Prey Demo Coming Later This Month
On April 27, you'll be able to play the first hour of Prey, the new action-adventure game from Arkane Studios and Bethesda Softworks, on Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
The official website for Prey describes the upcoming demo as the very beginning of Morgan Yu's "very bad day." As Yu, players will embark on their first day on the job at the Talos I space station, where things quickly take a dark and sinister turn with "aliens hunting down any surviving crew members, including you." It's up to you (and Yu) to stop the invaders before they reach Earth, although as the demo's announce trailer implies, things may not be as straightforward as they look.
If you're too busy to check out the demo yourself or do most of your gaming on PC for some reason (Bethesda doesn't seem to have a demo on Windows machines), Eurogamer has a Let's Play video of Prey's first hour. The game is as a mix between BioShock, Metroid, and Arkane's previous games, which include the lauded Dishonored series. The full version of Prey comes out on May 5 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.
Keep in mind that Prey isn't the long-awaited (and ultimately canned) Prey 2, which was announced back in 2006, then put into development in 2009, and officially canceled in 2014. In fact, the upcoming Prey reboot has very little to do with the original game, which stars a Cherokee protagonist with astral projection powers.
In an interview with GameSpot, Arkane CEO and creative director Raphael Colantonio explained that the space station-set adventure had enough thematic connections and a close enough concept that reusing the Prey name made sense. It doesn't hurt that Bethesda picked up the rights to the Prey franchise in 2009.
Given how long it's been since the first game was released, a reboot seems more marketable than a direct sequel. But it's still sad to see Prey 2 (which allegedly followed the adventures of a space-faring bounty hunter on a hostile planet) added to the ever-growing list of games we'll never get to play.