Road to E3: Prey 2

Throughout May, IGN is taking a look at games set to appear at E3 2011, from June 6-9. We'll let you know what to expect and what we hope to learn about these games at this year's show. Will we see Gears of War 3's single player? Will Sonic Generations be... good? We'll answer as best we can amidst publishers' E3 secret planning.

Human Head surprised everyone when it first revealed Prey 2. Tommy, the protagonist from the first game, was moved out of the spotlight, replaced by U.S. Marshall Killian Samuels. He's pulled off a plane at the game's beginning and tossed into an alien world called Exodus. The cool part is that Exodus, or at least one city on it, looks a lot like Los Angeles in Blade Runner. As Killian you'll wander nighttime neon-lit streets choked with steam and flying cars. Shady extraterrestrial peddlers will sell items, others will offer side quests, and you're free to wander around and explore.

It's a dramatic shift from the linear, gooey stages of the first Prey. Though Human Head has said Tommy will still appear at some point, Prey 2 and its predecessor share little in common aside from the first-person perspective and presence of aliens. Prey 2 seems almost Deus Ex-like in its structure. It's not fully open world like The Elder Scrolls, but will present smaller metropolitan sectors to wander around and fight through.



Even the combat's been significantly altered. In addition to being a first-person shooter, Killian can hop around environments, hanging from ledges, scaling the sides of buildings, ducking behind cover and jumping across sizeable gaps. He can turn on a visor to detect where hostiles might be and identify quest goals, and will often need to use it to chase down enemies who decide to flee through the streets instead of fight. While it might seem a little odd that a game like this bears the Prey name, it definitely looks like it has potential to be good.


Normally with a first-person shooter this is the section where I'd talk about wanting to see the multiplayer component, but that doesn't apply to Prey 2. Human Head has already said that this game won't have a multiplayer mode even though the original did. This is a 2012 game so I can't imagine Human Head wants to show too much off just yet, but I'm hoping to see a glimpse of some of the other cities in the game or a look at some of the additional gadgets aside from the electric bola and shoulder-mounted missiles already shown to press.

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