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Rumor: Prey 2 cancelled, official statement due next week [Up: ZeniMax: No comment.]

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Truant

Member
Why are you guys acting like this is such a big deal? Developers constantly do this. It's a vertical slice made for PR reasons. Half Life 2 and Doom 3 are famous for doing this, and both of those turned out pretty great in their owns ways.
 
Why are you guys acting like this is such a big deal? Developers constantly do this. It's a vertical slice made for PR reasons. Half Life 2 and Doom 3 are famous for doing this, and both of those turned out pretty great in their owns ways.

I think you meant 'Not Doom 3'.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
If the E3 demo was the only part of the game that existed, and they were unable to keep things at that level for a 6+ hour campaign, then I can see why it would be canned.

I honestly expect the same thing to happen to the new Tomb Raider - or at the very least it will look completely different when we see it again.

I imagine most of Tomb Raider is more like the leaked video as opposed to the stage demo, since the stage demo would actually make kind of a terrible game.

That said, if Prey 2 was only targeted to be a 6-ish hour singleplayer only FPS in 2012... I think they need their head examined.

I mean, even if we look at the singleplayer games that did succeed last year, they were almost all very lengthy games, and thus couldn't be played in a short rental period.
 
I imagine most of Tomb Raider is more like the leaked video as opposed to the stage demo, since the stage demo would actually make kind of a terrible game.

That said, if Prey 2 was only targeted to be a 6-ish hour singleplayer only FPS in 2012... I think they need their head examined.

I mean, even if we look at the singleplayer games that did succeed last year, they were almost all very lengthy games, and thus couldn't be played in a short rental period.
Darn I always miss the good stuff. Had to search for awhile to find that leaked Tomb Raider video and even then it was such poor quality since it was recorded off a cell phone to prevent copyright infringements. Thus can't really tell how the visuals hold up compared to the E3 demo but it looks about like I expected after seeing said demo.

And no way Prey 2 was targeted for 6 hours if it was going to be open world. Even if that demo area was all they had, in open world games to add more length to the game all you do is add more pointless missions. The real question then is how large of a playable area did they have complete and how functional was it.
 
I´m sorry, what is so impossible about the E3 demo? First time i heared about the "smoke and mirrors" talk, sure E3 demos are often faked, but i can´t see a thing in there that looks like it can´t be done in a game.

That's how I feel, I'm not seeing anything in that demo that's especially impressive - the best thing is the environments but there's probably a shit load of invisible walls despite the gameplay itself being non-linear
 

Ether_Snake

安安安安安安安安安安安安安安安
WAT, it actually looked like it had a lot of potential, wtf. And I don't even care about shooters.

They should have gone forward with this and cancel Doom.

edit; It doesn't even matter what state the game was in, they eventually have to release SOMETHING, it should have been that game.
 
What's your source on this? Or are you making shit up?

It's bullshit. I saw the demo, it was played in front of me with a controller. Yes it was scripted to hell and back, and the demo broke once when it was shown to me, but it was playable, and while it could have been proof of concept / vertical slice, it doesn't make it a in-engine cutscene.

The validity of the E3 demo should not be in question, but instead of how much there was apart from that (like with Halo 2 back in the day), and what went wrong from E3 last year to today being bad management or Human Head just being idiots is hard to say without anyone from inside the studio speaking.
 

Eusis

Member
Wrong. Prey 2 is/was to be published by Bethesda. And the id Tech engines (4+) are only available for games that are to be published by Bethesda. Just like BRINK.
I think you misunderstood what I said, otherwise you'd say "right". I was thinking all id Tech games may need to be Bethesda published this time, thus why Prey 1 (didn't state the number for that, just Prey) was a 2K game, but this is Bethesda.

Though I guess I'm wrong about all id Tech being Bethesda exclusive, isn't CoD still developed with the id Tech 3 (Q3A Engine) as the basis? So, yeah, you got me in that it's id Tech 4 and above only.
 

Angry Fork

Member
This has got to devastate the people who worked on it much more than us. Even though they got paid I'm sure they thought this was a real fresh interesting game like many of us and imagine working on something for years just for it to not see the light of day. Instead shit like Homefront gets a green light.

Really hope the publisher changes their mind or someone else picks up the game and finishes it.
 
I read a bit further in the thread and he said the funding for the game was pulled.

Jesse Moody said:
Well considering.. what has happened as of late with their operations (Bethesda) it seems as though this will indeed be bad news. Sadly this has been rumored for months now...

Funding was pulled a while back and they didn't negotiate for more or B pulled out... It wasn't good for Human Head and game devs up here in Wisconsin

He is indeed from the Wisconsin area where Human Head are based. Not a good sign.

Again :(
 

subversus

I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap
I heard that guys weren't getting paid, were put on furlough and all kinds of other nonsense in disputes with Bethesda and the financing of the project

yep, sounds like Bethesda (and probably every other publisher when they feel that the development is getiing out of hand):

Brian Fargo said:
I would estimate than on our last big publisher financed game we spent at least a third of the budget needlessly on things the publisher forced us to do that didn’t need to be a part of the process.

A publisher signs up a developer because they trust they can make the game, but as soon as he contract is signed they forget about that and they spend the entire development process making the developer prove themselves over and over at every milestone instead of just focusing on what is really needed to finish the game. You would never manage an in house team in this way, because it doesn’t make any sense. No programmer on a project is going to do better work if you threaten to not pay him if the feature he is working on doesn’t make the marketing girl who has never played a game happy. It’s lunacy.

the last big game he was working on was Hunted which was published by Bethesda.

since I can't remember a single good game published by Bethesda which is not ES or FO I guess the part of blame lies on them too. I mean I understand that devs can fuck up big time but not every time. Or Bethesda just picks wrong devs/projects. Or doesn't manage them well.
 
How quick they forgot morrowind, their derivitive cookie cutter shite bombed like a motherfucker and they faced imminent studio closure. A little faith and a little ambition and they ended up with a mammoth franchise IP.

I just hope that Mikami is willing to kill off Tango if ZeniMax try to screw him around too much. The benefit of multiple studios I guess, he can just shift employees over to which ever one he is feeling healthiest at.

A little worried about Arkane once Dishonoured ships too.
 

Omega

Banned
I never understood why publishers cancelled games so late in development. All that money goes to waste. Whether the game bombs or not, at least you're making some money back?
 

robin2

Member
I can't know exactly what happened for Prey 2, but re-rationalization of costs and mindset* is needed.

*gamers' mindset too, they been miseducated in always expecting better graphics from the latest released game.
 

DTKT

Member
may be because it's actually playable.

The E3 Prey 2 demo was pretty good from what we have seen.

I feel like there is no hype behind Dishonored. I don't even trust Arkane to do something really good. Both Arx Fatalis and Might and Magic were deeply flawed games.
 

Bread

Banned
Wow this is depressing, they had me sold on this game since the announcement, and I hated Prey 1. It sounded extremely ambitious, but I didn't think it would get scrapped so close to release.
 

Surface of Me

I'm not an NPC. And neither are we.
Seeing it at Quakecon, they showed a but more than they showed the public at E3. I'm sure they had more than just those demos.
 
The E3 Prey 2 demo was pretty good from what we have seen.

I feel like there is no hype behind Dishonored. I don't even trust Arkane to do something really good. Both Arx Fatalis and Might and Magic were deeply flawed games.

No one ever got hands-on with Prey 2, so that was most likely a vertical slice.
 

subversus

I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap
The E3 Prey 2 demo was pretty good from what we have seen.

I feel like there is no hype behind Dishonored. I don't even trust Arkane to do something really good. Both Arx Fatalis and Might and Magic were deeply flawed games.

flawed but totally awesome.

I agree though that they can fuck up something badly in gameplay department. But Human Head could fuck up something too and even worse than Arcane have ever done as it seems. Because Bethesda doesn't afraid to lay off people from internal teams even from such known developers as id. They have laid off a lot of people from Doom 4 project for example.
 
may be because it's actually playable.

So far there's nothing sepeating the two. Both have been given totally controlled demos to the press, where neither were hands on, both were controlled small hub environments with a single goal and different elements setup to show game mechanics in a vertical slice setting.
 

subversus

I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap
So far there's nothing sepeating the two. Both have been given totally controlled demos to the press, where neither were hands on, both were controlled small hub environments with a single goal and different elements setup to show game mechanics in a vertical slice setting.

I said "may be".
 

ctrayne

Member
The E3 Prey 2 demo was pretty good from what we have seen.

I feel like there is no hype behind Dishonored. I don't even trust Arkane to do something really good. Both Arx Fatalis and Might and Magic were deeply flawed games.

1) The E3 demo was probably a vertical slice, who knows how much is actually finished and playable. Been over this a million times.

2) You're the only one here who thinks that it's some kind of trade-off between Prey or Dishonored. It's not like that. Dishonored is already in playtesting and has been added to the latest Nvidia driver profile. It's probably almost done.

3) The Dishonored devs said they wanted a blackout period of a few months so things would not be spoiled, hence the lack of hype. Plus, lack of hype =/= bad game. Also, lots of people really like Arx and Dark Messiah and know the pedigree behind the devs working on the game, and are excited for that reason.
 

DTKT

Member
1) The E3 demo was probably a vertical slice, who knows how much is actually finished and playable. Been over this a million times.

2) You're the only one here who thinks that it's some kind of trade-off between Prey or Dishonored. It's not like that. Dishonored is already in playtesting and has been added to the latest Nvidia driver profile. It's probably almost done.

3) The Dishonored devs said they wanted a blackout period of a few months so things would not be spoiled, hence the lack of hype. Plus, lack of hype =/= bad game. Also, lots of people really like Arx and Dark Messiah and know the pedigree behind the devs working on the game, and are excited for that reason.

Both Arx and DM are old games. Probably not a big enough fanbase to sustain an AAA game.

Anyway, that was just my opinion. We'll never know why Zenimax picked Dishonored over Prey 2.

*just watched some of the footage, I can see some confusion with Dishonored and Bioshock infinite.
 

Hesemonni

Banned
History repeats itself. Prey franchise is cursed :/

I hope they get it sorted somehow, since quite honestly Prey 2 was one of the few games I was actively waiting for. :(
 

ctrayne

Member
Both Arx and DM are old games. Probably not a big enough fanbase to sustain an AAA game.

Anyway, that was just my opinion. We'll never know why Zenimax picked Dishonored over Prey 2.

*just watched some of the footage, I can see some confusion with Dishonored and Bioshock infinite.

The folks who get Dishonored and Infinite confused probably aren't even paying enough attention to those games to buy them in the first place.

Deus Ex and Thief are also old games, older than Dark Messiah, yet DX: Human Revolution did very well, especially considering it's a 20-40 hour game which turns off some people. Thief IV will get there too, once a trailer comes out. I think there's a market there, it's just not the same group of people as a CoD might appeal to. I'm not sure what actually constitutes an AAA game, but I think it's related to budget, and I don't think DX, Thief or Dishonored fall into that category of spending.

Don't get me wrong - I wanted Prey 2 as well. I think most of us do. Just don't blame a completely unrelated studio, or demand that their unrelated game is cancelled like it's a trade off. I don't think that's the situation at all. That's all. :)
 

subversus

I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap
The folks who get Dishonored and Infinite confused probably aren't even paying enough attention to those games to buy them in the first place.

Deus Ex and Thief are also old games, older than Dark Messiah, yet DX: Human Revolution did very well, especially considering it's a 20-40 hour game which turns off some people. Thief IV will get there too, once a trailer comes out. I think there's a market there, it's just not the same group of people as a CoD might appeal to. I'm not sure what actually constitutes an AAA game, but I think it's related to budget, and I don't think DX, Thief or Dishonored fall into that category of spending.

Don't get me wrong - I wanted Prey 2 as well. I think most of us do. Just don't blame a completely unrelated studio, or demand that their unrelated game is cancelled like it's a trade off. I don't think that's the situation at all. That's all. :)

I wrote here why I think Dishonored might do rather well. Its audience is limited but pretty passionate and knows what's up.
 
Kickstarter?

I don't think so.

Even equaling Double Fine's total would not be close enough to get them anywhere. Also. having $60 be the lowest Reward would to get a copy of the game would not be great either

Also, Human Head do not own the the IP or engine, so I believe all work created would be null and void - they would have to start again from the ground up.

That means a new engine would have to built . or licenced (which would be a big chunk out of hugely successful Kickstarter).

Even if another publisher steps in, I think ZeniMax owns so much of the content, that everything currently made would have the scraped.
 
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