First impressions can be wrong. Prior to Prey’s release, I played the demo for the game. The first impression it gave me did not move me very much. It felt a lot like Dishonored in space. Being an Arkane game it’s not surprising that Prey is built on the bones of their other main series. Even things like in-game notices …
First impressions can be wrong. Prior to Prey’s release, I played the demo for the game. The first impression it gave me did not move me very much. It felt a lot like Dishonored in space. Being an Arkane game it’s not surprising that Prey is built on the bones of their other main series. Even things like in-game notices look striking like those in Dishonored 2.
This is not inherently a bad thing, but I played Dishonored 2 not long before and I was not blown away. I was actually disappointed with how the second Dishonored lacked anything compelling in the way of replay value. So at the point that I dipped my toe into the world of Prey, I was not in the mood for more “Dishonored”.
Flash forward to 2018 and two things have changed:
- I have Dishonored: Death of the Outsider under my belt, a game I played three times over and platinumed (something I rarely care to do) thanks to some highly engaging elements, renewing my interest in Arkane’s work.
- The realization that despite its superficial similarities to Dishonored, Prey is a very different game, one that is more complex game with a rhizomatic structure that makes Dishonored’s forking paths feel like rigid linearity.
If you have heard people say that Prey is the descendant of System Shock, take them seriously. Prey is a significantly satisfying game in the vein of System Shock, benefiting from modern mechanics and visuals. I have been playing for a bit now and I have barely left the initial areas. I continually find new things to explore and then discover the more I poke around. The game is satisfyingly multilayered and the riches of every area of the Talos I space station is something that even the fairly and richly detailed Dishonored seems minuscule when the two are compared. Do not make my mistake and think this is just Dishonored in space.
