{"id":26176,"date":"2018-06-15T20:02:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T20:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/320109"},"modified":"2018-06-15T20:02:00","modified_gmt":"2018-06-15T20:02:00","slug":"dont-miss-how-prey-gives-players-space-to-tell-their-own-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/06\/15\/dont-miss-how-prey-gives-players-space-to-tell-their-own-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Miss: How Prey gives players space to tell their own stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra\u2019s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. <\/small><\/i><\/strong> <\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a cute bit<\/a> in the Philip K. Dick story \u201cDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?\u201d where one character warns another about the lurking threat of kipple, all the useless objects that clutter up our lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen nobody\u2019s around, kipple reproduces itself,\u201d he says. \u201cNo one can win against kipple, except temporarily and maybe in one spot, like in my apartment…but eventually I’ll die or go away, and then the kipple will again take over. It’s a universal principle operating throughout the universe; the entire universe is moving toward a final state of total, absolute kippleization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Games are full of kipple. Empty cardboard boxes, old crates, coffee mugs, desks piled high with papers you can\u2019t read and manila folders you can never open.<\/p>\n

But Arkane\u2019s latest, Prey<\/em>, does something neat\u00a0with kipple — it weaponizes it.<\/p>\n

Like most games you might call “immersive sims”\u00a0(Deus Ex, Thief, BioShock, System Shock<\/em>),\u00a0Prey <\/em>asks players to spend a lot of time rooting around in cabinets, trash cans and other nooks\/crannies in search of hidden gems: useful resources buried in the rubbish.<\/p>\n

Unlike those other games, Prey <\/em>makes that rote and repetitive\u00a0action scary.\u00a0It introduces an enemy early on called the Mimic,\u00a0a common but utterly alien creatures\u00a0that tends\u00a0to hide by taking the form of a piece of kipple, then leaping out when the player draws close.<\/p>\n

While the nuts and bolts of actually fighting Mimics once they\u2019re revealed can be annoying (they\u2019re small and move erratically),\u00a0their sheer existence make every otherwise innocuous, kipple-strewn corner of\u00a0Prey<\/em>\u2019s Talos I space station feel threatening and alive<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And shucks, that space station. Can we just take a minute to appreciate the way Prey <\/em>handles space, and sets the player up to tell their own stories within it?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The game came out a month ago at this point and I know it may\u00a0have slipped past a lot of people (there are a lot of games!) but after finishing it, I wanted to quickly call out some of the neat things Prey <\/em>does that are worth celebrating.<\/p>\n

Holistic level design<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Prey <\/em>takes place on Talos I, a fictional space station orbiting Earth\u2019s moon. Once the player moves past the opening scene, pretty much the entire station is accessible, and the player can also get outside and jet around the station\u2019s exterior (though they take damage if they go too far.)<\/p>\n

That means pretty much every space in the game is understandable and accessible from multiple perspectives, both internally and externally.<\/p>\n

A player can spend five hours moving through the station from the Arboretum to the Hardware Labs, then exit into space through an airlock and retrace their path externally in a few minutes. If they happen to float by a viewport on the way, they might glimpse the aftermath of a particularly frenetic fight they had two hours ago, or spot the open hatch of a maintenance duct they crawled through to circumvent said fight.<\/p>\n

This is important because it reinforces the illusion that the player is somewhere else. It makes Talos I feel like a real place<\/em>, a holistic environment that can be explored, learned, and mastered.<\/p>\n

This kind of environmental design isn\u2019t easy — there\u2019s a reason most games run through a linear series of discrete levels — but when done right, it helps the player feel embodied in your game.<\/p>\n

There are lots of great examples of other games that nail this sort of holistic level design, but I\u2019m just going to take the lazy way out and say it\u2019s like Dark Souls<\/em>. That game had fantastic, complicated environments that all fit together perfectly, lulling players into feeling that they were exploring\u00a0a real place.\u00a0Prey\u00a0<\/em>achieves something very similar, with the added benefit of being set on a floating space station that can be circumnavigated from the outside.<\/p>\n

Dynamic enemy placement<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Also like Dark Souls<\/em>, the lion\u2019s share of Prey\u00a0<\/em>is\u00a0devoid of friendly life. Thus, the\u00a0game’s\u00a0interlocking environments are chiefly defined by what enemies you find there and what stuff you can pick up.<\/p>\n

The enemies also respawn or repopulate across Talos I in some fashion, ensuring (for better and for worse) that players can never fully relax when backtracking. More importantly, there are moments when the nature and number of enemies spread across the station changes in accordance with the narrative.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

That gives players new\u00a0challenges in known settings, keeping those locations feeling fresh and, more importantly, rewarding players for learning and exploiting the environments of Talos I.<\/p>\n

Fluctuating power curves<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Prey <\/em>takes a lot of direct inspiration from games like System Shock<\/em>, Thief<\/em>, and Deus Ex<\/em>, asking players to navigate Talos I while fighting\/tricking\/sneaking past enemies and collecting items, weapons and upgrades.<\/p>\n

Since those resources are placed throughout the station and basically the whole thing is open to players from the jump, there are lots of different paths players can carve through the game — and lots of ways that progression can be impacted by how threats shift and change.<\/p>\n

For example, let me lay out my emotional journey through Prey<\/em>. After about an hour, I was intrigued and felt pretty safe: I had plenty of healing items, a weapon or two, and (naive) trust that the game\u2019s designers had balanced the difficulty level (Normal) so that I couldn\u2019t totally ruin myself.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This seems fine<\/em><\/p>\n

Five hours in, I was ruined.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d burned through all of my healing items, ammunition, and upgrade tools. All I had left\u00a0was a wrench and a few EMP grenades, which were useless against the monstrosities that stood between me and everything I needed \u00a0— a shotgun, for example, or the fabrication plans for medkits.<\/p>\n

I considered restarting the game, but decided to stick with it and sneak past everything in my way. I was terrified. Prey <\/em>was the worst!<\/p>\n

Ten hours in, Prey\u00a0<\/em>felt too easy. I\u2019d managed to get both a shotgun and the medkit plans, as well as some schematics for other Useful Things. I was practically bursting\u00a0with ammo and healing items, and I\u2019d learned the enemies and environments well enough to know no fear.<\/p>\n

This is it, I thought. This is the part in every game where you make\u00a0the jump from underpowered to overpowered. Assuming the endgame was nigh, I caught myself thinking wistfully about how much more immersive and real Talos I had felt when I was inching through it in total abject terror. It would be kind of nice to go back to being underpowered, I thought.<\/p>\n

Twenty hours in, I decided it wasn\u2019t actually that nice!\u00a0I was totally out of healing items (again),\u00a0out of ammo (again!)\u00a0and barely surviving as I sprinted across the station, using every trick I knew to try and get away from the enemy.<\/p>\n

By this point I\u2019d cleaned out most of Talos I and was having a hard time replenishing my resources and \u00a0getting from zone to zone, much less accomplishing quest objectives. With no immediate endgame in sight, I thought again about giving up — or at least reloading an earlier save.<\/p>\n

After ~26\u00a0hours of play, I finished Prey<\/em>. I had to make some late-game upgrade choices to counter troublesome enemies, and chase some side objectives that took me through new (resource-rich) areas of the station, but at the end I felt, if not godlike, at least god-ish<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Most games like this take you from the same start to the same end; the player starts at the bottom of a smooth power curve and spends the game climbing to the top. Prey stands out because it affords the player space to slip, fall, and get back up again, only to slip up in a totally new and terrifying way.<\/p>\n

I mean space in a literal sense as much as a figurative one. When lead designer Ricardo Bare talked to Gamasutra<\/a> earlier this year about the team\u2019s approach to level design, he said the goal was to create a kind of \u201cmega-dungeon\u201d in space \u201cwith lots of immersive, simulation-based systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Enter the Mega-Dungeon<\/em><\/p>\n

By way of example he mentioned the studio\u2019s 2002 first-person RPG Arx Fatalis<\/em>, which took place inside a giant network of caves.<\/p>\n

But my dumb stupid brain\u00a0went somewhere else — to the sorts of \u201cmega-dungeons\u201d that are\u00a0popular in some tabletop role-playing game circles, especially in the 20th century.<\/p>\n

If you didn’t play D&D or whatever in the ’90s, know that these were\u00a0often sprawling, isolated areas\u00a0with ridiculously complicated layouts (think like, a 12-level underground dungeon surrounded by a network of caves)\u00a0and, most importantly, threat levels that varied\u00a0depending on how far players were willing to explore.<\/p>\n

That means players could\u00a0effectively set their own difficulty by choosing how deep to delve. Pair\u00a0that with the relative freedom tabletop RPGs afford players in choosing how to circumvent challenges, and you get\u00a0an experience that’s often light on narrative (there’s something real\u00a0bad\u00a0<\/em>going on in these caves\/dungeons\/ruins! Check it out!)\u00a0but well-suited\u00a0to letting players tell the story they want to tell.<\/p>\n

Making games that give players lots of room to tell their own stories is tricky business.\u00a0I think if you look at\u00a0Prey<\/em>, you’ll find some good examples of how that can be done well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Players can\u00a0go\u00a0almost anywhere and do almost anything (including finishing the game) relatively early on, but\u00a0Talos I\u2019s interconnected environments are filled with enemies of varying difficulty, letting players choose how to play and what to risk. The threats in those environments change over time, rewarding players for learning the levels and increasing the odds they\u2019ll go through dramatic shifts in power level as they adapt to new challenges.<\/p>\n

Of course, there\u2019s a big downside to all this that you\u2019ve probably already sussed out. Prey <\/em>gives the player finite resources, but the enemies seem <\/em>nigh-infinite. You might clear out a section of the station, only to come back hours later and find fresh monstrosities lying in wait for you.<\/p>\n

That has a chilling effect on the player\u2019s creativity; after all, why risk experimenting with new weapons and tactics when you know that freezing an enemy with the industrial-strength glue gun and bashing them to death with your wrench will A) be ammo-efficient B) totally work and C) present minimal risk of damage?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

70 percent of the time, this works every time<\/em><\/p>\n

This problem really rears its head in the end-game, when the player is likely to be criss-crossing Talos I and facing new enemies while moving through spaces that have already been picked clean.<\/p>\n

Still, it’s a minor complication in an otherwise great example of good level design and interesting power\/challenge systems. I know a ton of interesting games will come out this year (like every year!)\u00a0but if you have the means to take a look at Prey<\/em>, do so!\u00a0<\/p>\n

And\u00a0if you want a bit more from Ricardo \u201cMega-Dungeon\u201d Bare, check out this hour-long conversation<\/a> Gamasutra Editor-In-Chief Kris Graft and Contributing Editor Bryant Francis had with him while streaming Prey <\/em>on our Twitch channel<\/a> last month. (I\u2019m not in it, so it should be pretty watchable!)<\/p>\n

Alternate blog titles: Beat, Prey, Love; Prey You Catch Me; Let Us Prey; The Prey’s The Thing<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra\u2019s community.The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. There\u2019s a cute bit in the Philip K. Dick story \u201cDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?\u201d where one character warns another about the lurking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}