It's no longer a linear tale with a few neat effects, but an open-world style game that mixes quests with a morality system and Mirror's Edge-esque movement capabilities. Killian's snatched from an airplane at the beginning, beaten up by ill-tempered extraterrestrials and sequestered on a hostile world called Exodus where he restarts life as a bounty hunter. One side of the planet is perpetually peppered with sunlight while the other remains caked in ice. Somewhere between these two sides is a neon-soaked nighttime cityscape ripped right out of Blade Runner. Pillars of steam drift up between soaring skyscrapers through which dart rows of flying cars and hovering ships emblazoned with glowing advertisements. Through the claustrophobic streets roam multiple aliens species, and it's up to you to decide how to treat them.
A different protagonist, a different world.
If you want, you can make Killian push an innocent alien over a railing and watch as the victim helplessly plummets into the abyss between buildings. Keep that sort of thing up and eventually a disc-like airborne security ship will descend upon your position and open fire. These can be killed, but if you keep disturbing the peace in senselessly violent ways, there'll be more resistance. Depending on how nice or ruthless you decide to be, expect to not only exchange fire with security forces but to affect your relationship with vendors and the sorts of missions you can access.
In Prey 2 you get main missions and side quests with the help of your multi-functional visor. By scanning any bit of the environment the visor will highlight any non-player characters standing around as friendly or hostile or otherwise potentially worth investigating. If there's a group of burly aliens smacking around a skinny-legged weakling, you can scan your field of view to identify where it's happening. Then you can plant a bullet in the weakling's head or put an end to the thugs' mean streak with a few well-aimed shotgun blasts.
Scanning certain targets can also pop up small information windows that reveal a few tidbits of personal info as well as bounties. That one guy with the conspicuous body armor standing in the dimly lit strip club might be a good target. While he's distracted with the writhing bodies of holographic non-human dancers, you can sneak up behind and try to capture or to kill, depending on the bounty's specifications.
Sometimes the target will stand and fight, sometimes bodyguards will swarm from all sides, and other times he'll bolt out the door. The only way to catch him is to give chase, which is where the Mirror's Edge part comes in. Killian can run, slide into cover, vault over low walls, and jump across chasms and cling and hang on ledges. He has upgradeable hover boots too to cross wider spaces. While behind cover or hanging from a ledge, he can pop up to fire or blind fire, letting him fight even while dangling from the side of a building. There aren't any advanced maneuvers like wall-running, but what Killian can do seems to be more than enough to not only rapidly run and hop across environments, but up and down as well.
When a target takes off, you'll need to use all these skills to keep up. The visor will highlight the target even though walls to prevent total disorientation while speeding around. Once the target is within range, you have a few ways to take him down. There's always a pistol or a shotgun to do the job, but there's also a variety of gadgets. All these items function as alternate fires, so if you want to trip a fleeing target with electric bolas or launch a volley of shoulder-mounted rockets, you can do it without switching away from your primary weapon.
Track down targets by scrambling across alien cities.
One particularly pesky enemy in the demo decides to flee across the alien metropolis, dropping bombs and teleporting while he runs. That means electric bolos won't work and direct pursuit isn't a good idea, unless you like eating explosions and reloading your game. If any enemies get in the way, it's a good idea to fire out an anti-gravity wave to pluck them from behind cover and send them floating helplessly up into the air on a blanket of blue energy, making it easy to splatter them with a shotgun.
From what Human Head showed off in the first demo the city appeared to be huge, with vast numbers of NPCs standing around and plenty of ways to navigate the environment, and there'll be three of these spaces in the final game. Earning money will be an important part of the experience, as it can be used to purchase items from vendors as well as in exchange for information. Of course if someone's demanding money and you don't have enough, you can always ready your gun, which is holstered by default, and threaten them until they spill what they know.
Work on Prey 2 began back in July 2009 and though the game is still in development, it looks really good already running on a heavily modified version of id's Tech 4. Prey 2 is a 2012 single-player-only shooter for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC and is definitely a game worth paying attention to.
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