{"id":53276,"date":"2021-11-25T06:00:20","date_gmt":"2021-11-25T11:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=53276"},"modified":"2021-11-25T03:08:08","modified_gmt":"2021-11-25T08:08:08","slug":"prey-2017-part-20-judgement-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=53276","title":{"rendered":"Prey 2017 Part 20: Judgement Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

This reveal creates an extra layer of possible confusion, because we now have an overabundance of characters named “Morgan”.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The original person that worked on Talos-1 and studied the Typhon.<\/li>\n
  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.<\/li>\n
  3. The virtual person recreated from the memories of #2. This is the version of the character that was controlled by the player.<\/li>\n
  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.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    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.<\/p>\n

    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.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    The Judges<\/h3>\n

    Come on guys, each of you should have a different color. Haven't you ever seen TMNT?<\/div>
    Come on guys, each of you should have a different color. Haven't you ever seen TMNT?<\/div>
    \nAlex is the only apparent human around. With him are four operator robots representing your fanboy Igwe, anti-fan Danielle Sho, ex-girlfriend Mikhaila, and security Chief Elazar. After Alex explains the premise of this sudden post-credits reveal, the robots each take a turn commenting on how you behaved in the game.<\/p>\n

    Normally I'd be flattered that someone was a fan of my work, but since a lot of my work involved murdering people for science, this is kind of weird.<\/div>
    Normally I'd be flattered that someone was a fan of my work, but since a lot of my work involved murdering people for science, this is kind of weird.<\/div>
    \nDayo Igwe looks at how empathetic you were. Did the mirror neurons take? Did you show any sort of empathy for the people you met?<\/p>\n

    More than you, Igwe. In the simulation, your interactions with Mikhaila and your casual dismissal of what happened to her father make me think that your dumb ass should be strapped in this chair, getting a booster shot of mirror neurons. You dick.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    No problem. I was on my way to get a handful of neuromods and your meds were right there.<\/div>
    No problem. I was on my way to get a handful of neuromods and your meds were right there.<\/div>
    \nMikhaila Ilyushin just looks at how you treated her within the simulation. She seems to assume that if you saved her life, you’re a really good person, or you were really into her.<\/p>\n

    Not really, lady. It’s just that qualified reactor technicians were in kinda short supply at that point and I thought those skills might be important. Get over yourself. I can’t even remember if we banged.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Nice pose, Chief. Very natural. That's exactly how I stand when I'm having a conversation with someone.<\/div>
    Nice pose, Chief. Very natural. That's exactly how I stand when I'm having a conversation with someone.<\/div>
    \nSarah Elazar wants to see you kill a ton of Typhon in the simulation. She assumes that if you killed a lot of them, then you must be a good egg. I don’t know how she reacts if you don’t. For me, Typhon were full of exotic material, which was the key to more neuromods. I’ve watched a lot of ending compilations on YouTube, and I’ve never seen one where she expresses disappointment that you didn’t kill enough Typhon.<\/p>\n

    I appreciate the vote of confidence chief, but I killed the Typhon because they made me stronger, not because I’m driven by some fanatical anti-Typhon hatred.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    How's it going, Danielle? Breathing hard, or hardly breathing?<\/div>
    How's it going, Danielle? Breathing hard, or hardly breathing?<\/div>
    \nAnd finally, Alex asks Danielle Sho what she thinks. For some reason. Danielle Sho’s bot is most concerned with how you treated Volunteer 37, the fake cook we met back in part 9<\/a>. Did you avenge the deaths of the people he murdered by killing him? If so, she assumes you did so out of a sense of justice.<\/p>\n

    Not really, Danielle. I killed him more for revenge than justice. But I suppose revenge would still qualify me as human. I’m willing to bet the Typhon can’t develop hatred and grudges for the same reason they can’t develop empathy and compassion. So I guess you came to the right conclusion, even if you got there with faulty reasoning.<\/p>\n

    Whatever. At least I didn’t sit outside and hold my breath pouting. You goof. There’s no reason you couldn’t have gone in and dispensed a little space-justice yourself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    When the robots have passed judgement, Alex shrugs and – even if the robots all think you acted like a lousy human being – shakes your hand. At this point you have one final choice to embrace him as a fellow human, or to kill them all.<\/p>\n

    Choice and Consequences<\/h3>\n

    Depicting cascading consequences as a result of player action is hard, so we're doing it via voiceover at the very end.<\/div>
    Depicting cascading consequences as a result of player action is hard, so we're doing it via voiceover at the very end.<\/div><\/p>\n

    On one hand, I love the idea of the game spending the last couple of minutes commenting on \/ reacting to your behavior. This gives us the sensation that “choices matter<\/a>” that players always seem to crave, but without creating the endless fractal branching that makes development impossible.<\/p>\n

    This is similar to how the original Fallout worked, where the game explained how your actions impacted the communities you visited, but without the developers needing to manually depict all of those possible outcomes. It’s a lot easier to write an alternate paragraph than to build an alternate version of the world. In theory, this is a great way to respond to player behavior without breaking the budget.<\/p>\n

    My problem is that these judges don’t actually have the information required to make their judgements. In Fallout, the game wasn’t attempting to pass judgement on you in a moral sense. It didn’t need to care why<\/b> you did anything, because it was simply reacting to the concrete things you did. You killed the sheriff of this town. It doesn’t matter if you killed him for sport, or because you thought he was a bad leader, or if you did it for resources because your only real loyalty was to the people in your home vault, or if you killed him in a friendly-fire accident by trusting that maniac Ian<\/a> with an SMG. Your reasoning doesn’t matter, because the game is just telling you what happened to the world once the guy was dead.<\/i><\/p>\n

    But this is not the case in Prey. This entire ordeal was an experiment on the part of Alex and these robots. Up until the closing credits, the stakes of the story have been about saving lives. The stakes began with the personal, and our concerns gradually expanded as the story progressed…<\/p>\n