Prey 2 Message Board older than one year ago

At a glance Prey 2 is quite a bit different than its predecessor. It's still a first-person shooter, but stars a new protagonist, Killian Samuels, is set in a vastly different environments and is structured in a new way. Instead of a linear corridor shooter through the gurgling corridors of an alien ship, the sequel is set in open-world style environments across urban alien sprawls on a planet called Exodus...

Yes, it’s that oldest of all the jokes. But I’m afraid a screenshot of Tommy’s actual back is all we’re getting from Human Head today. Given exactly thirty-two in every five hundred and twenty-eight people on the internet were vocally distressed to discover that Prey 2 would be ditching the first game’s Native American protagonist Tommy in favour of a white soldierdude named Killian Samuels, you’d have thought the first unveiling of Tommy’s NPC appearance in Prey 2 would have a little more hullabaloo. But no, just his back. And a bit of his nose, admittedly. Will he be purely a talky character, or will you fight alongside him somehow? I don’t know these things. I’m sorry. Look, I’ve got this picture of his back, and that’s all. Stop looking at me like that.

So there you go. There’s the picture. That’s my story. We’ll always remember this moment.

If there's a single takeaway from these new screens of Prey 2 straight outta Quakecon, it's that, man, where we live sucks. These screens are chock full of aliens and flamethrowers and exciting extraterrestrial-type stuff. Where are our holographic dancers?

Quakecon has come and gone, gibs have been aged, the Great Lord Carmack hath spoken, and yet again nothing was mentioned about Doom 4. But what have appeared are Bethesday-based screenshots. There’s no point in reposting the Rage pics, as they’re all the same ones we had a week ago for our hands on, so you can see them there. But below there are the latest batch from Prey 2.

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Bethesda has released a new developer commentary video discussing the two live-action trailers for Prey 2. The video does a good job of explaining Human Head's inspirations for Prey 2 and exactly how it ties into the original Prey. Another video, discussing Prey 2's CG trailer, is coming soon.

#theydontadvertiseforkillersinthenewspaper Prey 2 had me at intergalactic bounty hunter. More »

Get the details on how you'll be hunting bounties even in your free time in this E3 2011 Interview with Chief Creative Officer Jim Sumwalt!

#watchthis No cinematic trailers or target footage here. Just a guy playing Prey 2 so you know what it actually looks like. More »

#womengocrazy I haven't done a faster turnaround on a game than I did with Prey 2 the other day. Granted, that was for a cinematic trailer, so let's see how well my excitement holds up looking at something a little more practical. More »

When Bethesda showed a smattering of its upcoming games, Prey 2 got a lot of buzz. A first-person shooter that's ditching just about everything folks remember from the original, Prey 2 tosses you on an alien planet and casts you as U.S. Marshall Killian Samuels. You're a bounty hunter, the world's o...

Mercy, this E3 is turning out to be a generous one. Next up we’ve finally got some in-game footage of alien bounty hunting sim Prey 2. It turns out that the excellent CG trailer we saw last week was actually hugely faithful to the game proper, and not at all the flight of fancy it could have been.

The following footage also solves the mystery of why this radically different sequel even bears the Prey name. Because it explores both sides of the predatory/prey relationship, of course! Oh, game developers. Never change.(more…)

Bounty-hunting gameplay walked through with Chris Rhinehart and Geoff Keighley as part of our E3 2011 All Access Live coverage.

The latest teaser for Prey 2 certainly does the job it's intended to do: get us pumped for a game we've only seen in teasers and screenshots. It does this mostly through its use of Johnny Cash's cover of Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage." Perhaps we'd feel duped if it weren't such a thrilling clip.

Bounty hunting gets more complicated when teleporting enters the equation.

#unexpected Until today, I could never see the point in a sequel to Prey, a game with a few neat ideas but nothing apart from assholes on the wall to really help it stand out. I now stand corrected. There is definitely a point. More »

Throughout May, IGN is taking a look at games set to appear at E3 2011, from June 6-9. We'll let you know what to expect and what we hope to learn about these games at this year's show. Will we see Gears of War 3's single player? Will Sonic Generations be... good? We'll answer as best we can amids...

So we know the broader picture of Prey 2 – a sandbox ‘alien noir’ world, with you as a bounty hunter taking on contracts – and how it’s a far cry from the first game, but what about the details? Let’s ask Prey 2 developer Human Head’s project lead Chris Reinhart and chief creative officer Jim Sumwalt for a closer look at just how the missions, the morality and the money-making works – as well as why they decided to leave the first game’s play style behind, why the themes are similar even if the lead character is not, and why the hell he’s called ‘Killian Samuels…’(more…)

There was a collective feeling of "er, why?" when Activision announced True Crime, a series no one held much nostalgia for since it disappeared, was getting a reboot. Perhaps, like Bethesda's decision to move forward with Prey 2, the company simply felt better with a brand, no matter its previous reputation.

Then, after years of development at United Front Games and several notable delays, Activision canceled True Crime Hong Kong in early February. Gamers weren't the only ones caught off guard; at the time, I was senior editor for EGMi and we'd just ran a digital cover story on the game, where we'd sent a writer to Canada to talk with the development team. The cover story was published and only weeks later, Activision decides to cancel the game. The official website for the game is still up, as though it still lives on.

I've run two stories so far based on two internal Activision memos that were passed to me. Both memos were released to employees not long after the announcement became public. I wasn't sure if enough people cared about True Crime Hong Kong to even run a third and final piece, but the surprisingly honest comments from one of the executives involved in the cancellation struck me as worthy of sharing.

 The latest True Crime would have taken the series from Los Angeles to Hong Kong.
"We are ceasing production on True Crime: Hong Kong," explained COO Thomas Tippl. "While we believe that True Crime would have been a good game, we do not believe that it would have ranked as a top title in the competitive open world genre. Unfortunately, despite significant investment, True Crime was not on track to compete at the highest levels. Given the market dynamics described above, where only the very best titles succeed, we decided to stop development and allow the organization to focus on the many opportunities which lie ahead of us and require our full attention in 2011."

There was a small Internet campaign to save the game and rumors other publishers were looking at picking it up but nothing materialized. And while the official website has not been updated to reflect the cancellation (one would hope GameStop is no longer accepting pre-orders!), the developers at United Front Games, also responsible for Sony's ModNation Racers, did try to explain what happened:

 "We are sorry we did not get a chance to complete this project with Activision, but we understand why.  We are both committed to doing quality games and nothing less.  Maybe we will have a chance to work together in the future, but in the meantime we are setting our creative sights on a different horizon.  You can keep up with the latest developments at UFG here on our site."

Tippl's not the reason I wanted to publish this. His comments are expected boilerplate regarding the cancelation of a high-profile game--significant investment, market dynamics, competitive genre. Yada.

Let's instead turn to Eric Hirshberg, the CEO of Activision Publishing. 

"On my second day at the company, I stood up and said that we want to focus this organization around creative excellence," said Hirshberg. "The decision to stop production on True Crime is based solely on that focus."

 True Crime was to a feature a dynamic combat system that would allowed extreme acrobatics. Within the memos, Hirshberg's comments seem more human, less corporate number crunching. He was also the executive saying Activision deserved more credit for its work on innovation.

"As many of you on the team know, I have a lot of heart for this game," he added. "And there are many great things about it. Stopping now is a hard pill to swallow, because a lot of blood, sweat and tears have gone into getting the game this far. However, after two pushed deadlines and a huge increase in the original production budget, we needed to take a clear-eyed look at the reality of this game’s potential."

The current evidence suggests that development was still going until the moment of cancellation. Perhaps Activision was faced with the decision of more delays and a continually expanding budget or cutting their losses and moving on. No doubt, Activision skeptics will take issue with the phrasing of "our most optimistic internal projects" (read: sales numbers), but since no one's played the game, who's to say?

"Even our most optimistic internal projections showed that True Crime Hong Kong was not going to be at or near the top of the competitive open world genre," concluded Hirshberg. "In an industry where only the best games in each category are flourishing, and for a game with a budget of this size, to be blunt, it just wasn’t going to be good enough."

Until next time, True Crime.

Find out what changes are coming to the second installment of Prey in this interview with the Project Lead Chris Rhinehart!

Prey 2 drew a lot of quick comparisons to games like Mirror's Edge and Mass Effect following Human Head's gameplay presentation at Bethesda's "BFG 2011" media event last week. Afterwards, I talked with Human Head co-founder Jim Sumwalt, creative director of Prey 2, about another big influence on the game -- film noir.

Set in a futuristic, hyper-vertical alien city, Prey 2 features some essential nods to the kind of classic Hollywood film noir that was inspired by German Expressionism. "The obvious is the use of light to create dramatic, long shadows," Sumwalt pointed out. "There's a really awesome use of color and reflective surfaces and distorted images." He cited newer neo-noir films, such as Sin City, as the inspiration for Prey 2's use of shadows. In an alien city, with a confused protagonist (he's got amnesia!), this effect almost guarantees a frantic, stressful tone, which is exactly what Sumwalt and company hope to achieve.

Prey 2 raised eyebrows at Bethesda's "BFG 2011" media event last week for its almost total lack of resemblance to the original game. Following the gameplay presentation, I picked the brain of associate producer Matt Bisenius to find out more about this startling sequel.

Because Prey 2 is such a clear departure from the first game, I wondered if the developers at Human Head were trying to fix some perceived problems. "We didn't look at Prey 1 and pick out mistakes as much as look at it and pick out the core themes of Prey," Bisenius clarified. "So we kept the alien abduction, 'Keepers' as the main race, one man versus many aliens, and then the predator/prey relationship."

He made it clear that Prey 2's new direction is not an effort to address any flaws in Prey 1, but instead reflects the natural progression of the overarching Prey story. Whereas the first game was contained within The Sphere, an organic ship that sustained itself on species from across the galaxy, Prey 2 will open players up to the franchise's universe at-large, which, in a way, revolves around the still-mysterious Sphere.

#askance Prey 2, as we expected, will be a very different sort of game then the original. Gone is the conflicted Native American hero. Gone too is the linear gameplay of the original. More »

Prey 2 is so radically different from the first game in terms of look, gameplay and feel that it should really be approached with entirely different expectations. Though the universe may be the same and is set to include an appearance from Prey's former protagonist, Tommy, this isn't the straightforward sequel you may have expected from Human Head Studios.

The hands-off demonstration at Bethesda's BFG 2011 event emerged from a downed airplane on an alien world. From there, you -- playing as US Air Marshall Killian Samuels -- begin a frantic battle with strange aliens amid the wreckage of his plane, using only your standard issue pistol. After you're knocked out by one of the aliens, the preview jumps forward a few years to a point where Killian is a talented bounty hunter in an open, alien city. In an interesting turn of events, neither you nor Killian have any idea of what transpired during the interim. Killian is aware of his profession and has retained his skills, but beyond that it's up to you to piece together the missing years.

I’m very suprised. Good surprised, not bad surprised. Prey is not a game I feel anything about, to be completely honest. I know it has its fans, but for me it remains part of that mass of id Tech 4-based stodgy shooters which went heavy on bio-mechanical corridor-pounding gloss at the expense of play I found truly engaging, despite early-game experiments with big ideas. Prey 2? More corridors, more textbook murderous aliens, more blamblamblam, no thank you ma’am.

Except it’s not. I was not expecting a game where you spend a significant time without a gun taking up half your screen. I was not expecting an open-world game, inspired more by the likes of Red Dead Redemption and STALKER than by Quake and Call of Duty. I was not expecting a game where your interaction with funny-headed aliens is as much about making moral judgements as it is shooting them. I’m surprised.(more…)

Go ahead and throw pretty much everything you know about Prey off a roof. Human Head's sequel is a significant departure from the original. It stars a different protagonist, U.S. Marshall Killian Samuels instead of the first game's Tommy, and completely does away with the portals, resurrection mini-...

#screenshot Here it is, your first colorful look at the bustling alien world of Prey 2—that is, if you haven't already seen previews of the game in OXM, PlayStation The Official Magazine or any of the other print mags with a peek at Human Head and Bethesda's very different sequel. More »

Believe it or not, it's possible to make judgments too quickly. For example, the last time we wrote about Prey 2 we were dismissing it for excluding the gameplay elements that distinguished the first game.

Now, with the debut concept art and screenshot of the game ... well, we honestly don't know what we're looking at any more. Check out at this neon-drenched alien city. It's crazy, right? And why's this guy dressed like David Carradine in Kill Bill?

Okay, so we're holding out hope for you, Prey 2. But you take the vaguely vaginal doors away from us and we walk.

Yeah, not much in the way of news this, but I suppose I’ll grudgingly report it. A Prey 2 screenshot has been revealed by Bethesda. It reveals some kind of alien bar, and is entitled “marketplace�. You can see it above and click on it for full size. I suppose it’s more like an in-engine image, rather than a screenshot in any “here’s how it will actually look as you play� way. I mean it’s not a great image, for an early image, is it? But anyway, I am grumpy and I need more tea. There’s also a concept art image, which you can see over on BethBlog.