Fridge / Prey (2017)

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

Fridge Brilliance

• Even though Morgan is doing random things instead of the intended test during the prologue, Bellamy remains professional instead of telling them to knock it off. It's revealed shortly after that Morgan had a violent outburst in one of their previous tests, so it's likely Bellamy is trying to avoid provoking Morgan by being as nice as possible.
  • From a scientific perspective you would want repeated tests to be as close to identical as possible except for the variables you want to test. Any of the testing staff behaving differently would add an unwanted variable.
• Gee, that city in the intro looks quite a lot like San Francisco, looks like they finally finished gentrifying South of Market for better or worse. Then the end of the helicopter ride reveals that nope, it's not SF, those are mountains where the Pacific is supposed to be. Just the first in a long line of falsehoods.
• Every single NPC is given a full name, even if they're just a random corpse on the floor... except for the pilot in the prologue, because he's not a real person.
  • If you take a closer look at the helicopter, it's easy to notice that the front of the chopper doesn't even have enough space in front of the passenger area to contain a properly-sized cockpit.
• The test in the prologue gives you three tasks, all of which you'll fail because you either can't do them or the solution isn't what the examiner expected. These make much more sense when you gain Typhon powers.
  • First, you're told to remove boxes from a circle, but they'll be disappointed when you move them individually. Kinetic Blast would accomplish the same task much faster.
  • Second, you're told to hide a room with nothing but a chair. You obviously will do your best, but a simple office chair isn't hiding anything. Of course, there is a more successful option, but Morgan can't do it. A mimic, on the other hand...
  • Third, you need to press a button that is separated from you by a simple barrier. You can jump it, but they obviously don't want you to. The Technopath's Remote Manipulation power allows you to so so.
  • Judging by January's comment that Morgan had been given blank neuromods that day, it's clear that the tests were specifically designed for the Typhon neuromod abilities, and there's a hidden reward for going back and doing it the right way.
• The prologue has you get tested on, and then find out you lied to about your everyday life. The last plot twist in the game is that the entire game is a simulation, a test, and you are really a mimic Typhon. In retrospect, the prologue was a test to see how you would react to the last reveal, put there by Alex.
• Why are the handguns suppressed? Easy!
  1 - Talos 1 is an enclosed environment, firing a handgun in an enclosed environment risks more hearing damage than outdoors
  2 - Truly suppressed handguns use subsonic ammunition, which would be handy in, say, preventing hullbreaches. Security chief Elazar even notes it herself, that the guns allowed on a space station are "pop-guns" compared to anything she could use earthside. This also explains why the other main firearm you can get is a shotgun - buckshot has much less penetration than a rifle because it spreads out over a wide area instead of concentrating all of its force on a single point.
• In Psychotronics, there's four specimen tubes that can have viewing hatches opened up to scan the Phantoms inside. Only three are filled, however; it's likely #4 was the one who originally broke containment.
  • No, that's not how it happened. The game forces the player to play through the experiment where containment was originally breached, so you see how it happens (when you go through the phantom-creation process, and it creates a voltic phantom.) The voltic phantom shuts down all the security gates and immediately escapes. Furthermore, there's no record of voltic phantoms in your notes (indicating that as soon as they appeared, containment was breached and things went to hell before anyone could note down what they were or how to handle them; no containment procedure for voltic phantoms exists.) Morgan's notes even imply that the weavers seem to have created the voltic phantom for just this purpose.
    • Not even close. The outbreak started when Trevor J. Young went too close to a Telepath without wearing a Psychoscope, got mind controlled and opened a container with a mimic. The experiment you are talking about has not been finished, so can't possibly be the reason for the outbreak. I mean, if they did create a Voltaic Phantom which then escaped and killed everyone, who'd put another volunteer's body into the container and start the experiment again for you to finish when you stumble on it?
• Why is Morgan a Heroic Mime when controlled, even though the character has a voice in audio-logs and videos? Because you're not Morgan, you're a Typhon that's being made to think it's Morgan, and Typhon aren't exactly native talkers.
  • In the same vein, why non of the survivors ever comment on your perpetual silence? Because it's a simulation and they are programmed to ignore that fact, likely to avoid confusing you or making you suspicious.
• Morgan's room in the Cabin Quarters is a direct copy of the apartment in the simulation. It's possible Morgan made it that way to recall that day back on Earth.
• The "Will Mitchell" imposter and Walter Dahl are the most antagonistic and vicious human beings you meet - but of course they are. They both pretend to be harmless (a cook and a HR expert, respectively), just as the shapeshifting, predatory Typhon Mimics pretend to be harmless objects.
  • By contrast, Ingram says his record is lies, then admits he may have committed some crimes, but for what he thought was a good reason.
• On a first playthrough, a player unaware of the fact that they're in a Simulation Lab on Talos 1 might think the Typhon are already on Earth when a mimic attacks the doctor running the tests in the fake Transtar building. They are.
• In the third act, why does Dahl prefer Operators instead of people? Not just because they follow orders, because they're smaller, lighter, and don't need life support or pay. And most importantly, you can wipe their memory afterward. Perfect for a wetworks man.
  • They also can't be turned into more Mimics and Phantoms.
• Nicole Hague, the lady who's the objective of the "With This Ring" side-quest, is found as a Phantom, in the same hotel room as Talos's celebrity guest, the similarly afflicted Argenteno Pero. There's an overturned bottle of scotch on the floor. Kevin's wife was stepping out on him at the time of the outbreak.
• The neuromods are not a case of of gameplay and story segregation.
  • Being a Typhon made to think that you are Morgan Yu, The neuromods just let you remember the Typhon powers you already have.
  • There's no "respec" option to re-do your Neuromod choices, because removing a Neuromod wipes out all memories accumulated after that Neuromod was installed.
• If you are either really good at ambushing Telepaths before their Mind Controlled minions can explode on you or invest some mods and Psi into Mind Jack to free them individually or simply render them unconscious with your stun gun, you can save a fair number of people who, for all intents and purposes, were dead men walking. If you go back to the areas they were in later, they'll be gone, but their tracking bracelets will list them as "Safe" - which not only implies that the computer knows that they were in distress before and aren't now, but also knows that they aren't in ANY more danger... wherever they've gone. How does this work? Alex probably had them unload from the simulation and, quite proud of Morgan's forethought, added the "Safe" condition just to put their mind at ease.
  • An added touch is if you activate the evacuation shuttle. Although the main shuttle has five people including you, computer next to the (locked) cargo hold informs you that there are more survivors in there, roughly corresponding to the number of people you saved. It is a good feeling, to know that you have rescued them, rather than delaying their deaths.
• In the beginning of the game, you are made to answer a short personality test whose questions basically boil down to "Are you open to new experiences?", "Would you put the needs of the many over the few?", and "How would you react if you are condemned for something you have done?" While at first glance these just seem like throwaway questions for the prologue, they are in fact a test to see whether you'll actually do what you say when present with similar situations in real world conditions.
  • "Are you open to new experiences?": Are you willing to think outside the box and use your neuromods and wits to their fullest extent? Maybe even using Typhon neuromods? Or will you merely default to the tried and true sneaking and running and gunning?
  • "Would you put the needs of the many over the few?": Are you willing to risk the fate of Earth by breaking quarantine and trying to help the few remaining survivors escape the station?
  • "How would you react if you are condemned for something you have done?": Considering how complicit Morgan was with the inhumane Typhon research on the station, would you Face Death with Dignity and destroy the whole station along with yourself, or are you going to try to find a way to get off the station as soon as possible?
• In the upgrade menu, you have three categories for human neuromods. Scientist, Engineer, and Security. At first glance, this doesn't seem to mean anything. These are just the skills most useful given your current situation. However, take a look at the operators Alex has in the ending. Aside from Danielle, there's Chief Security Officer Elazar, Chief Systems Engineer Ilyushin, and Dr. Igwe, who's one of the top scientists aboard Talos One. Each one corrosponds to one of the human neuromod catagory, and may very well have been the "donor" for the data you've been sticking into your brain.
• The "December" questline (where you have the option to just steal Alex's escape pod and run away from the station) seems like a really bizarre thing to include in the game, especially since completing the questline only seems to result in a Non-Standard Game Over. However, it does make sense as a personality test for the Typhon. Incorporating an escape route into the simulation is yet another test of how the Typhon reacts difficult situations- namely whether it chooses to take the easy way out and save itself or stay and try to help others.
  • This is also supported by the fact that, on finishing the questline, you hear a brief exchange in which someone labels the events of the game as a failure, before being told to put the player back in- these voiceovers are presumably members of Alex Yu's team reacting to your choices. Even though you successfully escaped, it's considered a loss because it showed selfish behavior and a lack of concern for others.
• Although not as called out as Undertale, the ability to go back to a previous save file to save NPCs after accidently killing them is accounted for in-game. The character you are playing as is in a VR simulation after all. In fact, just like Undertale, reverting save files to save a character can be seen as a good thing, as it shows that your character feels remorse for their failures and seeks to fix them to the best of their abilities. This shows your character is developing morals when there was not morals before, which is what Alex wanted. Being able to revert to old save files also helps Alex to know whether your character is deliberately killing the NPCs out of malice (and therefore his experiment failed) or accidently killing them out of incompetence.
• Why use Morgan as the template for the Hybrid Typhon? There could be a number of factors:
  • Only a limited number of people likely have their brains scanned and available to Alex.
  • Morgan did terrible things to other sentient beings, but also showed a capability for growing into a better person over the course of their mind-wipes, and that capacity for change would be vital for any pro-humanity Hybrid.
  • Morgan experienced the damage done by the Typhon first-hand and survived, giving the Hybrid a clear picture of what the Typhon look when they're targeting you.
  • Morgan extensively used Typhon Implants, meaning their brain tissues may have been closer than most to that of a Typhon and more compatible with being inserted into one.
• The two decisions that seem most important to the player, namely whether to use Typhon Neuromods and whether to destroy the station or go with Alex's Nullwave Emitter plan, actually make no difference in the ending and it's smaller, subtler interactions like whether the player spared the convict Aaron Ingram or acted to save Igwe and Ilyushin that influence his decision. This makes sense seeing as what Alex wants most to know is how the Typhon Hybrid treats humans when it encounters them and whether it is capable of empathy and forgiveness, whether that means forgiving Igwe for trapping it in the simulation or sacrificing a repentant convict for more exotic matter.
  • Another reason to disregard the player's choice of ending is because there could be multiple different reasons for each decision. If the player goes with Alex's Nullwave plan there's no way to know if this is because it condones Alex's unethical experimentation, seeks to save the surviving humans on the station or simply wants to save its own skin.
  • Likewise the choice of which biomods to use is far from definitive. If the player favours Typhon neuromods this could be because they lack affinity for humanity, or simply because they're more familiar with the Typhon powers.
• Typhons lacking mirror neurons helps explain a lot of what they do and are capable of. Current theories about mirror neurons hypothesize that they not only help with empathy but also learning. This would greatly hamper the Typhons' ability to learn through observation. Instead what they do is absorb and convert other organisms into themselves, and in the process they "learn" through directly absorbing the neural structures of their prey and rearrange their own brains to pass on the learning. Which in turn explains how Typhons are necessary for Neuromod technology.
• If the player goes back to the Neuromod division and enters Halden Graves' office before going to Psychotronics, he can be found dead from suicide. However, given his call to Alex during your first visit to Psychotronics (blocking the neuro-mod licenses, prompting you to go back and turn his program off) he should "canonically" still be alive at this point. This seems like an oversight, until you realize that the simulation never intended Morgan to interact with him. This extends further to other unseen characters, which ultimately don't exist because they're just voices in a computer simulation.

Fridge Horror

• Hey, remember Dahl's Technical Operator? The only one with a name? That signed its hacks just like humans do? What if it was based on a person, just like January? What if it was sentient? What if you killed it? What if you hacked it?
• In the twist ending, all you have to do to get the good ending is not be a total dick. To display the slightest bit of empathy. How desperate is Alex, that he would call on such a lost creature to defend Earth?
  • To be fair, the point of the experiment was to see if the Typhon could ever see us as more than a step to their survival by making them experience mirror neurons, and to that end, all he needs is the smallest amount of proof.
  • On the other hand, we don't know how long it took Alex to make the Typhon!Morgan. It could have been hours or it could've been years. The fact that Alex is willing to trust a creature that killed or abandoned dozens of people, potentially, and hope that it doesn't feel betrayed, manipulated, or angry about its experiences in the simulation speaks volumes about his and humanity's situation. He may just see the Typhon act like a sociopath and assume, "well, it was my brother's memories". Given that his brother was just as much of a prick as the rest of his family, maybe Alex is just praying that the Typhon!Morgan may have some residual love of him from Morgan's memories. After all, a near sociopathic Typhon with pieces of Morgan's mind may be a dangerous tool, but a useful one.
• Despite disagreeing about the exact methods for preventing it from happening, everyone agrees that if even a single Mimic reaches Earth, then humanity is doomed. Yet Morgan merrily slaughters their way through hundreds of Typhon over the course of the game, showing that humanity could stand a chance given enough neuromods, psychoscopes, and guns. Most players will likely chalk this up to One-Man Army Gameplay and Story Segregation and move on. Except, as the epilogue shows, that didn't really happen. One man or woman wasn't enough to stop the Typhon. They did breach containment, they did reach Earth, and they did proceed to overrun the planet, to the point that mankind's only hope is getting the Typhon to want to coexist. The only reason Morgan is so successful in the game is because the simulation is programmed so the Typhon can't One-Hit Kill them like they can in real life. So much for the player being a badass.
• Expanding on the above. Mimics are shown to be capable of killing grown humans in mere seconds just by hopping on their head, but why can't they do that to the player character? Because the Morgan you are playing is a Mimic themselves.
  • Except they can and do that sometimes. You just get a game over and load last save if that happens.
• The Typhon spread Coral throughout the entirety of Talos 1 to create a neural network to summon the Apex. The Coral is never stated to be their natural environment, or nest, or what-have-you. It's purely for the purpose of summoning. In The Stinger, the entire Earth is shown to be covered in Coral. What is the Apex trying to summon?
• When Morgan catches up with Danielle Sho, she's outside the station in an EVA suit and beginning to run out of oxygen. From Morgan's own spacewalks, we know that the oxygen tanks built into the suits have an impressively long lifespan; from the various notes left around Talos I, we know that the Typhon outbreak began around three weeks before the events of the game. It's not clear exactly when Danielle decided to save herself with an EVA, but since she's one of the last survivors of the station, presumably she got out pretty early on. So has Danielle been clinging to the side of the station, relying on her suit's life support systems to keep her from suffocating or dehydrating, waiting for her murdered girlfriend to give her some sign of life... for the best part of a month?
  • The emails show that Morgan has recently been in the simulation for three weeks straight, the outbreak started at most the day before.
• The bad ending where "Morgan" kills Alex makes no sense... unless we assume that the Typhon Morgan was aware of being a part of simulation experiment from the very start and DELIBERATELY deceived Alex by mimicking benevolence.
  • Alternatively, the Typhon Morgan DID learn morals... and decided that Alex deserved to die for his crimes.
• The situation of Alex Yu and the Operators in the ending is terrifying when you think about it. The last hope for humanity is the Typhon hybrid they've inserted human neurons into, yet even after putting it through an elaborate simulation to try to determine its mindset and morality they have no way of knowing why it made the decisions it did or what it is really thinking, or if it's merely feigning benevolence. In the end even if it does some morally questionable things in the simulation they have no choice but to take a leap of faith and release it, despite knowing that if their judgment is wrong there's nothing they could do to stop it from killing them and then going after the rest of humanity.
• According to the developers the entire outbreak can be traced back to when Trevor J. Young, the mind-controlled crew member confined the Trauma Centre went into the chamber with a Telepath without a Psychoscope to shield his mind, and was forced to release a mimic while under its control. That the downfall of the station can be traced back to a single mimic being released supports January's claim that if even a single piece of typhon matter makes its way to earth then humanity is doomed.
  • With this in mind there are actually a couple of instances that could have allowed a Typhon to reach earth, most notably an easily missed event in the bridge where the player can discover that the Shuttle Advent left the station after the breach but before it was discovered and is currently minutes away from reaching earth. Unless the player found the event and chose to scuttle the shuttle, killing the five crew members if they are not harboring a Typhon, then even destroying every Typhon on the station may not be enough to stop them reaching earth.
• The threat the Typhon pose earth if even a single one reaches earth is made very clear once you learn more about their ecology. Mimics are skilled infiltrators and capable of self-replication, so a single one would be able to rapidly spread in secret, then transform into a Weaver with the help of its clones and start producing Phantoms and their powerful variants, as well as the coral to signal the Apex Typhon.
  • The Typhon are also clearly adaptable, producing Telepaths, Technopaths and Nightmares to tackle perceived threats. While earth forces may have more powerful weapons than on Talos 1 unless they're able to rapidly share information and produce psychoscopes then entire squads could be taken out of commission by unwittingly getting near a Telepath.
  • Poltergeists would be another dire threat given that they're invisible even with a Psychoscope. The odds of a Phantom becoming a Poltergeist are less than 5%, but if the Typhon were able to overrun an appartment block there could be multiple of the things sculking around.
  • Considering the Talos 1 Typhon were able to signal the Apex Typhon with just the crew of a small space station (a couple of hundred people tops) all it would take to bring it to earth would be for a Typhon infestation to run unchecked for a few days in a small village.
• While not so much Fridge Horror than it is Fridge Squick, Morgan notes in his journal that GLOO Foam "Smells like crap". Given how that turn of phrase can mean "Generally malodorous", it's not clear how literal this is, but the point remains that it smells bad enough for it to be a problem worth noting. Now take a moment to consider how frequently it is used in the space station for repairs, security, and even entertainment. Even before the Typhon, it must have resulted in some very gross-smelling areas of the place, especially when you add stale wine to the mix (As Morgan notes that Red Wine can be used to remove it).
• It's a small one, but while exploring the Crew Quarters, in Regina Sellers's habitation pod you can find a note and a drawing from her child. The note says they have nightmares and their therapist advised them to draw it. The drawing is a pretty accurate depiction of a Phantom. So, someone on Earth was having nightmares about Phantoms even before the outbreak on Talos I. There can be several interpretations of that and most of them are horrific.
• Think of all the people who end up uploaded into Operators, and live on through them. Then remember that mimics, who feed on sentience, can't use them as fodder for their breeding cycle.
  • There are corrupted operators, which are infected with typhon material.

Fridge Logic

• Mooncrash kind of solves one of the biggest problems characters face in the game. The moon base has Typhon gates, which not only identify any Typhon (including players with Typhon Neuromods), but they can accurately pinpoint their location. With that technology, it seems trivial to ensure that all material exiting the station is mimic free.
  • It's possible there's something particular to the moon or the base that keeps the gate from working on the station. Even if they had those gates on Earth, they can't cover everything.