T w e n t y S i d e d

I hope this doesn’t feel like I’m beating a dead horse. Elsewhere in this series I skipped over literal hours of gameplay in a sentence or two, so maybe it feels sort of weird to spend 7,500 words on these last three and a half minutes of the game.

But this is a pretty big switch-up that lands after gameplay is concluded and the credits have rolled. This is a very unusual move, and so I have a lot to say about it.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Prey 2017 Part 21: Alex All Along”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Like I said last time, Prey ends with us either “saving” Talos-1 or nuking the station, and then we get a post-credits scene where we learn the entire game was a simulation. We’re actually a ball of Typhon cells that have been implanted with the memories of Morgan Yu, and allowed to experience a simulation of her struggles aboard the station.

This reveal creates an extra layer of possible confusion, because we now have an overabundance of characters named “Morgan”.

1. The original person that worked on Talos-1 and studied the Typhon.
2. The person who originally fought the Typhon in the real world. We don’t know what happened to her, although I guess we have to assume she died somehow.
3. The virtual person recreated from the memories of #2. This is the version of the character that was controlled by the player.
4. The ball of Typhon cells that’s been tricked into thinking it’s Morgan Yu. Arguably this is the same as #3, but this reveal means that we might want to make a distinction between the two.

In this series, I’ve been referring to #1 as “Old Morgan”. To help us keep track of these different versions, I’m going to give the name “Morphon” to #4, the Morgan-Typhon hybrid.

If you’re still confused, I’m sorry. This is as clear as I can make it. The writer is really throwing us a curveball here. Again, I think that a reveal this big needs to appear BEFORE the credits, and we need to be given a little space to process it. This post-credits replacement of the plot is trying to fit too big an idea into too small a space.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Prey 2017 Part 20: Judgement Day”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

So Talos-1 is enjoying the sweet embrace of a skyscraper-sized intergalactic horror. Thankfully, we already have a plan for this. Actually, we have a couple. We just need to choose one.

You can do what Alex wants and vaporize the Typhon with the nullwave device, thus leaving the station intact. Or you can follow January’s advice and blast the entire place into space-dust by making the reactor go boom. The latter is supposed to be for the hardcore Typhon haters who think that “man was not meant to meddle”, while the first option is for folks who just want to take a mulligan and have another go at taming the Typhon.

The thing is, I’m not totally comfortable with either option. 

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Prey 2017 Part 19: Going Out With a Bang”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.