4) Prey 2
Before Morgan Yu and the horrifying Typhon species were even a glint in Arkane’s eye, Human Head Studios had a very different vision in mind for where to take the troubled Prey series next. Unlike the Dishonored creator’s re-imagining (which is great, by the way) released earlier this year, Prey 2 was intended to be a direct sequel to the 2006 original with a brand new protagonist: U.S. Marshal Killian Samuels.
Samuels wound up becoming a reluctant abductee of the Sphere mothership, the very same anomaly that beamed up Tommy and his pals in Prey, only his point of entry differed, in that he crash-landed, mid-transit on a passenger plane, the very same one Tommy witnesses during the events of the first game. The plot was then intended to skip ahead several years to the planet Exodus, where Samuels is an amnesiac bounty hunter-for-hire and the only human present on the alien planet, or so he believes, anyway.
Following a well-received gameplay presentation at E3 2011, however, Human Head and publisher Bethesda went worryingly dark in regards to additional details; the latter confirming three years later that the project had been canceled due to it not “shaping up” in the way it desired. Vague reasoning, as usual, I know, but Bethesda clearly had reason to believe Prey 2 wasn’t up to scratch, even if what it had shown to the public up to that point looked far from eliciting any cause for concern. The cyberpunk inspired cityscape of Exodus looked pretty slick interesting bounty system to boot.
We may never get to explore the grimy streets of Exodus’ cyberpunk inspired world or live out Samuels’ life as a hardened bounty hunter, but if there’s any solace to be had out of the debacle, it’s that Prey‘s name will live on, albeit in a very different form.
