Not a single post about Prey (2017), the Arkane’s immersive sim gem set aboard the Talos I space station orbiting the Moon? I expected more of you, people!

Prey is a wonderful game. I think it wouldn’t lie make a mistake by designating it an RPG and an immersive sim, given its various skills (that are actually more than a few stat changes here and there - they affect, dictate the way you play the game), the multitude of ways you can approach so many things from puzzles to locations where you’re supposed to be to pretty much any in-game decision.

Prey’s world is rather small, but in the best way possible - it’s a space station, called Talos I, orbiting the Earth’s only moon (the Moon), doing some bleeding edge scientific research thanks to its diverse crew of the very best people Earth could send there. Talos I itself is split into different sections, each with its own purpose, making them unique locations with their own dangers and breath-taking sights; some interiors are spacious and let you navigate the level in stealthy ways, avoiding the hostiles entirely (if you have the wits!), and some are narrower, but many still offer you an alternate path to your destination if you look hard enough.

Prey lets you do stuff. You don’t like crawling in silence, trying to stay away from a fight until you hoover up every resource you can to make you “ready” to face the enemy? Go gun blazing - there’s no shortage of unique lethal tech at your disposal! You want to play a certain role, like be a mad menace to society? Feel free to murder everything you see, either with your own hands or by letting them die another brutal death! You want to be a true video game hero, saving each and every one? Roll your sleeves and get to work, because there sure is some saving to do!

Prey is the game where you think you know what’s going on, but you actually don’t. There will be surprises, and there will be moments of awe, and they’re all just done so well.

And last, but not least, is its magnificent soundtrack by Mick Gordon. The game looks gorgeous, and sometimes can give you some spooks, but the music completes the puzzle, setting its eerie atmosphere.

It’s a game you will likely play more than once to experience everything it has to offer. The game does not force you to do this or that, it does not explicitly tell you what skills to pick to be a good person, and it does not block one path if you’ve already taken another one, but you sure will experience the call of curiosity: “What if I chose only that?” Whatever you choose, you have the ability to craft yourself a unique playthrough, each equally interesting and viable.

This.

Most of my friends aren’t Linux/tech enthusiasts at all, but they do build their PCs because it’s cheaper, and they’re all over intel and nvidia. One even asked me for an advice on what GPU to get under a certain budget, and the fucker wouldn’t listen to my AMD recommendations, despite the very obvious advantage to his wallet and performance he was looking for.

Intel + Nvidia pretty much dominate the pre-built market, too. I was in a tech store recently and, as usual, gazed at some PCs and laptops they had over there just for the sake of it, and nearly every single one of them was intel+nvidia, for the very exception of a full AMD laptop.

Typical Crimson Fleet geezer right here.

I’m on the same page as you are, though.

@dear_faye@halubilo.social you should probably do the same if the price tag is too much for you. If you really do feel wrong about it, you could first get the game, keep playing it all you want, and then just pay later; or, if the experience turns out to be disappointing, never pay for it as a result.

Either is better than pre-ordering. Even if Starfield is worth every penny on launch, i.e. no bugs, no issues that cannot justify the price tag, not a single argument against the very practice of pre-ordering games, giving companies money before they deliver anything at all is giving them much more than just the money - it’s giving them an idea that it’s okay to ask for money before any of the paying customers ever get anything, and this kind of appeasement has to stop.

I think of that every time I see a cursor following my mouse in an FPS game.

And at the moment, I struggle to remember anything besides the tiny resemblance of that in Cyberpunk 2077 lol

Can anyone explain to me, a dumbass, what it means for my current save file? I haven’t beaten the main quest yet because I’ve been doing everything else for over 120 hours (finally got all the gigs and NCPD scanners, at least), but I still don’t see how an overhaul of that caliber is going to play well with the current balance of things. Judging by that one update that reset my skill and perk points, I think we can expect some resets again.

I think Phantom Liberty is my incentive to finally finish the game and then start a completely new playthrough, preferably with a consistent build and playstyle this time from start to finish. So much to choose from!

You and I are similar. I’ve developed a slightly bigger interest for fantasy in the recent months, but still am sci-fi space-faring monkey through-and-through.

I have sunk hundreds of hours into No Man’s Sky already, and I think I’ll sink even more into Starfield tinkering with my ships… or ships that didn’t use to be mine at first, to be more precise. I’m really excited to play a game of that scope where ships and their systems are kinda psychical objects in the world, taking space, changing what you see, etc. Same goes for the outposts.

I’m not going to preorder either, although I will go much more off the grid 5 days prior to release, as the early access spacers are probably going to spoil some initial moments for me. I’ve been waiting for this game for way too many years to know anything more than the marketing material about it.

Not to mention that the discussion is almost guaranteed to consist of similarly short (or even shorter) witty one-liners. Twitter format is just horrible, and its restrictions promote equally horrible behavior where you have to look for ways to convey ideas and feeling in a short manner, which almost never results in more polite and sophisticated conversations.

Never used Twitter for anything more serious than some announcements from the game devs I follow. Anything else is just plain stupid, which makes me really surprised over the wide-spread adoption of Twitter by officials and ministries and the like.

And raising the character limit is going to be even more absurd, because then it’s going to be reminiscent of an actual forum, just less structured and sensible.

Twitter, as a format, is the worst option between messengers like Matrix and proper forums of any kind.

It’s called programmer humor for a reason: we’re just using established libraries instead of inventing a bicycle from scratch.

Holy shit, I thought I was alone in the big gaming world!

The reason I never played it is because at the time the game was out, my PC couldn’t handle it, so I gave up after my sad attempts to sit through the unplayable frames. And by the time I upgraded, there were simply too many games to steal my attention entirely - that’s how it been ever since.

I want to play it, though. I never considered it boring - I liked it even when I wasn’t that interested in fantasy, and now I’m gravitating even more towards it. Hope to get my hands down to it one day, but with Starfield (hopefully) coming out this year, and with The Outer Worlds to beat before that happens, I think I’m not slaying any dragons any time soon.