Prey – analysis of the simulation

It’s somewhere out there

I got myself into gaming fairly recently, in 2018 when I got my Nintendo Switch. 2018 at this point was almost 8 years ago, but I was 13-14 back then, so I do think that I got myself into gaming pretty late. I had obviously played games before, but mostly as something to kill time rather than something what would become my main hobby. At that point I was discovering many genres and game series, some of which I wished to eventually play. A year later I would “inherit” an ok PC from my older brother, and the list of games that I could and wanted to play increased to ridiculous degree. One group of games for me stood out among the rest. Those being immersive sims.

Immersive sims for me seemed as some of the most unique and inspiring games out there, them being the games that focused on immersion and player freedom more than any other genre or category. It would take some time, but in 2023 I was finally able to play my first immersive sim – Dishonored. And I was so blown away to the level design, attention to details, reactivity, freedom of approach and unique mechanics that I had access to that after beating the game for the first time, I’ve instantly started a second playthrough. And after I’ve finished that one, I would play the DLC and beat it a second time too. After that I just kept going. In a span of two years, I would play Deus Ex (Both the original game and the prequel games), Thief 1 and 2 (including a decent bit of fan missions), System Shock 2 and even some recent indie im-sims like Gloomwood and Fallen Aces. They become a big part of my game preferences, and I’ll definitely play more of them in the following years. However, there was one game in this category that I’ve always wanted to play ever since I’ve heard about it, but that was so distant because for a while I lacked the hardware that would be able to run it. But after years of anticipation, when I’ve recently finally got a computer that would be able to run it, my happiness knew no bounds. After spending some time in the main menu, sitting in disbelief as well as being hypnotized by the music, I would finally start a new game. That game was Prey.

And I was so impressed by the game, that after beating it twice, that I’ve decided to talk about its mechanics, world, story, setting and immersive atmosphere. I am not going to walk around it any longer, let’s begin. Obviously, spoilers.

Breaking through the looking glass.

Before talking about different aspects of the game, I’d like to talk first about opening of the game. It’s such a strong opening that for some people it outshines the rest of the game. I personally wouldn’t go this far, but I can see why. We play as Morgan Yu, a vice president director of research of TranStar Industries, in our apartment on March 23^rd, 2032. At the start of the game, you can select Morgan’s sex, but for the purposes of this review, I’ll be referring to them as he/him. After receiving the call from our brother Alex Yu, the CEO of TranStar Industries, to get to the Testing Facility. We put on our red stylish uniform and get to the roof and take a seat in our private helicopter. After the flight accompanied by the track called “Everything Is Going to Be Okay”, we take an elevator from the roof to the testing rooms to meet our brother. After checking our red eye, something that we could spot at the sex selection screen, when Morgan looks in the mirror, he apologizes for the unconventional tests, but once we are done with them, we can finally go to the research station. When we do the tests, which include doing things like pushing around boxes, hiding behind chairs and pressing buttons, we can hear disappointment from the scientists, despite them telling us that we are doing great. Finally, we end the tests with the quiz full of questions similar to the classic trolley problem. However, while we are doing the quiz, behind the glass we can see a second cup appearing on the table next to the scientists. Once one of them picks it up, it turns into some dark entity and attacks him. We instantly get knocked out with the gas and… we wake up in our apartment in on March 23^rd, 2032. Except everything is off. We don’t receive a call from our brother, and on our computer, there are only emails telling us to escape. Leaving an apartment, instead of a living plumber that greeted us yesterday on our way to the roof, we found their deformed corpse. Upon picking up their wrench, we receive a call from someone named January asking us to leave our apartment. And when we try to break the window to get to the balcony… we instead break a projection screen.

Here is the short version of what’s going on. In the 60s Soviets discovered non-terrestrial organisms later to be called Typhon. In just a few years, Soviet Union and United States create a space research facility to study the alien lifeforms. Then in 1963, Kennedy survives an assassination attempt, which created tensions between two global powers and putting the research project to a stop. Eventually after many political movements between two sides over many decades leads to TranStar Industries purchasing the facility and building a newer research facility called Talos I built on top of the old one. We, Morgan Yu, with our brother, through research of the Typhons, in 2030 develop the first neuromod – a tool allowing the transfer of information directly into the human brain and learning that information instantaneously. Eventually, you both come to the idea of developing the neuromods based on the unique properties and abilities of the typhons. However, testing them on the current volunteers, which are the criminals sent mostly from Russian prisons, is dangerous, so instead, Morgan Yu decided to test them on himself. However, in order to test the neuromods properly, they need to be uninstalled after testing, which leads to the loss of memory after the installation of the neuromod, due to their unique properties. Eventually, the tests would lead to personality changes in Morgan, culminating in him creating operators (mechanical assistants) to help him eventually to escape, and Alex creating the whole simulation to speed up the testing process and hopefully minimize the personality degradation. January is the latest of Morgan’s operators, and he who’s us the recording by us made in between test. And in the recording Morgan tells us about the simulation, dangers of the typhon and their research and about the ignorance of our brother. Finally, he asks us, with the assistance of January, to destroy the station with everyone and everything on board, including us. In order to do that, we need to get detonation launch keys, one that we had and one that our brother has now, kicking of the main quest for most of the game. Now that you’re caught up with the main premise, let’s finally talk about the game in detail.

Box stacking simulator

A lot of immersive sims are designed with resource management gameplay in mind. Whether that be long term management, like upgrade point allocation like in System Shock 2 or Deus Ex, short term, like using elements of the environment like in Dark Messiah or Fallen Aces, or general management, like ammo management for your weapons and tools, which generally have multiple applications, like in Thief, Gloomwood and many others. Prey is no exception to this, and in my opinion, it’s one of the best representatives of this aspect of the genre. In terms of things to manage Prey has weapons and ammo, consumables like med kits, spare parts or psi injections, and finally, neuromods. I could go in detail about every human and typhon neuromod, every weapon and item and their applications, but I think it would be better to just give and example and go from there.

Let’s say that there is a room that seem to have items inside, but the entrance is blocked by a heavy box. You could try a straightforward approach and use your upgraded Leverage skill to lift it up and move it to the side or throw it into the enemy inside the room, if there is one, or other enemies later, which will deal a good damage to that enemy. But what if I don’t have Leverage? In that case, we can try throwing a recycler charge, which will absorb the heavy box and some other surrounding objects and turning them into fundamental small materials, allowing you to pass and use gained materials to craft some resources at the fabrication stations. But what if I also can’t use recycler charge, for some reason, like wanting to save them for later or I simply don’t have any left? Then you can try one of the many typhon abilities that you might have. Use gravity shaft to rase the box into the air and move it away. Or maybe use kinetic blast to move it to the side. Or maybe even use morph to turn into a small object, like a cup, and move through the gaps between the doorway and the box. But off course, these solutions can only be used if you researched a proper typhon, installed the right neuromod and have enough psi meter. And we haven’t even considered potential alternative to get into the room. What if there is a vent above allowing you to get inside. Then you can just jump up there if you have upgraded mobility. Or maybe use your gloo gun to make a small staircase on the wall to go up. Or you can also stack surrounding boxes and other objects to go up. Or use the aforementioned gravity shaft to launch yourself. Or maybe you can turn into a cup and launch yourself into the air with kinetic blast. Or if you have upgraded morph, you can turn into one of the flying operator-robots and just fly up there like that. Or maybe you just have a suit upgrade that allows you to double jump. Or maybe there is a second door, but it’s locked behind a password. Then if you have installed hacking skill neuromod, you can hack it. Or you can look around and find the password on someone’s computer.

And I could go on and on about potential solutions to such a simple problem as getting inside of the room. And this level of complexity is applicable to other problems that the game presents, like combat encounters, traversal and exploration, quests and other objectives, can be solved in many ways. And the best part about it is that it’s not just a flavor to how you can solve a problem. No, the way you can solve these problems is determined by what weapons and items you have, what resources you have access to, what upgrades you’ve picked. Every immersive sim, and Prey especially, is good in and great for presenting such complex problems and letting you solve them in multiple ways that all can interact with each through different systems in many dynamic ways, while still remaining challenging thanks to resource management related to all these solutions. And because of this problem-solving gameplay, Prey is so engaging to play and possible to replay in so many different ways.

My favorite space dungeon

Level design is commonly overlooked in game discussions. Level design not only has a large role in any game, but it sometimes can also elevate a game with otherwise simple mechanics like in Half-Life, SOMA or, like in the game from my previous review, Thief. It ensures pacing, creates environments for fights and facilitates exploration. And in my opinion, Prey has one of the best world and level designs out there. Let’s start with the macro aspect of the level design. Talos 1 is a space station, that starts out locked up but opens as the game goes along. This is obviously like many other aspects of this game was directly borrowed from the System Shock series, where, as the player progresses throughout the game, they unlock new sections of the station, while keeping the ability to backtrack to the previous levels. Prey, as a proper successor, takes these ideas and continues to evolve them. Starting in the Neuromod Division it’s connected to only one other section of the station - Talos Lobby. After that, you are being told to go to the Hardware Labs, which also isn’t connected to other sections of the ship besides the Lobby, but introduces the space hatches, that allow you to go into the exterior of the station and which you will be unlocking along the game, so for now you can’t go anywhere else, so I’ll save the exterior for later. After going to Hardware Labs and fully listening to the message from the past self, January tells us to go to Arboretum to access the Deep Storage where we can get on of the station detonation keys. This is where the game starts to open up more and more. Firstly, we get general access card, which allows us to go into some areas of the station, from the next area needed to progress like Psychotropics to an area that you need to go to later like Shuttle Bay. Besides that, to get to the Arboretum, you need to go through the G.U.T.S. (Gravity Utility Tunnel System), a zero-g section that goes along the whole station. From G.U.T.S. you can also go to aforementioned Shuttle Bay and to Cargo Bay, and from Cargo Bay you can go to Life Support and Power Plant. So, you can practically explore about half of the station before you get to Arboretum. And we are still basically in the early game. Of course, this comes with a nuance, which I’ll discuss in micro design section.

Once you’ve got to Arboretum, you’ll be able to access the remaining areas of the map – Crew Quarters, Deep Storage and Talos 1 Bridge, which might be the only optional area in the game. While you’re in Arboretum, you can also repair the main elevator that goes from here to Lobby and Life Support, giving you a second and more convenient way to move along the station. Fixing the main elevator also solidifies the Lobby as the hub of the game, and changing the map structure from a linear tunnel, like it was in System Shock 2, into a web, where each section is either directly accessible from the Lobby, or one section away. This makes backtracking much more manageable, as well as making Talos 1 feel more real.

However, there is one last section of the map left, that I’ve been avoiding talking about until this point. And this area is Talos 1 Exterior. While exploring the station, among other things, you were unlocking space hatches that allowed you to access the exterior. And the exterior might be one of the most interesting cases of an area in video games. Firstly, as you can imagine, we are in space now, meaning that we can a full area in zero-gravity, which isn’t unique to this area, but this is the only area that is fully in zero-gravity. There are many mechanics related to zero gravity in this game, but the most important thing about it is how it affects the traversal in the area because you here you can move in any way, any direction and in any angle in relation to the station.

And on top of that, the Exterior is a proper game area. It has many secrets to find, like multiple haul breaches that lead you into rooms that you wouldn’t be able to access otherwise. And being fully in zero gravity also affects few encounters that you can have here, but I’ll save this discussion for a bit.

Before moving to the most important aspect of the game, I’d like to summarize why I like Talos 1 station and I find it to be one of the best maps done in video games. It provides good pacing through the main guest while not taking away player’s agency to explore it. It rewards observant players with better traversal in the game with no fast travel and makes you really appreciate how well planned the station is for its inhabitants. However, until now I’ve been leaving out the most important aspect of the game that makes gameplay systems and level design come together. It’s time to talk about immersive simulation in Prey.

Immersive Simulation

So, what is the most important aspect of Prey? Well, it’s what makes every immersive sim great – interconnection between core gameplay mechanics and the game world to the point where the “game” and the “world” of the game become one. And Prey does an amazing job of intertwining these elements with each other and having an immersive experience where your knowledge of the game world directly translates into the knowledge of the game mechanics and vice versa. To start somewhere let’s talk back about neuromods.

As I mentioned before, neuromods are responsible for allowing the player to improve Morgan and letting him gain new active abilities. In the world the main purpose of a neuromod is to install information into a person and most of the human neuromods follow on this idea. When player installs a hacking or engineering neuromod into Morgan, Morgan isn’t magically becoming better at doing these things – he’s actively gaining knowledge about related fields and utilizing them as skills. More physically related neuromods like Leverage or Health are a bit harder to explain but they can also be related back to the brain. Gaining knowledge isn’t like putting an info file into computer, it also requires rewiring some of the brain functions like muscle memory, reflexes and other brain functions. So, to pick up a fridge, he just gains muscle memory to brute force the action despite how hard it is for him to do. Basically, he doesn’t gain muscles on how to do it, he just now knows how to lift it properly. This sounds like a cheese explanation, and it kinda is, but neuromods affecting human behavior, brain function and even personality is one of the prominent ideas in the game. There are many logs in the game the remark on neuromod installation and uninstallation has an affect on these aspects of the brain and is one of the reasons why at the start of the game Morgan has to do psychological evaluation – to make sure that he didn’t go insane.

However, typhon neuromds are a bit more complex. Thanks to rewiring brain in more significant ways, due to typhon abilities being psychic in nature, and injecting exotic material of the typhons it allows Morgan to gain their abilities. However, you can’t just install any typhon neuromod that you want. First, you’d need to scan the typhon that has that ability to research it. More powerful versions of the abilities would require more scans of the related typhons so naturally, as you go along with the game and scan more of them, you’ll be able to gain more powerful or unique abilities. However, research doesn’t just allow us to install new neuromods, it also lets us learn about typhons. How they are made, what is their function in the typhon ecosystem, their habitat on the station and their weaknesses. So scanning not only gives a functional benefit by allowing us to gain new upgrades but also provides information about the typhons, both narrative and relevant to combat.

This is just one of the many examples of how different systems and narrative elements connect with each other. Resource management directly connects with recycling and fabricator mechanics, which also connects to level design, since different materials are more likely to be in the areas where it makes sense for them to be, like organic in Arboretum or mineral in Hardware Labs. This is also related to placement of different types of typhons across the map. Weavers are likely to be in areas with zero gravity, Technopaths in areas with big amount of electricity like Power Plant, or Telepaths in areas with big about of crew members like Crew Quarters. In short, there are a lot of connections across the game like this, and they are so connected that the worldbuilding and the gameplay systems start being seen as one whole rather than two split elements, which helps achieve the feeling of “immersive simulation”.

Another way through which the game achieves this feeling is through reactivity. One of my favorite examples of that is Danielle Sho and the fake cook. At some point in the game, you need to get into Deep Storage, but the entrance to it is locked by voice command of Danielle Sho, chief archivist. Our quest giver, January, suggests us go to Crew Quarters to collect the samples of her voice to fake the voice command. And we indeed can do just that, collect her voice samples, synthesize the command and get into the Deep Storage. However, on your journey you will most likely encounter cook Will Mitchell, one of the few surviving members on the ship. He says that he can help us if we get his award from his room. And in his room, we can find this award. However, if you pay any attention to his room, then you will find the audio log, in which Will sounds completely different and, on the log’s profile, looks nothing like the cook we met. And in said log, he mentions Morgan, meaning that he knows us, something that the fake one failed to show. This among with some other details clearly imply that the cook is a faker and probably killed actual Will. But let’s continue. After giving him the award, he will ask us to fix the water, whether we do it by finding a new part or fixing the broken one, he will give us the entrance into the freezer where he says he keeps his supplies. If you paid zero attention and fall for it, he’ll lock you in the freezer and try to freeze you to death, but you’ll survive thanks to your suit, however the cook will escape. If you paid attention, you could kill or knock him out and get into the freezer safely. Regardless, inside you will find the bodies of different crew members including the body of Abigail Foy, Sho’s ex-girlfriend. Her body will be holding a message from Sho to knock twice on the window in the pool to meet with her. And if we do that, we will indeed meet with Danielle. What’s interesting here is that depending on how we handle the fake cook, Sho will have different sets of lines. If we fall for the trap, she will ask us to find and kill him. If we already killed him, she would thank us. In both cases, she will give us the voice command, and we can get into the Deep Storage skipping the quest of finding her voice samples. But what if we follow the initial plan and not meet her? Then in Deep Storage once you get the detonation key and Alex locks you inside, she will call you to help you escape. This happens regardless of how you progress through the quest, similarly to the scene in the pool, she will have a different set of lines and if we still didn’t stop the cook, she will ask us again or for the first time to kill him. As for the cook himself, if you kill him, he obviously stays dead, but if you let him escape, he will start placing traps across the station and you’ll have to go through a separate quest to find him, which will lead to a final confrontation that you can handle in different ways.

This is but one example of reactivity in Prey, whether that be main or side quests, the game will react and adapt to how you handle the situation. That’s not even mention other gameplay related reactive elements like how every placed gloo, broken window or dropped item remain the same, even if you leave the area. The only relatively weak reactive component in the game, in my opinion, is how the game will react to you installing typhon neuromods. If you install too many of them, security systems will start seeing you as a threat and start firing at you. But this is the only form of how the game reacts to this decision, and even then, it doesn’t feel like a punishment or a tradeoff.

Despite this, Prey still remains a highly reactive game, and combined with already mentioned sandbox elements, map design, interconnectivity of narrative and gameplay elements, it becomes one of the most deep and expressive immersive sims out there and a true peace of art from game design standpoint.

However, there is one last element of the game that I’d like to discuss. That being the story.

Mind games

At the start of the review, I’ve mentioned that it will contain spoilers. However, until this point, I tried to reduce them to a minimum. But I can’t do this section without spoiling the rest of the game, so if you by reading this become even a little bit interested in playing Prey, I recommend you stop reading this, play the game, and come back after you finish it. Or just skip this section but I won’t promise that later sections won’t contain spoilers.

Before we talk about character and the main story I’d like to start with the setting and story components involved. This being alternative history where Soviet Union still exists and the world being stuck in a state of the Cold War. The way the world has culturally stagnated reminds a lot of Fallout, except instead of 50s retro futurism, we have modern interpretation 70s retro futurism with Art Deco and all that. The effect it has on the story are the inclusion of Soviet prisoners used as test subjects on Talos 1, which is related to a lot of story line in the game, and overall state of paranoia due to the Cold War and how it affected people. Smuggling rings, corporate spies and the state of distrust among the crew members of the station are all contributing factors to the feel of the station and main themes of the game.

The other important and, arguably more interesting, aspect of the setting are, of course, typhons themselves. They are presented as mindless invasive species with telepathic abilities. Typhons, like many things in this game, are inspired by System Shock, specifically the Many form System Shock 2. The Many is an expanding biological hivemind, similarly able to corrupt human bodies, control technology and use psychic abilities, except they are mostly presented as organic expanding meat, as opposed to more ethereal typhons. However, there is one big difference between them. The Many in System Shock 2 is presented as a choir. All people controlled by the Many are still aware of what’s happening, and more importantly, the hivemind itself has a mind of its own, and the most interesting part about it is that it genuinely wants to help humanity and believes that what’s it’s doing is good. So much so that even in its dying moments it wishes the best for humanity. The typhons, on the other hand, are silence. They don’t have a voice and they act almost instinctually. According to Alex, they lack mirror neurons which are responsible for our sense of empathy, which remove any sense of moral responsibility from them making them somewhat morally neutral. They do things without being aware of the consequences for others.

This creates an interesting conflict between empathetic but imperfect and disorganized human crew of the station and organized and emotionless hive of typhons. It is here it’s relevant to talk about neuromods. Neuromods as a technology has a lot of implications.

The main thing that the game explores in relation to neuromods is the nature of knowledge. Because knowledge is directly connected to memories this means that with uninstallation of a neuromod, the person loses their memories until the moment of installation. The effect this can have on the person was thoroughly explored through Morgan and his tests and how later down the line it affected his personality and perception of reality down the line, where current Morgan, different Morgans during different stages of the tests and Morgan before the tests are all practically different people.

Another aspect of the neuromods is their natural effect on someone’s personality. Due to knowledge installed coming from a different person and not just an abstract collection of text or instructions, this means that installation of the neuromod will affect the personality of the person receiving the mod to some degree. This can vary a lot. From complete personality change and even straight insanity to more subtle, almost unnoticeable changes.

One of the people shown to be affected by neuromods is neuroscientist doctor Dayo Igwe. Igwe scanned and installed Gustav Leitner’s, the pianist invited to Talos that Igwe admired, skill to play piano without his consent. Later in the game, he will ask you to retrieve the connectome with Leitner’s skill. Due to the events on the station, Leitner is dead and Igwe wants to preserve his skill. While he is guilty of the act of scanning his mind without consent, he is glad he did it because he was able to preserve his skill. Whether or not Igwe appreciates the skill itself or its relation to Leithner and whether this appreciation comes from installation of the neuromod and part of the Leithner personality or natural change in Igwe’s mind and appreciation for the music and related skill that comes to anyone who had experience learning how to play a music instrument is up to interpretation.

Going back to Morgan and his memory loss, we need to talk about Mikhaila Ilyushin, chief system engineer. Her main goal on Talos 1 is to find her father, who was sent to Talos 1 as a prisoner for experiments. In order to do that she falsified her medical records to hide that she has Paraplexis, a fictional neurological condition that makes installation of neuromods damage her brain. The reason why personal with this condition wasn’t allowed on the station is because of the periodic removal of said neuromods, which conveniently made researchers lose memories of horrific experiments that they’ve done along with preventing corporate secret research slip into the public. Going back to Ilyushin, after joining the station she would briefly join a relationship with Morgan, which he abruptly ended due to upcoming tests. Little did she know that he was the one to kill her father. After rescuing her, she will give us the quest to investigate the disappearance of her father, which she assumes is on the station. When we find the recording, we have a choice to delete it or share it with Mikhaila. If we share it with her, she will hate use for what “we” did but later in the game will apologize for blaming us for the murder. While it is clear that current Morgan is practically a different person and doesn’t remember doing it, and therefore not responsible for the murder, it is interesting to point out how Mikhaila despite mourning her dead father was able to make this distinction and come in terms with the fact that current Morgan is a different individual and that the old Morgan is practically dead.

Next on the line is security chief Sarah Elazar. Before joining the station, she was leading a military unit. During one operation she lost several soldiers under her command which still weighs on her. She is Talos 1’s biggest sceptic of the whole research being done on the station. At some point she learned about typhon which made her start prepping for the potential outbreak. Both she and Alex where spying on each other, he due to Sarah failing to report anything on secret relationship between Morgan and Mikhaila, she because of Morgans’s disappearances. Eventually, when the outbreak finally happened, she and her team set up in Cargo Bay, and this is where all rescued NPC end up. Throughout the game Sarah will try to reach out to other surviving crew members to assist them in survival. When we eventually end up in Cargo Bay, she will ask us to help her combat the upcoming typhons and protect the crew, and if we do so, she will express gratitude and let us continue our journey. According to old Morgan’s note, Sarah doesn’t trust either Alex or Morgan and in general is super cautious, but he also points out that she is trustworthy. And indeed, if Alex went in his bunker and some other crew members went for escape pods, Sarah as a responsible chief of security stayed and tried her best to save surviving personnel. Sarah cares for her crew, probably more than for herself, which in turn makes her more empathetic than most people on the station.

Before we move on, I’d like to say a few more words about Danielle Sho. While I’ve already talked about her in the last section, I want to talk about her a bit more. Danielle feels like the most genuine person on Talos 1. Not only she was able to go over her insecurity to join Abigail’s TTRPG campaign to make her happy, but she is also open about her intolerance towards Alex Yu, which knowing how hypocritical Alex is from different notes and audio logs and compared to most complacent personnel, makes her a really open and relatable character compared to most of the paranoid staff. And even despite the breakup with Abigail due to Sho’s behavior related to Alex, she still tried to help her when the breakout happened. And when she asks you to kill the cook, it obviously comes from a place of heart and her feelings towards Foy and her other friends killed by him. It’s hard to tell if she is asking it out of revenge or wish to save the remaining crew members, it’s undeniable that the request is empathetic in nature, but it’s still feels hard to follow with her request considering that she is asking for a murder, especially if the person in question is mentally unwell tortured prisoner.

Of course, there are more NPCs with different stories that contribute to the main themes, especially someone like Lorenzo Calvino, the creator of looking glass technology, who through his quest line suffers from memory loss and disconnect from reality. But they would mostly loop back to the same themes of paranoia, trust, empathy and memory that the previous 4 explore. However, nobody can compare the two biggest highlights of this game’s story: Alex Yu and January.

As I mentioned before, January was created by one of the previous versions of Morgan to assist us and ensure the destruction of Talos 1 and all typhons and related research with it. Until a curtain point in the game, Alex’s motivation stays in the shadows. The only thing being clear is that he’s trying to ensure Morgan’s safety. However, eventually he opens about his true motives. It turns out that at some point the tests on Morgan with typhon neuromods worked and he gained some of the typhon abilities. At that point, Morgan and Alex decided to make a recording for the future Morgan detailing the importance of the research and the plan to stop the typhon outbreak using a stronger Nullwave transmitter. So, everything that Alex did, such as stopping everyone from escaping the station and refusing to contact the Earth, among other things, was at the request of older Morgan. He is in a lot of ways similar to January with both simply following requests from different versions of Morgan, just at the different stages of the tests. Alex’s Morgan is more ego centric, thinking more about immortality and power and “moving humanity forward” without much concern for said humanity, clearly having his capitalist mindset set straight. But hey, at least he’s better than Morgan who built December, an operator preceding January, whose whole plan is to use Alex’s escape pod to abandon everyone on the station. This actually gives you the worst ending that gives no conclusion and forces you to reload a save. Which makes January and Morgan that built him so much more sympathetic, since his primary concern is the safety of humanity even at the cost of his life.

What’s interesting is that in the recording that Alex shares, he discusses with Morgan this exact plan of exploding the station as a potential alternative, showing more concern for Earth than Morgan. But despite that, he still sticks with Morgan’s plan because he wants to save him. When Morgan started becoming more delusional due to the experiments, he probably decided to stick with the initial plan probably in hopes of eventually fixing his brother. This concern for Morgan’s safety is also the reason why he was trying to stop us at many points in the game, he didn’t want us to put ourselves in danger. And, why he did want to show us the recording, he wasn’t sure how our unstable mind would handle it. I want to iterate though, that Alex is not exactly a “good” person. He spied on his employees, conducted experiments on different people, and prevented the personnel from escaping the station. He allowed the crew to use neuromods, despite knowing the potential risks and therefore not using one himself ever. And some other smaller things, like clearly not following the PE protocol that everyone else on the station were forced to follow. And in general, has a big pride, so much so that he believed he could reserve the issue on his own. Later in the game we get a good insight into why he is the way he is. After we help him get the data on the Coral, supposed typhon neural web needed to create Nullwave transmitter, we and everyone on the station get attacked by Walther Dahl, recovery team leader sent by Yu’s parents to resolve the situation on the station. Dahl on his own isn’t really an interesting character, but his inclusion and the recording of the order from Yu’s parents, were they request him to kill everyone on the station including Morgan and Alex, paints a good picture of Yu’s family. If their parents are willing to kill their children so easily for the benefit of the company, no wonder that both Alex and older versions of Morgan are the way they are. But this also shows that importance of Morgan to Alex. Morgan was and still is the only person that he cares about, and despite his selfish and prideful nature, he’s going to do everything for him. If we decide to go with the plan of exploding the station and Alex survives and remains active during our final decision to explode the station with us, he is going to stay by our side awaiting their death, demonstrating his empathy towards the only person he cares about.

On the other side of this is January. Initially, January comes off as simple, straight forward operator that just wants to make sure that typhons won’t threaten the Earth. And everything he does is with the goal of completing this objective. This includes destroying December, constantly reminding us about our goal and even trying to knock out Alex by the end of the game to prevent him from stopping us. However, as we keep playing January will express his opinion on our actions, particularly in cases when we help other crew members. He will express respect for our decision to help the survivors but is confused about why we would do this considering that we will explode the entire station. This shows that he’s more aware of the situation and our actions but can’t fully deduce our true motivation and thinking process. Regardless of this, he is set on destroying the station, even after Alex reveals a potential way to resolve the incident. His reasoning is that this is what he was made for and he’s simply accomplishing the goal of his creator, something that he is encouraging us to think about, who created us and for what purpose. And while it is clear that he’s just following his protocol despite being more intelligent than an average machine, I’d like to believe that, similar to Alex, he’s just doing this out of personal respect to Morgan. If we choose to resolve the situation with Dahl in a way that he’ll help us and the rest of the survivors to escape, choose to destroy the station and installed little or no typhon neuromods, he’ll say that we don’t present a potential threat for the typhon invasion of Earth and would suggest us to escape the station, showing his genuine care for humanity, crew and Morgan.

This all makes the final choice between blowing up the station and using nullwave a real layered problem. One the one side we have a question of practicality of each solution, both in my opinion having an equal merit. On the other hand, the result of this decision for humanity. Using the nullwave will obviously let us preserve research and technology for the benefit of humanity, with the caveat that Transtar will responsibly handle it and that it won’t open a possibility for typhon infection of the Earth. Then we have concern for the crew, choosing to let them live and share what happened on the station at the risk of also spreading typhon infection. And finally, a choice between Alex and January, both characters who simply express goals of different versions of Morgan and have humanity in mind with just different perspective on what “helping” said humanity means. And I won’t tell you which choice is correct one. Not only because both have merit to each other, but because no matter what you choose, the game will hit you with the final surprise.

After your chosen ending and the credits, you’ll learn the truth: the whole game, the whole station, everyone and everything on it was a part of the advanced looking glass simulation. Surviving Alex and 4 other operators representing Igwe, Mikhaila, Sarah and Danielle will explain to you what happened. Typhon reached the Earth and killed most of humanity. Morgan is supposedly dead. Alex and the remaining humans (though we don’t know how much or if any) are doing a desperate experiment: if humans can gain typhon traits through neuromods, then the opposite should be possible. We are one of those typhons that are being experimented on to gain those human traits, most notably, ability to empathy. A lot of people didn’t like this plot twist, saying that it comes out of nowhere and makes everything that came before pointless. But I disagree. Not only we get some flashes throughout the game implying this twist, but we can also find an audio log of Morgan and another scientist trying to propose this exact project to Alex, use human based neuromods on typhon and use looking glass technology to simulate experience needed to install them, but unfortunately it gets turned down. But I will agree that the game hides it too well, though otherwise it would be that shocking. In terms of what is the meaning behind this ending, it’s great. Firstly, it recontextualizes the game from a fun exploration sandbox into a test, paralleled to the opening of the game. Here, Alex and other operators will judge you based on your performance. Which neuromods you installed, how many typhons have you killed, how many humans did you save, as well as discussing how you handled different situation both from practical and moral standpoint. Did you tell Mikhaila the truth? Did you complete Danielles wish? Did you help people in Cargo Bay? Did you do Igwe’s favor? How did you handle Dahl? And most importantly, what was your final decision? All of these are supposed to evaluate you “level” of empathy. What’s interesting here is that the game doesn’t portrait some decisions as black and white. The game doesn’t consider installation of typhon neuromods a bad thing, similarly, to helping Danielle as a fully altruistic action. While the operators can evaluate your actions and point out a potential for empathy, ultimately, they don’t know what our reasoning for each decision was. So, Alex is willing to take the risk to see if we’re willing to join them, if we developed empathy, if we “can see them”. And we are left with two choices: join them or kill them.

I love this choice because not only it is earned, because if you kill a lot of people on the station and in general show lack of empathy, you won’t even be presented with the choice, the observers will consider you a failed subject. But otherwise, how this story ends are left for you to decide. And I love how this choice is set up and other elements surrounding it. I love how the idea of having empathy is ambiguous. Like, we can say for sure if something doesn’t have it, but how can we say for sure if it has it or just follows an advanced survival instinct. I love how different operators have their own ways of evaluating this question but still failing to reach definitive answer. I like how Alex is willing to take the risk for potential of humanities survival. I like how it gives us insight into how the simulation is set up. While we don’t know if these characters, especially Alex, acted this way in the actual situation or wish they acted this way. Does Igwe regret not preserving Leitner’s connectome? Does Danielle wish Abigail was avenged? Does Alex regret leaving Morgan behind on the station? But we don’t know. Maybe this is how they acted there, we’ll never know for sure, but it’s interesting to think about it this way. I love how it lands on the question about the perception of reality like Morgan’s tests or Calvino’s quest. Like, how can we tell if something is real or not? Can we in this case trust our own judgements of the satiation? Can we be accountable for what we did and if your choices had any value what’s so ever?

I also like how this presents typhons as more complex species than they already are. Maybe they can develop empathy, or maybe their adaptation is more advanced than simply turning into a cup.

Then there is also consideration for the reason for the experiment. Of course, we are told that this is for the sake of humanity. But we’ve also been inhabiting Morgan specifically, and if we choose to join Alex, he’ll say “We’re going to shake things up. Like old times”. Which means that he has the secondary (or maybe even primary) extra motivation to do these experiments: he still wants his brother back. Which another line up of questions related to the authenticity of our choice. Are we joining Alex because we want to or because we are conditioned to think like Morgan and that’s what Morgan would do. Or are we choosing to kill everyone because of our own independent decision making or is it because of typhon instincts telling us that this is the perfect moment to strike?

This final choice is so grand, so deep that I could talk about it for another essay, but I would rather leave this discussion for others. Before we move on, I want to share my own extra “meta” interpretation of the ending. I don’t think this is what the developers intended, but this is what I saw in this. The looking glass simulation is a commentary on immersive sims and video games as a whole. I mean the name of the simulation technology, looking glass, is a reference to Looking Glass Studios, developers of Thief 1 & 2 as well as System Shock 2, primary inspiration for the game and the “genre” as a whole. I my opinion, the game acts as a commentary on the value of engaging with the media and video games especially. Books or movies generally portrait fictional stories. Even if it’s based on some real historical event, they still have some creative liberties making the events of these stories “not real”. So, why do we engage with these stories? Why do we engage with the media in general? For experience, and for that experience to change us. Prey when explaining how neuromods work makes it clear that things like skills or knowledge don’t exist in human mind in a vacuum. They are inherently connected with our personality, memories. Connected with our experience. We can learn something without experiencing something. So, the main reason for the simulation is for typhon to learn empathy rather than evaluating their empathy. Because how can you know how to make an empathetic choice without having ever presented these choices. So, when the operators evaluate the typhon, what really is happening is the game evaluating the player’s choices, and when it asks the player “Do you really see us?” it’s asking if the player sees the ideas that these characters represent and if they value these ideas. If we value, the experience that led us here. This is why the game doesn’t present the final choice to the players that acted horribly in the game, because only the player that does care about what the game has to say can do that, and therefore, there is no point in asking their opinion, it’s pretty obvious.

In conclusion, Prey’s story might not be particularly complex on the surface, but in the end it comes together in the end to asking us countless questions worth asking and one of the most difficult choices presented in a video game.

Mooncrash

Before we move on to the conclusion, I must talk about Mooncrash DLC. Around a year after the release of the main game, Arkane made one and only expansion to the game. Mooncrash makes us take the role of a hacker working for a company competing with TranStar Industries. Our job is to investigate the virtual recording of the incident on the moon station. So basically, another simulation.

Except this time, we are presented with 5 potential survivors each with their own least objectives and ways to escape the station as well as their own ability trees. Basically, each of them represents a specific game class: engineer, soldier, hacker, scientist and space wizard. I really like this for a few reasons. First, unlike the main game, you’ll interact only with some abilities in the game, assuming you play it only once. But here, you will be able to try the whole set. Secondly, it brings up a forgotten idea of the classes into immersive sims that haven’t been in the genre since, believe it or not, System Shock 2.

Another unique aspect of Mooncrash is that it’s a roguelite. If you die as one of your characters, you move to the next available. If all of them die, you end your run and you need to start again. And the way Arkane combine this genre with the ideas of immersive sim is great.

At the start of the DLC, you are presented with a list of objectives to complete with final one being escaping with all five characters. And these objectives are made in really interesting way. First of all, you can’t complete both personal and escape objectives on one run, at least for some characters, meaning that each character has at least two unique problems to solve throughout the playthrough. Secondly, you don’t start the game with all five characters, you unlock them as you complete the objectives. Thirdly, the way these objectives are set up narratively. Not only do these explore some of the ideas of the main game, but they are also intertwined with each other. A twist in the story of one character is explained in the other. And similarly, you unlock them but learn about their involvement or importance in the story.

But the best part about this objective set up is that everything you do in one run as one character, remains in the game world when you switch to another. If you loot a security room as one character, the following ones will find it empty. You can use characters that are good at combat to kill an annoying enemy at the main area of the map to make it easier for characters that are bad at combat later. And you can solve different problems for one character or accidentally make it a problem for another. For example, you can turn on the electricity in one area of the map to make completing objective for one character easier but leave another character with functioning train and force them to take a long route to their objective. Which is important because the longer your run is, the higher is the simulation corruption meter, and the higher the meter the harder the game will become. And this meter persists when you move to another character.

Another element of the roguelite in the game is the random hazards. In different areas of the station, you might have to deal with different hazards or inconveniences. One area might be on fire, the other one has a radiation leak, and a third one might be in a vacuum. What’s great is that for each a decent amount of these hazards and each run they are random, so you’ll have to adapt each time.

Combine this with the survival elements that are left in the main game as optional difficulty options, but on default turned of due to not really changing how you play the game, such as weapon degradation or unique injuries, which depending on the character, might be a big problem, slightly expanded sandbox and randomness of your equipment, and some other map challenges like typhon gates and you’ll get one of the most emergent gameplays in a roguelite, where you are presented with array of different tasks and problems, and solutions that you need to come up on a spot with what you go at eh moment. Obviously, the game has a meta progression element to it. Before the start of each run you can buy yourself some equipment, including the item that reduces the corruption levels. All character upgrades also remain between each run, so your characters start out weak but become stronger and versatile as the DLC goes on. And finally, you gain a storage operator that allows you to share all your found items between each character on one run. This all sounds like the game becomes easier as it keeps going, and it does, but I think for what it’s going for, it makes sense. Once we unlock more characters and move from easier objective to harder ones, the problems presented at the start of the DLC start becoming repetitive and partially annoying, especially when you have a bigger fish to fry, and the meta component makes this transition smoother.

And speaking of bigger fish. The DLC ends with the final objective, escape the station with all five characters in one run. This objective is great not only because of all the gameplay systems that I’ve previously mentioned, that become more and more complex as run goes on, but also because all escape options don’t exist in a vacuum. One of the options is only available to one of the characters, and the other one requires skills of the other two characters, so you have the need to strategize while still having some freedom in how to solve this problem. And when you do this final run and escape with the last character, it feels cathartic.

To summarize, Mooncrash is a great experiment in immersive sim formula, how to present its narrative but more importantly how to increase the complexity of the systems and problems related to them. If you enjoy the main game, this is a must play.

So, was it worth it?

This is a difficult section to write because it requires me to summarize such enormous and multifaceted game. It has one of the most complex and thought-out worlds. It has some of the most complex and immersive systems that are in any games. It raises a lot of questions that are worth thinking about. And most importantly it lures you in to do another playthrough, to find all its secrets, try out different solutions, make different decisions and see how they’ll play out.

Above all things, for me, Prey was one of the most stand-out landmarks on my immersive sim journey. It took me years to finally play it, and on my way to playing it, I’ve played a lot of immersive sims, including the ones that inspired it. And when I’ve finally played it gave me an experience that was worth waiting for all these years. I am glad that I was able to experience it and that I’ll always be able to do it again.