[Hendricks266]

deuxsonic, on 17 August 2016 - 08:02 PM, said:

It's taking a game franchise people are familiar with and marrying it to a totally different IP.

It worked for Quake.

[TheZombieKiller]

Hendricks266, on 17 August 2016 - 08:07 PM, said:

It worked for Quake.

As much as I absolutely despise the tone shift from Quake 1 to Quake 2 (and beyond), the second "Quake", if you can call it that, at least played similarly to the first game. In the case of Prey here, it looks nothing like the first game.

[deuxsonic]

The thing is id wanted to name it something else, but the names they were looking for had already been taken, so they ended up calling it Quake II. Technologically, it's not as huge a leap between games: Quake II looks and plays like a souped up version of what Quake used, which is what it is, despite some large changes under the hood like a switch to client-server for everything, hardware acceleration, and ditching QuakeC for DLLs that allowed the release of an SDK to build new DLLs for new gameplay written in normal C, perhaps not as easy to do, but far more flexible than what QuakeC or HexenC (Hexen II's superset of QuakeC) could do. They also had a habit of naming games more along the lines of technology than what would have made most sense: Quake III (different universe again, just happened to have characters from their past games, third iteration of Quake technology, a bigger jump than from I to II which is reflected in the numbering of the engines, idTech 2 vs idTech 3) and DOOM 3 (a reboot but the third DOOM game that id made) are examples of this. What Bethesda did with Prey is throwing away all the already-established stuff on what Prey is and saying a completely different game with completely different technology that looks and plays nothing like Prey is indeed Prey. With Prey 2 they at least had Tommy in the game, even though it disappointed many that he wasn't the protagonist, something else that can be blamed on Bethesda. New Coke was obviously different than classic Coke, but it wasn't as different as Sprite is to Coke. If I made a lemon-lime soda and put the name Coke on it, you'd go "what the fuck?"

[Richard Shead]

Sorry if someone else has already asked or mentioned this, but has a game franchise ever been rebooted after just one entry? It's kinda weird. Prey(2006), and then Prey(2017). Nothing in between.

[DukeNukem64]

Duke Rocks, on 17 August 2016 - 11:05 PM, said:

Sorry if someone else has already asked or mentioned this, but has a game franchise ever been rebooted after just one entry? It's kinda weird. Prey(2006), and then Prey(2017). Nothing in between.

Correct me if i'm wrong: shadow warrior?

[Micky C]

yeah shadow warrior. Definitely not many of them though.

The thing with Shadow Warrior though is that it was a nearly 20 year old game when SW 2013 came along. Completely different level of technology. Prey still looks and plays like a modern game.

It's not like movies, where they're more or less forced to reboot after a period of time due to requiring a younger cast. Unless you do something like James Bond of course.

The other difference with Shadow Warrior is that they never tried to make a sequel. Prey of course had something in the works for quite a while.

[Daedolon]

So, I lost all my interest for this game after watching that gameplay video.

[MusicallyInspired]

I never had interest to begin with. Not only do I resent the blatant disrespect for the franchise (not to mention the Prey 2 fiasco), but nothing in the video grabbed me at all. Seems incredibly generic.

Also, I just noticed that the original Prey is no longer on the Steam store. How long as that been gone?

[Daedolon]

It's been gone for several years. You have to hunt down a new copy somewhere.

[MusicallyInspired]

I have a copy already. Redeemed an old used retail key years back from a GameStop. Just sad to see it's not acquireable anymore. Though it doesn't make sense to put it up there now anyway as two games with the same name would be confusing. ActiVision also removed the King's Quest Collection in favour of their new episodic King's Quest reboot. They have a store item for a bundle of all the episodes called King's Quest The Complete Collection which would only confuse people. Hate that. Not everybody is that stupid. And Steam has refunds now if you buy the wrong product. Anyway...

[Daedolon]

Yeah I was looking at eBay and such and noticed the game goes between 20 to 50 €, which is crazy. Looked around a bit and found one in my country for 5€, so now I can finally play the game proper again.

[deuxsonic]

Totally floored about rolling mug gameplay.

I bought the collector's edition when the game originally came out. The cliffhanger after the credits never being answered still vexes me.

[MusicallyInspired]

I still have yet to beat it actually. The cliffhanger makes me curious.

[deuxsonic]

Since you can't actually die, even on Cherokee skill it's easy.

[MusicallyInspired]

I know. I just stopped playing. Not because it was hard.

[Mr. Tibbs]

Video from HyperBitHero: Lost in Concept - Prey 2 and a Hostile Acquisition Gone Wrong

[Malgon]

It just occurred to me that it will be a missed opportunity if the inevitable collector's edition doesn't come with a coffee mug.

[HulkNukem]

With how collector's editions have been lately for AAA games, it will likely only contain the mug itself, an art book, and a sticker or two.
$149.99

[Mr. Tibbs]

GamePressure Preview:

Quote

It is nice that the developers decided not to create a fully open environment – each location can be freely revisited, but they are separated with loading screens, allowing the devs to focus more attention on smaller, individual sections.

[Micky C]

Mr. Tibbs, on 19 August 2016 - 12:39 PM, said:

Video from HyperBitHero: Lost in Concept - Prey 2 and a Hostile Acquisition Gone Wrong
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=OKw_VUuZjCE

Wow, I had no idea there was gameplay footage out. The game looks awesome and way ahead of its time.

[Daedolon]

There's several hours of gameplay footage available.

[X-Vector]

I don't get a System Shock vibe from the current Prey at all, the SS2 music doesn't gel with it and if anything feels like a more appropriate companion to Human Head's work.

Micky C, on 22 August 2016 - 01:27 PM, said:

Wow, I had no idea there was gameplay footage out. The game looks awesome and way ahead of its time.

Blade Runner/Mega-City One/Nar Shaddaa style worlds are endlessly fascinating, but I wonder how long it would take for HH's game to become stale.
There doen't seem much more to do than bounty hunting and I don't see any interactivity with the environment or non-hostile NPCs.
On top of that, the id engine 4 based visuals show a severe lack of variety with everything seemingly consisting of dark grey metal doused in uniform coloured lighting, resulting in an oppressive lack of natural diversity and richness reminiscent of Doom 3, Prey and Hard Reset.

[deuxsonic]

People complained about the SS2 soundtrack not fitting with the game so I don't know if that's a good thing to use as a metric.

[Micky C]

X-Vector, on 23 August 2016 - 01:12 AM, said:

There doen't seem much more to do than bounty hunting and I don't see any interactivity with the environment or non-hostile NPCs.

Is it really all that different from dishonoured? Keep in mind the footage is a very early version of the game.

[Mr. Tibbs]

Another comment from pathological liar Pete Hines on Prey 2's cancellation:

Quote

GC: I saw Prey yesterday, and it looked fantastic. But since I’ve never been able to raise this subject with anyone at Bethesda before I feel I have to ask about Prey 2, specifically the IGN report about your relationship with developer Human Head.

PH: I’m not gonna talk publicly about the back and forth, and the he said/she said. It does absolutely no good to anybody. And I’m certainly not about to say anything to try and cast anybody in a bad light, one way or another. Here’s the fact: the game didn’t turn out like we wanted. It didn’t work, and it didn’t happen.

I find it really interesting that I get abundantly more questions about Prey 2 being cancelled than Doom 4 being cancelled. Everybody seems to forget that we did actually cancel a Doom game at id for pretty much the exact same reasons, and started over. And all anybody talks about, and rightfully so, is the game that we did make and how it turned out. Not, well whatever happened with that other Doom, and why did you decide…

GC: But I’m not sure the situations are that similar. The rumour wasn’t that the game was turning out poorly, the rumour was that you were purposefully failing their milestones…

PH: Utter nonsense. I will simply say this: I don’t know what possible good reason we would have for spending millions and millions of dollars to create something to then suddenly arbitrarily decide, ‘No, we don’t want to actually make our money back off what we’ve put into it’. Because we were footing the bill, right? We’re the publisher, we’re paying the developer. We’re putting all the money into it.

I’m spending my own time taking trips up to Madison, creating brand, creating trailers, putting effort into it, taking it to E3, doing all that stuff. And to take all of that time and investment, and for the notion to be, ‘Oh yeah, for arbitrary reasons we decided to fail the milestones and are just going to wave goodbye to all that and never see any of it returned is the dumbest argument I’ve ever heard.

GC: Okay, but according to the rumour the reason wasn’t arbitrary. It was that you were trying to force them into a situation where you could acquire them against their will and for less than they were worth. And I’ve personally spoken to a veteran developer who, although he knows nothing about Bethesda specifically, states that this has always been a standard industry tactic for many different publishers.

PH: We don’t have any real predilection towards acquiring somebody or not. We haven’t acquired anybody, that I can remember, in the last five or how many years. I think Tango [Gameworks, the studio behind The Evil Within] was the last acquisition. It’s not like we’re on some acquisition tear.

We work with third party folks, like with The Elder Scrolls: Legends, like with Quake Champions. We have a perfectly good third party relationship with them. We’re gonna make the game, we’re not acquiring them, we haven’t failed milestones… again, it boils down to one thing and one thing only: we’re in the business of making games and we’re only going to put out and make games that we think raise to a certain level of quality.

It’s no different to BattleCry, which isn’t anywhere. Isn’t being talked about, and it’s on hiatus because it also wasn’t rising to the level. Just like the Doom game that we cancelled.

5 years, 10 months ago: Machinegames
6 years, 1 month ago: Arkane Studios
7 years, 2 months ago: id Software

As for it it being speculation that Bethesda was looking to acquire studios around 2010-2011, this Games Industry article suggests otherwise.

[particle cannon]

Pete Hines is a liar indeed. Beth/zenimax was trying to hostile acquire human head and they fought against that. Zenimax as payback cancelled the game.

[Micky C]

Quote

I don't know what possible good reason we would have for spending millions and millions of dollars to create something to then suddenly arbitrarily decide, 'No, we don't want to actually make our money back off what we've put into it'.

Pete raises a good point. You'd have to be an idiot to do something like that

[Mr. Tibbs]

[MusicallyInspired]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessss

[HulkNukem]

Bethesda also owns the futuristic bounty hunter assets that were created for Prey 2, so they would have to start from complete scrap, which means it would take years to get back to that point, however would mean a fresh start and lessons learned the first time around will be implemented to make the second version much better