9/13/2023 0 Comments Prey video game dahl![]() The ultimate expression of this philosophy is the GLOO gun. Remember, this is a game which takes the repurposing of the environment so seriously that every level includes a recycling facility, converting unused weapons and food scraps to useful tools. She lobs recycler grenades into piles of junk blocking her path, literally deconstructing the blockades erected by Talos’ frightened humans. Her powers reach through gratings and across chasms to retrieve distant objects. She transforms into teacups and skitters through crevices. She smashes through glass-sometimes transparent, sometimes holographic-to reach her objectives. Stealth and hazards force her away from catwalks and corridors. Like the IDF employing critical theory as a method of warfare, Morgan treats paths as walls, and walls as paths. After repeated failures to enclose the Typhon, humans decide to infect a Typhon themselves, and determine whether it would act in favor of containment. It is no accident, I think, that the game’s hopeful ending hinges on an inversion of envelopment and penetration. Yes, Morgan’s mission is containment, in preventing the alien threat from spreading to Earth. In light of all this, it is not at all surprising that the player isn’t strictly human. We know from the epilogue that we failed to contain them then, and ultimately, the Typhon invaded Earth. Nowhere is this more spectacular than the arrival of the Apex, which seethes throughout the station, a roaring mass of tentacles tearing at the walls. Prior to the events of Prey, the Typhon broke containment again, consuming Talos I. “After an unfortunate containment failure led to the death of an entire research team,” we learn, the TranStar corporation cleared the station and established Talos I. Kletka enveloped the satellite, but was itself infested. It was Vorona I which was first penetrated by the Typhon, who, in footage of the first human-Typhon encounter, burrowed their way through the face-shields of the repair team to consume them. ![]() The station, they explain, was constructed by the TranStar corporation, wrapping a US R&D station, which was constructed around the US-Soviet Kletka (literally “cage”) station, which in turn contained the Vorona I satellite. There’s a museum dedicated to it, in the Lobby of Talos I. Alex has wrapped us in an illusory world in order to understand our psyche.Īfter all, we are Typhon, and the story of human and Typhon is the story of envelopment and penetration. Like the prologue, both simulations are morality tests-explicit, then implicit. We discover that our experience on Talos I was, in fact, another class of simulation. The “flashbacks” we experienced were a glimpse into that world. In the epilogue, we emerge into a third frame: an undisclosed location on Earth. We delve into the heart of the Coral and place our technology there. We invade the minds of our enemies and repurpose them to our ends. We take Typhon and Human techne and inject it into our brains. But we persist, we invade, we intermingle: sneaking through ducts, hacking security systems, skulking up the twisted spine of the station. Throughout Talos I, Alex tries to contain us: blocking the video, warning us against Psychotronics, withholding the arming key, locking us into Deep Storage. We gain access to the past, and are troubled by it. We discover the world is not what it was. When Morgan smashes the glass door of her apartment, and steps through into the darkened lab beyond, she penetrates narrative boundary, emerging into the frame story of Talos I. The laboratory envelops her in its idyllic dreaming. Morgan lives each day over and over again, her memory reset to the injection of her first Neuromod. We open in Morgan’s apartment, which we discover is a simulation: a laboratory to study her personality and abilities through Neuromods, and now, an iterative prison. Like so many thrillers, it takes the device of a framing narrative and turns it inside out. Prey is a fantasy wrapped in a nightmare wrapped in a reverie. But I’d like to step back for a moment and talk about Prey’s symbolic and thematic choices, which are absolutely fucking fascinating. ![]() For some reason, these are the things that people talk about when they talk about Prey.Īfter all, Prey is a videogame, and gameplay, art direction, and story are how we read videogames as texts. There are some lovely ethical questions, both abstract and reified. As is traditional for the genre, much of the storytelling transpires through the environment: emails, voice logs, and diorama. It’s a first-person shooter, a stealth adventure, and a surprisingly enjoyable platformer. Prey is an perfectly serviceable AAA-class, science-fiction survival thriller game.
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