About a week ago work leaked out of 3D Realms that Prey
project leader Paul Schuytema and lead programmer William Scarboro had been
unceremoniously dropped from the much-delayed 3D shooter. Seasoned gamers will remember
that this is the second shake-up for Prey, coming almost two years after the departure of
the former team in the middle of the night – erasing their computer hard drives in
the process – to found Ritual Entertainment (or what was then known as Hipnotic
Interactive). With this second shakeup to the project, should gamers be worried? Will Prey
ever be released, or has 3D Realms hit a sophomore slump? There’s no question that
Prey has had more valleys than peaks up until this point, but anyone who knows 3D Realms
is quick to point out that the company is adamant about quality. With the success of Duke
Nukem 3D, they now have the luxury of working on a game for almost as long as they want.
There’s no pressure of a ship date or a lack of financial resources.
All Games are the Same
Indeed what likely happened with the Prey project is what happens to 75% of the games out
there – They lose their focus and don’t turn out to be as stunning or exciting
as originally envisioned. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: no one sets
out to make a bad game, but invariably most PC games released have major faults. Was Prey
about to fall into this category? Was it not going to be as incredible as everyone had
hoped? I don’t think for a minute that Prey was in jeopardy of being a bad game, but
I do think that perhaps it wasn’t turning out as expected. Most companies would be
forced to continue with a project that has gone slightly awry, simply because the
economics of fronting a new game design once you are well into a project are far too
formidable for most. The majority of companies are strapped for resources and locked into
a ship date with a publisher. 3D Realms doesn’t fall into this category.
In many ways I think the news that Prey has had a changing of the guard is good, or at
least in the respect that we know 3D Realms isn’t going to settle for second-best. Of
course it’s disappointing to hear that Schuytema, who always seemed to be very much
into the design and story of the game, would no longer be associated with the project, but
these creative changes happen all the time in other types of entertainment – music
artists switch producers halfway through doing an album (recent example: Aerosmith), and
movies often change directors (recent example: Tim Burton leaving the Superman project).
Games are no different. Sometimes parties with the most genuine intentions for a game just
don’t move in the same direction.
But, What Happened?
However, there is cause for concern about why the game would get to this point, especially
considering the fact that Schuytema had been on the project for over a year. Usually
creative differences are evident very early on, and that’s why the announcement that
he had left came as somewhat of a shock to the industry. One has to wonder what was the
straw the broke the camel’s back so to speak. Why did what happen occur when it did?
What could have been done to prevent it? All valid questions that are virtually
unanswerable based on that current information.
The last public showing of Prey was at the E3 show in Atlanta this summer. Sure, 3D
Realms had a lot of interesting technology to show off this year, including fully
destructible rooms, spinning portals, and a rich in-game animated cut-scene. That was all
beautiful. Unfortunately, they had given a very similar technology demonstration at
1997’s E3 – I still remember Schuytema spending 5 minutes showing me how the
light in a room would reflect off the player’s weapon. Truth be told, Prey always
looked like it had a huge amount of potential, but even this year at E3 it didn’t
seem to be coalescing into a playable game. Of course 3D Realms isn’t alone in just
showing off technology and hoping to catch the eye of the press, but for two years in a
row it seemed like Prey was still lacking a core game mechanic to set it apart from other
shooters.
Still Something Special?
For years Scott Miller has been telling me that there’s a lot to Prey the company
isn’t talking about publicly, and I hope that’s true. In truth, 3D Realms
announced Prey at a point and time when they were still a small shareware company – I
remember Tom Hall showing me the initial story outline to Prey back in 1995 when he was
finishing up Rise of the Triad for 3D Realms. Today, 3D Realms is a much stronger outfit,
which doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone – people know they can make
games. Hence, I think we’re going to hear a lot less about Prey over the next year as
the project gets back up to speed. Ultimately, final judgment on these delays cannot be
passed until the game ships. If Prey comes out and doesn’t meet expectations, all
these delays were for naught; but if it comes out and is truly something special, all the
delays in the world will quickly be forgotten.
Gamers should be excited about playing games like Half-Life and Sin this holiday
season, and forget about Prey for a while – Sure, there has been a changing of the
guard and the game will be delayed, but it’s only logical that the result will
hopefully be a better game. It’s unlikely this decision was made for any other reason
than the belief that the change-up would yield a better game. Most developers can’t
afford to make tough decisions such as the ones 3D Realms did last week, and let’s
hope what they decided to do works out for the best. In the end, it’s the game that
matters.
Thanks for reading,
Geoff Keighley
Editor-in-Chief
GameSlice
