Prey

I think on my first run I pretty much ignored the Nightmare. It showed up on occasion, granted, but only right at the end and never actually really, well, interfered with what I was doing. I think part of that was that I was on a human-only run, which apparently prevents it from spawning while you're actually deep in an area.

Did it ever do that incredibly annoying spawn rigtht when you enter Deep Storage for the first time? Happened to me, but I was speedy enough to hide in the vents at the side before the rest of the Typhon in that room also aggroed on me.

Every time I told the elevator to stop in the lobby, it was pacing back and forth in front of the doors. Except for the one time it was off to the side eating military operators.

I beat the game. So ... that ending. The idea of the game being a simulation as Alex tries to force a Phantom to understand humanity - eh, ok, sure. It's an interesting twist, but I'm not sure it adds anything to my self-sacrifice. I stopped everyone from leaving except the shuttle, and that went through only because I didn't see the terminal with the self-destruct code, nor did I notice a timer; then I blew up the station. Fireworks for everyone! However, this implies that 1) typhon!Morgan was able to deviate significantly from real!Morgan's memories in the simulation; 2) real!Morgan was, at least in part, responsible for Typhon ripping humanity a new one; and 3) real!Morgan not only escaped, but did so to somewhere that they could strap her down and rip out her memories. Which really says a lot about how evil TranStar is, and leaving Alex to drift into a tendril and get reduced to a fine mist was the right call.

It's not clear how much is actually based off Morgan's memories, how much is simply based on Alex's and others' own recollections of events, and how much is just made up from whole cloth as part of the simulation. It's possible it's all directly based on Morgan's memories, but it's also possible that they constructed the simulation around what they know happened, or they extracted it from an already dead Morgan, or used previous brain scans, etc. Or they just extracted the memories from Morgan without kidnapping them and strapping them to a table.

What happened to Morgan isn't known. They could've deliberately sat still on the ship and sacrificed themselves to ensure the Typhon's destruction (tough luck there, then). Certainly Morgan is no longer around now. They could've chosen something else. Or perhaps the Null Wave and blow-up-station situation wasn't even a dilemna Morgan encountered, and was simply a trick to see if the test subject would make a conscious decision over the fate of humanity (as opposed to simply mindlessly proceeding with the simulation or simply fleeing through December's route).

edited 15th Mar '18 10:10:48 PM by Lavaeolus

The real Morgan was no saint. The guy stood by and calmly watched as Mikhala's father was consumed by the Typhon in an experiment. But he probably did try and save the remaining survivors on Talos I, and given how Alex refuses to leave the station if you're setting it up to self-destruct, that means either Morgan stuck to Alex's plan and chose to neutralize the Typhon, or that simulation the phantom experienced was altered more significantly than what truly happened.

It's also worth mentioning that following through with December's escape plan leads to a nonstandard Game Over. Alex immediately scrubs the experiment, terminates the phantom, and decides to start over with a new subject.

EDIT: Got ninja'd by Laveoulus. Eh, that's what happens when you wait more then an hour to post your reply.

edited 15th Mar '18 10:31:20 PM by SgtRicko

It's almost too bad you can't do both; after triggering the self-destruct, I actually tried heading to the office to see if I could set up the nullwave transmitter too. I mean, how do you properly exterminates the aliens if you don't kill them twice?

I will try going through the game again, once I get this graphics glitch fixed, and this time go Typhon-power crazy; literally the only thing I bought from powers was the electric damage reduction because I was tired of power junctions murdering me for looking at them.

Ironically the most aggressive or interesting of the Typhon abilities also end up being the least practical. The Mimic Matter ability is the most disappointing case, since the Typhon will notice any movement from you, and you'll take far more damage when in "disguise", even to the point where the enemy may be able to insta-kill you. Though I do admit, it's pretty handy to have the ability to squeeze through small holes, vents, etc.

Stick with the more utilitarian Typhon abilities, such as Mindjack, Machine Mind and Remote Manipulation: those abilities alone will get you out of so many situations, and also make exploration far easier in some ways. (HINT: Mindjack actually works on the Nightmares, albeit only very briefly!)

edited 16th Mar '18 6:06:45 PM by SgtRicko

Steam now has a series of new hidden achievements for the game, 10 in all. They're all one word, but they spell out: If You Believed They Put A Man On The Moon. I'm pretty sure that's one of 'em references. The important thing is this would seem to indicate: 1) Prey's DLC will not be standalone, and 2) it's not too far away. We're getting closer to the date they posted earlier, 10 June and the date of the Beth E3 conference.

EDIT: Over on Reddit, u/KasmaCorp posted a binary message that led to this Imgur album. They also sent this weird message to someone. Elsewhere on SteamDB, Prey has an unidentified new DLC and a series of depots that read out 'kasmaseesyou' when decoded.

edited 19th May '18 10:45:55 AM by Lavaeolus

The DLC campaign Mooncrash was just unexpectedly released, alongside an update for the main game that adds various survival mode options (which were previously stricken from the main game, but found and made accessible by modders), as well as NG+ and a "Story Mode" that significantly dials down combat. The add-on takes place, naturally, on the moon, and you can pick various characters with different abilities; the whole thing seems to take some inspiration from Alien Isolation's Survivor Mode, but is still supposed to be story-focused.

Hooey did I just bum-rush this game over the last 48 hours. Tore through Hardlabs, Psychotronics, GUTS, Arbotoreum, got bum-rushed in Crew Quarters for awhile but I came out on top. Scariest area of the game was probably Crew Quarters - but with enough turrets and spare parts defense becomes a non-issue.

So, I found EP 101. I knew something was a little off because I found Alex's bracelet next to the pod. I tiptoed my way up to his room, swiped EP 101, made a second save, and high-tailed it over to the pod - BOOM NIGHTMARE, ETHERIC PHANTOM, VOLTAIC PHANTOM, GREATER MIMICS.

Yeah, forget that mess. Ran like a motherf-r and cheesed it via my previously-constructed GLOO staircase. Click, Psychoscope, IS THAT A MIMIC, click, psychoscope, TELL ME THAT'S NOT A MIMIC, I'VE BEEN PLAYING THIS GAME FOR 6-7 HOURS I-I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S REAL ANYMORE. Hrh-hrm.

So at last I calmly entered the escape pod and...

...that was it.

"We failed - this isn't the one." - Alex.

"Start over." - Danielle Sho with a creepy, possessed-sounding voice?

So I'm assuming that playing through to the normal ending will help this ending make sense, yeah?

That error screen looked like a Looking Glass - so, somehow, this entire game is taking place inside of a simulation and Alex and Danielle are somehow in on it. But why would Danielle sound mind-controlled? All of the mind-controlled people have been saying that Morgan is "different" from the rest of them.

Edited by Soble on Aug 30th 2018 at 9:03:33 AM

Heh. Heh. Heh. Heh. Heh. Heh. Heh....

You have two more major endings to discover, though you won't be seeing them for a while until.. well, the end of the game.

Oh, and a bit of a tip: You can actually take on a couple of Typhon powers without setting off the turrets. I believe the limit is two: activate any more Typhon powers and the station's security systems will begin to consider you hostile. And while I know the shapeshifting power seems awesome it's ultimately rather situational since some Typhon will either immediately see through your disguise or discover you so ridiculously quick to the point where it's not worth it. Mindjack is probably the most useful of the bunch since it'll allow you to safely knock out the mind-controlled humans without killing them, and remote manipulation, since you can telekinetically lift and move obstructions or grab objects in difficult to reach areas.

yeah, mindjack is the way to go for a mostly-human run. shapeshifting doesn't open up a lot of places either, most of them can be reached other wise, so it's not that parctical either. and yeah, the limit is 2 neuromods.

Crew quaters here was the first time the nightmare said hello... And the last time he's ever been a threat to me. after this encounter, I maxed out the shotgun and every weapon damage neuromod I could find, And after that the poor bastard kept dying to 6-8 shells.

I'll note that Mindjack isn't strictly necessary to knock-out humans, if you have a stun gun.

How did you... yes, I was afraid of losing my security blanket turrets so I was avoiding Typhon powers until a point in the story where the enemies became truly overwhelming. I've killed 2 Nightmares now so I figured, "eh."

January's warning about "unforeseen consequences" had me on edge too - I figured that was how you get the bad ending, like maybe Alex would set up turrets to keep you from reaching an escape pod or something and they'd turn you to swiss cheese if you had Typhon mods.

That's good to know. I was going to go for Mimic Matter, Mindjack, and probably Regen or that "Force Push" power.

I'm kind of disappointed that killing the Telepaths' A) doesn't give you anything really useful far as I've seen, and B) renders all the possessed humans unconscious.

Are you kidding? That bastard waited for me at the front of the Talos 1 Lobby the second I rode the elevator down with like 2-3 Cystoid Nests planted around either side, all of my turrets broken, and chased me all the way upstairs to Morgan's office.

Thing is the first time this happened I nope'd out of there and went back up to the Arbotoreum, and then a scripted Phantom attack happened immediately after - probably the best jumpscare since the Looking Glass Phantom - and I thought they'd intentionally designed it that way, expecting the player to retreat back to the elevator. I pretty much went back downstairs, stupidly, and evaded him. Then I figured, "come on, they said I can kill him why not give it a try?"

I was ready for Round 2 - dashed to the stairs, planted a Recycler Charge, GLOO'd my way to the other side of the lobby, sniped him from the stairs, hid in my office, got into a nasty mix-up when the Nightmare climbed through the damned doorway but GLOO'd that sucker and blasted away the last bit of health. Felt like such a badass until he respawned in the Crew Quarters out of nowhere.

The research/mission info on the Nightmare indicates that Morgan "knows" that the Typhon created the Nightmare as a "response" to him, since they see Morgan as a threat to their ecology. That's spooky and cool and all, but does that mean I've been killing a crap ton of Phantoms? Or is that just a scripted event once you reach a certain point in the story? Because I've been feeling like such a badass given that the Typhon had to rapidly alter their ecology to spawn a predator to deal with me, and I've killed two of them thus far.

Alright so... I'm certain that they've put enough detail in this world that it can't all be fake - we've got a DND-stand in, emails that refer to Morgan's odd behavior presumably after testing Nueromods. It has to be something to do with Morgan as a person. I refuse to believe that the Looking Glass technology is simulating all of this because that would be stupid and cruel, but at the same time there's something really off about Morgan's interactions with Alex in the beginning and even Danielle's in the Fitness Center. And that abrupt ending just practically confirms that not all is as it seems.

My second is that Alex is actually the player character and the memory erasure has caused Alex to delude herself into thinking she's Morgan when it's the other way around.

Audio logs and emails have painted Alex Yu as a real son of a b-tch. Yet, Alex encourages Morgan to get Typhon powers so that they might actually have a chance at reuniting.

Yet this sentiment doesn't make sense - I don't understand what Alex is doing that requires Morgan to be left in a simulation where the Typhon are definitely a threat.

There was also a book about voice-recognition/personality falsification in one of Morgan's rooms so I'm thinking that Alex isn't real, or January is somehow not what she seems - killing December like that and all. I know there's a twist coming up here because they left that book there intentionally.

My third is that the Typhon are controlling everybody and we were all f-cked from the beginning but then they must be doing a pretty garbage job considering Morgan's been killing them left and right.

Edited by Soble on Aug 31st 2018 at 5:13:08 AM

Probably should have done something like that the first time for the nightmare instead of throwing a nightmare lure at him, shoot at him, and then have to find enough seconds to reload and kill him with the second volley. but since it was the first time at crew quaters, I would've run into more ennemies.

As for the side effects of installing too many typhon neuromods, it's actually simpler (spoilered if you don't want to know) than that : It just makes The nightmare sometimes spawn midlevel instead of at the beginning and make him just generally more common.

Edited by Yumil on Aug 31st 2018 at 3:19:02 PM

It's always so fun hearing reactions from players who haven't been spoiled on the story and are going in blind, especially when the plot happens to be particularly good.

Regarding the difficulty... if you've somehow killed two nightmares already, I suspect the game isn't going to get much harder until near the end. The only other enemy that's more problematic than the nightmares are probably the technopaths, since they can quickly screw up any drone defenses you've set up by corrupting them against you and happen to be surprisingly durable, and the pyro phantoms, both due to their sheer HP and annoying ability to spawn flame geysers everywhere, even behind walls and solid cover. And if you don't mind a small spoiler, prepare to have at least some countermeasure against heavily armored drones. A certain incident causes the drone replicators to go berserk and start spawning military-grade drone operators which shoot extremely damaging lasers, and they are going to BE EVERYWHERE.

I take it I can't just summon those fortified Operators myself then?

One thing I like about this game is that I don't feel like I'm getting sent on bullsh-t quests - the closest I ever felt like they were just giving me something to do was collecting samples of Danielle Sho's voice, but that was nicely subverted thanks to the Fitness Center mission.

This game seems to give you more tactical/strategical options than Dishonored, and that's really saying something. In any other game Danielle would have died just before she could give me the code, transformed into a super-powered Typhon, killed me five or six times, and I'd have been railroaded into stomping around the scariest parts of the Crew Quarters to gather voice samples from her so I could trot back to the scariest parts of Arbotoreum and unlock Deep Storage.

There are enough linear and confining parts in the game, but it thankfully doesn't get too out of hand.

You should get the ability to build your own portable turrets via the replicator machines pretty soon. If you're willing to spend the crafting parts you can quickly have a sector of the space station totally cordoned off with those bad boys... until a Technopath comes along.

Honestly having played through once with no human upgrades and once with no typhon powers (and several times with both), the fact is the typhon powers are mostly superfluous.

They add dimension and versatility to the game, but full human makes you a Space Marine in a game full of squishie blobs by roughly mid game.

The best way to do a Typhon-only run is in NG+, off a No Needles run. That way you can pick up the Psychoscope as soon as you reach your office for the first time, with all the research attached, and then go crazy. You can even do the psychic water sidequest as you soon as you reach the G.U.T.S., to make things even more busted.

Part of the reason typhon only is more difficult than human only is that by the time you get your first Typhon mod, you already have plenty of Neuromods that you can't use until that point.

Plus the basic utility things are all human powers. Expanded inventory space, weapon upgrades, hacking, all the things you use more than just the psionic powers.

Its of course doable, its just difficult in a way that feels more artificial.

Which reminds me, I need to get that no needles cheevo at some point. Plus the one you get for killing all hoomans, including dearest and darling-est Igwe.

Edited by ArthurEld on Aug 31st 2018 at 1:49:37 PM

So, going to get back to this... eventually... after Walking Dead 400 Days... and Detroit Become Human... and midterms...

But in the mean time I had a thought: Typhon vs Necromorphs from Dead Space.

Since Flood vs Necromorphs has been done to death, I was thinking about The Necromorphs fighting the Typhon from Prey.

Turns out somebody on Reddit was thinking something similar, but they were thinking about Isaac taking Morgan Yu's place.

If Isaac is willing to use the typhon neuromods (at least, the mind control one) then he'll be able to completely avoid killing any humans on Talos I - except for the mercenary Dahl, there might be no way around that. Plus there's lots of non-lethal weaponry around the station, so it's not like he can't resupply either.

Hey, did you ever finish up Prey's campaign? Curious, it certainly was fun helping guide you through the events.

Also, in some Moon Crash related news: Prey: Mooncrash adds free paranoid multiplayer and VR escape rooms next week

Edited by SgtRicko on Dec 7th 2018 at 4:01:08 AM