Prey: the vanguard of videogame science fiction - article
Often, in truth, it has remained entangled in the cliché canvas, abandoning itself too often to a reiteration of themes, environments and contexts that did not elude the videogame medium at all. The fingers of the two hands are probably not enough to count the science fiction works that the video game has brought us in recent years, but one hand is abundant enough to count the memorable ones.
Prey is undoubtedly some among the latter. Not so much for his plant, playful, sometimes rendered imperfect by a gunplay drawn out. Nor for its sales data, even today, inexplicably sad. As for a background sci-fi fascinating, intoxicating, magnetic, and even avant-garde. Yes, because the space that swallows Talos and the macabre vicissitudes that populate it is a space that shows a future from the outlines for different aspects far from the utopia the traditional that often surrounds tales of space exploration, and recalls boldly by the legacy of works by avant-garde such as System Shock, BioShock and Half-Life.
Talos in all his glory! The pen of Chris Avellone moves in the context of retro-futuristic from the base, indeed, quite classic, which has blossomed, however, in a story of the very finest construction. The historical background of Prey is clearly fictional, and shows us a space race instead. A collaboration between the Soviet Union and America was made initially necessary for the containment of an alien race is hostile, the Typhon. In 1958, the space fleet of the soviet sends a team on the satellite Vorona I, as a result of an interruption of communications with the mother country.
The crew, once penetrated inside the structure, is destroyed by the creatures. From black features stringy and by the movements schizophrenic, these have the ability neural particular, suggested even by their design very close to that of brain cells. In 1963, the turning point. Khrushchev and a survivor Kennedy announce publicly a collaboration, launched from the new project space Kletka. The objective of the latter is to build a space station on the remains of the Vorona I, with the dual purpose of containment and study of the alien race. In the next twenty years are the States, in the story fictional of the game, to expand the project, but the arena in 1998, due to a serious accident that leads to the death of the scientists of the team.
About 30 years later, we arrive at the year 2032 in which we wake up in the guise of our alter-ego, Morgan Yu. The Transtar, a wealthy private company, decided to focus attention on the wreck of that now legendary Vorona I, allocating a full-bodied investments in renovation works and research, and giving life to Talos I.
A disturbing Typhon. So begins the journey into tomorrow's space-Arkane. A tomorrow that teaches the science, still in the mere experimentation, but a tomorrow that is voted on new boundaries for the human race. Here, then, is that the ability to hybridize to the capacity of human neural to those of the Typhon becomes the pretext for the narrative of a plot that crosses the boundaries of knowledge and ethics. A plot that tangles masterfully around the fates baneful and never banal of the various extras, imbastiti to the subplots of the fine writing.
What Prey offers to the medium is a background sci-fi new, not so much in its instances, as well as in its construction and in its design. A work of this magnitude, narrative is seen rarely, with a considerable amount of documents and details that outline a lore far more extensive and sophisticated of our small synopsis. In this hunt for detail, which creeps in even in every single side quest in the adventure, lies one of the merits also the play of the production, who manages to get completely to the rhythms, between phases, exploratory, narrative, and action.
The true flower to the eyelet, as well as the undisputed protagonist of the work, may not that be Talos I. here Prey is off of the elements peculiar to and characteristic of the medium where it belongs: not just a script wide and multi-layered, where the substantiation of each choice of the player, but also the level design for which Arkane has already shown the muscles in other locations.
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Talos is filled with a maze of tunnels, ducts, balconies, halls sconquassate and buildings ranging from art deco, what with the prominence of its angularity seems to almost shy away from openly the contours of classicism. Also in this aspect of pure design, Prey is innovative. We show a new space, a city between the planets, in orbit, with all the trappings of the case. Exactly like Rapture and Columbia bewitched the player for their inspiration and visual context, with Talos Arkane shows us a new cologne urban space.
yet another step beyond the border of a humanity and a science that reject any concept of limit. To Talos, in addition to the plethora of laboratories and facilities for research, encompassing all the richness that characterize the human society; a theatre, a bar, a garden used as a greenhouse, even a swimming pool. Nothing to do with the corridors and the confined spaces of the ISS. A Talos is home to a of expressions the most fascinating and daring of the science fiction that the videogame medium has given him.
