Day one of E3 2016 is coming to a close, and although the E3 trade floor doesn’t actually open until Tuesday, the first two days are as usual host to the big publisher press conferences. Electronic Arts went first and this evening, Bethesda took over to share some surprises of their own.
While rumors pointing towards potential announcements for another new Wolfenstein game, a sequel to The Evil Within, and even another new entry in The Elder Scrolls series proved false, instead gamers got a teaser for Quake Champions - continuing Bethesda’s trend of bringing back classic shooter IPs - and after years of waiting, a new Prey game.
And before you ask, no, this isn’t the infamously cancelled/re-tooled Prey 2 - a game that blew us away back in E3 2011 for its impressive demo. It’s an all-new thing from a different developer that’s embracing the title of the original, much like the latest Doom game did to great success. And for this new Prey, as early reports suggested three years ago, Dishonored developer Arkane Studios (and not Human Head) is in charge of the new game and its vision which was described from the get-go as being a “spiritual successor” of sorts to System Shock 2.
The Prey reveal trailer cinematic is up top, and it emphasizes sci-fi mystery and horror elements with a big potential twist. Its visuals are as exciting as the idea of the franchise returning and the timing couldn’t be better for Arkane who is also working on Dishonored 2. Having not seen any gameplay however, it’s difficult to fathom at this point our visually impressive Prey gameplay will really be especially when compared to Dishonored 2.
Below an in-depth video featuring gameplay from the original Prey 2 alongside an interview with Chris Rhinehart from E3 2011, the at-the-time project lead and co-founder of Human Head Studios (the makers of the original Prey) so you can compare to what could have been:
As Rhinehart explains, the original concept for the Prey followup featured a bounty hunter working jobs on an alien world. In this new Prey, players will instead step into the space boots of Morgan Yu in the year 2032 aboard the Talos One space station. As emphasized in the reveal trailer, Yu is a subject of some kind of experiments on this station and something goes wrong and monstrous creatures attack.
How does the new direction for Prey compare to what was previously showcased for Prey 2? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Prey releases sometime in 2017.
