Seeing the tragic news of Microsoft shutting down Arkane Austin had me pondering over my favorite game of theirs, and one arguably in my top 5 of all time: Prey. For this fourth-or-so playthrough, I decided to play the FPS-boosted Series S version of the game so I could play it alongside my girlfriend I recently moved in with. I did this to spend "together but separate" time together in the evenings as opposed to being alone at my computer, but also so I could point to the screen and blather on about the many interesting quirks that make Prey such a brilliant experience. She was impressed with the things I showed her and remarked how flexible the game is compared to its contemporaries, which is ultimately why Arkane Austin met their tragic fate: heavy, systems-driven experiences just don't sell.

I wasn't there for Prey at launch when it really needed it. At the time, being fresh out of high school and starting my failed attempt to make it even a full year through community college, I spent most of my time with older games with the occasional new game purchase off my part-time income. Hearing about Prey from outlets wasn't the most positive coverage: anger about the title considering its messy history, and substantial performance issues that led to harsh reviews in retrospect. With the little I heard being not so positive, I mostly let Prey go through one ear and out the other, not bothering with it until years down the road via its growing word of mouth from the Im-Sim community and COVID lockdowns.

Prey was, and still is the exact kind of game I crave, so much so it feels personally made for me. The mid-century modern interiors constructed in a vast, futuristic space station feels like the perfect counter to the retro-futuristic/rustic design of Alien/Aliens, a systems-driven game design offering the most flexible objectives in any game of its genre, and an intimate, complex level design that offers a wealth of gameplay opportunities without feeling believable. As a game, Prey is everything I could ever want in its audio/visual and game design, though it needed more in the story front to make the total experience feel more impactful.

Story is something that Prey offers but not enough of it. Like the System Shock games previously, Prey offers a lot of narrative via the audio/text logs strewn about Talos 1.The narrative on offer is decent, but doesn't present enough explicit choice or driving motivations to stick in your head for long. The simple goals of escaping/exploding Talos 1 are always present while playing, but the explicit motivations and character drama driving it lacks impact. A lot of this could easily be chocked up to not allowing the player to make rash decisions as to not completely stonewall them with no direction. Though January can be killed right as you meet him in the beginning of Prey, Alex still hangs around as a "Handsome Jack-esque" phone buddy giving at least some direction until he shows his face in the late game. The thing is, Alex becomes a bit of an afterthought the moment the call ends, offering minimal information that sticks say for small anecdotes he dishes out while you rummage around his office.

Not having other people around Talos 1 until the mid-game hampers its early sections as well. Not until access to the cargo bay opens up does the player get any real heavy decisions involving fellow living people. Though these choices mostly boil down to "do I kill these people or not," there's weight behind some of their side quests and having to wait so long to get them only to add further backtracking is a bit of an odd choice. I believe a lot of these early game grievances led to people bouncing off this game hard, not to mention its often vague objectives that I still get stuck on. There are 30-50% drop-off rates between the achievement to get your first ability, and meeting January not even an hour later, with drop off rates plummeting further there platform be damned. Seeing those statistics breaks my heart, but I understand why those numbers are the reality of the situation given the steep incline to begin cracking Prey wide open.

Once the player does break Prey open, a wealth of creativity through problem solving occurs. More than enough tools are disposed to the player to tackle any objective they see in front of them, so much so there's an achievement encouraging playing the entire game without obtaining a single skill-tree upgrade; a challenge I have not attempted but may do some day. The weapons and items are more than enough to tackle the objective at hand, yet the skill-trees open up immense possibility. Unlike the garbage-ass Ubisoft slop that gives you menial upgrades through XP gains or whatever, Prey takes a more tactile approach to having "XP" dished out via tangible items found/crafted through the station. The upgrades offered to the player are also more than mere damage percentage gains (though a few of those do exist) but rather whole new combat/traversal abilities that can range from super strength to insane alien abilities. Watching the "making of" documentary made by Noclip highlighted just how dedicated the developers were to providing a robust skill tree with abilities that meant something. Designing the enemies around the player and pondering what alien ability would be Morgan's counterpart is some dedicated game design, considering how difficult they say implementing many of these abilities were.

Speaking on the enemies does lead me to the next real complaint I have, which is the lack of interesting enemies to combat. Mimics and Phantoms are fine in their won right, but being dished 2-3 different versions of those enemies for the majority of combat encounters weighs on the experience over time. Other, rarer encounters like the Phantom, Weaver, and Telepath are appreciated when they happen, but they're largely one-and-done scripted encounters in the first run of a given area. This leaves the Nightmare to being the most impactful enemy of the game: a massive, threatening beast that spawns randomly in larger areas of the station. Unfortunately, only the first couple encounters feel like much of a threat even without completing its accompanying side-quest to attract/deter the beast. Once the player acquires enough weapon upgrades/damage neuromods, the Nightmare becomes more a nuisance than a force to be reckoned with. At least he offers more variety than the different flavored phantom that respawned in an area you're backtracking to.

Backtracking is the last of the real complaints I have with Prey, but this one is a little more nuanced and doesn't bother me as much as others. Being an early Resident Evil apologist, I don't mind running through corridors I've been to before, especially if developers do the due diligence of spawning in newer and sometimes harder enemies in areas you've already been to like Prey. That being said, the loading screen between major sections of the station do become a bit of a hassle eventually. The late game in particular contains plenty of running back and forth through areas you've been to half a dozen times already, with your only interactions in said area being an aforementioned different flavor of Mimic or Phantom, or bolting straight to the door for the next loading screen. Even the loading screens wouldn't be much of a hassle considering modern drive speeds if I didn't have to manually confirm I'm ready to go to the next room every time. I'm sure many people take that feature as a saving grace, but a toggle would've been nice to have to help create a more seamless experience. Small changes would make the hassle of traversal just that much easier. Not as many people complain about the backtracking in early Resident Evil games and a lot of that can be attributed to a single door opening animation/sound effect.

That all being said, I'll reiterate that the backtracking isn't so bad especially when you're aware of the tools at your disposal. If you're heavily investing in neuromods in particular, sprinting and flying around the place helps on time, which is only added with strategic use of the GLOO Gun: aka the best not-explicitly-a-weapon tool an Immersive Sim has ever given the player. I could go on for an entire paragraph on how the GLOO Gun opens the door wide open to early strategic travel and tackling objectives non-linearly, but I've gone on long enough as it is. The sheer number of retrospectives from developers, fans, and pundits alike have gushed enough about it for me.

Even at 4ish preythroughs, there is a wealth of abilities and ways to tackle objectives I still haven't discovered. Like ogres and onions, Prey has many layers to continue peeling back to discover more and more, even without touching Mooncrash (which will be on PC like any future playthroughs because this game almost needs a keyboard). With how robust this game is and how poorly it performed, it didn't surprise me that Bethesda was so scared to pivot into a doomed live-service venture for the studio. Great games like Prey, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, and more are not the gangbuster titles "hardcore gamers" like to think they are; they're neat, niche titles that gaming's equivalent to cinephiles brag about playing decades before you ever did. The writing for Prey and Arkane Austin was on the wall with their explicit Looking Glass Studios references through the video-mirror tech in the game; a brilliant studio developing genre classics still talked about to this day, but couldn't sell anywhere near enough to keep the studio afloat. That and the fact that the development for Redfall went so bad they bled enough talent that formed WolfEye Studios in its wake.