{"id":1176,"date":"2007-06-01T15:00:05","date_gmt":"2007-06-01T20:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1176"},"modified":"2007-11-03T08:49:08","modified_gmt":"2007-11-03T13:49:08","slug":"prey-followup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1176","title":{"rendered":"Prey: Followup"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a follow up to various questions and comments on my initial Prey post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The game really does use the Doom lighting system. This is a good thing. It’s like playing Doom<sup>3<\/sup>, except I can see stuff.<\/td><\/tr>
The game really does use the Doom lighting system. This is a good thing. It’s like playing Doom3<\/sup>, except I can see stuff.<\/td><\/tr><\/table>Phlux pointed out<\/a> in the comments that Prey does indeed use the Doom 3 engine (modified) which explains why the lighting looks so similar. I remember hearing about the “Prey Engine” years ago while the game was in development, and I just assumed they were still using it. The Prey entry at Wikipedia<\/a> explains that they jumped engines a couple of times. It turns out the game had an interesting history. I’m glad it was delayed – their initial design sounded horrible. (The main character was supposed to be named “Talon Brave”. Cringe.) The final game was really worth the wait.<\/p>\n

Flexstyle<\/a> asks, “How gory is it?” I’d have to say: Pretty freakin’ gory. What’s interesting is that for the most part the gore isn’t perpetrated by the player. Sure, you gun down bad guys and they do bleed, but it’s the scenery itself that’s most disturbing. The aliens in the game are harvesting people for food, and so in some parts of the game you’re pretty much exploring an alien meat-packing plant, where humans are meat. Not for the squeamish. <\/p>\n

Several people pointed out that death in the game is fairly painless. I agree that this is one of the major things that keeps this game fun. No reloading. No reflexive auto-saving. No replaying the last five minutes because you took a bad step. When you die, you go to the spirit world for a minute and sort of fight your way back, which is a lot more fun than staring at a loading screen. Yes, it means you’re more or less immortal, but the same is true of any player armed with a save \/ load screen. The player is already unstoppable, it’s just that this way the game is less of a time sink. Note to game developers: More ideas like this, please.<\/p>\n

I’m enjoying the puzzles more than anything else. I’m probably in the minority here, but I think it would be a blast to do the puzzles without the fighting. Not that the fighting is bad, but now I’m finding myself being drawn forward by the desire to get to the next puzzle. Fights are starting to feel like interruptions, instead of the heart of the game. I can’t say that’s ever happened to me in a FPS game before. If you removed all of the combat and made this a game where the player simply explores an alien ship Myst-style, I would really get into it. <\/p>\n

It’s gross! It’s strange! It’s a squirming example of nightmarish alien technology! Actually: It’s a machine gun. It even sounds like a machine gun.<\/td><\/tr>
It’s gross! It’s strange! It’s a squirming example of nightmarish alien technology! Actually: It’s a machine gun. It even sounds like a machine gun.<\/td><\/tr><\/table>Phlux mentions that the weapons feel bland. I have to agree here. What’s interesting is that the weapons look<\/em> like freakish alien organs or strange artifacts. For example, one gun looks like it has an egg-like pod of clear membrane with a writhing creature inside. They really do feel strange and alien, which makes it all the more disappointing when you realize that they are nothing more than the familiar weapon archetypes we’ve been seeing for over a decade: Machine gun, shotgun, rocket launcher, grenades, and improved machine gun. An opportunity was missed here. They could have created something really new and different. <\/p>\n

I don’t feel like I really know what the bad guys look like up close. So much detail goes into crafting these strange monsters, but as a player I only ever see them at a distance or through the haze of combat. Once it’s dead, it vanishes after a few seconds. For the primary foe in the game (the “hunters”) I can’t tell if the oblong shape is their heads, or if they are wearing helmets. Some artist probably spent days crafting that thing in exquisite detail, and I’d love to be able to appreciate their work. Doom fixed this by giving each creature a little 5-second cutscene the first time you meet it, as a way of seeing it up close. This was a great decision and I wish Prey had adopted this idea. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a follow up to various questions and comments on my initial Prey post: The game really does use the Doom lighting system. This is a good thing. It’s like playing Doom3, except I can see stuff.Phlux pointed out in the comments that Prey does indeed use the Doom 3 engine (modified) which explains why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-1176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-prey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}