We may never get another gaming year like 2017. Looking back, the sheer amount of absolute banger titles released that year just seems unfathomable to me. Among others, some of my personal favorites released in 2017 were NieR Automata, Persona 5, Dragon Quest XI, Divinity Original Sin 2, Breath of the Wild, and so so many more. With that many top tier games released in such a relatively short time, it is only natural that some titles won’t get the recognition they undoubtedly deserve. I feel like that was the case with Prey, the second to last game developed by Arkane Austin, a studio known for its strong focus on immersive sim games. I remember following the overall gaming discourse back in 2017 quite rigorously and while I do remember some outlets speaking about Prey and praising its qualities in terms of worldbuilding, storytelling and freedom of choice, I do feel like this game flew under the radar a bit. That’s probably why I wasn’t super hyped to play this game when it released. Like with so many other games, I just put Prey on my wishlist, let it rest there for a while and finally decided to buy it on sale years later. And still, I wouldn’t play it. For years and years, this game was sitting in my library, becoming one of those titles, I would surely pick up at some point in the future. That’s a shame because, having finished it now, I think I was sleeping on one of the, if not the, best immersive sim games ever created. The push to finally give this game a try came upon reading the news that Microsoft had decided to close down Arkane Austin for good. I remembered that, before the (Red)fall of this company, they had worked on games I was interested in but never found the time to play. So, the time had finally come. I sat down and started playing Prey.

And what a journey it was.

I’m gonna keep this review short. For me, this is one of those games, people should experience with as little prior knowledge as possible. That’s how I approached the game and I’m happy I did. Prey is an immersive sim in all the best ways. This genre, if it can be called that, is all about player freedom. A good immersive sim presents an intriguing premise for the story and world of the game, puts the player into a semi open world, and lets them approach a number of objectives in multiple ways. It’s a formula that was first established by the Ultima and Thief games and has since then been revised and advanced by games like Deus Ex and Dishonored. Having played Prey now, I think this formula has come to a sort of perfect conclusion with this game.

From the first seconds of the game, Prey knows exactly what it’s doing. As you’ve probably guessed by looking at screenshots or trailers for the game, Prey is a Sci-Fi story that plays with you as much as you play it. There’s an all-encompassing feeling of “wrongness” in everything you see, like something just doesn’t really add up. Playing Prey feels like playing a mind game. The first couple of minutes make it very clear that this is intended by the developers. You’re supposed to question what you see. And so, you’ll end up asking yourself if what you see is real or just an illusion, a mimic of reality. But Prey is more than that. It deals with questions of humanity, identity, technological progress and morality. Only on its front is it a Sci-Fi story with a cosmic horror twist. Prey is a deeply human story that is not afraid to question the cost of technological advancement, touching on topics like the value of human life in a world dictated by corporate greed and the never-ending hunt for profit, no matter the cost. That’s a premise that immediately hooked me. I wanted to know more about this version of our world, where John F. Kennedy survived his assassination attempt, launching the world into a new era of space exploration. I had so many questions in my head that needed answering. What’s the point of Talos I? What’s a Neuromod? What happened on this station and who are we anyway? Step by step, the game will have answers for you, some of which will be hard and unforgiving truths whereas other will pose even more questions. And sometimes, there’s no right and wrong and it’s up to you to decide how to interpret the “truth”.

Freedom and choice, that’s what it’s all about in an immersive sim. Not only is that reflected in Prey’s narrative, it’s also a significant aspect of its gameplay. Every challenge the game offers can be approached in different ways. Again, I’m not going to go into detail what options you have at your disposal to deal with challenging situations as I want everyone interested in this game to find their own solutions. Let me just tell you that to me, Prey felt like a playground (or a Preyground….sorry^^) that managed to tickle my sense of creativity. Sometimes, I would just go crazy with the most outrageous strategies to deal with enemies and it just…worked. And if it didn’t, I at least had a laugh and learned something for my next fight. But it’s not just about the combat. Player choice is at the forefront of everything you do in this game. How do you get into that room? How will you deal with that environmental trap? How can you get to that precious piece of equipment that seems out of reach from this point? It’s all up to you and each time you come up with a solution, it feels right. The game doesn’t punish you for finding creative solutions to problems, it encourages you. In every moment of the game, I felt like I was truly in control of deciding how to play my character. The choices I made were truly mine. Prey let me choose who I wanted to be in this world. I could be a reckless killer, not minding any questions of morality and just going around like an absolute mad man. It also gave me the option to be empathetic, to be kind and honest and to go out of my way to help others. In this regard, it reminded me of Deus Ex and Bioshock in the best ways possible.

Prey is a masterpiece. It’s absolutely unthinkable to me how the people, who worked on a game like this, are out of a job now. As immersive sims go, this is as good as it gets. Prey takes clear inspiration from games like System Shock when it comes to story, presentation, and gameplay. It revises and improves the core ideas found in those games and offers and experience that is just next level. There’s a clear line of continuous improvement that Arkane went trough coming from games like Arx Fatalis and Dishonored and it’s an absolute shame that we will never know what their next immersive sim game would have looked like. There’s still hope that Arkane Lyon and Wolfeye Studios will continue to scratch that itch that these games leave. In any case, please play this game if you are at all interested in games like these. Prey is certainly not perfect. There are sections that include heavy backtracking, some enemy respawns felt unnecessary and the ending came rather abrupt. Still, Prey is the culmination of decades of perfecting the immersive sim formula and should be experienced by any fan of the genre.