"Prey is not a sequel, it’s not a remake, it has no tie with the original," Arkane Studios creative director Raphael Colantonio stated in an interview recently released on Bethesda’s YouTube page, "you have to look at it like a re-imagining of the IP."
The Prey property has had one key issue throughout its development: getting released. The first Prey was announced in 1995 and changed hands several times before finally being launched by Human Head Studios in 2006. A planned sequel, Prey 2, was leaked in 2011 and saw several delays before finally being cancelled in 2014. The upcoming game, simply called Prey, also leaked in 2013 and will not use any assets from the cancelled sequel.
In the spirit of the game’s main inspiration, System Shock 2, Prey will be a first-person shooter with role-playing elements and an emphasis on narrative. Colantonio also reconfirmed that the main character, Morgan Yu, can be played as a woman or a man.
As Morgan, players must survive a space station swarming with hostile aliens who wield strange powers, and the decisions they make will affect how the story unfolds. Players will have to scrounge the station for weapons and scientific gadgets which are "not meant for combat, but somehow work out in combat." Certain supernatural powers can also be learned from the alien enemies that inhabit the environment.
Prey is planned for a 2017 release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC.
