! Technically M. yu did exist, but you were in fact an alien lab rat. Although that everything already had happened, I didn't guess that. I was fine with it, I think people takes a silly stance and believes it's a 'it was all a dream' end, which is nidicolous, what you have played in the game it happened all (years before), except right at the end when we can imagine they failed killing the Typhoon.

 

[Angelus Errare]

About the game's story. The game makes you doubt who is the real Morgan Yu, the one who built January, or the one who built December, if the things you hear from Alex about you are true... but eventually I 'got it', and in fact before the game ends it also spells it out in the last ten minutes, confirming it. There isn't a 'real' you, or better said, in a way all of them are real, it's just that at different points of time you believed in different things. The decisions that you make in the present (like if saving or destroying the shuttle, and all those moral conundrums you have in the game that seems to have no impact), they form your actual self and that is a valid as any other past yourselves, so wondering endlessly what decision would have taken Morgan before the neuromods is pointless philosophical wank.

There were little hints, a cryptic message here, a weird flashforward cut there, or what happens when you try to escape in Alex's capsule before time, that served a setup as a real end. There was a moment that in fact it made me thing "what if M. Yu did never exist, and I'm a pure lab rat, an alien/human thing they are experiments with". I was close! Technically M. yu did exist, but you were in fact an alien lab rat. Although that everything already had happened, I didn't guess that. I was fine with it, I think people takes a silly stance and believes it's a 'it was all a dream' end, which is nidicolous, what you have played in the game it happened all (years before), except right at the end when we can imagine they failed killing the Typhoon.

Just beat the game myself, my take is sort of like yours.

I think we're reliving everything that happened prior to the Typhon taking over Earth. I think the canonical ending is Morgan using the Nullwave and then getting on the shuttle with everyone else. Alex is still on the ship unconscious since we never took him with us which is why when we awake from the simulation we're on Talos 1 with Alex much older. He most likely built all the operators from the memories stored aboard the Talos, each operator being someone who was actually with Morgan when shit went down.

All it takes is one mimic to basically fuck up planet earth.

I'm also not really making a great argument because I'm ignoring some stuff in the game.

So really ignore me lol.

 

[chrominance]

Honestly my biggest issue with the ending is that it invalidates itself (and this explanation gets a bit mind-bendy so stick with me). The simulation only works if you think you are human. In other words, as the Typhon organism sitting in the simulation and being judged by Alex and the operators, when you wake up in the fake apartment you have to believe that you are human, that it is normal to be human, and that everyone you have ever known is human. And this makes sense when you, the real human player, are playing Prey the video game, because you are actually a human and you expect everyone you interact with to be a human. However, if the game is saying that you are actually a Typhon organism in a simulation, wouldn't you expect everyone you know to be a Typhon? Wouldn't it be weird for you to wake up in a human being's body? The whole premise of the simulation would fall apart once you realize you are a human. At the end Alex very clearly says that they have started putting parts of humans into the Typhon, so you are clearly Typhon first human second, and your true nature is a Typhon. So how would you ever believe that the human world you are waking up to is business as usual?

Anyway all of this to say that the first half of Prey is an ingeniously designed experience, but it falls apart at the halfway mark and never really regains its footing. Classic example of a game that doesn't really know what it wants to be.

I think the underlying assumption is that whatever has been done to you to get you to empathize with humans has also (at least temporarily) wiped your memory of being Typhon. All the talk about your underlying motives I assume is about your subconscious/unconscious desires, i.e. does your Typhon nature override the empathy towards humans Alex tried to graft onto you even if you don't actually know you're a Typhon.

You're right in that if this work wasn't done to hide your Typhon origins, you'd probably notice immediately upon waking up. I think you can assume that this actually happened in prior runs of the simulation with earlier test subjects.

 

[Machina]

I just finished the game a couple of minutes ago.

I have to admit I'm rather salty. I was going for the good ending (no killing humans) and thought I had achieved that all the way up until the ending. When I didn't get it, I was puzzled....Until I remembered that the character Ingram committed suicide by himself shortly after I freed him. Him and I were just standing there looking at eachother after I freed him when all of a sudden, we were attacked by a phantom that came out of nowhere. He took damage but survived initially, but then took off down a hallway with flammable pipes running along the right wall. Of course, that pipe had been breached earlier and was spewing flame, so he runs straight into it and burns himself to death.

I would have just reloaded a save, because I was concerned that that would count against me, but since I myself didn't do any damage to him (just the phantom and the fire), I assumed it wouldn't count. It did. Massive bummer. Ah well, I've never been overly concerned with Steam achievements anyway. Just Youtubed the good ending then got on with it.

That little let down aside, overall I really enjoyed it. The influences from SS/Bioshock are VERY pronounced, almost to the point where you could argue it's basically a ripoff, but in my case that worked in its favor. Bioshock is one of my favorite games ever, so any other game like it is obviously gonna get brownie points with me. Bioshock was slightly better thematically speaking, but gameplay wise I have to admit Prey has it covered.

I really only have one major gripe with it, the Nightmare. The first 2 or 3 times you encounter it are cool and intimidating as fuck, but by the 4th, 5 and 6th times it has just become an annoyance, especially when you have no supplies to fight it with and have to just sit and wait for the clock to tick down and it pisses off. I did the mission to get the satellite signal that gets rid of it, so that helped on a few occasions. Still, it began to bug me with the repetition of it.

8 to 8.5 out of 10 for me. Somewhere in that ball park. Will be keeping an eye out for DLC.