A Word about the Creature Design [Prey]

This is a Prey blog article on Nicholas Archer’s concerns about the upcoming 2017 game.

For more Prey content, head over to our top page.

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A Good Game right up to the Creature Design? 

Prey will arrive on May 5 this year.  I am cautiously excited after the last sci-fi video game to come this year turned out to be a half-baked fiasco. Still, with people like Chris Avellone (Fallout: New Vegas) developing, I’m quite sure it isn’t going to be difficult to like this video game.

I’m half enthusiastic just from the thought of Fallout New Vegas‘s developers and Dishonored developers working on a game. But there’s so much more to be excited than just that. I know I wrote an article about this, but allow me to mention a few more that I didn’t get to talk about. Prey looks like a shooter in the vein of System Shock 2, with gameplay that will trie to be as good–and will probably land somewhere in the area, if it doesn’t meet the mark.

However, I do have some concerns. Particularly, with the creature design. There doesn’t seem to be any.

I mean, take a look at these:

I hope I’m wrong, but I feel like the worst thing about Prey–as the screenshots, promotionals and early access videos have brought us–is the underwhelming creature design. The Typhon have an intriguing back story, and there’s a sense of Lovecraftian dread in their origins, but they themselves look like if I tried to draw things by just shading their outlines.

Did the Smoke Monster from Lost have bastard children with the headcrabs, the predalien, the cacodemon, etc?

I really hope I’m wrong, but this jarring flaw is something that I think really hinders Prey from achieving true greatness. You can have an amazing “Neo-Deco” atmosphere, an interface that harkens back to the classic days when PC was the way to game, an array of amazing tools and guns, and a setting that mixes Dishonored, Bioshock, and Dead Space into one product. However, if you don’t have interesting-looking enemies, it’s a severe drawback from what is possibly a good enough game.

Still, I hope my opinion is dissuaded by these creatures when I finally encounter them on May 5, 2017.

Other Archer’s Apprehension Articles

• Mass Effect: Andromeda–What Stinks, What Rocks
• The Real Meaning Behind “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” 
• Survival Horror According to Resident Evil