PREY BY PROXY

Surviving Talos 1 without (directly) killing any Typhon.

- Rick Lane

As an immersive sim obsessive, Prey should rank highly among my favourite games. Yet when I first played Arkane’s ode to System Shock back in 2017, I didn’t fully get along with it. I admired much of what it did – the art-deco labyrinth of Talos 1, the freeform exploration, those exquisitely tricksy Mimics playing the solar system’s deadliest game of hide and seek.

Despite this, something didn’t click. I’ve thought about it often in the years since (like I said, I’m an obsessive), and I’ve concluded the problem lies with Prey’s combat. I relied on shotguns and psychoshock too heavily in my first run, and combat perhaps isn’t Prey’s greatest strength. Consequently, I’ve decided to try the game again, but with the added rule that I’m not allowed to kill any enemies in the game directly.

To be clear, I’m still allowed to eliminate any Typhon I encounter, but only through indirect methods. I’m not allowed to shoot them, blast them with psychokinetic powers, smash them with a wrench, or harm them in any way such that you could trace a straight line from my weapon to the alien corpse by my feet. As for what I can do, we’ll find out as I go. It’s been nearly six years since I last played Prey, and my memory of it is fuzzier than that of a TranStar employee after a Neuromod removal.

My plan is to play the game on normal difficulty, but with weapon degradation and ‘traumas’ (specific injuries that have negative effects) switched on. These were added after