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Arkane PREY - Arkane's immersive coffee cup transformation sim - now with Mooncrash roguelike mode DLC

Luckmann

Arcane
Zionist Agent
Joined
Jul 20, 2009
Messages
3,759
Location
Scandinavia
Price isn't the issue; the industry is simply too big for its own good.
I dunno, I think that with overall lower prices in general, they'd all sell more to make up for it. It's not that common that people can sink hundreds of dollars into getting games per month. At 60€, I'm extremely hesitant to get anything at all, let alone two or more games.

The issue with lower pricing is that there's a subconscious idea of price = quality. AAA+ games rarely get prices lower, because if they are, they will be assumed to not be AAA+ games. If every major publisher agreed to lower the initial pricepoint of their AAA+ games, this wouldn't be an issue, but they're not going to go for it anytime soon.
 

Paul_cz

Arcane
Joined
Jan 26, 2014
Messages
1,996
Don't look the ending up and try to not get spoiled. I can say that going completely blind into the game probably made a huge difference to me. Even in the beginning I got a proper mindfuck. That said, I can tell you that the ending isn't great. Not because of what it is, but because it exists in the way it does at all. My key criticism of the narrative is probably the ending.

The first time interacting with the Looking Glass technology was fucking superb. Threw a glass into it and went wtf is going on.

I really didn't enjoy the ending. I think that the initial ending, with just a small vid and a quote was well-made and left me melancholic and wanting for more was actually great, once I gave it some thought and I got over the initial "Was that all?". It left you wondering what happened, and wanting for more, to continue.

And then there was the after-credits scene and it just sorta ruined the mysteries and serves as a forced and somewhat awkward cliffhanger that just sorta dumps the facts of what was going on all along in your lap, and makes me worry about the future of the game and it just becoming some weird-ass shooter-style game where you play the not!BadGuys and how things turn out rosy, instead of independent installments taking place in the same universe, or something along those lines. They really shouldn't have put that in there.

Funny, for me it was exactly the opposite.
When the credits started rolling, I was like "holy fuck, this was completely underwhelming and unsatisfying, 30 second cutscene and that's all? Are you fucking kidding me? What was up with those weird quick cut flashbacks during the game?!" Then credits roll with that awesome music so I am starting to feel little better....and then there is this wonderful mindfuck of a scene which explains what those flashbacks were about, and ALSO explains my biggest issue with the game - why the fuck is Morgan silent protagonist? Plus just the awesomeness of the fact that it takes place after Earth has already been invaded/taken over, and the added mysteries of it. It was great. Made me want to replay it actually, although I will wait some time for my memory of it to fade. Would be nice to have some neuromods to remove so I could just erase it from memory :p
 

Paul_cz

Arcane
Joined
Jan 26, 2014
Messages
1,996
Oh and regarding the ending, this is a great article:

https://theindiestone.com/binky/why-the-ending-of-prey-is-magnificent/

But don't read if not finished.


Stop holding these companies up as icons of incline. Especially Eidos Montreal.
Better than the usual shit, yes, but still utterly compromised and borderline mass market.

I do not hold them as "icons" of incline and I agree DX HR/MD had stupid stuff in them (timefreezing takedowns, bad economy, somewhat arbitrary level design, gamey systems in general), but I still enjoyed them lot more than most AAA games. They had great atmosphere, sense of place, I liked the sidequests etc. So eventhough they could have been better and closer to original Deus Ex, it is still a huge shame for me to see them relegated on Marvel mass production.
 

Durandal

Arcane
Joined
May 13, 2015
Messages
2,117
Location
New Eden
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
1 or 2 hours in, I dig it

Somewhat lengthy introduction aside (though I'm sure Dark Messiah would be longer in this respect until you get to the city after the fantasy turret section), there doesn't appear to be any handholding aside from tutorial pop-ups explaining to you how shit works. No quest markers or compass arrows as far as I can see. Visual and sound design (when it isn't imitating terrible Hollywood horror movies) are excellent, but the music is eh

Standard Arkaneisms of leaning, mantling, auto-low crouch and good movement are in place, though sometimes your screen can jerk back and forth at random when trying to lean near walls. Leaning also prevents you from turning horizontally with the mouse unlike in Thief, so that might feel weird to some people.

UI is excellent too, my only gripes being that container contents don't pop up instantly (there's a half second delay but I want to see whether there's anything in it INSTANTLY) and keypads not accepting keyboard number input

The first area after leaving the bedroom is quite spacious, there's a lot of stuff to climb around on but not much to find aside from some trash items, SS was more tight in this regard.

Will check out more tomorrow

Verstuurd vanaf mijn GT-I9301I met Tapatalk
 

Sentinel

Arcane
Joined
Nov 18, 2015
Messages
6,633
Location
Ommadawn
Only one question: How is Chris Avellone 's work in the game? Is it visible? is it great?

You can feel he wrote a good chunk of the audiologs. Some of it is pretty decent like the D&D subplot (although a bit SJW borderline) but I don't think he had anything to do with the main story except some spoken lines.
Yeah you're correct. He merely gave "feedback" for the main story (that's marketing speech for "did absolutely fuck all") and wrote some audio logs.
 
Joined
Apr 19, 2008
Messages
3,059
Location
Brazil
Divinity: Original Sin
No quest markers or compass arrows as far as I can see.

What? I can't deactivate these quest markers and i'm playing on nightmare difficulty. The game has quest-makers. I guess you can deactivate it somehow, but not from options menu.

Anyway...

I'm playing it and i'm 8 hours in... and i just met the weaver chamber and about to enter the GUTS. but i'm a very slow player since i like to explore every nook and cranny in these kind of games, and with all those readables and side missions... I haven't finished dishonored 2 yet because I spend 3-4 hours on each level by doing everything I can in a no powers non lethal perfect play through - it's the average time I take to play thief FM levels. And the "hours" do take its toll and I just quit playing and play something else (but I don't abandon... I just don't have the time to spare as i did some years ago). Anyway, I like dishonored games for what they are. I can't say the same for DX: MD which is boring as hell.

I'm enjoying Prey. I said that dishonored 1 was the closest thief experience we will ever have in modern gaming industry, prey '17 is the closest we will get to a modern day SS2. Level design is the strongest point. And the fact that, like in SS1 and 2, if you drop items in a section you can go back and it will still be there, is enough to make me happy. I remember bioshock previous levels would reset if you went back there, and there was no reason to do so anyway.

Not everything is amazing. Remember when they said Bioshock was SS2 spiritual successor? Well, this is something in between (but I feel it's closer to SS than BS). We have bioshock features here: The psychoscope works like the photographic camera in bioshock 1, and you scan enemies to discover their weaknesses and unlock their powers. Also, I see myself using mostly my wrench against my enemies. Also, I'm playing on nightmare and I think the game is a bit easy. I haven't suffer from lack of resources yet, and to kill my enemies I use the shotgun and mostly my wrench, and I even haven't upgraded my stamina skill... I feel like a psychopath bashing the wrench on everything. It's like the electric plasmid and wrench in bioshock all over again.

I haven't encountered any bugs other than gaming crashing now and then. In any case, I feel i'm still in the beginning of the game. I also like the sections that take place out of the station in 0 G.

Is this game worth the price? no. I wouldn't buy for the price it is sold here in Brazil, but I bought it for half that price on CDkeys. And I don't regret it. People that claim recent arkane games like dishonored 1 and 2 and prey are popamole modern shit, well... Prey nightmare level of difficulty is easier than when I struggled in system shock 2, a game that I had to backtrack to find some scarce bullets. Here, I can recycle everything. If that's the definition of popamole... they're right. But it's not a disaster like Thiaf or bioshock 2. I still think arkane games are the closest thing we will ever have to games of that time, and they get a lot of things right. But games nowadays must be playable with gamepads, so...
 
Last edited:

randir14

Augur
Joined
Mar 15, 2012
Messages
641
What? I can't deactivate these quest markers and i'm playing on nightmare difficulty. The game has quest-makers. I guess you can deactivate it somehow, but not from options menu.

You can turn them off by going into the quest menu and double clicking to make the quests inactive.
 

DemonKing

Arcane
Joined
Dec 5, 2003
Messages
5,958
IGN gave the PC version 4/10 due to bugs wiping out their saves and Gamespot could only manage 6/10.

Bethesda must be behind in their payments...

Even with cdkey discount sites in abundance I can't bring myself to pay top dollar for new release games anymore, given the huge backlog of unfinished games sitting on my PC. Maybe for multiplayer games which live or die by the size of their community it's important to get in early but otherwise it's far easier to wait for the inevitable discounts a month or two down the track.
 

Sentinel

Arcane
Joined
Nov 18, 2015
Messages
6,633
Location
Ommadawn
IGN gave the PC version 4/10 due to bugs wiping out their saves and Gamespot could only manage 6/10.

Bethesda must be behind in their payments...

Even with cdkey discount sites in abundance I can't bring myself to pay top dollar for new release games anymore, given the huge backlog of unfinished games sitting on my PC. Maybe for multiplayer games which live or die by the size of their community it's important to get in early but otherwise it's far easier to wait for the inevitable discounts a month or two down the track.
They're probably massively asshurt that they were denied early review copies and had to compete with competent youtube reviewers for page clicks, so this was their way of getting back at Bethesda.
 

Icewater

Artisanal Shitposting™
Patron
Joined
Jun 12, 2011
Messages
1,952
Location
Freedomland
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2
IGN gave the PC version 4/10 due to bugs wiping out their saves
Just looked it up, haha what the fuck. That's not a fair review. Rating a game shit because of a technical issue that not everyone experiences and could very well be fixed (and actually I literally just downloaded a patch via Steam 10 mins ago that claims to fix it) is what I expect some random dumbass in a user review section to do.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
Man, this game get me conflicted, it has alot of win but is missing so much. System shock 2 for me had three pillars: Level design, survival, atmosphere. Prey does one of them pretty well but I'm missing the other two. I wanna feel like a desperate rat within an oppressive place and feeling "NOPE! NOPE! NOPE!" at each corner, Prey doesn't offer that.
 

Junmarko

† Cristo è Re †
Patron
Joined
Jun 20, 2011
Messages
3,480
Location
Schläfertempel
16 hours in, thoroughly enjoying it - completely taken by surprise on how good it is. It's one big homage to the best Immersive Sims. Can't believe how lukewarm the response for this game has been outside Steam.

Seems to be rooted in this "Alien Bounty Hunter Concept" being scrapped, a concept which was never fully realized outside a CG teaser - nearly seven years ago. That and console gamers seem to hate the fact that it's been designed primarily with PC in mind.

I bought a physical copy (it was cheaper than direct from Steam) and even the dude at the store said they've had refunds from PS4/Xbox gamers who "didn't like it"....says everything.
 

toro

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 14, 2009
Messages
14,029
... snip ...

You are early game. Wait for the first contact with a Technopath or Telepath then you can tell us all how you "wrench-ed" their asses ... on Nightmare ;)

Man, this game get me conflicted, it has alot of win but is missing so much. System shock 2 for me had three pillars: Level design, survival, atmosphere. Prey does one of them pretty well but I'm missing the other two. I wanna feel like a desperate rat within an oppressive place and feeling "NOPE! NOPE! NOPE!" at each corner, Prey doesn't offer that.

Level design is excellent, atmosphere is great and survival is decent. You get resource management, sometimes you are hunted and you have to plan before you enter fights.

You are a desperate rat but the Typhon doesn't give you special attention and because of this you have much more space for exploration. I actually like this.

But I also see your point: the atmosphere is not as oppressive as in SS2. I don't know. Enjoy diversity :)

Maybe you should postpone your run - they are planning to release a Survival Mode dlc. (see video below - posted by Siel)

Interesting interview of Raf and Ricardo talking about development, compromises, references.



Hehe ... told you. The guy has a deal with Bethesda :)
 

Paul_cz

Arcane
Joined
Jan 26, 2014
Messages
1,996
Blows my mind that there are people on the codex (of all places) who don't know how to deactivate the quest markers. It is the first thing I did whenever I got a new mission. Come on
Darth Slaughter.

Later via patch there will be added central option to disable them altogether so it does not have to be done manually each time.

Avellone also wrote some side characters. In the credits, he and Colantonio are credited under "Written by" and then there are about 6 more people in "Additional writing".

The game is written very well.
 

toro

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 14, 2009
Messages
14,029

Gord

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2011
Messages
7,049
Seems to be rooted in this "Alien Bounty Hunter Concept" being scrapped, a concept which was never fully realized outside a CG teaser - nearly seven years ago. That and console gamers seem to hate the fact that it's been designed primarily with PC in mind.

That might be mainly because this game ("Prey") has nothing to do with that other game ("Prey 2") anymore. AFAIK, it's a complete reboot after the first attempt got scrapped and the old team let go.
 

V_K

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2013
Messages
7,714
Location
at a Nowhere near you
We have bioshock features here: The psychoscope works like the photographic camera in bioshock 1, and you scan enemies to discover their weaknesses and unlock their powers
Didn't SS2 have a similar mechanic where you researched enemy body parts to get new implants?
 

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