Prey is a 2017 first-person shooter immersive sim video game developed by Arkane Austin and published by Bethesda Softworks. It occurs in an alternate timeline in which mankind has taken to orbital stations following an accelerated Space Race. The player plays as Morgan Yu, a member of a scientific team aboard the space station Talos I researching the Typhon, a hostile alien force with both physical and psychic powers. As the Typhon escapes confinement, the player uses various weapons and abilities to survive, progressing to end the alien outbreak and ultimately escape Talos I. The player gradually gains access to areas of Talos I through linear mission progression until they can explore the station freely, acquiring key items and abilities along the way.

Development of the game started after Arkane Austin completed its work on Dishonored (2012). Raphaël Colantonio served as the title's director. Arkane's Prey is largely unrelated to the 2006 game Prey or its cancelled sequel. It did not use any of the planned sequel's assets and only incorporated the previous game's name and the broad theme of the protagonist being hunted by aliens. Arkane built Prey as a spiritual successor to System Shock (1994), giving players multiple avenues to approach and tackle missions while considering the Talos I station a thematic reinterpretation of the underground dungeon from their debut game, Arx Fatalis (2002). The game combines elements of first-person shooters, role-playing video games, stealth games, and Metroidvanias in its design. Aliens in the game were designed to be enigmatic, with their design being inspired by paranormal elements rather than stereotypical insect- or lizard-like species.

The game was released for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One on May 5, 2017. It received positive reviews from critics, who praised the game's setting, level design, environmental storytelling, and themes, though its main story and gameplay received a mixed response. The game's reputation improved over time. Retrospectives from several gaming publications described it as one of the best immersive sims ever made. Arkane released an expansion named Mooncrash, which adds procedural generation and gameplay elements found in roguelike games. Arkane also introduced a multiplayer update named Typhon Hunter, which incorporates the Typhon shapeshifting abilities in a hide-and-seek-style game. The game's disappointing commercial performance resulted in Arkane Austin pivoting to making live service games such as Redfall (2023).

Gameplay

Prey is an immersive sim played from a first-person perspective. The player plays as Morgan Yu, a human who must find a way to escape a space station following its takeover by a hostile alien race named the Typhon. At the beginning of the game, the player is only equipped with a basic wrench as their weapon, though they eventually unlock a Gloo Cannon, which shoots out a foam-like substance that can freeze enemies in place. The game features a number of firearms, such as a silenced pistol, a shotgun, and a boltcaster. Players can also take advantage of environmental hazards, such as oil spills and explosive canisters, as well as station defenses such as turrets, to defeat Typhons. Some movement, such as swinging a melee weapon and sprinting, consumes stamina, which gradually regenerates when the player is resting. Ammo in the game is scarce, and players can make use of stealth tactics to silently bypass enemies or chart alternate paths to avoid them entirely.

There are many subspecies of Typhon in the game, each with a unique attack pattern: the Cystoids rush to players and explode; the Mimics shapeshift into common items to disguise themselves; the Poltergeists can turn themselves invisible; and the Telepaths can unleash devastating psychic energy attacks. Phantoms are human corpses taken over by the Typhon, and the power they wield is randomly generated. Throughout the game, the player will also encounter a singular enemy named the Nightmare, who serves as a powerful opponent that constantly hunts and stalks the player. Their psionic attacks can be nullified using throwables, rendering them vulnerable. Alien attacks depletes Morgan's health and suit integrity, though they can be healed by consuming food or utilizing a health kit. A post-launch update introduced a "Survival" mode, which introduced weapon degradation, and "traumas" that further hinder the player's combat performance.

Rather than having separate levels or missions, the station setting of Talos I is completely continuous. The Gloo Cannon releases a foam-like substance that can be attached to walls and platforms, creating makeshift stairs that can be used to access distant locations. Areas in the game are interconnected, and there are often multiple ways to access a location or approach an objective. At times, the game requires the player to return to areas they previously explored, though new skills unlocked may allow them to enter previously inaccessible areas. The player can venture outside Talos I into space and find shortcuts connecting parts of the station. Through exploration, they can discover optional objectives, as well as items such as maps that aid navigation, key codes used to unlock additional rooms, and blueprints necessary for crafting new weapons and ammo. Prey has multiple endings, falling into three major narrative structures depending on how the player broadly interacted with the station and surviving humans. Various items can be collected for use later, though Morgan only has a limited carrying capacity. Useful items can also be looted from corpses of fallen crew members. Recyclers can be found across Talos I, turning useless items into raw materials, which can then be used in fabricators to craft weapons, ammo, and consumables.

A device named a Psychoscope can be used to scan the environment and detect the location of Typhons. As they explore, the player can collect an item called a Neuromod and eventually gain an ability to make them at a fabricator. These Neuromods are used to upgrade the player's ability through a skill tree system. It includes human abilities such as hacking and passive skills such as increased damage and improved health, as well as alien powers that enable Morgan to perform feats such as lifting enemies, creating a psychic explosion, teleporting short distances, mimicking matter, and taking over an enemy's mind. These powers have a short cooldown time, as governed by a Psi meter. Injecting themselves with too many alien Neuromods will result in Nightmare detecting the player's location and the station defense attacking them since it began identifying them as an alien. Weapons in the game can also be upgraded to improve their performance, and Chipsets can be equipped on Morgan's suit and Psychoscope to further increase their attributes. As an immersive sim, the game supports a variety of playstyles, and gameplay systems interlock. For instance, the bolts of the boltcaster can interact with the touch screen of terminals, skills can be chained together to create devastating damage, and mimicking a robot will allow players to essentially fly and explore the station.

Expansions The Mooncrash expansion is a roguelike experience in which, while the layout of the station remain the same, the placement of enemies, weapons, and other items is randomized on each playthrough. Narratively, the player takes the role of a hacker running simulations to investigate what happened to the five survivors of the Pytheas Moonbase. In the expansion, the player must navigate each character through the station, fighting off the Typhon, collecting equipment, hacking terminals, and ultimately reaching an escape point unique to that character. The state of the station is randomized at the beginning of a run and does not reset between characters; completing a run requires escaping with all characters without dying or resetting.. Players may reset the simulation, randomizing the world elements and effectively starting a new run. However, the player gains points that they can use within the simulation to improve how any of the characters start, such as with better weapons or additional health packs, and they can permanently unlock skills for each character within future simulation runs by collecting certain objects. As players spend more time in each run, the difficulty of gameplay increases.

The Typhon Hunter expansion contains two game modes. One is designed as a single-player virtual reality experience known as Transtar VR, challenging the player to various escape room scenarios aboard the Talos I station. The second is an asymmetrical multiplayer mode for up to six players. One plays as Morgan while the others are Mimic Typhons, which can disguise themselves as nearly any object within the environment. The player as Morgan is challenged to find and kill all the other players within a limited amount of time, while the Mimic players can rearrange items in rooms, disguise themselves, and when the Morgan player is close, jump out and attack them before seeking another hiding place.

Plot Setting Prey takes place in an alternate timeline where the Soviet Union encounters a species of eusocial aliens called the Typhon aboard their satellite Vorona 1 in 1958. The Soviet Union works together with the United States to fight off and capture the aliens, unbeknownst to the general population. Together, they build the space station Kletka, situated in orbit around the Moon, to be used as a prison for the Typhon. After a failed assassination attempt on United States President John F. Kennedy, the United States wrests full control of the Kletka satellite from the Soviet Union. Research of the Typhon continues under the name "Project Axiom". After the 1980 "Pobeg Incident", which resulted in the Typhon killing some scientists aboard the station, the American government shut down Project Axiom but left the captive Typhon alive.

In 2025, the newly founded TranStar Corporation acquires Kletka and, by 2030, refits it as Talos I, a fully operational research laboratory to study the Typhon and create advances in neuroscience. This leads to the creation of Neuromods that harness the Typhon's physiology to restructure the human brain and grant the user new abilities, including superhuman ones. TranStar grows financially successful from sales of Neuromods on Earth. At the time of the setting, about 2035, TranStar has further expanded the station to make for suitable living quarters for its staff, which spends up to two years on the station between regular shuttles to Earth.

Synopsis

In March 2032, Morgan Yu (male voiced by Tim Kang, female voiced by Sumalee Montano) is recruited by their brother Alex (Benedict Wong) to join TranStar's research team on Talos I. Before leaving for the station, Morgan takes a series of tests. One of the supervising doctors is attacked by a Typhon during the testing process, and Morgan is knocked out.