Trivia / Prey (2017)

• Absurdly Short Production Time: Not the game itself, but an enemy: according to lead designer Ricardo Bare, the Poltergeist was made in an extremely truncated period late in the game's development when the developers decided they wanted more enemy variety. The time crunch left them without the artists or AI programmers to make an entirely new, fully-realized creature from scratch, so they made it invisible and attack by throwing physics objects, saving them a dramatic amount of time and resources while successfully adding something new.
• Actor Allusion: This isn't the first time Mae Whitman played a woman who had a stormy relationship with another woman. Or was connected to a screwed up family.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: Walton Goggins and James Hong have minor roles in the game, as Aaron Ingram and William Yu, respectively.
• Creator-Driven Successor: To System Shock, but also to Planescape: Torment. Sharing a writer in Chris Avellone, the games deal with similar questions of identity and one of Prey's more prominent story elements are the actions of previous incarnations - including Morgan being guided by several former versions of themselves, often at odds with each other.
• Executive Meddling: Arkane founder Raphaël Colantonio stated in 2022 that no one at Arkane wanted to call the game Prey, since it had no story connection to Prey (2006) and they felt it was "gross" to use the name of an IP they didn't create, but Bethesda forced them to.
• The Other Darrin: Presumably because Benedict Wong was busy filming for Avengers: Infinity War during its development, Alex Yu's cameos in the Mooncrash DLC are done with a soundalike.
• The Other Marty: William Salyers recorded for Alex Yu before being replaced mid-development by Benedict Wong.
• Screwed by the Network:
  • For some reason, Bethesda did not distribute review codes for Prey to reviewers and press until 24 hours before the release date. This unfortunately meant that reviews were either delayed or rushed, which gave many people who were on the fence about the game a negative initial impression.
  • Adding to the confusing marketing was the insistence on Bethesda's part of naming the game after an unrelated game from 2006. While both Preys are first person shooters in space, that's where the similarities end; 2006 is a linear action/horror First-Person Shooter about a Native American losing and regaining his connection with his native culture and a mechanical emphasis on portals and gravity manipulation, while 2017 is a much a slower paced sci-fi Psychological Horror/thriller Immersive Sim with nonlinear progression that focuses its narrative on what it means to be human and its mechanics on outsmarting enemies and obstacles. A common comment is that naming the game "Neuroshock", would have avoided the confusing comparison and better stated the game's actual presentation via association with System Shock and BioShock, well-known examples of the subgenre and the overall premise.^note The game's director, who left the studio shortly after its completion, directly stated that the title was forced on Arkane by Bethesda. By and large, it's agreed by most that the use of the same title as the previous "Prey" was a baffling decision that can really only be explained as an act of pure corporate spite from Bethesda's higher-ups towards Human Head Studios, who were working on the actual Prey 2 but were actively screwed over by Bethesda due to an attempted hostile acquisition, resulting in the game being canceled when they refused to allow the publisher to buy them out.
• Throw It In!: The "Reployer" machines that are found around the station started out as an object that nobody in the development team could figure out a plausible use for. As a result, it was nearly cut from the game...until someone suggested turning it into a meta-joke.
  “We almost cut this from the game three times,” Colantonio says. “I even had a few ‘fights’ with [Lead Visual Designer] Manu [Petit], telling him I never want to see that thing again – until we eventually turned it into a joke and said, ‘What if no one aboard the space station knows what that object is? Let’s give it an obscure name like Reployer and let’s have people talk about it in emails.’”
• What Could Have Been:
  • Human Head Studios's Prey 2 was originally developed as a direct sequel to the original game with a "Cowboys in Space" vibe, as the player character worked as an intergalactic bounty hunter of sorts. After a fairly impressive debut at E3 2011, the game sank into Development Hell for several years due to disagreements between Human Head and Bethesda over the game's direction, along with a hostile acquisition that Bethesda allegedly attempted on Human Head. The game was officially cancelled in 2014 before the name was given to Arkane for their new sci-fi game.
  • Arkane's Prey had a number of features cut during development.
    • Early footage showed an oxygen meter while Morgan was in environments with no air, suggesting that the useless (aside from being thrown at the Typhon) O2 tanks present in the final game were intended to refill the suit's oxygen supply.
    • Injuries would have caused negative status effects to Morgan, with burns and fractures needing different items to treat properly.
    • An AI-powered homing disc rifle (complete with sidequest) was cut for unknown reasons.
    • Weapon durability was scrapped in the final game, possibly because the developers feared it would become a Scrappy Mechanic as it had in System Shock 2.
  • A later update added an oxygen meter, weapon degradation and negative status effects from injuries as "Survival Mode" options that can be toggled on or off individually when starting a new game.
  • The Mooncrash DLC includes weapon degradation and more status effects, but all characters still have unlimited oxygen as long as they keep their suit intact. Except Peter.