Prey 2 sounded pretty cool, huh? Casting you as a human bounty hunter in space and promising open-ended parkour chases where you take down your alien prey by any means necessary, it was to be a very different beast to the first game. Unfortunately, it was cancelled by publishers Bethesda.
Hopefully none of our upcoming PC games list get cancelled.
At the time of the game’s cancellation, there were rumours of Bethesda forcing developers Human Head to miss deadlines, in an attempt to acquire the studio when they didn’t deliver on schedule. Speaking to Metro, Bethesda’s vice president of PR and marketing strongly denied these claims.
“Here’s the fact: the game didn’t turn out like we wanted. It didn’t work, and it didn’t happen,” said Hines. “I find it really interesting that I get abundantly more questions about Prey 2 being cancelled than Doom 4 being cancelled. Everybody seems to forget that we did actually cancel a Doom game at id for pretty much the exact same reasons, and started over.”
As to the suggestion that Bethesda purposely made the studio miss milestones, Hines replied: “Utter nonsense. I will simply say this: I don’t know what possible good reason we would have for spending millions and millions of dollars to create something to then suddenly arbitrarily decide, ‘No, we don’t want to actually make our money back off what we’ve put into it’. We’re the publisher, we’re paying the developer. We’re putting all the money into it.”
He went on to explain the cost involved in taking the game to E3, showing it off to the press and everything about in that. He says the idea that the publishers are going to wave goodbye to that investment and not see any of it returned is “the dumbest argument” he’s ever heard.
As for claims of an attempted forced acquisition, Hines outright denies it. “We don’t have any real predilection towards acquiring somebody or not,” he said. “We haven’t acquired anybody, that I can remember, in the last five or how many years. I think Tango [Gameworks, the studio behind The Evil Within] was the last acquisition. It’s not like we’re on some acquisition tear.”
Instead of Prey 2, we’re now getting Prey, a completely new take on the IP headed up by Dishonored developers Arkane. This space-set immersive sim sees you taking on shapeshifting aliens and stripping their powers.