“In short, contingency and freedom, it all means creation; freedom for us is creation.” - Henri Bergson

Prey is a video game about action. An immediate question may arise: what video game isn’t about action? A fair enough question since I haven’t set forth any terms. What I mean here is the specific action that philosopher Henri Bergson defined in his book Matter and Memory where he writes, “The degree of independence of which a living being is master, or, as we shall say, the zone of indetermination which surrounds its activity, allows, then, of an a priori estimate of the number and the distance of the things with which it is in relation.” For the most part, video games are constricted experiences, designed in ways that create illusions of action and what action always becomes: creative choice. Video games are limited in a way that we voluntarily ignore; the individual act of playing them already satisfies most base desires. This is not a critique of the medium, but an explanation of how it functions. Video games cannot account for choice (and usually when they try to, they fail spectacularly). The BioShock series is all about this for example. However, Prey, and by extension the entire genre of immersive sims, were created with the intention to capture real-life agency in a virtual world. Prey does this best, partly because these philosophical underpinnings are finally brought to the surface and commented on in meaningful ways — a cohesion only really found in games like Cruelty Squad, Disco Elysium, Pathologic, and Planescape: Torment. If video games are by design vessels for determinism, then Prey is the yolk finally breaking and providing an argument for free will. Again, in the Bergsonian sense, with free will forming from the actions that reflect the personality of a self (an idea explored in his book, Time and Free Will). In immersive sim fashion, such agency is expressed in every crevice of its game design with Prey having an untold number of ways to approach each situation you find yourself in.

In this manner, the game itself plays remarkably like System Shock 2. I had dropped Prey years ago because I played it like an FPS, I am not sure why I exactly did this; having played Dishonored as a teenager I knew what immersive sims were on some level, but I wasn’t making use of any of Prey’s systems. My old save was still there thanks to Steam’s cloud save feature and by the time I got to where I had left off originally, I had put six hours into the game compared to two. This anecdote alone is proof to me that immersive sim deserves to be categorized as its own genre, an opinion with some detractors who only want it to be labeled as a “design philosophy” or think these games are at their core just RPGs or FPS’ like I originally treated Prey as and had a monumentally worse time. Back to System Shock 2 though, having now played that game and it now sitting comfortably in some nebulous top 10 spot for me, Prey clicked from the start. And now that I have finished it, I can comfortably say that Prey is a better game. The freedom of Prey’s mechanics isn’t only there to birth emergent gameplay, the hallmark of immersive sims that makes it my favorite genre, but to make a point about video games and like all great fiction, life itself. The number of tools and systems at play in games like System Shock 2 are there so you can have a different experience with them each time and treat these virtual landscapes as real, lived-in spaces; this design is so open-ended that the developers themselves cannot account for every variable. I was able to sequence break Prey in a few situations thanks to getting creative with the GLOO gun and instead of that feeling only like an emergent discovery, it felt directly tied to how the game presented itself on every level. The choice to act in these ways, like reverting back to a newborn who lacks spatial awareness and forgetting where a staircase was so I created a needless parkour arena out of the reactor core while various Typhon attempted to slaughter me and constantly made me fall back down — while proof that I need to get a new prescription for my glasses — revealed the game’s core philosophy as a game where choice finally matters and the creative potential of freedom that brings.

Prey’s response to System Shock 2’s psi abilities is the ever-creative Typhon powers which you can get by installing neuromods, the game's version of upgrade modules. There are six total categories for neuromods with many different sub-pathways in them, although three of them are for human upgrades like hacking, repair, and stealth and then three for the Typhon powers which you gain through researching the various types of Typhon on Talos I. You can mix and match these to your heart's desire, or only play with one, or neither. Here again, though, Prey is able to take a standard element of game design and breathe new life into it by exploring how neuromods are made and their effects on the people who install them. What exactly does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be human when you alter yourself with the ability to morph into a coffee cup and roll around before transforming back and hitting an unsuspecting goo monster with a wrench?

Having only talked about Prey’s gameplay up to this point, gameplay that if you have played one of the other 40 immersive sims that have been made in the last 30 years might not strike you as needing such philosophical analysis, it is then paramount to detail some of Prey’s thematic elements from its story, where all this philosophy is at the forefront. It isn’t that Prey is such an obvious standout in its own genre gameplaywise but that it coalesces so seamlessly with its story-driven themes in fully artistic and emotional ways.

It is then of course no surprise that Chris Avellone helped write this game alongside Raphaël Colantonio and Ricardo Bare (Prey’s director and lead designer respectively), for Avellone’s magnum opus Planescape: Torment is centered around the principle question, “What can change the nature of a man?” and it has a definitive answer: choice. Prey follows this path, not in a derivative way, but in the same philosophical fashion. According to the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, the foundational aspect of our reality is that of difference, in this regard the entire notion of a Being, or anything static, or any notion of a true self or an essence is shattered and disposed of. All we are, all there is, is Becoming. Identity is forgone in the place of a multiplicity of difference and any repetitions will always be different; change is the only constant, as the character January states near the end of the game, “the ‘real’ Morgan is a fiction.” The process of Becoming is integral; it is not that Morgan Yu is there to be a measly projection, there are far too many videos and audiologs of them to be considered a blank slate character, it is that with every action they take Morgan becomes someone new — it is difference all the way down.

This underlying ontology gives way to a system of ethics as well, which is most notably present in how the game goes about its main quest and endings that January, Alex Yu, Dr. Igwe, and Mikhaila Ilyushin all play their respective parts in. Prey makes use of the trolley problem — a notoriously boring thought experiment that exists to make utilitarians think too highly of themselves — in a thought-provoking way. Which is frankly speaking revolutionary. While the more overarching elements are not something I can delve into without taking Prey’s climactic catharsis away from anyone reading this who hasn’t played it yet — the ethical parts of Prey are just as present in its side content. Talos I, the setting of Prey, has one very striking difference to the Immersive Sim in Space that it owes its existence to: humans who aren’t dead the second the game begins. Another revolutionary design choice from Arkane. How you choose to interact with these struggling survivors is going to define you, to the point that if you play the game “empathetically” you will receive an achievement titled “I and Thou,” which I will eat a shoe if that is somehow not a direct reference to Martin Buber’s book of the same name. Side quests where you can find Mikhaila’s medicine or get a piano recording so Dr. Igwe can hold onto a song that he and his now-dead wife loved, to helping a stuck escape pod launch all exist to reflect your approach to Talos I and a seemingly unstoppable threat that has the potential to reach Earth and likely drive humanity to extinction. All throughout these side quests you will receive radio transmissions from January, the most extreme deontologist in fiction, commenting on your behavior. It’s a small station, orbiting a moon that orbits an even bigger world. Who are you, who are these people, in the face of a threat this large? Should you be taking all these diversions to give them comfort, especially if this robot with your voice wants you to blow up the whole place? Well, you’re a human, aren’t you? The choice is yours.

While much of Prey uses high-concept philosophy to get across its sci-fi adventure, it is in these moments of humanity where the game truly shines. There is much art that falls on its face for trying to intellectualize itself, combining theory with fiction in a way that is fun to experience is a difficult task, but Prey excels at it. In a medium that so often plays it safe, Prey goes as far as it can to question you. Our bodies are constructed by action, our perception is tied to the freedom this gives us, and so all we are left with is an endless sea of choices. We all stand on the precipice — anxiety becomes overwhelming in the face of it, but the task at hand is to push forward. These choices will constantly change us or be changed by us. You are not the same person you were yesterday. Neither was Morgan Yu.

In 1992 the company that would go on to become Looking Glass Studios created the beloved “good game” genre known as immersive simulations with the release of Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss and in a multitude of ways changed the medium forever. Seven years later an off-shoot company named Irrational Games made up of ex-Looking Glass staff who still used their former company’s office space would co-develop the game this review is posted for which nullifies any sort of build-up I had in my mind because this isn’t a printed essay. Anyways, they made System Shock 2.

In more ways than one, it is hard to find anything fresh to say about System Shock 2 in 2023, 24 years after the game's release. I was only four months old when it hit shelves and the one thing that needed to be said about it was uttered in its first week of existence: System Shock 2 is one of the best games ever made. More so than any other game I have played I would consider agreeing with that statement to be a proper litmus test for if you should even be allowed to talk about video games.

It’s just that good.

As with every immersive sim ever made till the heat death of our universe, System Shock 2 is a game about its systems. And in utilizing the Dark Engine that was made for Thief: The Dark Project, Ken Levine’s team at Irrational, and those few helping over at Looking Glass, they were able to create the foundations for what immersive sims are meant to look like in the modern era. Along with Thief, System Shock 2 brought immersive sims into the fully 3D landscape of the late 90s — and it allowed for the entire genre (which at that point consisted of precisely four games) to reach new heights that games being released today can barely even touch while standing on their tippy-toes. Ultima Underworld I and II, along with the first System Shock, make up what I affectionately call boomer immersive sims; they were the first attempts, and while they were majorly successful and amazing video games that are unparalleled by anything in the medium of video games up to that point, it is in System Shock 2 where everything reaches perfection. Ultima Underworld’s biggest flaw stated by its own creators was its dialogue system which they viewed as functioning as a second game rather than feeling like an interwoven experience with the overall gameplay and was fixed by Austin Grossman’s idea to make the original System Shock’s story and dialogue be told to you through audiologs that are scattered throughout the world. System Shock 2 also utilizes this method of storytelling to a much greater effect. I adore the games Grossman has worked on and written. Still, System Shock’s audiologs are a bit heavy on exposition, and also due to the scuffed nature of memory on floppy disks and CDs Looking Glass seemingly didn’t know how much of the recorded dialogue they could fit onto disks and so when playing the game you are likely going to have to stop dead in your tracks and read text that in no way matches up to what the characters are saying which hurts the seamless nature the team obviously wanted. No such thing was happening in 1999 though and so the audiologs are not cut at all and you are able to listen to them as you traverse the horrifying corridors of the Von Braun. This allows for more audiologs as well, which lead designer/writer Ken Levine has proven himself to be the master of — while some still serve the function they did in the first game in giving you information on where to go next or a code needed to open a door, most of the audiologs in 2 are dedicated to cataloging what happened to the crew leading up to the start (and sometimes during) the game and you get to hear the final thoughts of those who — unlike our protagonist Soldier G65434-2 — do not have military grade implants and so died brutally at the hands of the Many. These logs are not only able to fully achieve a sense of immersion in the world but also able to generate a bountiful amount of empathy for those on board who are long dead by the time you wake up.

System Shock 2’s overall story was Levine’s first at-bat for his comic book-inspired approach of pitting two extremes against one another that you find yourself in the middle of. This time composed of Shodan, the egotistical, fascist AI who hates all things weak and composed of flesh, and her offspring the Many — the hybrid creations she began to create in the first System Shock, who are, well, made of flesh (and so clearly the inspiration for the Flood in Halo, it’s uncanny how similar they are). Naturally, they don’t like each other much. During the course of development, the team was at odds with Levine for his idea to make Shodan not the principal antagonist and rather begrudgingly need your help throughout the game to defeat the Many. I am glad that he stood his ground because she is a much more nuanced character in this game and rightfully deserves her spot on every “Best Video Game Villain” list because of it.

And then there’s the infamous/meme’d-to-death ending. Really I can only say one thing: if you aren’t doing backflips for the last ten minutes of the game then — like the Many — you probably have worms in your brain.

On the gameplay side of things is of course where all immersive sims shine and System Shock 2 is no slouch. The introduction of RPG mechanics to immersive sims started here and would continue to be seen in the genre, even just a year later with the release of Deus Ex (which sadly makes some people think that immersive sims are just RPGs with a pretentious name, but that’s a rant for another time) and led to what these games are likely most known for: multiple styles of play. Want to play stealthy? This game is using the same engine as Thief: go nuts. Want to only use melee weapons? Max out strength and get various OS upgrades just for that. You joined the marine core at the beginning and only want to blast things with hot lead? The game practically begs you to. Energy weapons? Become a literal space wizard? The list goes on. And depending on which difficulty you select at the start you can probably mess around with 2-3 options to your heart's desire.

And do I really need to talk about level design for an immersive sim? Does everyone checking this page already know that this genre does levels better than anything else? Well if not, let me be the first to inform you that the Von Braun is one of the most intricately crafted locations in video games. Everything in it is seamless, while I would occasionally get lost while playing both Ultima Underworlds and the first System Shock that never happened here. The number of different paths you can take to get around never feels complicated but instead organic with a plethora of secrets strung along the way depending on your aforementioned chosen playstyle. While there are two more locations near the end of the game, they are quite small and still work as an interwoven structure — unlike another beloved game for its interconnected world design, System Shock 2 never falters.

System Shock 2 is a wonderful game. It is also a game that only sold 58,671 units during its initial release and I am unsure how many it has sold now in its fate as a game that more people seem to know and reference through making Shodan their social media profile pictures than actually playing it, but I’m sure of those couple dozen thousand fleshy bodies the majority heralded it as one of the greatest games they’ve ever played — and I’m glad to be able to count myself among their ranks.

Both Ultima Underworld games are two of the most important and revolutionary in the medium’s history. The technological leap that the games had in graphics with the introduction of a refined form of texture mapping for video games and the fact that every developer in North America in the early 90s knew each other would lead to a phone call between Paul Neurath and John Romero that would lead to the creation of Catacomb 3-D and Wolfenstein 3D over at id Software, thus birthing an offshoot of immersive sims that was not simulated or immersive but a massively marketable simplicity of combat mechanics resulting in the birth of the evergreen FPS genre; or for those who only care about gaming through the lens of Japan: the entire creation of FromSoftware who’s King's Field series and later Dark Souls owes much to the level design and simulated lives of characters that Ultima Underworld birthed — even if From’s games, like many other titles that maybe or maybe not are named The Elder Scrolls that Underworld influenced, didn’t further or even utilize any of its more revolutionary gameplay mechanics and seem to be more of a homage consisting of “hey, remember Ultima Underworld? Cool games.” Which, to be fair, they are cool games.

Labyrinth of Worlds is a sequel to The Stygian Abyss in design but in terms of its place in the Ultima franchise overall it is a sequel to Ultima VII, taking place exactly a year after that game ends as Lord British invites the Avatar (that’s you) to his castle for a celebratory feast on the anniversary of the Guardian’s (that’s the bad guy) defeat only for that buzzkill to show up once more and trap the entire castle underneath a mountain of blackstone. The Stygian Abyss’ narrative was not its strong suit, the entire synopsis can be boiled down to a few words on you having to go down deep into a dungeon to rescue a princess. The immersion of its gameplay mechanics is what you’re playing that game for. In Labyrinth of Worlds, the immersive and emergent gameplay systems of its predecessor are dialed up even further as well as having a narrative that while still a normal enough fantasy affair on its surface, is oozing with charm and heart that you can now immerse yourself into as an agent in the world.

The overall level design of Labyrinth of Worlds is much stronger as well, take for example one of the first locations in the game: the prison tower. While a small location made up of eight floors that all seem to be around four square feet, the strength of the level is shown in its possibilities for approach. As per all immersive sims that have come after Ultima Underworld the levels are crafted to be engaged with in an emergent way that you uncover or outright create rather than having its solutions shown to you. The prison tower can be handled like in any other old dungeon crawler: violence. But this is likely to be difficult as Labyrinth of Worlds varies creature levels far more than its predecessor which helps the world feel much more alive and so while it is doable to kill every goblin on the level and free the prisoners to advance the story it would likely prove challenging to most and so there is also a more nuanced approach to take where through certain dialogue choices you can hide your identity as the Avatar and instead impersonate an interrogator which will allow you to procure the keys needed to unlock the prison cells and release a friendly troll who will kill the goblin guards for you, netting you zero experience points and instead experiencing a far more intricate outcome that few games outside the genre can generate. This is just one early example, but fret not over any suspicion that the game peaks in its design philosophy early: every level is like this. Labyrinth of Worlds is expertly crafted, whereas The Stygian Abyss consisted of eight floors to its one massive dungeon its sequel consists of eight planes of a multiverse that you travel to which all vary in size and scope. A lesser game would crumble under this ambition but Labyrinth only forged ahead, much to the credit of the games designers all being attached to one plane rather than all of them at once over the course of its development. This approach makes every plane distinct, a favorite of mine is the two-floored plane of Talorus where you meet the aptly named Talorids, who seem like the genesis for why Looking Glass went down the sci-fi route for their next game as you traverse this world composed of AI robots and teleporters with walls adorned with colorful lights rather than torches.

Every new area in Labyrinth needed to sing because you’re going to spend far more time in its levels than any floor of the Stygian Abyss as Labyrinth takes a non-linear approach to exploration with you constantly unlocking new areas amongst already explored zones as you uncover the connective tissue between all of the worlds through the main story in order to defeat the Guardian. While The Stygian Abyss drags in its pacing occasionally due to its backtracking through areas that often look identical, Labyrinth stays fresh by constantly changing themes and setting that ebb and flow wonderfully into its emergent design and narrative.

Speaking of theme, the character work is far more dynamic as well. The foundations from The Stygian Abyss remain: you don’t have to and should not murder hobo your way through the areas as every character has an emotional spectrum that can be increased or decreased by how you interact with them except for outright hostile mobs who will always attack you on sight. You will come across many NPCs throughout the world but this time the game was written by Austin Grossman (who would go on to be a writer for System Shock, Deus Ex, and the first two Dishonored games) in his first ever writing credit in his now stellar career; the twenty-somethings straight out of MIT that filled Looking Glass’ studio at the time were all rookies when they made this game and it doesn’t show. The NPCs are all more lively and richer in character and theme than in the previous title and as the Avatar you can interact with them more fully as you would in the mainline Ultima games. An early part where this arises is when a group of servants threaten to go on a labor strike unless you tell Lord British to start being class conscious; it is a minor change: you can beat the game no matter what — as per the course with immersive sims your character’s actions are reflections of your agency on said character rather than on the overall narrative. Situations like these are not uncommon in the game, since the game utilizes Lord British’s castle as a hub world that you are constantly returning to, as select characters function as trainers for you to level up your skills (as opposed to Stygian’s Shrine system). This also lets you feel for the cast and interact with them more, Stygian Abyss’ flaw is that when you had talked to the NPCs of a floor once you rarely ever had to again, but your experience would be actively hampered if you were to ignore the inhabitants of the castle in Labyrinth as they are both reactive to what you do throughout the game but also independent actors with their own schedules that converge into various situations that heighten the game's storytelling. These details, with how characters react in response to how you handle situations or even how they interact with each other when you are traversing other planes to combat the Guardian’s foul plot reveal an unparalleled amount of ludonarrative consistency that is nowhere to be found in games before it and only rivaled within the immersive sim genre that it created. Grossman’s writing in this regard pushes the game to a new height of immersion that shows why both Ultima Underworlds created an entirely new genre rather than just being another dungeon crawler with no heart or mind behind it.

While the Ultima Underworld games are sometimes looked back on as being unrefined in comparison to the immersive sims that came after them, saying that should not be a negative. Looking Glass hit it out of the park in these games and even if not as crazy bonkers with simulation as latter games in the genre the increase in ambition and avenues for emergent gameplay to arise from The Stygian Abyss to Labyrinth of Worlds shows and would only continue as seen in their next game which was…oh yeah, System Shock. Few gaming studios are so lucky to have a track record that is not only revolutionary but meaningful, with care and intent dripping from every design choice to make one of gaming’s first wholly consistent experiences that few games have replicated since.