Thread by @AlexandraErin

Playing Prey (2017) is a lot of doing the Family Guy "TWO priests? How can that be?" bit but with buckets or trash cans.

My Imitation Crab Meat Morgan theory took a bit of a nose dive when the turrets kept telling me "no Typhon material detected", until one of them watched me try to pick up a container of ramen and didn't start shooting until it tried to eat my arm.

(No spoilers.)

Imitation Crab Meat Morgan theory picking up steam as I learn you can get a brain implant that lets Morgan wriggle through tight spaces by turning into a delicious Hostess fruit pie.

It's possible that in-universe the Typhon mods are meant to be things that would work on any human capable of receiving neuromods, but the Mimic ones in particular seem a bit of a stretch.

Prey is a *very* different game from Dishonored in terms of mood, immediate themes, and gameplay, but I love the little points of similarity like being able to infiltrate through small spaces by taking the form of something much smaller...

...and the fact that the weapon/tool you use for remote interactions is a Nerf crossbow feels like it was a very deliberate choice to invoke their first breakout franchise.

Talking about the differences between the games, though... it's odd but I feel a much greater sense of freedom going through the largely linear bounded levels of Dishonored than the sprawling Metroidvania style space station of Prey.

I think part of this is the paranoia. In Dishonored, you can deal with all the threats in an area and have the run of it, as new enemies only spawn in response to specific events like alarms, where in Prey you can go through a room multiple times and still have new spawns.

But I think part of it is also the Metroidvania formula means that most large hubs you go through will be full of doors you can't open, platforms you can't reach, and flasks ye can't get until you've completed other objectives and gained new capabilities.

And part of it is also the games' emotional themes. In the Dishonored games, you are an ultra-competent magical assassin/demigod and the level design is there for you to master. Gaining knowledge of all nearby entities is trivial.

Prey has more of a survival/horror vibe, and the equivalent of the Dishonored Darkvision power -- the Psychoscope -- is less efficient/all-encompassing and puts a claustrophic overlay on the interface.

When you achieve a sufficient state of mastery of the character and environment in Dishonored, you *feel* masterful. The world is your playground and everything in it, including your enemies, are just toys in a sandbox.

The equivalent state in Prey, at least for me, so far, is more like a state of wariness and readiness.

The design of the games plays into these things in a load of different ways. The human enemies of the Dishonored series behave in predictable and understandable ways, and they signal their intentions and actions audibly in plain language.

The Typhons are (understandably) much more alien, much less direct or comprehensible in their communications, and fight you using abilities that are effectively supernatural.

In a lot of ways, it upends the formula of the Dishonored series, where you are frequently the most supernaturally empowered figure in a fight, and very often the only one. Watching Phantoms teleport/timestep around you as you try to fight them is a lot like fighting Corvo.

Another difference is that in the Dishonored games, with a few exceptions, there's not much of the usual video game trope of escalating enemy power level. You're mostly fighting against the same troops and tactics in the endgame as in the opening levels...

...while your options in terms of both weapons and magic have diversified, and also increased in passive power. In Prey, you start out fighting weak but stealthy opponents with relatively few, options either weak or expensive in terms of scarce resources...

...and as you gain more weapons and powers and solve the problem of ammo acquisition, your foes proliferate in power level and available tactics, cheapening your in-game and meta-game abilities to deal with the Mimics, who are now dangerous pests in firefights with bigger foes.

Have discovered that in-story, the scienterrific consensus for how Mimicry works in the Prey universe is "something something subspace duplicate" or "IDK, magic maybe?", so maybe that's less definitive evidence of Morgan's physical nature.

(No spoilers.)

https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1438120956741001224

I do love sci-fi that is willing to say, in-universe, "Look, this thing that is happening is clearly bonkers, any explanation we give would be flatly impossible according to what we understand about the universe, but nevertheless it's happening."

And it's interesting because the (non-Yu) Mimics are made of protean matter that is very stretchy and compactible, and display an instinct for physical mimicry (they rear up and mold themselves briefly into humanoidish forms as a seeming taunt)...

...which suggests to me that the ambiguity around what outwardly appears to be shapeshifting is there to create ambiguity about the nature of the playable, apparently human Morgan Yu, if they acquire Mimic powers in a playthrough.