nkarafo
Member
* This post contains spoilers so if you haven't played the game don't read below.
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So, in this game you explore a space station where death and devastation took place. Which means hundreds of corpses are lying around.
Now, games like this (let's say Dead Space or Callisto Protocol) need those corpses so you can loot them. They also need them as visual storytelling, to see the damage that has been done. And it makes sense to have corpses lying around when you explore a place where devastation and death took place.
Prey does all that just like any other game with similar themes. But it goes one step further:
In this game, each corpse is an actual named person who is logged into the various security computers you can access. You can use these computers to track and find each killed person individually through their tracking bracelet. There's even a check mark next to the corpses you have found so you can always track one of those you haven't to see if they hold something useful. I like the way they all have designated places to be and jobs to do and for many of them you can even find their cabins and offices, with all sort of small storytelling bits about them. A few of them may be part of side quests but even those that don't still exist in this world naturally. Even the most insignificant person in a random hallway may have a cabin, an office or one of those small bed chambers to their name. It's like nobody is there randomly by chance and each one is individually handpicked and placed in their positions with care. And the scale of the game (literally hundrends of people) makes it all more impressive.
This makes the space station feel so much more believable and lived in. Which is even more important in an immersive sim like Prey. Now in other such games like System Shock 2 and Bioshock, the NPCs are usually the ones who attack you because they are either infected or brainwashed. Prey also has a few of those but they are still named. But in the other games they are just random enemies who also respawn so you don't feel like these people mattered as much. I think Prey is a better game than those (awesome) games and this is one of the reasons.
The only issue i have with the NPCs is the way they look, it seems like the early days of wokeism taking over as there isn't a single attractive woman in this station. Also, there is a certain black woman who looks like a Caucasian who fell in tar or something. It's quite funny and unnatural looking. Like they wanted to race swap her at the last minute and picked the wrong shade of black or something. It's a bit distracting but it's a different issue altogether. It doesn't really take away anything from the whole system
So i wonder if other games have done such interesting things with all their background dead NPCs. I can think of SOMA, which may be even better, but that one is a much smaller game in scale and also linear, with only a fraction of the number of NPCs.
.
.
.
.
So, in this game you explore a space station where death and devastation took place. Which means hundreds of corpses are lying around.
Now, games like this (let's say Dead Space or Callisto Protocol) need those corpses so you can loot them. They also need them as visual storytelling, to see the damage that has been done. And it makes sense to have corpses lying around when you explore a place where devastation and death took place.
Prey does all that just like any other game with similar themes. But it goes one step further:
In this game, each corpse is an actual named person who is logged into the various security computers you can access. You can use these computers to track and find each killed person individually through their tracking bracelet. There's even a check mark next to the corpses you have found so you can always track one of those you haven't to see if they hold something useful. I like the way they all have designated places to be and jobs to do and for many of them you can even find their cabins and offices, with all sort of small storytelling bits about them. A few of them may be part of side quests but even those that don't still exist in this world naturally. Even the most insignificant person in a random hallway may have a cabin, an office or one of those small bed chambers to their name. It's like nobody is there randomly by chance and each one is individually handpicked and placed in their positions with care. And the scale of the game (literally hundrends of people) makes it all more impressive.
This makes the space station feel so much more believable and lived in. Which is even more important in an immersive sim like Prey. Now in other such games like System Shock 2 and Bioshock, the NPCs are usually the ones who attack you because they are either infected or brainwashed. Prey also has a few of those but they are still named. But in the other games they are just random enemies who also respawn so you don't feel like these people mattered as much. I think Prey is a better game than those (awesome) games and this is one of the reasons.
The only issue i have with the NPCs is the way they look, it seems like the early days of wokeism taking over as there isn't a single attractive woman in this station. Also, there is a certain black woman who looks like a Caucasian who fell in tar or something. It's quite funny and unnatural looking. Like they wanted to race swap her at the last minute and picked the wrong shade of black or something. It's a bit distracting but it's a different issue altogether. It doesn't really take away anything from the whole system
So i wonder if other games have done such interesting things with all their background dead NPCs. I can think of SOMA, which may be even better, but that one is a much smaller game in scale and also linear, with only a fraction of the number of NPCs.
