Arkane Austin's Prey is an Amazing Example of Why Immersive Sim Games are Great
Now if only they hadn't been shut down and we had gotten a sequel.
Immersive sims as a genre really came about with Deus Ex in 2000. It was a game that provided a massive amount of freedom to approach the missions you played, provided an in depth combat system and story that made you question all that was going on and made you into a conspiracy theorist while you were playing the game. It is genuinely one of the best Immersive Sim games out there and everyone who loves the genre needs to play the game. But it wasn't the only game that is an amazing Immersive Sim game.
Arkane is a developer who didn't become widely known until it's 2012 game Dishonored. The game has you play a betrayed bodyguard who has to go around killing the leaders of the government that betrayed you and killed the queen that you were the bodyguard for. It allowed you a similar amount of freedom as Deus Ex except it added some absolutely amazing powers that allowed you to do some pretty crazy combat and speed-running. I loved this game. I've played it multiple times and even replayed it recently. But this game wasn't the game I want to talk about today.
In 2017 Arkane Austin (RIP) released Prey. A game that was supposed to have a different title but Bethesda insisted it needed to be Prey so as to capitalize on the Prey name despite the game not being at all connected to that world. Prey has an amazing amount of freedom for you to explore the space station Talos I. It provides you with a story that keeps you questioning, a set of powers that makes you want to spec into them, a surprising amount of changes that happen depending on your decisions, and a significant amount of freedom to approach the quests. Is it as much freedom as the Dishonored games or Deus Ex? I would say no, but it's still a significant amount of freedom in a world of confusion.
Prey has a haunting atmosphere. It makes the character feel uneasy constantly and from very early on. Not only are there mimics that come out of nowhere but there are bodies of people that will give the constant feeling that you're just barely surviving. For example, the beginning where you wake up in Morgan's apartment and supposedly are on earth and then go through some testing and then when you get put to sleep and wake up again you immediately can tell things are off, and from the very moment you step outside of Morgans apartment for that second time, you know something's wrong but you also know you have no idea WHAT is wrong. When you find the first bodies and the first mimic you realize something is fucked and you need to figure out what happened. It's a fantastically communicated feeling that gets you, the player, into the world and the main plot very quickly.
Or when you come to the cafeteria and meet someone who claims to be the chef but is really an escaped test subject and once you help him and he lets you into the kitchen he tries to kill you in a freezer. The game is constantly making you second guess your surroundings. You are made to feel uneasy and the people you'll meet who won't betray you like the "cook" are constantly at risk of dying. You're able to save some of them but some will die because of mistakes you make or because of some of your own decisions.
This is the best part of these types of games. In Dishonored, the decisions you make and who you kill and how you kill them determines how the game progresses. In Deus Ex, your decisions decide who lives, who dies, and what ending you get. In Prey, your decisions on who you kill accidentally or purposefully can change the options you then have later on in the game, and it hides some of these decisions from you. It makes you play the game and only after playing it do you realize how your choices impact things. For example, if I accidentally open a container with Doctor Igwe in it, he'll die, and that doesn’t seem to mean that much, but only later do you find out that he actually helps you figure out how to save Talos I from certain destruction by perfoming brain surgery on the mind of the late game Big Bad, Walther Dahl. It hides a significant part of the ending behind the simple choice of entering a key code and killing a seemingly meaningless dude. The game is filled with these small details and seemingly innocuous decisions that have larger implications just like the best Immersive Sim games out there.
When it comes to thematic depth, Deus Ex and Dishonored provide very interesting and cohesive stories and worlds allowing the player to feel both conspiracy oriented and like you can and will be betrayed by those around you. Prey has just as impactful thematic depth by making you feel like you're fighting against human nature to save people and fight for Morgans research. And not only that, it gives you seeds of the story throughout the game that make you feel like you're fighting even more against time and the other humans around you. Just like any good Immersive Sim does.
Speaking of the story. Similar to Deus ex, it will consistently provide you with information that makes you start to become a conspiracy theorist to try to understand what's happening. I played the game once years and years ago and once in the last couple months and I didn't remember any of it. I was kept guessing and theorizing and making me want to save the people on the station, blow it all to hell, and save the station itself so the whole experiment wasn't done in vain. The best games MAKE you want to choose different decisions. They make you want to choose the darkest decisions because they have a rationale behind them that makes some sense. The game will communicate just enough to you that it allows you to actually feel like you're always pushing the story forward, while still keeping you guessing. Then when the ending arrives I was genuinely nervous to make the final decision, but after the credits rolled and the post credits scene played it made me really satisfied with the choices I had made throughout the game. And it made me sad that we aren't likely to get a Prey 2 given that one was very clearly being set up. Its such a shame Arkane Austin was killed because of the trash that was Redfall.
When I initially played Prey years ago, I pushed into the powers and made decisions based on that, but this most recent time I only got the powers that I was initially forced to during the story. I wanted to not integrate myself with typhon material but simultaneously wanted to save Talos I because there could have been so much good that would come out of the research there. I'm disabled and I can only imagine how helpful some kind of Neuromod could help me feel less broken when I have issues doing things because of my disability and I made my decision based on how my life could be impacted if something like this really existed. The best games make you consider how you relate to them when making your decisions.
The best immersive sim games provide you with lethal and non lethal options and this game does that in such an effective way that you feel like non lethal can actually be the easier option, while also providing you with a combat path that you don't have to feel guilty over with the mimics that are everywhere. The game provides you with opportunities you're not expecting and also moments of non lethality that aren't combat based, like what I mentioned earlier with Doctor Igwe.
Prey allows you to figure things out for yourself like any good immersive sim. While that did lead to a few times where i didn't know what to do or missed something that I needed in order to complete an objective, I was still able to eventually figure it out and it never got to the point of frustration. To be honest I felt way more lost in Deus Ex which is obviously one of the best Immersive Sim games out there despite its age.
I can't express enough how much I enjoyed the game. And it's not just the main story that provides a decent amount of investment for the player. The game provides side quests that are connected to characters you've come to like and some you don't trust and that provided more of a drive for me than the original Deus Ex where I didn't care that much about most of the characters.
Of course in Dishonored I did care about the characters but that is not surprising given Dishonored and Prey were made by the same developers.
Dishonored 1 and 2 provide more of a diverse story that has more combat and more enemies that can fight back in normal combat fashion while Prey is more like a giant puzzle. It provides more interesting combat from the Dishonored games largely because of the fact that almost every enemy can't shoot you. I think the only thing I missed in Prey compared to the Dishonored games was that Dishonored made it easier to very quickly get outta dodge. I was able to have the feeling of being outnumbered and escaping far easier in the Dishonored games than in Prey, but that is largely because the enemies in Prey are more lethal. You don't go up against large amounts of enemies, it's usually just a handful, if that. Often I found myself not being scared of some of the enemies flanking me, but of the singular enemy in front of me doing something i hadn't prepared for. Both Dishonored games were the opposite.
Having a higher lethality and less enemies overall allows more interesting and more varied combat encounters. It's something that I love about the game, Dishonored usually came down to the same type of combat encounter and using the same powers over and over again, Deus Ex usually came down to crawling through vents even in the most recent ones, but Prey? Prey encourages you to be out in the open while avoiding enemies, it doesn't railroad you into vents, it doesn't encourage you to sneak up behind enemies and use takedowns to kill them, it allows you to have dynamic encounters and has far more varied environmental challenges. I loved the game and its amazing how good the Immersive Sim qualities of the game are.
I think Immersive Sims are one of my most favorite genres and Prey is easily one of the best. It's a shame the developers have been closed. I intend sometime soon to talk about some indie Immersive Sim games. I know there are a lot and i think since we wont be getting another Deus Ex for a while there's a lot of space for indie devs to fill. I look forward to talking about games like Ctrl Alt Ego and Shadows of Doubt and I'm sure I'll figure out others to talk about as the indie space often provides the most interesting games nowadays.
Until then, make sure to check all those coffee cups to make sure they're not mimics.
Meow,
Cat