One of the best things about Prey is how it gives you the tools you need to get to unexpected places. With a jetpack hover, a pillar of levitating energy, and a cannon filled with hardening adhesive, you can get almost anywhere you want with a bit of imagination. At one point, though, Prey’s levels were fully open, from top to bottom – you could fly.
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Obviously, the current moveset is already a nightmare for Prey’s artists, as they have to take into account that the player might reach somewhere unexpected in the tall lobbies of the Talos 1 space station. That means they have to make the station look pretty everywhere, but flying multiplied this problem by quite a bit.
“There was another power that we cut because we just couldn’t make it work or make it fun, it didn’t hit our quality bar,” system designer Seth Shain tells PC Gamer. “It was a power that would directly allow you to fly around the space [station]. That one just amplified that problem. [The artists] were really happy when they cut that, you’re mostly constrained to the walls with the Gloo gun.”
As PC Gamer point out, you could fly in Bethesda’s Morrowind, but the power has been cut from subsequent Elder Scrolls games, likely for the same reason – it’s damn hard to make work. In the end, I’m glad it was cut from Prey, because it makes the sections where you’re floating around in zero-G feel all the more special.