History VideoGame / Prey2017

* BrainUploading: One of the ways you can escape the station. Riley Yu has to do this to unlock her story mission, as this is canonically how she escapes the moon base, and either she or Claire is required to unlock the terminal to make it available. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, the Operator that she was going to upload herself into was sabotaged by Claire, causing it to kill her original body before being intercepted by KASMA.]]

* AllThereInTheManual: Turning on general subtitles in the options will translate the otherwise indistinct murmurings of phantoms. They're vaguely aware that they aren't quite human anymore, and most seem more disoriented and confused than malevolent.

** In the first area, there is a hospital wing that you can find. Inside is a normal and thermal phantom. They can kill you rather fast and it's possible to only have a wrench and GLOO Gun by the time you find it, and even once you acquire some proper guns, the thermal phantom is pretty durable. But if you manage to kill both of them, you find a decent amount of goodies from exploring the wing, plus a robot that will heal you to max health for free.

* BizarreAlienSenses: [[ImpliedTrope Implied]] with the Cystoids, floating explosive Typhon that do not appear to have any sensory organs.

** PlayedWith [[WrenchWhack regarding the wrench,]] the only melee weapon in the game, with 3 human neuromods upgrades and several psychoscope chips dedicated to it. It's not advisable to use it against powerful enemies due to the damage you may take in the process, but it's good when you don't want to waste ammo on weaker enemies such as Mimics (and coupled with the [[BackStab sneak attack]] upgrades, if you get the drop on them you can kill them with one hit, with no cost to health, armor or ammo), and it's extra effective against [[AIIsACrapshoot Corrupted Operators,]] especially as a followup to a quick zap with the Disruptor stun gun.
* BrainUploading: {{Downplayed|Trope}}. Medical technology is sufficient to map the living mind and recreate it, at least in part. In the case of Neuromods, this involves scanning specific skills from extremely talented individual donors, then being able to apply those to another person's brain to give them the same talents. Similarly, the data of a scanned brain can be used to train an artificial intelligence to mimic the thoughts and behaviors of the person who was scanned; such a simulacrum is officially referred to as an "Emulated Entity". [[note]](The legal status of such intelligence is still being decided, as apparently a person built one and declared it the executor of his estate after he died. Since it mimics his thoughts and ideas extremely accurately, it asserts that it knows his will better than his family does after his death, which his still-living family is disputing in court.)[[/note]]
** [[spoiler:This appears to have been done with Mikhaila, Igwe, Sarah and Danielle sometime after the actual Talos I incident, as TheStinger shows they were all AIs in Operator bodies, acting out roles in a simulation.]]

* FastKillingRadiation: Some broken canisters and enemies emit radiation. Once your rad meter is maxed, your health rapidly deteriorates and under direct exposure, you die within seconds. On the other hand, as long as you stay away of the affected area, even a maximum level of radiation poisoning doesn't have any lasting effect on you.

* JumpScare: Mimics can (and will) jump at you from their disguise if you're not careful, and even have their own stings.
** [[spoiler: Stay on your toes when you take the lift anywhere for the second time.]]

* LaserGuidedAmnesia: To remove a Neuromod, you have to lose all your memories from the point it was installed in your brain. As Morgan has been doing this ''hundreds'' of times to test the new Neuromods, their memory is seriously messed up. [[spoiler:And it's possible to sway a hostile NPC to your side by removing one of his Neuromods, erasing his memory of receiving orders to kill you.]]

* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: The way the [[spoiler:fake helicopter ride in the beginning]] works reflects how such vehicle rides through large environements are often implemented in first-person shooter games of this nature, ie. artificial windows into a skybox.

* RegeneratingHealth: Only for the bottom ten percent of your health and Psi bars, though. Otherwise, you'd better [[HealThyself find some food or a medkit]]. There are chipsets that allow you to fully regenerate both bars though.

* {{Shapeshifting}}: The Typhon aliens have the ability to mimic ordinary objects. Prepare to be paranoid about ''everything''. Morgan is also be capable of obtaining this as a power, allowing them to shift into a coffee cup to get through a small opening for instance.

* RegeneratingHealth: Only for the bottom ten percent of your health and Psi bars, though. Otherwise, you'd better [[HealThyself find some food or a medkit]].

* AscendedMeme: The achievement awarded for reading every email on Talos I is "Press Sneak", a reference to a [[http://kotaku.com/thanks-for-the-shoutout-prey-1794708577 leaked email]] by Arkane creative director Raphael Colantonio to Arkane Studios staff following a leak to Kotaku that the Austin office of Arkane Studios was working on a reboot of Prey 2.

* ArtisticLicenseGeography: Done intentionally as subtle foreshadowing. The opening makes a discreet but strong effort to convince the player that it's set in San Francisco. Morgan's apartment window looks over what looks like the Bay Bridge and the Oakland Hills while there's a healthy fog bank over the city. Late into their helicopter ride though it's revealed that where the Golden Gate Bridge and Pacific Ocean should logically be there's nothing but mountains.

''Prey'' is a 2017 PsychologicalThriller [[ScienceFiction Sci-Fi]] FirstPersonShooter[=/=]ImmersiveSim developed by Creator/ArkaneStudios and published by Creator/{{Bethesda}}. The game was released on May 5, 2017 for the UsefulNotes/PlayStation4, UsefulNotes/XboxOne and PC. [[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Not to be confused with]] the [[SimilarlyNamedWorks identically named]] 2006 game, ''VideoGame/{{Prey|2006}}''. The game's development was led by then-CEO and director Raphaël Colantonio and his team in Austin, with Creator/ChrisAvellone working on the project.

* {{Roguelike}}: Though the general map remains constant, items and enemies are randomized in each playthrough. As you complete more objectives, additional hazards are unlocked (oxygen, fire, electricity, radiation) that affect random sections in each playthrough. Certain side rooms are also shuffled through each playthrough (what was a storage room can become a medbay, for example).

* HellIsThatNoise: The metallic groaning when you enter an area that means a [[BonusBoss Nightmare]] has spawned and it's looking for you. Which is admittedly not as bad as the shrieks they make when they ''find'' you.

** If you kill January [[spoiler:before she kills December]], December will contact you later on in the game, and will appear by the escape pod she's trying to lead you to.

** Several bits of dialogue will play out differently if you've already completed an objective before being told to do it. The developers also occasionally account for you skipping steps in a quest line - for example, if you head to Psychotronics before inspecting the elevator, January will contact you, assume you already knew the elevator was broken, and then give you the instructions they would have given you at the elevator.
** If you kill January [[spoiler:before she kills December,]] December will contact you later on in the game, and will appear by the escape pod she's trying to lead you to.
** Literally every single crew member on Talos-1 is accounted for. Yes, ''every single one''. You can use the terminals in each departments security booth to track who is where in the station, and this can be useful for tracking down specific people.

You take the role of Morgan Yu, Director of Research and a key subject of morally dubious experiments designed to improve the human race for the [=TranStar=] Corporation. In 2032, you are recruited by your brother to serve aboard the Talos I space station, but during some [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything some suspicious preliminary tests]] you and the scientists testing you are attacked by shapeshifting aliens known as the Typhon. You wake up in your apartment where it is revealed that it is actually ''2035'', and that you have actually been living in a simulation aboard the Talos I for the past three years. Now you must uncover the secrets hiding in the depths of the space station while being hunted by the mysterious alien force that has taken over. You’ll have to rely on the tools you find on the station -- along with your wits, weapons and mind-bending abilities -- to combat the growing threat and hopefully survive.

** Sim points can be spent to drop pretty much any item you want in your inventory prior to starting, such as the aforementioned navigational chip and more mundane tools like the jetpack and psychoscope. The only requirement is to have found the crafting schematics in the previous run. This is especially important when it comes to the jetpack and psychoscope, as only two characters start with one or the other, and the simulation at best has two more lying around. Full maneuverability at the start is worth the point investment.

* GuysSmashGirlsShoot: Inverted. Of the five playable characters, two of the women are melee specialists while the two guys specialize in PSI powers and guns, respectively.

** The game straight up tells you from the beginning that all five need to escape the station in one run to complete the objectives, and once an escape is used, no other survivor can use it. Thus, getting out just by scanning your brain seems a little suspicious, since it still leaves your physical body to escape, and there's only five escapes to use. [[spoiler:As such, once the upload is done a new order is given: eliminate the original body.]]

** [[spoiler:KASMA is particularly fond of this. They leave Claire to die on Pytheas once she has completed all of her objectives, and outright try to murder Peter by shutting off his life support after he completes all of the simulations.]]
** [[spoiler:During his story mission, Andrius has his head exploded by the Telepath once he's delivered the disguised Mimic to an escape pod. The Telepath will also do this if you attack too many of the now-friendly Typhon during this period.]]

** [[spoiler: "Touch to Calibrate"]]

* DaylightHorror: Much of the station is well-lit, which won't help you see the [[HiddenInPlainSight Mimics]] coming at all.

* ActionGirl: Three of the five playable characters are women with at least basic competence in a wide variety of guns, and Joan and Riley also have specialty skill trees. [[spoiler:Claire does too, and hers take it up to eleven transforming her into a brutal ninja hacker.]]

* CrutchCharacter: Joan's unique combination of utility, damage, and Typhon powers allow her to bypass every obstacle in the game on top of doing respectable damage. On the damage side, she gets wrench damage upgrades that make her deadly with an elite wrench, can summon a zero-cost ballistic turret with only a medium cooldown, and has a large enough health pool to survive close combat with all but the biggest Typhon. On the utility side, her repair skills allow her to fix broken doors and repair broken power conduits, and her Typhon electro-ball power allows her to shock open Typhon gates without any other equipment. She can easily set up the whole map for the other characters to rush for their exits, while leaving behind a sizable haul of weapons and neuromods to upgrade the other characters.

* ItOnlyWorksOnce: There are five escape routes and each can only be used once before being disabled for that round, for varying reasons. One of the objectives the player has to meet is directing each survivor to a specific exit, which is complicated by the fact that not all characters can reach their exits by themselves (most notably, Andrius needs two other survivors to unlock his). Doing so unlocks the story missions for the survivors. Beyond that, any survivor can use any exit they please.

* EscapePod: Naturally, given the location on a space station. Naturally, given that this is a horror game, they malfunction. FridgeHorror sets in when you count the number of pods; 3 bays, 6 pods each (plus Alex's personal pod), 8 seats each is only 144 seats compared to the 279 personnel on Talos 1.

* PlotTailoredToTheParty: All the skills in the base game are divided between the characters here, so no one character can perform every single action. Downplayed, however, in that only two of the five characters have skills absolutely required to proceed. Joan's repair skills and Claire's hacking are necessary to stabilize the Mimic Portal, Joan can access almost every room on the base unassisted (barring certain plot-relevant ones and storage rooms on certain spawns), and Claire can bypass the security lock on Riley's computer for the BrainUploading exit, negating the need for Riley to do so personally.

* UnreliableCanon: Which parts of the simulation are real? If everybody escapes, then there's no way the story objectives for Andrius and Vijay are canon since [[spoiler: Andrius dies in his and Claire is killed by Vijay.]]. But some of it is conceivably true. We know that Riley Yu's escape must be real, since the datavault operator she uploads herself to is the same one you collect at the beginning of the game and is what the whole simulation hinges on. Likewise, that would imply that [[spoiler: Claire's]] story was canon, and doesn't conflict with Vijay's. But if the stories are canon, then does that mean that there's actually more than one escape pod, since [[spoiler: Andrius uses one during his story objective, and Vijay blows up one that Claire is using during his story]]? But Claire's story must be canon because [[spoiler: that explains the ending of Riley's escape attempt and Peter has to use Claire's arming key outside of the sim.]] Not to mention all the minute little possibilities. Some of it can be explained away via simulation corruption, just like how the loot and hazards are mixed around. But it still leaves a lot of questions.
** To add to the confusion, you find Vijay and Joan's bodies when playing as one of the other characters -- Vijay's route is actually unlocked by locating his corpse -- which seems to suggest that canonically those two ''did'' die; though of course the simulation isn't 100% accurate, so it's still not certain.

** ''Pyro'' effects cause Burning.
** ''Nullwave'' Grenades and the ''Psychoshock'' ability cause Silence upon the Typhon, which rightfully causes more powerful Typhon to flee until it wears off. Morgan can't use any powers that require Psi while under this effect.

*** Radiation poisoning gives a debuff to all stars and makes their [[InterfaceScrew vision fuzzy.]]

* TakeThat: [=TranStar=] as a whole is one big dig at the 21st century corporate tech sector, but the choice to place the opening moments in a faux San Francisco pinpoints it as a VideoGame/WatchDogs2-esque shot at the Bay Area of the new tens.
* TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow: Trying to scan [[spoiler: the Apex]] results in your health draining to 1 point, your Psi totally draining, and the Fear effect being applied.

* VideoGameCaringPotential[=/=]VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Morgan will come across a number of surviving crew members and be the options to help them or leave them to die (or actively kill them, if the mood strikes). [[spoiler:Though helping or hindering other survivors is completely optional, the game will actually keep track of your choices, which affects TheStinger.]]

** Claire, unlike the other four playable characters, is a simple custodial worker that doesn't have any specialized training, and thus possesses no special abilities whatsoever. [[spoiler:However, once you complete Vijay's story missions and find out Claire's actual purpose on the station, the game also drops the facade of her being a simple custodial worker, and from then on shows you her actual "action pose", skill tree and abilities.]]

* StatusEffects: ''Pyro'' effects cause Burning. ''Nullwave'' Grenades and the ''Psychoshock'' ability cause Silence upon the Typhon, which rightfully causes more powerful Typhon to flee until it wears off.