Prey

PostRe: Prey by **Jenuall** » Wed Jul 20, 2022 12:35 pm

Ah the Boltcaster :wub:

The game does a pretty good job overall of reacting to actions you might take which might be out of sequence with the "intended" approach, of course there's only so much it can account for, but it's nice when it happens!

Love the Arboretum, a nice combination of open and cramped spaces

PostRe: Prey by **OrangeRKN** » Wed Jul 20, 2022 11:28 pm

Arboretum:

My current main mission task is still to go to Deep Storage through the Arboretum, but as there are other places I can get to I've been exploring:

My first encounter with a Nightmare:

The Bridge:

Also shout out to the fully upgraded stun gun. Just casually one shotting corrupted operators from halfway across a room, and it is also proving very useful in dealing with poltergeists - just hit them with the stun then shotgun to finish them off!

PostRe: Prey by **Ploiper** » Thu Jul 21, 2022 10:38 am

i really want to play this game again at some point, i loved just exploring the game world, loves a good space colony setting.

PostRe: Prey by **OrangeRKN** » Sun Jul 24, 2022 11:12 pm

I finished it today. Fantastic game! :datass:

twitter.com/orangerakoonps4/status/1551236046716903424

I apparently got the "most empathetic" ending for my choices, along with the trophy for not killing any humans. I was happy with that! I'm not sure what's going on with the 17 saved stat as when I reached the shuttle it told me I had 25 people in the cargo hold plus 5 up front.

So yeah I destroyed the station and escaped on the shuttle with Mikhaila, Elazar and Igwe. I've looked it up and apparently the spare seat was for Alex - I did save him in the Arboretum but I progressed the experimental nullwave ending right up until the end before I made up my mind to self-destruct, so January knocked Alex out on the Bridge and I guess that stopped him from escaping too.

I liked the final twist - despite none of it being real it managed to avoid rendering it all pointless as the whole point was the choices you would make. It was great having all of the operator-characters sing my praises!

I got a semi-serious bug near the end - I saved everyone in the cargo bay by reconnecting the air supply, but they apparently moved to the air filtration area in life support after that anyway (looking it up, apparently they shouldn't have?). I went down there to finish the quest with the wedding ring, but as soon as I entered life support it updated as failed and I found the character's body, along with several others, leading up to where Elazar and the others had moved into air filtration. But then I went down to the cargo bay - and not only were there characters still there, the characters who I had just found the dead bodies of in Life Support were still alive and well down there! I found the guy for the quest, and it updated and completed despite having already been failed. So I definitely messed up the flags there somehow and ended up with a bit of a paradox, but oh well!

Killing the Cook was very satisfying. I knew he wasn't who he said he was as there were several clues/tells, but I didn't preempt him despite that as I didn't want to attack him without sure reason so still got locked in the freezer with him laying traps around the station. I thought it was building up to some big confrontation with him using neuromod powers as a boss or something so tracking him down to an escape pod and just taking him out in a single shot was surprisingly underwhelming!

It was a similar story with Dahl - I opened the door into the air filtration room with no idea he was in there, and just immediately laid him out with the disruptor. Him having advanced combat neuromods had been explicitly set up so again I was surprised and underwhelmed I didn't actually have to fight him. I guess I went through the game expecting there to be bosses and there never were, but yeah that wasn't really a problem.

The only plot point I was expecting to get a follow up on at the end was the shuttle I blew up before it reached Earth. Obviously the ending means it wasn't important outside of being a choice I made, but I was surprised it didn't get mentioned at the end when they were talking through what I'd done.

All said it is now my favourite Arkane game and I've started a new playthrough already!

PostRe: Prey by **Squinty** » Mon Jul 25, 2022 7:12 am

Aye, this game is fantastic. Loved it even more on my second playthrough with typhoon powers.

I have Mooncrash as well. I should play it.

PostRe: Prey by **Jenuall** » Mon Jul 25, 2022 9:11 am

Nice work OR!

Glad you enjoyed your time with it, I'd rate it as my favourite Arkane game as well :toot:

It's definitely a game that gives you more on extra play throughs as well - taking on new powers and trying new approaches is always enjoyable, plus the option to ramp up the challenge and turn on some of the survival modes helps keep things fresh as well!

Mooncrash is definitely worth a play, it's kind of a proto-Deathloop but without quite as much of a narrative hook

PostRe: Prey by **OrangeRKN** » Mon Jul 25, 2022 10:11 am

Reading this thread through from the start is a wild ride. Some of the opinions I'm wondering if we played the same game :lol:

I never found any part particularly difficult on Normal. I would reload often to beat encounters in a more satisfying way, and that will have contributed to my overabundance of resources. I think I finished the game with ~50 medkits, ~50 suit repair kits, ~50 drink cans, ~250 pistol ammo, 1000+ ammo for disruptor, gloo and Q-beam, ~20 of every grenade (I would recycle more for the inventory space). I was always crafting more shotgun ammo as it was my main weapon so I'd vary between 30-80 on my at any time. I also never encountered an enemy that I lacked the capacity to take on. It's odd to imagine running away and hiding from a Nightmare when I would just nullwave them and tear through them with a shotgun!

That said though I seem to have taken almost double the playtime of some people so I suspect I was overpowered because of methodical exploration and hoarding.

PostRe: Prey by **Jenuall** » Mon Jul 25, 2022 10:28 am

Yeah I re-read the start of this thread a few days ago and had to sit down for 5 minutes to recover from the sheer abundance of wrongability! :lol:

I do think the early stage of the game can provide a reasonable challenge if you go about things in too haphazard a fashion - wasting pistol rounds on mimics, not finding the shotgun for a while, not exploring much to find additional resources or ways to avoid/get a drop on enemies etc. Basically my key advice remains: don't play it like an FPS!

And yeah, if you really explore then you can become very strong and have loads of resources (if you know what you're doing you can actually get hold of a ridiculous number of neuromods really quickly!) which is one of the reasons why I like playing on higher difficulty with things like weapon degradation and trauma's turned on as it helps to re-balance the situation against you a bit more! That said, I like that it rewards you for exploring and being methodical - feels like you earn the advantage it gives you

PostRe: Prey by **OrangeRKN** » Mon Jul 25, 2022 10:46 am

The pistol is genuinely rubbish so I do feel for anyone who didn't pick up the shotgun and had that as their first real weapon. I only really used it for shooting hidden regular mimics and cystoids/cystoid nests (I never did find a properly efficient/reliable way of killing cystoids).

I've started a new game on hard with all the survival options and my aim is to escape without installing a single neuromod and then to reload and only install typhon mods. That means I have no way of repairing weapons, so they are all limited use and I've got to treat upgrade kits as temporary and only slight upgrades on base weapons. I'm about to enter psychotronics so it's going fine (and very quickly) this time.

I'm already thinking about doing a pacifist run - once you know what to do I reckon it should be pretty easy to just run past everything, with an occasional nullwave grenade just to clear the way.

PostRe: Prey by **Jenuall** » Mon Jul 25, 2022 11:03 am

I actually make quite a lot of use of the pistol - fully upgraded and combined with stealth bonus damage you can take things out pretty efficienty! The golden pistol is even more effective - I think there's still a bug with the way the stats for it are shown that makes it look not much better than the regular pistol, but it's actually quite a lot more powerful

As for cystoids, there are quite a few ways to deal with them, my favourite is recognising that they are attracted to movement: throw gooseberry fool near them and they will jump on it and suicide themselves thinking it's something they need to kill! :toot:

PostRe: Prey by **LewisD** » Mon Jul 25, 2022 12:23 pm

OrangeRKN wrote:The pistol is genuinely rubbish so I do feel for anyone who didn't pick up the shotgun and had that as their first real weapon.

Didn't get it for aaaaaaages - somehow!

PostRe: Prey by **OrangeRKN** » Mon Jul 25, 2022 12:47 pm

Maybe I should try a run without the shotgun aka the LewisD run

Jenuall wrote:I actually make quite a lot of use of the pistol - fully upgraded and combined with stealth bonus damage you can take things out pretty efficienty! The golden pistol is even more effective - I think there's still a bug with the way the stats for it are shown that makes it look not much better than the regular pistol, but it's actually quite a lot more powerful

I was confused for a little while as the regular pistol was actually showing better stats than the golden pistol! Next time I loaded the game it then changed but the golden pistol did only show as having like 19 damage instead of 16, so it didn't seem much better.

Good tip on the cystoids too, I never realised that!

PostRe: Prey by **Jenuall** » Tue Jan 02, 2024 11:53 pm

Great article from Edge on why Prey is amazing:

A sci-fi classic that's only gotten better over time

System Shock may have been beloved by those in the know, but according to Looking Glass founder Paul Neurath it ultimately resulted in a net financial loss for the studio. In this sense, Prey followed its inspiration with nigh-poetic symmetry. The only hope is that great game design eventually wins out and word spreads, just as System Shock's legacy has grown over the decades. And here there is a more optimistic parallel to be found: as the years pass and the red shifts, Prey's star only ever shines brighter.

Everyone who hasn't already: go play Prey!

Everyone who has: go play Prey again! :nod:

PostRe: Prey by **jawa_** » Wed Jan 03, 2024 12:00 am

Jenu-All I Want For Christmas wrote:...Everyone who hasn't already: go play Prey!...

I have the game - and the supposedly decent DLC! - but I've yet to play it. I like the idea of it and I shall try it out sometime, though, Jen!

PostRe: Prey by **ITSMILNER** » Wed Jan 03, 2024 9:05 am

Got this and the Dishonored games on Steam Deck, will finally get round to playing them at some point as I only ever hear good things

PostRe: Prey by **FatDaz** » Wed Jan 03, 2024 11:24 am

ITSMILNER wrote:Got this and the Dishonored games on Steam Deck, will finally get round to playing them at some point as I only ever hear good things

Me too. I got Prey free on epic games but I really don’t like that storefront so I never played beyond an hour or so and didn’t give it a fair chance. On steam deck I feel it will get more of a chance. And I have loved both dishonored games and deathloop so fingers crossed it clicks this time.

PostRe: Prey by **Zilnad** » Wed Jan 03, 2024 1:19 pm

I played it for the first time last year and it really is fantastic. I didn't really dabble with the wilder upgrades so there's plenty of room for a second play one day.

PostRe: Prey by **Jenuall** » Wed Jan 03, 2024 1:21 pm

Fresh meat! :toot:

Stock advice remains the same:

- Don't treat it like an FPS! Combat is a valid option, but in the early phase you're often weaker than the enemies around you so going in guns blazing isn't always the best option. Avoiding enemies, turning the environment against them, finding ways to get the drop on them etc. all of these are part of your toolset!

- Exploration and curiosity are your friends! There is often more than one way to skin a cat. Look for alternative approaches, other ways to get places or manipulate the environment to your benefit, or just ways to avoid enemies. If nothing else you can find plenty of useful resources by poking your nose into places!

- Tools not weapons! Pretty much every piece of equipment in the game has multiple uses and ways it can be used to your advantage. Experiment with things, see what reactions you get from enemies and the environment!

- Forge your own path! The game has a pretty solid critical path to follow but there's plenty fun to be had and advantage to be gained by going places that the objectives haven't necessarily told you to yet - break free from the shackles of the objective marker (turn it off unless you really need it would be my advice!) and take in all that the Talos station has to offer on your own terms! :toot:

PostRe: Prey by **jawa_** » Wed Jan 03, 2024 1:22 pm

...it kinda feels like you've set off a wave of enthusiasm for playing Prey, Jenuall!

PostRe: Prey by **ITSMILNER** » Wed Jan 03, 2024 1:26 pm

Is it better to play Dishonored first? I know the games are not related other than they are both by Arkane but is there a clear evolution of gameplay style if you started with Dishonored first? Or are they completely different that it wouldn’t matter.

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