MediaStinger: Though not quite enough to make us completely forget about what could have been with Human Head’s Prey 2, Arkane’s latest is without question one of the better space sims to be launched recently and a must-play for fans of the sci-fi genre.
You can understand some games getting canceled, but these awesome looking games still baffle us to this very day.
"Tommy saving the planet from an army of aliens after they abducted him and his entire bar, with the game ending on the promise that Tommy would be back, but that promise was never fulfilled"
The thing is with the original Prey 2 that Tommy wasn't even the main character, they replaced him with some generic looking space bounty hunter. It was a refreshing change to see an awesome Native American character with ancestral like powers fight aliens yet they ditched him. It was only after an outcry they showed much later in a new preview that Tommy was in the game as an NPC.
I'd have prefered a real sequel with Tommy as the main character, literally picking right up from the originals ending.
As for Eight Days...Sony really needs to pick this up
If Amy Hennig was still at ND, I'd have loved to see her tackle it after what she did with Uncharted.
I thought that was awesome too, and honestly i wish people werent so damn critical about cultural variety in games. I feel like people try to ruin devs lives if even one detail is off about their culture in a game and so everyone is too scared to try anymore
One of the lead engine programmers for Prey 2 at Human Head was my programming instructor when i was taking game design. This game was in limbo at the time and we asked once and only once about this game, the misery in his eyes when he told us "this is the 1st and only time ill ask you to never ask me about that game" was something ill never forget😅 he used a couple assets through the curriculum for teaching purposes but nothing very tangible. Just a function here, a 3d prop there. Such a shame. Years later i saw him at a magic tournament, we caught up and he still thinks about that game and how it's "practically done" probably sitting on a drive somewhere
Practically done? Jeez that fking blows because that looked much more interesting then what bethsada made. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed the one bethsada made.
Lmno looked interesting.
I'd knock titanfall and fez off the list. Add something else. Scarface 2 man only if would've been awesome. Prey 2 should be higher to. Either way not a bad list. Out of 20 there's only 2 I'd hate on.
That gen got a lot of games canned right before the finish line. Cipher Complex, Battlefront 3, legacy of kain dead sun just to name a few
One that's not on the list is Killing Day, I remember seeing the trailer in 2005 and being impressed at the time. Being Ubisoft you know it would have been a AAAA game too, lol
2 Days to Vegas and The Getaway 3 are two other games that seemed promising but never came out.
BY JOHN: There are lots of commercially successful games that are, to put it mildly, not very good. Whether they launch broken, or they’re just a cookie-cutter version of another title, some games just hit the jackpot when it comes to sales numbers.
But, what about those games that are well worth playing but don’t sell well? It can be too easy to miss a great gaming experience just because it wasn’t a commercial smash hit, despite having a strong story or interesting gameplay mechanics. This can be due to poor marketing, the timing not being right in the market or dozens of other reasons.
Here are ten games that flopped commercially but are well worth checking out.
Prey shouldn't have been connected to the original, they should've changed the name. It looked good and had decent exploration but it was way too long and the ending was trash. Definitely gets more praise in the comments than it should.
I actually hated Prey after playing the demo, for me, it felt so bad to play, I agree that it gets more praise than it deserves. Most of this list is fine though, there are some really good games on there.
I couldn't get on with Prey either, sounded great on paper but I didn't enjoy it at all. I don't think I like Arkane, tried to get into Dishonored years before and it left me cold.
Did you play it on ps4/xbone? If so, yeah, it played terribly on those machines. 90 second load times, horrible input lag.
I couldnt enjoy the game until it got updated for Series X
I really want to like Prey. I've gone back to it a few times on my Steam Deck but I don't know, I just can't get into it. Mind you, I'm not the biggest fan of immersive sims
@Concertoine,
Actually it was PS4, I don't recall anyone mentioning that it was console specific at the time though.
I liked Prey (2017), but I think the original Prey was more polished and arguably better game of the two. If Bethesda had been so cheap, Prey (2017) could have trade marked as “Nightmare on Talos” or “Typhon “.
Played the demo of Prey (2007)
Never got around to actually playing it but it's BC so one day (soon) I'll hunt it down
I really liked prey, but I'll add I never finished. Dishonored, was a borefest for me I couldn't get into it with multiple times of trying.
The ORIGINAL Prey sequel looked dope as F. I would have loved to have played that instead of what we got.
I couldn’t get into Prey when I played it. I own it so I’ll try again someday.
I think the issue with Prey is how the media were infatuated with everything done by Arkane Studio and the Dishonored Universe.
For some reason they need to remind us all the time that Dishonored is among the best games and everything related to that suddenly becomes near perfection.
cue the same treatment for Deathloop.
Dishonored 1 is incredible. The 2nd is pretty darn good too ...
All their other games have been average to bad.
Idk if I agree, I never really hear Dishonoured being talked about a lot, I think the amount of attention Deathloop got was fine for what it was, then again, I never really cared that much for Arkane Studio's games.
I think the problem was releasing at the same time as another great racer, Split Second, no doubt the cannibalised each others potential sales.
Both great games but I think I prefer Split Second, just about!!
Arkane's six-year-old immersive sim has never looked better.
that's what happens when developing for two xbox consoles, one doesn't align with the other. :D
She's got one eye on the fire place, the other on the chimney pot. Maybe it's her unlockable 'special skill'.
Prey was a decent game. Not as good as Dishonored imo. They usually make 7-8 type of games depending on your taste so Redfall is a huge disappointment.
Dishonored was incredible. World, action, puzzle and approach based gameplay. Prey was pretty good but started lacking in enemy variety. Those mimics are by far my favourite enemy type of any game.
Death loop was a massive let down for me.
Agree, I liked the mimics and some parts of the story/characters in Prey (was unfortunately spoiled of the early twist and the ending, so that was a let-down to begin with) but didn't captured me like Dishonoured did. Thus I'm surprised they mentioned how good Prey looked. To me it was easily the worst part of the game, extremely sterile, bland looking objects, areas and enemies. The art design, especially of the vampires, were one of the things which turned me off instantly when I saw the preview trailers of Redfall.
I enjoyed all the Dishonored games as well. I tried Prey & I just couldn't get into it.
I really enjoyed prey over dishonered. Probably cause I love scinfi. To be honest though I've never giving dishonored it's fair shot. I dabbled in it a little. I'd like to. Think they had some sort of remaster on ps4 I'll have to check amazon
Arkane lost a few key people over the years. I don't know if that has anything to do with Redfall
I didn’t mind it but I would have enjoyed it more if it wasn’t called Prey
Seeing a game you loved get rebooted into something that isn’t anything like what it actually is was super sad. I liked Tommy, I wanted to see his story continue and we got a complete reset.
If they changed the name it probably would have helped them.
Anyone remember that incredibly amazing Prey 2 cinematic trailer? Why they would ever cancel that game is still dumbfounding.
https://www.youtube.com/wat...
I am still pissed that I never got to play that game. The cinematic trailer is cool but there's tons of actual gameplay out as well.
Anyway, Bethesda tried to force the devs to let Bethesda buy them and the devs said no. So Bethesda cancelled the game and made up a story about poor quality and the game just being nothing more than a tech demo. The director said the game was actually almost done by the time it was cancelled, and that it certainly didn't lack in quality.
Then Bethesda forced Arkane to call their game Prey, pissing off prey fans and associating the game with a series it had nothing in common with. Then one of the main devs from Arkane left because of it.
The worst part of this is that Prey 1 and 2's dev Human Head Studios then went on to revive their old Rune series. Immediately after Rune II released the studio went bankrupt and Bethesda swooped in the pick up all the devs and open a new studio, Roundhouse. So they still got what they wanted. It's unlikely they'll ever let Roundhouse revive Prey 2 but I really hope they do.
See this seems like a situation where important lines in the legally binding contract between the Publisher and Dev should have been written in. Clauses like the publisher cannot back out after a certain point. Else who's to stop any Publisher really from just tricking a dev into making a game and then on purpose canceling it at the end and go nawwww sorry bruh we changed our minds, sucks to be you! byeeeee
Agreed. Human Head got royally screwed. I hope most devs are smarter with any contracts they sign.
Bethesda tried to buy the studio. When Human Head said they wanted to remain independent Bethesda canceled the game, bankrupting them. Very scummy move. Didn't surprise me though - this is the same Todd Howard who essentially took Ken Rolston's credit for making Elder Scrolls open world. Ever wonder why there is very little innovation to ES since Morrowind? Ken left early in Oblivion's development and Todd is a hack
EDIT: worst part is via developer diary thing, Human devs said the said the game was almost complete
Prey 2 would've been fucking awesome if it had come to fruition. I was pretty damn hyped for that game.
Yeah it looked great
Only issue was the main character who was a generic looking space marine / bounty Hunter
They had Tommy in the game as an NPC rather than the main character, made no sense to me.
