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Prey (2017)

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There are a few sidequests that are gated behind one particular skill or another, like being unable to complete "Mixed Signals" without Repair III, which is annoying. Thankfully the bulk of the game's challenges have multiple solutions, so these instances stand out as exceptions rather than the norm.
 
Jace911 said:
There are a few sidequests that are gated behind one particular skill or another, like being unable to complete "Mixed Signals" without Repair III, which is annoying. Thankfully the bulk of the game's challenges have multiple solutions, so these instances stand out as exceptions rather than the norm.
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Nah, there is a tiny hole in the blastdoor protecting the satelite if you morph into coffee cup you can crawl in and open it from inside with the inside button.
 
When you've been playing too much Prey: I could have sworn I left two identical cups on the table next to my gaming PC. I look over, there are three identical cups on the table next to my gaming PC. Heartrate increases slightly....

On the ending:

...was anyone just kinda underwhelmed? Here I am, halfway to posthumanity, with a backpack full of psi-syringes, medkits, shotgun shells, and grenades of every conceivable type, ready to step into what is obviously a final boss chamber...and there's nothing. Even the Apex isn't super threatening when you get down to it.

I dunno if that's because they couldn't increase the difficulty without screwing over anyone who made a beeline for the endgame, or what, but it feels like the final segments should have been a final exam on problem-solving and a chance to blow out all of the resources you've been hoarding the whole game.
 
Acatalepsy said:
When you've been playing too much Prey: I could have sworn I left two identical cups on the table next to my gaming PC. I look over, there are three identical cups on the table next to my gaming PC. Heartrate increases slightly....

On the ending:

...was anyone just kinda underwhelmed? Here I am, halfway to posthumanity, with a backpack full of psi-syringes, medkits, shotgun shells, and grenades of every conceivable type, ready to step into what is obviously a final boss chamber...and there's nothing. Even the Apex isn't super threatening when you get down to it.

I dunno if that's because they couldn't increase the difficulty without screwing over anyone who made a beeline for the endgame, or what, but it feels like the final segments should have been a final exam on problem-solving and a chance to blow out all of the resources you've been hoarding the whole game.
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The final boss was the friends we made (or killed) along the way. :V

I was also surprised there was no big fight against, like, a constantly-respawning Nightmare or whatever before the final objective. My first time around I did Self Destruct+Escape Pod and although the reactor chamber was stuffed with dudes I kinda just sprinted past them all, pushed a bunch of buttons, and then moonwalked out with both middle fingers extended. I think it would've worked out well to have some sort of final physical confrontation, then the seven minute cooldown afterwards to either huddle with Mikhaila in your office or a frantic sprint to the shuttle bay.
 
Acatalepsy said:
When you've been playing too much Prey: I could have sworn I left two identical cups on the table next to my gaming PC. I look over, there are three identical cups on the table next to my gaming PC. Heartrate increases slightly....

On the ending:

...was anyone just kinda underwhelmed? Here I am, halfway to posthumanity, with a backpack full of psi-syringes, medkits, shotgun shells, and grenades of every conceivable type, ready to step into what is obviously a final boss chamber...and there's nothing. Even the Apex isn't super threatening when you get down to it.

I dunno if that's because they couldn't increase the difficulty without screwing over anyone who made a beeline for the endgame, or what, but it feels like the final segments should have been a final exam on problem-solving and a chance to blow out all of the resources you've been hoarding the whole game.
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The ending was definitely sequel bait.
 
Jace911 said:
The final boss was the friends we made (or killed) along the way. :V

I was also surprised there was no big fight against, like, a constantly-respawning Nightmare or whatever before the final objective. My first time around I did Self Destruct+Escape Pod and although the reactor chamber was stuffed with dudes I kinda just sprinted past them all, pushed a bunch of buttons, and then moonwalked out with both middle fingers extended. I think it would've worked out well to have some sort of final physical confrontation, then the seven minute cooldown afterwards to either huddle with Mikhaila in your office or a frantic sprint to the shuttle bay.
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By the way, is there any good ways to ascend the reactor chamber? Both times I went there it was a really annoying slog to the top, using the GLOO gun and some dodgy jumping. Is there a fast way to the top I was just missing?
 
Acatalepsy said:
By the way, is there any good ways to ascend the reactor chamber? Both times I went there it was a really annoying slog to the top, using the GLOO gun and some dodgy jumping. Is there a fast way to the top I was just missing?
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There's a gravity lift off to the far left you can restore with spare parts.
 
Jace911 said:
There's a gravity lift off to the far left you can restore with spare parts.
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Okay, that one I missed, but it wasn't that bad the second time since I had the mark 2 upgrade for the jetpack. Double jump(ish) for the win.

But yeah @Acatalepsy since I beat my third nightmare in melee range instead of hiding behind cover on a balcony and taking potshots at it like I did with the first two it felt like the game's difficulty stoped scaling along with me. After that I continued to mass produce neuromods while the game didn't really do anything to ramp with me.

I've beat the game on normal and is currently replaying it on nightmare. The only real difference is that the enemys does more damage they don't really have more hp so I predict that in the end i'll still be nuking everything with level 3 psychic powers.
 
It was a nasty surprise early in my second playthrough when I realized spending a bunch of alien neuromods at once summons the Nightmare, but the second time that happened I was in a closet and the third time it walked into my vanguard of turrets in the Arboretum.
 
Jace911 said:
then the seven minute cooldown afterwards to either huddle with Mikhaila in your office or a frantic sprint to the shuttle bay.
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Is this actually what happens if you don't save Dahl? I did, so everyone was on the shuttle, but a "before the nuke" exchange of goodbyes in Morgan's office would work rather well.

On the implications of the game's ending....I'm a little torn. On one hand there were a lot of effective things for handling empathy; I went out of my way to avoid killing mind controlled humans and it felt good to have that acknowledged. On the other, it feels like it has the problem a lot of these games do, in that empathy can become effectively conflated with completionism, or mindlessly following objective markers. And I don't know how you solve that in a game like this.

OverlordZovreign said:
Okay, that one I missed, but it wasn't that bad the second time since I had the mark 2 upgrade for the jetpack. Double jump(ish) for the win.

But yeah @Acatalepsy since I beat my third nightmare in melee range instead of hiding behind cover on a balcony and taking potshots at it like I did with the first two it felt like the game's difficulty stoped scaling along with me. After that I continued to mass produce neuromods while the game didn't really do anything to ramp with me.

I've beat the game on normal and is currently replaying it on nightmare. The only real difference is that the enemys does more damage they don't really have more hp so I predict that in the end i'll still be nuking everything with level 3 psychic powers.
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I really only had two powers at the end: psychoshock and combat focus. But between them and the stun gun, that was enough to handle most things (with a highly upgraded shotgun as finisher). Nightmares forced me to either use turrets, or break out the grenades. This was on hard, mind you, so we'll see how that works on impossible.
 
The first time I beat the game I chose Destroy and it gave me an actual seven minute countdown when I pushed the button. Alex told me he was disappointed, then I went back to my office to hang with Mikhaila. She said she was at peace and didn't regret anything, and we just sat there until the timer ran out.
 
Jace911 said:
The first time I beat the game I chose Destroy and it gave me an actual seven minute countdown when I pushed the button. Alex told me he was disappointed, then I went back to my office to hang with Mikhaila. She said she was at peace and didn't regret anything, and we just sat there until the timer ran out.
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Very cool. Since I did the "subdue Dahl" quest, everyone was waiting in the shuttle, so I sprinted for the shuttle bay, mowing down anything dumb enough to get in my way. I would hope that if you have Alex's escape pod, Mikhaila et al would meet you there.

Actually, I wonder if you could save Alex. Taze him, then drag him to his escape pod. He can whine about losing everything when he gets back to Earth, alive.
 
I had psychoshock, kinetikblast and electroshock maxed out with the amp chipsets for Kinetik and elektro at the end. That pretty much trivialised anything short of a nightmare. And nightmares have two significant weaknesses:
1 gloo, they become slowed easily from that stuff. 2 they have serious turning speed problems. Gloo and get behind them and you can get of alot of shotgun shots in, interspace with some well aimed psycic blasts and they go down real fast
 
One thing I never tried, but want to try this time, is abusing leverage and recycler charges. Use leverage to pile up all the junk in an area - big crates, trash cans, furniture, etc - then use a recycler charge to turn it into raw material, which can be in turn used to create MORE RECYCLER CHARGES.
 
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Acatalepsy said:
Very cool. Since I did the "subdue Dahl" quest, everyone was waiting in the shuttle, so I sprinted for the shuttle bay, mowing down anything dumb enough to get in my way. I would hope that if you have Alex's escape pod, Mikhaila et al would meet you there.

Actually, I wonder if you could save Alex. Taze him, then drag him to his escape pod. He can whine about losing everything when he gets back to Earth, alive.
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She doesn't meet you at the escape pod, sadly. You get a confused message from her asking why she's reading an escape pod activation just before launch. I save-loaded just to see what would happen if I evacced after setting the reactor to blow.
 
Jace911 said:
She doesn't meet you at the escape pod, sadly. You get a confused message from her asking why she's reading an escape pod activation just before launch. I save-loaded just to see what would happen if I evacced after setting the reactor to blow.
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Yeah, you don't get that message if you use Alex's escape pod while the shuttle escape route is active - presumably, everyone just takes off in the shuttle.

Anyway, the first time I used the Nullwave Transmitter; my reasoning was basically "well, if we zap them and it doesn't work, blowing up the station is a good Plan B, where if we blow up the station and it doesn't work, we're totally fucked". My plan for engaging targets at that point was psi shock to disable, then shooting, so this would be the same thing on a macro scale. I do like that they called out in the after the credits scene that they couldn't really figure out your true motivations for choosing one endgame or the other.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
http://kotaku.com/old-leaked-design-documents-show-what-prey-couldve-been-1795295577

So Kotaku has linked design docs for Prey 2017 and made me realize that Danielle Sho might actually be a reference to SHODAN.

Also, I love leaked design docs because they're a great look into how the creative process for videogames works, like SHOOTER: MAJESTIC REVOLUTIONS (i.e. Deus Ex).
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It's interesting what ideas were dropped on the cutting room floor. A lot of them are the more "hardcore" ideas - I suspect if there was time they'd have built in (optional!) hunger and sleep systems, but both of those are the first things to go when it comes to optimizing a project for release to a mainstream audience. Also, they dropped all ideas of an actual ecology you could interact with because...well, the average player doesn't care and it doesn't lead to interesting decisions.
 
Acatalepsy said:
It's interesting what ideas were dropped on the cutting room floor. A lot of them are the more "hardcore" ideas - I suspect if there was time they'd have built in (optional!) hunger and sleep systems, but both of those are the first things to go when it comes to optimizing a project for release to a mainstream audience. Also, they dropped all ideas of an actual ecology you could interact with because...well, the average player doesn't care and it doesn't lead to interesting decisions.
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What I find interesting about these design docs is that oftentimes they're very different from the end product but you can still see enough of the end product in them to know that they're the same game.

For example, the whole "main character in a simulation, researching alien powers and modifying themselves to survive encounters" thing from the early Prey 2 stuff (I assume at that time it was going to explicitly be set in the same universe as the original Prey?) which made it into the final game.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
What I find interesting about these design docs is that oftentimes they're very different from the end product but you can still see enough of the end product in them to know that they're the same game.

For example, the whole "main character in a simulation, researching alien powers and modifying themselves to survive encounters" thing from the early Prey 2 stuff (I assume at that time it was going to explicitly be set in the same universe as the original Prey?) which made it into the final game.
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My understanding is that they only got the name sometime after they started working on it, because the publisher had the name and thought it sounded like a good fit or something.
 
Acatalepsy said:
Also, they dropped all ideas of an actual ecology you could interact with because...well, the average player doesn't care and it doesn't lead to interesting decisions.
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This is both something that sort of bummed me out and which I also totally understand. Coding a responsive game ecology that wouldn't either collapse as the player goes great white post-human hunter on the Typhon or go in the other direction and generate totally unwinnable scenarios as the Typhon breed out of control, was probably a bit too tall an order for a feature that would go unappreciated by nine tenths of the players.

It honestly beckens back to Alien: Isolation for me. A game whose opposition AI operated almost too well, too unpredictably, and left me in cold sweats unable to finish the damn game.
 
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You can kind of see the ecology idea in the coral and how it gradually spreads through the station as the game progresses, with more and more powerful Typhon appearing with it no matter how many you kill.
 
Jace911 said:
You can kind of see the ecology idea in the coral and how it gradually spreads through the station as the game progresses, with more and more powerful Typhon appearing with it no matter how many you kill.
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I mean, it would have been a nice touch if we could reduce the incidents of powerful enemies by recycle charging the crew corpses.
 
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