![]() Good immersive sims-like BioShock and Dishonored 2-weave stories into their environments. Nevertheless, the lack of variety provides little incentive to stop and admire your surroundings beyond the initial few hours. Logically, the lack of variety makes sense-it's an installation designed to house people that do science, not a funfair. Otherwise, the place is comprised of typical living quarters, office areas, and an abundance of science labs in various states of disarray. Talos I, however, maintains a consistent aesthetic throughout its various areas, breaking the uniformity of its visual design only for the Arboretum, where lush vegetation, towering trees, and snaking vines are entangled with cold space station architecture. Video game worlds are often designed on the same principles as amusement parks, with zones supporting unique themes for variety. Together with the luminescent blue computer screens and neon stylings of other futuristic technology, Talos I has a distinct visual identity, but it's one that grows tiresome. It has the deep red furnishings and gleaming gold frame of a baroque hotel but this is abstracted against the blackness of space, visible through giant glass windows. With its fusion of art-deco stylings and utilitarian design, Talos I is initially very striking. Prey quickly loosens its grip on this narrative thread, allowing it to drift into the background in favour of environmental storytelling that shifts the focus to Talos I itself. ![]() But sadly, that opportunity is largely wasted. It's an opportunity to tell a twisting, paranoia-fuelled story that forces you to second-guess your own character. Prey subverts this with an early game twist that lays the groundwork for players to scrutinise their agency in the moment, to question the motivations of characters as they appear, and re-evaluate the impact they're having throughout. In the ending of Irrational's BioShock, the revelation surrounding this phrase re-contextualises the events of the entire game to deliver a commentary on player agency. Prey's opening is its most memorable part, largely due to its own "Would you kindly" moment, and the promise of what it could mean. During the removal process, the memory of a user is rolled back to its pre-installation state, and since the game begins shortly after some mods are ripped out of her brain, Morgan-and by proxy, the player-starts as an amnesiac. She was also the primary test subject for them, hot-swapping Neuromods in and out of her brain with reckless abandon. Morgan was involved in the creation of Neuromods, a technology derived from the Typhon that allows humans to augment their abilities. ![]() Set in the year 2032, Prey casts the player as Morgan Yu, a scientist that finds herself-or himself-trapped on Talos I, a space station overrun by a race of highly intelligent aliens called the Typhon. By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's ![]()
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