TeAM YYePG

RADAR PREY
ELUSIVE PREY
Infamous vaporware, Prey is back from the great beyond—and looking great
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In 1996, Prey was on every game editor’s lips. The cutting-edge graphics, the
promise of a deep story-driven shooter rooted in Native American culture, and
3D Realms’ revolutionary portal technology were going to usher in whole new
ways to play. And then, just like that, it vanished.
PUBLISHER: 2K Games DEVELOPER: Human Head Studios GENRE: Shooter RELEASE DATE: Mid-2006
First Look
“THE SHORT VERSION IS THAT WE BIT OFF
more than we could chew,” says 3D Realms
founder and CEO Scott Miller. “We had just started
Duke Nukem Forever at the same time, and
we even had a third never-announced project,
Bombshell. After nearly two years of trying to
make Prey with an undermanned team, we saw
that it wasn’t going to happen and made the
tough decision to cancel the project.”
During the long silence, though, 3D Realms has
been busy. Busy working for what seems like forever
on Duke Nukem Forever…and secretly
retooling Prey for an unsuspecting public for
release in 2006. Well, in truth, 3D Realms executive
producer George Broussard passed the Prey
torch to Wisconsin-based Human Head Studios.
So here we are, a mere six to 12 months away
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from seeing the game done (or as Broussard
puts it, “It’ll be ready when it’s ready”…yadda,
yadda, yadda), and Prey still holds the same
promise from nine years ago: that it will be a
deep story-driven shooter rooted in Native
American culture and include great graphics and
some cool new gameplay mechanics working
behind the scenes. We had to see this for ourselves
to believe it.
THE STORY SO FAR
I’m reading the press release right now, and it
says: “Prey makes use of Joseph Campbell’s
renowned story structure, ‘The Hero’s
Journey,’…made famous when George Lucas
used it for the original Star Wars.” It even has bullet-pointed
“a deep, emotional story of ‘love and
sacrifice’” as one of the key features of the game.
This is the first thing to call them on. Don’t a lot of
games claim to go this route? Half-Life and
KOTOR sure did. Broussard, though, thinks that
not one game has yet come along and sold that
drama exceedingly well. Miller adds, “I think
we’ve mostly achieved our goal of making a tragic
love story within the FPS genre, one that players
will care about. This was not a part of the
original design for Prey.” Cue the demo.
The game unfolds in an interactive cut-scene.
Your weapon of choice, the assault
rifle, is ripped off an alien’s arm!
You’re strapped to a table and all you can hear
are the screams of other people in the distance
and the voice of your girlfriend, Jenny. As a conveyor
belt moves you both, a voiceover, your
voice, narrates as your life is flashing before your
eyes. You’re Tommy. A Cherokee, you joined the
U.S. Rangers at an early age to escape the reservation.
Denying your heritage, you’ve been trying
to convince your girlfriend to leave with you.
The tag line for the game, “Earth’s savior doesn’t
want the job,” pretty much sums up Tommy.
Even though he’s apparently chosen by the spirits
of his people to save the world, he just wants to
get off this alien ship and save his gal. You eventually
embrace your heritage and gain mystical
powers in the process. This entire story unfolds
from a first-person perspective. No cut-scenes,
just a living world that you’re interacting with.
(Well, it is a linear script and you can’t choose the
conversation paths, but you get the idea.)
To illustrate the point, cut to the first in-game
sequence you have control of, which takes place
back at the bar on the reservation. True to 3D
Realms’ form, the environment is highly interactive,
just as Duke Nukem 3D’s was way back
when. Here, it’s kicked up to the nth degree.
Beyond flushing toilets and playing interactive
arcade games, you can walk over to the jukebox,
where Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper”
is playing, and change the tune if you like. People
are talking, you chat with Jenny for a couple seconds,
and then it starts. The lights flicker and the
ground shakes a little. Suddenly, a bright green
light appears outside. A pickup truck launches
straight up like a rocket, pulled by something.
The roof of the bar is being torn off as patrons
scream and cling to whatever they can. Debris,
bar stools, and eventually everyone follows.
The script and this scene certainly show lots of
promise for what lies ahead, but there are a number
of innovations that are equally, if not more,
important to Prey.
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30 > COMPUTER GAMING WORLD
Did you
know...?
Prey was thought to
have been cancelled
in 1999 because 3D
Realms was working
on three games at
the same time.