Cool concept. Great world and atmosphere. Talos I is seriously an awesome setting for a game and its clear the devs focused on this. Typhons are a good balance between something new, but still rooted in familiarity for enemy types. The world building is truly one of the only highlights of this game. Talos I genuinely feels like it could be built in a real scenario. The organization of the departments and overall architecture is all very sound to how laymen would understand what "realistic" sci-fi could look like.
Onto the rest... The story is uninteresting, riddled with middling writing overall. I listened to most of the audio logs (even when they had to repeat themselves over and over again due to overlapping npcs and events occurring), as well as read most emails. People boast about how much of an immersive sim this game is, but realistically, Prey is still pretty linear. They do give you workarounds into other pathways and departments, access to some power resources and guns in multiple ways. But, the questing is all very much linear. You don't really get rewarded for exploring things "out of order" and the game forces you to backtrack anyways like a Metroidvania would. Timed quests are a cool concept, mixed execution. Grabbing the pills to save your coworker vs "protecting your brother in his bunker". When they introduce the protecting your brother objective, they don't really allude to it being a heavily pressing matter. They also drop like 5 other objectives for you, one which is to shutdown the hacking robot that is causing enemy spam across the whole ship. It was just an obnoxious implementation all around. Grabbing the pills was completely optional, but allowed the freedom to explore some side story and character connections you only would've been hinted at through a couple files and emails throughout the game. The character would've died without them and they played a somewhat important role.
The first half of the game is focused on the "immersive" part of the immersive sim. You truly feel like you are figuring out your way through who you are, where you are, what you are, and absorbing/understanding everything around you. Second half feels pretty rushed and railroaded.
Execution is lacking. Gameplay is clunky and buggy at best. The game boasts all of these tools, powers, and items to solve every situation in its own little way. However, GLOO, Mimic, and Hacking are just WAY TOO STRONG. The game is easy with just these. I didn't find the gameplay fun enough personally to force myself away from easily accessible methods such as this. AI enemy design is very lackluster too. If you wanted, you could just sprint past basically everything (which I did the last couple hours of the game, due to the amount of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ they toss at you during an extremely awful slow burn of an ending).
However, Prey starts off pretty good story-wise. The beginning all the way up to the first time you go into the Arboretum are engaging. You are still in the "mystery" of the story, the relationship between the Yu brothers, and how it all relates to the current existence (which they don't reference or pull a trigger on until a last small tie in during the last credits scene).
Arkane did put a lot of thought and effort into this game and I do feel bad for leaving a negative review on an ambitious project. There should be more games in this vein of originality. At the end of the day though, I dreaded finishing the last two sections of the game. The lackluster and abrupt endings as well were the cherry on top, leaving with a very bad taste in your mouth. I am not surprised at all that this division of Arkane was closed down at the end of the day.
All in all, I had fun moments, but I don't understand the overwhelming love for this game. They were far and few between. Maybe I just don't have the self control or imagination for this game and I missed the mark, but that's what reviews and game diversity are for.
