Prey is a 2006 first-person shooter game developed by Human Head Studios, under contract for 3D Realms, and published by 2K Games, while the Xbox 360 version was ported by Venom Games. The game was initially released in North America and Europe on July 11, 2006. Prey uses a heavily modified version of id Tech 4 to use portals and variable gravity to create the environments the player explores.
The game's story is focused on Cherokee Domasi "Tommy" Tawodi as he, his girlfriend, and grandfather are abducted aboard an alien spaceship known as The Sphere as it consumes material, both inanimate and living, from Earth in order to sustain itself. Tommy's Cherokee heritage allows him to let his spirit roam freely at times and resurrect, giving Tommy an edge in his battle against the Sphere.
Prey had been in development in one form or another since 1995, and has had several major revisions. While the general approach to gameplay, including the use of portals, remained in the game, the story and setting changed several times. The game received generally positive reviews, with critics praising its graphics and gameplay but criticizing its multiplayer component for a lack of content.
Prey was a commercial success, selling more than one million copies in the first two months of its release and leading to the abortive development of its sequel Prey 2. The rights to Prey passed on to Bethesda Softworks, who released a game of the same name, developed by Arkane Studios, in 2017.
Gameplay
Prey is a first-person shooter with the player in control of the protagonist Tommy as he explores the gigantic extraterrestrial craft Sphere and fights its inhabitants aboard. During the game, the player will collect a number of alien weapons, some comparable to typical first-person shooter archetypes, others more alien in behavior.
The game's engine introduces two unique aspects to exploration. Portals in the game can transport the player from one area to another instantly; portals can be looked and shot through and can also be traveled in reverse. Unlike the later game Portal, the player cannot create portals directly without the use of mods, and portals remain fixed in space. The game also features variable gravity. Special paths allow the player to walk along them, remaining upright regardless of orientation, though should the player fall or voluntarily jump off the path, gravity will reassert itself. Small planetoids inside The Sphere can also exhibit their own gravity fields, allowing the player to walk completely around the outside of it.
The player can detach Tommy's spirit from his body, allowing the spirit to roam freely for a short time. The spirit has limited interaction with the environment, though it is able to activate control panels and can use a spirit bow to strike at foes. The spirit force is often used to solve environmental puzzles within the game as well as to locate paths that are not visible to mortal eyes. Although Tommy dies when his health is depleted, he is resurrected after a brief period during which his spirit can increase the health the revived body will have. Two vehicles make an appearance; one is a flying vehicle used frequently for travel and attacking (as well as puzzle solving), and one is only used for a short period near the end of the game.
The bar that the game begins in is interactive, with usable restroom facilities, a TV with various channels (including a clip from Duck and Cover), a fully playable Pac-Man-style game called Rune Man (referring to a previous game by Human Head entitled Rune), several video casino machines (including blackjack, draw poker, and a slot machine), and a jukebox that plays a small selection of licensed songs.
Plot Domasi "Tommy" Tawodi (voiced by Michael Greyeyes) is a Cherokee mechanic and former United States Army soldier living on a Native American reservation in Oklahoma. The game begins with Tommy in a bar owned by his girlfriend, Jen. Tired of life on the reservation, Tommy tries to convince Jen to leave it with him, but she refuses. After a fight between the two, a fight erupts when two men at the bar will not leave. The building is lifted up by some kind of force into a green light above. Tommy, Jen, Tommy's grandfather Enisi, and other captives are transported to a massive alien starship called the Sphere. Tommy is freed in an explosion set off by a mysterious stranger, who, despite being a cybernetic being like most of the Sphere's inhabitants, appears to be working against the Sphere.
Tommy witnesses Enisi's brutal death in an alien device. While attempting to find Jen, he has a near-death experience and travels to an afterlife known as the Land of The Ancients, where his grandfather bestows spiritual powers upon him. Tommy gains the ability to separate from his body to pass through obstacles, come back to life after being killed, and aid from his spirit guide, the ghost of his childhood pet hawk, Talon. Despite being entrusted by his ancestors with the mission to protect Earth from the Sphere, Tommy is only interested in rescuing Jen.
Tommy finds Jen, whose torso has been surgically attached to a reptile-like creature that attempts to kill Tommy. Because Jen cannot control the beast she is attached to, Tommy is reluctantly forced to kill it, in the process also mercy-killing Jen. Tommy learns that the Sphere is an organic alien ship with the main goal of maintaining itself by preying on various alien races. The Sphere houses many of these alien races, which have become mindless drones in servitude of the Sphere. The Keepers of the Sphere, who appear to be responsible for its creation, plant life on other planets, and periodically return to harvest it. A small band of human rebels on the Sphere named the Hidden have not lost control of themselves. Led by Elhuit, the Hidden hope to destroy the Sphere and return to Earth.
Tommy finds that the Keepers and their drones are controlled by the Mother (voiced by Tyne Turner), who communicates telepathically with him throughout the game. She reveals to Tommy that she was once human, too, and fought the previous Mother of the Sphere, who persuaded her to take its place as the new Mother. After Tommy defeats her, the Mother begs Tommy to take her place, acquiring god-like powers in the process, or else the Sphere will perish. While tempted, Enisi's spirit contacts Tommy, reminding him of his humanity and duty. Tommy heeds his grandfather's advice and drives the Sphere into the Sun, and ends up in the Land of the Ancients once more to see Enisi and Jen. Tommy returns to Earth, knowing that he will see them both again when it is his time to live in the Land of the Ancients.
In a post-credits scene taking place six months later, Tommy has rebuilt the bar. The official story of the bar's disappearance is that the original building and the people within it at the time of its disappearance vanished due to an unknown natural phenomenon. Elhuit arrives in the bar and explains to Tommy that she and other Hidden escaped through a portal just before Tommy destroyed the Sphere, and tells Tommy that powerful beings elsewhere wish to meet him. Tommy steps through a portal made by Elhuit as the words "Prey will continue ..." appear on-screen.
Development Prey's long development history spans over a decade, starting in 1995. It went through several iterations of the game design and software technology before its eventual release in 2006.
False starts In 1995, the first incarnation of the game was announced. Prey was envisioned by 3D Realms as the first of a number of games to be running on unique, cutting edge game engine technology, developed in house. In this sense the project played the same role as Unreal did for Epic Games, and it would retain this role in the company's strategy throughout its development time in the 3D Realms studios.
Prey as a game was to go through many different forms during this first development period. A rapid succession of different designs was outlined by Tom Hall (previously of id Software and later of Ion Storm), who was at that time fresh off the Rise of the Triad team at Apogee Software. After about a year's worth of work, however, Tom Hall abandoned the project and left the company to form Ion Storm with ex-id compatriot John Romero.
At this point, 3D Realms brought on Paul Schuytema to begin the next phase in the game's development. The new team would go on to create a new game design. The alien abduction theme from Hall's work was retained, but now the game was to be set on a massive, ring-shaped artificial world called "Trocara", inhabited by four different alien races, one of them called "the Keepers". The player would take the role of a Native American hero, called Talon Brave.
The game was the first in the genre to make use of moveable portal technology, a feature that allowed rips in space to be created, moved and reshaped in real time. This was to be a core feature of the gameplay, along with heavily destructible environments. It was also thought at the time this engine would be used for Duke Nukem 5 (the game after Duke Nukem Forever), but Duke Nukem 5 was never released. Demonstrations of these features drew widespread acclaim at the 1997 and 1998 E3 exhibitions – the television program Infinite MHz was able to capture exclusive footage of the game's private behind-closed-doors demo at both of the game's E3 showings. The public perception was very positive, the game looked impressive, and 3D Realms' name, fresh from the success of Duke Nukem 3D, was a mark of quality.
German industrial band KMFDM was to create the game's soundtrack. 3D Realms posted on their website in 1997 that they received a sample of the soundtrack from KMFDM and highly praised the music, described as "ambient industrial". On December 19, 1997, 3D Realms also released two KMFDM songs in MP3 format (that are not on the Prey soundtrack), "Inane" and "Megalomaniac".
Seemingly insurmountable technical problems ground development to a near-halt, and this version of Prey too fell apart. Later, on an Internet discussion board head engineer William Scarboro would comment that "in hindsight, portal tricks such as these should be used as tricks, not as an engine paradigm."
Shortly after the Schuytema variant of Prey disbanded, 3D Realms attempted again to revive the project by bringing on tech programmer Corrinne Yu in November 1998. Development of the game itself was not part of this effort, Yu was working by herself on the game engine exclusively.
The title was put on indefinite hold (although never formally canceled, contrary to popular opinion). On March 8, 2000, Prey.net (an early Prey site with a section about KMFDM) released a RealAudio file of a third KMFDM song: "Missing Time", which was going to be part of the Prey soundtrack but was featured in the film Heavy Metal 2000 instead (under the name MDFMK which is a side project of KMFDM members during their temporary break-up).
Final production The game was developed with a 30 person team. In 2001, 3D Realms began development on a new version of the title. This time, with the advantage of the necessary portal technology already being a stable and functional component of all modern game engines, 3D Realms was able to license the necessary technology instead of having to develop it. 3D Realms chose the id Tech 4 game engine from id Software, and Rune developer Human Head Studios was commissioned to develop the game using the previous designs as a base.