History VideoGame / Prey2017

* DifficultySpike: Status ailments (really nasty ones, too, like one that damages you if you sprint), degrading weapons, a death clock that ups enemy difficulty, randomized environmental hazards and the dreaded Moon Shark all make this more difficult than the base game. However, the mitigating factors are that this game is ''intended'' to let you die a lot and keep certain character progression for later, and points can be used to just buy fresh weapons if you found the schematics.

** Looking Glass surfaces will repair themselves to an extent when switching between maps, so you can never completely lock yourself out of being able to view useful information on them.

* 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 UpToEleven transforming her into a brutal ninja hacker.]]

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: [[spoiler You can incapacitate Dahl, let Dr. Igwe take out his neuromod, which erases the memory of his actual objective, and convince him he's here to evacuate survivors. So, William Yu's decision to send an assassin to kill everyone on the station ends up providing them with a shuttle and a pilot to get to safety even if you decide to destroy Talos I.]]

** The limit on fabricating neuromods can be lifted as soon as the player can repair the grav-lift in the starting area. There's no reason for the player to actually fight the Technopath in the way: it can be stealthed past fairly easily (the raised floor in the middle of its room can be crawled under) or bypassed entirely if the player finds the door code for the neighbouring area (which is in the trauma center). Additionally, the same office opens a large cache of exotic materials, thoroughly jump-starting neuromod acquisition.

* 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 UpToEleven transforming her into a brutal ninja hacker.]]

* DownerEnding: If the ending of the main game is anything to go by, [[spoiler:Earth still ends up destroyed by the Typhon. Worse still, it's implied that either Andrius Alekna or Pete the KASMA employee are the cause of the outbreak on Earth, due to a mimic disguising itself as their child's toy in both cases.]]
** Ignoring any potential inconsistencies with the simulation and the "real" events, if the story missions and the conditions you need to unlock some characters are any indication, [[spoiler:almost all character endings are canonically this:]]

*** Vijay Bhatia [[spoiler:manages to prevent the spy from getting away (or optionally allows her to escape,) but in order to unlock him you have to find his corpse, which means he didn't make it after all.]]
* DynamicDifficulty: The longer you spend in the simulation, the higher the level of Corruption becomes, causing more dangerous enemies to show up and raising the stats of all enemies once it hits certain thresholds. You can slow the Corruption timer with special items, but you can't reduce its level, and if Corruption reaches Level 6, [[GameOver the simulation terminates and your run immediately ends.]]
** Additionally, as you complete KASMA orders, new rules are gradually added into the simulation, almost all of which only serve to make things harder on you in general.

* FiveManBand: [[spoiler: Deconstructed. While the gameplay encourages you to play them cooperatively, Andrius and Claire end up working against Pytheas in their story quests.]]

** The Chick: Claire. She's the team civilian, and her role is recycling things. [[spoiler: She's also a ruthless Femme Fatale.]]
* GameplayAndStoryIntegration: 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:Additionally, 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 skill tree and abilities.]]

** During Andrius's story section, [[spoiler: he is being controlled by a Telepath, so all the Typhon become non-hostile]].

** The game also straight up tells you from the beginning that all five need to escape the station in one run to complete the objectives, and once a 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.]]
* LastSecondEndingChoice: [[spoiler: Subverted. Peter is presented with 3 options for where to send the satellite: Earth, KASMA Headquarters, or the surface of the Moon. As it turns out, he only has enough fuel to choose the moon.]]
* MetaFiction: You're someone playing ''Prey''...playing ''Prey.'' Which is a pretty good excuse for the more game-y elements like a death timer or getting points for killing enemies.
* OnlyOneSaveFile: Mooncrash has one autosave slot, which even activates once you enter the finale.

* TimedMission: Vijay's story quest leads to him getting poisoned and having a limited time to find the antidote. Afterwards, [[spoiler:he needs to scuttle Claire's shuttle before she escapes]].
** The simulation in general is an overall TimedMission since once the corruption meter maxes out, it crashes.

** 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.
* WhamShot: [[spoiler:Joan is kind, whimsical, and loving, and the character most geared for supporting the others. Of course her story mission starts as she's in the middle of beating a doctor to death with a wrench. A rummage through the logs &c reveals that Joan's lover had been critically injured due to a mechanical failure and she'd taken it very poorly indeed, reasoning unreasonably that since she's Chief Engineer, mechanical failures are ''her'' failures. She learned that the doctor had removed him from the clinic, and confronted the doc and demanded to know what the doc had done with him. The doc tried to completely bullshit her - understandably, as her lover had died, and the doc, owing a debt for stolen equipment, had turned his body over under the table to the science labs, where it was very thoroughly defiled by using it as a spawning ground for classified, hostile alien life. Something had to give, and it turned out to be the doc's face. In comparison, the way Claire begins her story mission with a blade through the skull of one of Vijay's security officers is a shock and all, but smacks of trying too hard.]]

** The shotgun in found very early, possibly even the first security weapon the player will find. It deals devastating damage at short range, and by the time you encounter enemies that hang back, you have to tools to avoid them or close the distance. Keep it upgraded and it remains an all-purpose problem solver for most of the game.

* WhamShot: [[spoiler:Joan is kind, whimsical, and loving, and the character most geared for supporting the others. Of course her story mission starts as she's in the middle of beating a doctor to death with a wrench. A rummage through the logs and what not reveals that Joan's lover had been critically injured due to a mechanical failure and she'd taken it very poorly indeed, reasoning unreasonably that since she's Chief Engineer, mechanical failures are ''her'' failures. She learned that the doctor had removed him from the clinic, and confronted the doc and demanded to know what the doc had done with him. The doc tried to completely bullshit her - understandably, as her lover had died, and the doc had illicitly turned his body over to the science labs in exchange for proscribed equipment stolen from the firm, and the science boys had very thoroughly defiled it by using it as a spawning ground for a classified species of hostile aliens. Something had to give, and it turned out to be the doc's face. In comparison, the way Claire begins her story mission with a blade through the skull of one of Vijay's security officers is a shock and all, but smacks of trying too hard.]]

* NoOSHACompliance: a single lift being the only access to most of the station, escape pods that don't work, doors than need to be forced open if the power fails, electrical junctions that shoot electrical arcs when damaged, grav lifts that can drop you to your death if the power fails, the list goes on.

** There's a finite number of pure VendorTrash items with a large stack capacity, putting a sane limit on how much GridInventory you'll waste on crafting resources.

* GridInventory: Morgan's carrying capacity is portrayed this way; everything, from weapons to ammunition to healing items to VendorTrash, takes up space in the grid. You can upgrade the amount of space available in the skill tree. Identical items stack in the same space, up to a certain limit. So bizarrely, this means that at some points you'll be able to pick up entire piles of things you already have, but not able to pick up 1 new packet of crisps.

* VendorTrash: Most of the items Morgan can pick up are junk, with no real value. They can be converted into base resources at recycling terminals, which can then be turned into useful items. Unfortunately, you have to deal with them clogging up your [[GridInventory inventory]] until you can find a terminal.

** UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy also managed to survive his assassination and win a second term (in fact living until 2031, when he was ''114'') and later domestic opposition successfully prevented US involvement in Vietnam. As a result, the Space Race continued until the 1990s. By this point, unsustainable space spending have led to economic collapse in the Soviet Union; a lack of military necessity as Cold War tensions recede, combined with the Reagan presidency's renewed political focus on solving domestic problems, removed popular appetite for further American space exploration.

* StaticStunGun: The RSV-77 Neuroelectric Disruptor, or simply the Disruptor, fires an arc of electricity at the target. Can be used to stun Typhon (though Voltaic Phantoms are immune), and when upgraded is surprisingly effective against Technopaths and corrupted Operators. It also of course will effectively stun human targets, such as those under control of a Telepath.

* TheCameo: As in Arkane's [[VideoGame/{{Dishonored}} other spiritual successor]], they seem fond of having celebrity cameos with some of their characters:'

* TheCameo: As in Arkane's [[VideoGame/{{Dishonored}} other spiritual successor]], they seem fond of having celebrity cameos with some of their characters:

* NoticeThis: Anything you can pic up will periodically glint, visible even in the dark. Yes, disguised mimics inherit this property.

* WhamShot: [[spoiler:Joan is kind, whimsical, and loving, and the character most geared for supporting the others. Of course her story mission starts as she's in the middle of beating a doctor to death with a wrench. A rummage through the logs and what not reveals that Joan's lover had been critically injured due to a mechanical failure and she'd taken it very poorly indeed, reasoning unreasonably that since she's Chief Engineer, mechanical failures are ''her'' failures. She learned that the doctor had removed him from the clinic, and confronted the doc and demanded to know what the doc had done with him. The doc tried to completely bullshit her - understandably, as her lover had died, and the doc had illicitly turned his body over to the science labs in exchange for proscribed equipment stolen from the firm, and the science boys had very thoroughly defiled it by using it as a spawning ground for a classified species of hostile aliens. Something had to give, and it turned out to be the doc's face. In comparison, the way Claire begins her story mission with a blade in the skull of one of Vijay's security officers takes you aback and all, but smacks of trying too hard.]]

* WhamShot: [[spoiler:Joan is kind, whimsical, and loving, and the character most geared for supporting the others. Of course her story mission starts as she's in the middle of beating a doctor to death with a wrench. A rummage through the logs and what not reveals that Joan's lover had been critically injured due to a mechanical failure and she'd taken it very poorly indeed, reasoning unreasonably that since she's Chief Engineer, mechanical failures are ''her'' failures. She learned that the doctor had removed him from the clinic, and confronted the doc and demanded to know what the doc had done with him. The doc tried to blow smoke up her ass rather than tell her the truth - understandably, as her lover had died, and the doc had illicitly turned his body over to the science labs in exchange for proscribed equipment stolen from the firm, and the science boys had very thoroughly defiled it by using it as a spawning ground for a classified species of hostile aliens. Something had to give, and it turned out to be the doc's face. In comparison, the way Claire begins her story mission with a blade in the skull of one of Vijay's security officers takes you aback and all, but smacks of trying too hard.]]

** PlayedWith [[WrenchWhack regarding the wrench.]] The only melee weapon in the game, which has 3 human neuromods upgrades and several psychoscope chips dedicated to it. It is not advisable to use it against 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.