[Malgon]

I like the background. It looks kind of creepy.

[PikaCommando]

Would people still be disappointed if Arkane Prey went with Tom Hall's original concept?

[Jblade]

Chris Avellone is working on this...that's a bit of a surprise.

[Mr. Tibbs]

Jblade, on 12 June 2016 - 10:14 PM, said:

Chris Avellone is working on this...that's a bit of a surprise.

True, but he also worked on Prey 2 in 2012 after Bethesda moved the project briefly to Obsidian. The game has nerd cred for days.

Ex-Prey 2 dev congratulates Arkane. Talk about a nice gesture considering what went down. Somehow I doubt Arkane will ever say anything positive publicly about Human Head's work, though they did pre-2012 and still do privately.

[Malgon]

I never would have expected that, although it does make sense since this version is basically inspired by System Shock and he is a big fan of System Shock 2. Definitely a good thing for the team to have him helping in some capacity.

[Tea Monster]

Cheer up, you could have been a fan of the original Quake.

[Mr. Tibbs]

"It's not a sequel. It's not a remake. It has no tie to the original. It's more like an Arkane version of the original." - Arkane on Prey (2017).
Video interview with the creative director.
Of interest from the 2014 leaked pitch documents.

Description from Prey's Steam page.

Quote

In Prey, you awaken aboard Talos I, a space station orbiting the moon in the year 2032. You are the key subject of an experiment meant to alter humanity forever – but things have gone terribly wrong. The space station has been overrun by hostile aliens and you are now being hunted. As you dig into the dark secrets of Talos I and your own past, you must survive using the tools found on the station, your wits, weapons, and mind-bending abilities.

Did anyone notice Raf's shirt?

Spoiler

Press Sneak Fucks

[Malgon]

I've had the Press Sneak Fucks stuck in my head since watching the BE3 stream.

Edit: High-res version.

[trustn0!]

I hate to be a broken record but

NOT MUH PREY

Unless this game blows the socks off of everyone, i'm giving it a pass.
We're already getting System Shock 3 done by the actual devs of looking glass studios.
I don't want Arkanes copied version of that.

[MusicallyInspired]

I couldn't be more uninterested.

Well, yes I can. I'm even less enthused about Quake Champions.

[PsychoGoatee]

I'm interested, will wait and see. I like Prey, and of course there's nostalgia in that I was waiting for that at the same time as DNF etc. But it's not a game where I'll mind too much if a sequel is mostly unrelated. That said, if it seems this game involves virtual reality in the plot, I'd rather see a plot where you actually fight aliens in reality, but we'll see where it goes. And hopefully the gameplay and level design is creative.

[Micky C]

*Mostly* unrelated? Did you even see the trailer?

[HulkNukem]

They had some relations

You played a male
You had guns


There was..... windows. Original Prey had windows in the bar!

[Mr. Tibbs]

The lead character Morgan can either be male or female.

[PsychoGoatee]

Micky C, on 13 June 2016 - 03:07 PM, said:

*Mostly* unrelated? Did you even see the trailer?

The best Final Fantasy Game (FF7) was a cyberpunk game, only thing in common with the first Final Fantasy was turn based gameplay and a couple motifs. If this has you shooting aliens or something, I guess that's some form of relation. I can see why some who are attached to what Prey was would want something more like it, just saying how I personally just see a new FPS game that could be cool. Which to me, is as exciting as a game faithful to that game Prey, which I thought was fine.

[Micky C]

Were the final fantasy games all made by the same developers?

Franchises evolve over time sure, but this is obviously just an arbitrary FPS game making use of the Prey IP (i.e, just the name) so that the purchase of the IP can only be a 99% waste of money instead of a 100% waste.

[Mr. Tibbs]

Lyin' Pete Hines on the essence of the franchise: "Prey is about aliens and being hunted." Wait and see on portals.

[deuxsonic]

So it was mentioned to me in the other thread that the ideas of Prey had changed hands many times, eventually resulting in Human Head's 2006 release, and then afterwards, with Prey 2, that also has been rewritten more than once and changed hands. Much like the long development of DNF, is there anywhere I can go to read about all the information that has come out about all the different ideas for Prey, from the earliest ideas to now? Having played Human Head's Prey over the years, that was what I guess the bias I use to look at everything else since I hadn't really followed the development of it. Now I see that they're completely rebooting the game, and it seems to be "Prey" in name only. Where can I get a full history lesson?

[Daedolon]

These two NeoGAF posts seem pretty helpful in telling what happened behind the scenes.

[Mr. Tibbs]

Daedolon, on 14 June 2016 - 12:57 PM, said:

These two NeoGAF posts seem pretty helpful in telling what happened behind the scenes.

That Mr. Tibbs guy seems like a prick! The former lead level designer from Human Head (who's currently working on Mafia 3) posted this in response to my mini-history of which I still omitted loads of important details (The cancelled GDC presentations, etc...):

Mick Gordon, the guy who composed DooM and Wolfenstein: The New Order, is the composer of Prey (2017). Prey 2 actually had two composers Mark Morgan (Fallout and Planescape) and Jason Graves (Dead Space and Tomb Raider).

[deuxsonic]

The whole "repeating day over and over" aspect is there and it seemingly being a simulation as it starts to show glitches the 3rd time through. His conjunctivitis getting worse each iteration? They seem to focus a lot on this (it's the preview image even) so it must be important? Running tests being part of the simulation or him breaking out of it, him seemingly listening to a recording of himself after seeing that he's out in space. Mick Gordon again? Bethesda seems to have a hard-on for him. Why is it using CryEngine? Licensing an outside developer's engine when they already have id Tech that they wouldn't have to license? Morgan being chosen since it's a unisex name and surname Yu an attempt to be clever since it's you who controls him?

[deuxsonic]

This just wasn't up to Pete Hine's quality standards. I on the other hand would liked to have played it.

[MusicallyInspired]

Never saw that. That's awesome.

[deuxsonic]

Hiney, I am disappoint.

See if it was a horror game, I would feel like "well maybe it'll be like an id Tech 5-powered System Shock-ish kind of game" but he denied that it's horror in that interview even though that's what the new trailer makes it feel like.

[HulkNukem]

MusicallyInspired, on 17 June 2016 - 09:02 AM, said:

Never saw that. That's awesome.

A lot of people, me included, didn't even know gameplay of Prey 2 was actually shown off. I didn't know until last week, I always assumed it was only the big E3 trailer and that was it.

About the quality of it not that it matters now, the demo shown did have lack in polish (which makes sense) but for all we know that was all the team had created that even worked. They could've been trying to make this huge open world that was not coming together and running improperly and Hines and co didn't think it would ever come together. Or there might've been another nefarious reason! We will likely never know the true reason.

[deuxsonic]

Good morning Morgan GOD STOP RUBBING YOUR EYES YOU'RE GOING TO SPREAD THAT SHIT.

Also Hiney is a habitual liar as can be evidenced by earlier posts in this thread. I bet you it was shaping up nicely.

[LkMax]

All this bullshit they did to Human Head just makes me even sadder that id is part of zenimax.

[deuxsonic]

At least Human Head escaped.

[Mr. Tibbs]

HulkNukem, on 17 June 2016 - 12:46 PM, said:

About the quality of it not that it matters now, the demo shown did have lack in polish (which makes sense) but for all we know that was all the team had created that even worked. They could've been trying to make this huge open world that was not coming together and running improperly and Hines and co didn't think it would ever come together. Or there might've been another nefarious reason! We will likely never know the true reason.

Prey 2 featured 3 open world hubs. The one that was displayed in the Pax, Quakecon, E3 and Gamescon presentation was made in April 2011, and was the Bowery level. They had those finished along with discrete levels like a Syndicate-run casino, Killian's apartment and the War Sphere. Like all P2 footage, everything released publically was running on 360s.

I've talked to over 40 people who worked on the game, and they all say the same thing. The reason P2 was cancelled is that after Human Head scooped up tons of awards at E3, Bethesda offered Human Head an extension, before renegging and rejecting everything they submitted. At the same time they stopped paying them, Zenimax, Bethesda's parent company, began sympathetically offering them loans - how kind, right? But if you accept that generosity, like Arkane did, you're selling your independence.

Spoiler

www.ign.com/articles/2013/06/05/what-went-wrong-with-human-heads-prey-2
Milestone abuse and a failed hostile acquisitions basically goes like this:

Bethesda disputes Milestones - reasonable or not - and withholds payment while Zenimax, the parent company, offers to loan money while the issues are being sorted, saying it's just an administrative issue that is bound to get resolved, then after several milestones aren't met and the money "lent" becomes too important, it offers to buy the company as a solution.

The companies have done it several times already. Given their documented history, there is no reason to grant them the benefit of the doubt: this is a planned, predatory practice.

If you're giving me money and it looks like I'm failing, and you don't want to give me more money because you don't trust that I can complete the project, why are you trying to buy out my studio?

That's the six million dollar question: if this really was a case of Human Head dropping the ball, ******* up development and ruining Bethesda's investment, why did Bethesda want to pour more money into acquiring the entire studio/team in addition to the product?

The fact is, Human Head were doing such a good job that Bethesda pretended they were doing a shit job so they could gain the financial leverage needed to acquire the entire studio.

I'll try to explain it as best I can. I'm sure there's a proper phrase for it in consumer advocacy environments, but I just call it milestone abuse.

In a traditional publisher-developer relationship in the video games industry, the publisher usually pays the developer through a number of milestones. Here's an example.

> Milestone 1: Exit pre-production with a final design plan
> Milestone 2: Finish X number of levels and audio/graphical assets
> Milestone 3: Have a "vertical slice" demo (showing all core features)
> Milestone 4: Establish a pipeline with the quality assurance testers

Stuff like that.

This system is technically great since it keeps the developer accountable. They only get paid if they keep working and showing progress. I WISH they'd have something like this for Kickstarter.

The problem with milestone abuse is when the milestone criteria isn't shown to the public (due to corporate confidentiality and all of that). Since it's kept behind closed doors, people who actually give a shit can't make sure that the publisher isn't trying to exploit the developer by exploiting loopholes in the contract.

Since most studios can only afford to work on one major project at a time, they need the milestone payments in order to stay afloat. However, if the publisher wants to intentionally bankrupt the developer so that they can purchase their IPs and employee contracts (hostile acquisition), then the publisher just has to ride it out and see who runs out of money first. Since the publisher is almost always wealthier, they just have to play a waiting game and arbitrarily fail the milestones.

> Yeah, you set up a quality assurance pipeline but we don't think it's good enough. No, we don't have to explain why. You think anyone out there's going to look through this contract?

> Yeah, you exited pre-production, but we still count those 10 meetings you did afterwards as part of it. Actually, you deserve less money than we gave. Maybe you should be happy that we're just withholding payment and not suing you.

> You call this a vertical slice? We didn't finish focus testing yet! We still might want more features! Oh, we didn't tell you? That's not our problem.

Once the developer gets desperate enough and they almost reach bankruptcy, the publisher is in a good position to force a buy-out. Since whether or not they did anything legally wrong is really, really complicated and the developer no longer has any money to hire a legal team that can rival a publisher's, most of these end in hostile acquisitions.

The bigger problem here is that you could have very easily achieved the same result by suing Human Head for "not fulfilling the terms of their contract" (and not have to pay a single cent more), but Bethesda never pursued that because they'd have no legal case. If this was presented before an external court that doesn't care about video games, they'd see that Human Head adequately fulfilled all the portions of their contract.

A lawsuit would have been literally cheaper if that was the case. If Bethesda didn't have a documented history of abusing companies in such a way, its people would be granted the same latitude.

BETHESDA OWNS PREY. Human Head fails to complete the project, you take what they've got so far and dump it in some other studio's lap to finish.

The reason you break contract with Human Head is you feel like you're throwing good money after bad; if I pay you, you still won't finish this project, so I'll stop paying you and pay someone else to finish it instead.

Pete Hines "quality" story would ring true if:

1) Bethesda/Zenimax didn't try to acquire the company at the same time it was denying it payment.

2) Bethesda/Zenimax didn't have a recorded history of acquiring companies that way.

With those two elements, that behavior from the company becomes terribly suspicious at best.

Every game Bethesda's published in since New Vegas has missed its release window. Dishonored took four years, Dishonored 2 slipped from Spring 2016 to November, according to the leaked pitch documents Prey was pushed back from Q3 to 2017. Evil Within delayed four months. Wolfenstein: The New Order delayed from the XBONE and PS4 launch to mid-2014. Doom was restarted countless times under their 7 year watch. P2 wasn't an expensive game. HH were a team of 55 in the mid-west. The 15 million marketing budget exceeded the costs of the game. Since they restarted with Arkane, Bethesda had to grow a studio of 24 to 80ish, licence technology and restart the marketing cycle. Pete Hines is a liar because they didn't scrap the game. They took it to Obsidian, and in June 2012, offered "What we said was it was not coming out this year and we're still trying to sort some things out with Human Head," Hines told Eurogamer. "That really hasn't changed. I don't have an update for you on that, other than it's not coming out this year."

Quote

Things have been quiet for a long time regarding Prey 2. Are you able to shed any light on this and the reasons for its delay?
That is a very complicated subject and one that makes me very sad. I enjoyed working on that project, possibly more than any other. IGN ran an article on Prey 2 last year, in June I think, that explains what happened better than I could here.

Prey 2's narrative director (currently narrative director for Volition)

Quote

Prey 2 was a full game. And a crazy fun one. The team was small but you wouldn't have known it. What happened to Prey 2, from where I sat, was political. And petty. And potentially litigable. Human Head had a great game. I was heartbroken when Prey 2 went into limbo. Human Head deserved to have that game released. Frankly, they needed it

Quote

Develop:“We stopped working on Prey 2 near the end of 2011, and had been working on it for close to two years,” he says. “It was very close to an alpha state, with all major content pieces represented.

“We were at that point in a game where you can step back and see the whole picture and shift from developer to editor and decide which elements to cut and which elements to emphasis and polish."

Prey 2 would have been counted among the best looking games of the previous console generation.

Norm Nazaroff, project lead on Human Head’s latest title Minimum, adds: "We had a great deal of content created, some of which was shown publicly but a lot of which was not.

“Our tech had progressed significantly past the live demo we ran at E3, Gamescom and PAX and was even more impressive. It’s my personal opinion that we would have been counted among the best looking games of the previous console generation.”

“Bethesda stated their reasons when they finally cancelled the game in October 2014, and needless to say we have our own perspective on the matter that differs from the reasons they stated,” he says.

“As we said in response in October, we feel that the quality of the game was well represented by the materials we displayed in numerous public demonstrations on behalf of Bethesda and we are disappointed that fans won’t be able to see our vision come to life. We remain proud of the work that we did."

[HulkNukem]

Thanks for all the info. Seeing how much was actually finished is disappointing, I really hope this gets to see the light of day!
It reminds me of the cancelled Avengers FPS game; the game was finished, just needed art and polish, but was cancelled as THQ was going out of business and was cancelled to save money (in the end, they would've made a ton from it)