Whether in the air, land, or sea
The latest stop on Bethesda’s Prey Marketing Tour covers a crucial aspect of any video game of this type: The setting. Prey takes place among the stars, up in a giant space station called Talos I (yes, everyone take note of the probable Elder Scrolls nod). It’s the design of the space station that’s notable.
Watching this trailer, Talos I has a decided BioShock retro-opulent aesthetic. As the developers explain, it’s because no expense was spared building it in an effort to attract the best employees. So, valuable materials like gold and marble were shipped to space to create the most luxurious station imaginable. (And, for what it’s worth, the old man portraits give me vibes of Portal 2.)
But it’s the timing of it all that’s maybe most interesting. This is a place where lots of people live and an alien outbreak just occurred. Many of them are still alive and the player encounters them starting the survival process. In a lot of ways, that’s very Alien: Isolation.
Prey probably doesn’t aim to stand on the shoulders of these giants, and nor should it. This certainly appears like it’s shaping up to be its own thing. However, there are traces of the workings of other games and that’s kind of exciting in its own right. Influence is a perfectly acceptable well to draw from as long as you end up with your own identity. It seems like Prey‘s on track to do that even if, funny enough, it’s a game that uses mimicking as a core tenet.
