Examples of Damage Control in Gaming: Praying for Prey (2)
Patrice Desilets and his (former?) game, 1666, may have made headlines recently as a display of how publisher and developer relationships can sometimes go horribly awry, but there’s an older example we shouldn’t forget: Prey 2. Though it received criticism for being a sizable departure from the original in terms of tone and approach upon its unveiling, fans of the first Prey and single player first-person shooters in general were looking forward to it. In making the sequel, developer Human Head Studios decided to abandon the comic book-inspired sci-fi aesthetics to make a game that channeled the spirits of popular cyberpunk works of days gone past. It was the E3 2011 demo that put the game on the radar as a title to look forward to.
Despite the cyberpunk genre’s popularity, it’s infrequently used in video games these days, for some odd reason. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is one of the best recent examples we have, if not the best. We’re far from the golden age of its prevalence, which happened in the early-to-mid 90s. That was a time when many games were inspired by popular 80s movies, and Blade Runner served as the main culprit for the cyberpunk genre.
And everyone who was anticipating it sure wasn’t prepared for the dismantling partnership of Human Head and Bethesda Softworks that would happen behind the scenes. The aforementioned E3 showing was great, and the publisher rode off that hype for a few months, but many of us became skeptical after the game faded from the public eye for months on end. It was then scheduled to reappear at a developer panel at GDC 2012, where a new demo would be shown. But that bout of excitement turned to panic when Bethesda cancelled the appearance. This told everyone that the game had likely entered development hell.
The reality was probably much worse than that. Soon, rumors started swirling that it was cancelled. The reaction from onlookers was a mixture of perplexity and frustration, unable to fathom why the company would cancel a game that looked so polished. But we received good news from Bethesda themselves that it was still in development. And along with that came some bad news. A reliable source told numerous press outlets that Human Head had been pulled off the game, and hadn’t worked on it since November 2011. To understand how dire this news was, you have to realize that the last time Bethesda did this, we ended up with the much-maligned Rogue Warrior.
But we just received some good news from another reliable source. Keep in mind that it’s not “great” news, which would entail handing development duties back to Human Head. The
newest rumor says the game has been handed to Arkane Austin, developers of last year’s critical hit, Dishonored. But they aren’t being handed any leftovers. No, they’re completely rebooting
the development, and plan to release the finished product in 2016. Word is that they’re treating the game like a new System Shock title, a franchise whose installments have been referred to as quintessential cyberpunk FPS experiences. So it certainly sounds like everything will go smoothly from here on; it’s just that we’ll have to wait a while to see their efforts. The source also said that Obsidian Entertainment worked on the game for a few months, who was probably the other development team referred to in the previous rumor. Also, Rebellion, who worked on the aforementioned Rogue Warrior, passed on the opportunity to work on a game, perhaps in an act of valor to save us from another one of their efforts.
And just when you thought this saga was over, something else came up. Jason L. Blair, a former Human Head employee who now works at Volition (of Saints Row), said on his Twitter account that Prey 2 was finished. Apparently Bethesda is just sitting on a game that merely needs a few tweaks. All this does is make us really want to know what happened behind the scenes, and hopefully someone spills the beans one day soon.
The future version of Prey 2 will be in good hands with Arkane, but it would have been ideal for us to experience Human Head’s original vision. If it really is finished, it would be nice if someone got their hands on it and distributed it themselves. That wouldn’t be entirely ethical, sure, but it would be the only way we could experience it. And it doesn’t seem like Bethesda plans on doing anything with it.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter