TIME EXTEND
On its release in 2017, Prey burned brightly but all too briefly. A wave of glowing reviews arrived late, thanks to Bethesda withholding code from journalists, and the game was burdened with a title that suggested it was a reboot of a not-very-wellknown title from a decade prior – a decision director Raphaël Colantonio recently said was forced upon the developer. However, two games released in 2023 have helped to push Arkane Austin’s science-fiction immersive sim back into the spotlight, albeit for very different reasons.
On the one hand there is Nightdive’s faithful update to the Looking Glass original, to which owes almost as great a debt as its remake. On the other, there is a game that highlighted the imagination, innovation and finesse demonstrated by Arkane Austin in – by their lack in its followup. Yet those qualities weren’t properly appreciated at the time of release, and not merely with the wider audience it failed to find. Many accustomed to the hazy playspaces of immersivemight be the least compromising of all Arkane’s immersive sims, if not the entire genre.