Spoiler Zone - Prey

Spoiler Zone - Prey

Whatever happens, in Prey, you are Morgan Yu. That's his only constant regarding your character. Nevertheless, this character stopped being the person he was as soon as the experiments on neuromods began. Even if some characters will interpret certain behaviors that appear to be a reminiscence of your old identity, you remain master of this new character. The difference between Prey and another RPG is the place it gives the player, whether or not to support the legacy of the character's past life. This legacy more or less draws the "overall direction" that the new Morgan Yu can take in its environment. Problem: these various orientations, if they draw very clearly a marked path allowing to put the player in a zone of comfort and to justify his actions, remains the question of who is really the old Morgan Yu, and who is most apt to to take decisions ? The one pre or post experience? And as with each new information received by the player, the image he has of his character is reversed; no doubt it would be better to trust his instinct? The whole subject of Prey: how to be sure that one is master of oneself?

The subject of the insane player is not new. The conditioning of our direct and indirect environment leads us in life to sometimes make decisions that are not in touch with the person we thought we were. Some people think that the individual, at least when his personality is stable, is therefore based on solid structures that guarantee his psychic unity, as well as his resistance in an environment subject to sudden paradigm shifts. We are ourselves, humans (unless you identify with something else, umbrella, helicopter, fire extinguisher ...) of 2018, subject to reconsider our world if we did not tend to follow the doxa.

In Prey, there is this: an individual subject to a paradigm shift that must respond to an emergency that, depending on his environment, is his responsibility, or is obviously dependent on a much more complex context. Here we have the question of accountability, which tends to show that an individual is responsible for his past actions, that there is therefore a solid identity structure that corresponds to an act a certain manifestation of psychic unity.

However, in Prey, this is obviously more complex. The individual is no longer what he was, and more invested by the player with his own sensibilities, it seems obvious that an amnesiac Morgan Yu, recovering his memory at the rate where his environment wants to provide some elements to be in a developmental continuum (basically, a long-term life story that is the identity of each individual), is far, far from being able to make a decision based on one's own conception of reality .

Knowing that the reality is by definition like the truth, totally elusive, and that the right choice is obviously the one that is most in agreement with what we are, we can therefore decide to discharge our hero of any responsibility for what happens on Talos I, and decide to respond instinctively to what appears to us, to be the most objective in the situation as being the right decision. All this highlights the divine role of the player and the need to place his character as a providential being in context, otherwise the player is not useful to the story, because let's repeat it: everything is narration.

But that's where the characters in Prey's story come into play, constantly re-contextualizing Morgan Yu to the person he's been to them; one inevitably comes to wonder if one is not too much in this conflict, and if finally to follow what would seem the most logical for the character that one incarnates is not finally the "best solution". Nevertheless, Prey being vicious, difficult to grasp what drove Morgan Yu deeply.

The need to advance humanity? The desire to take revenge on his parents? The desire to mark history with his brother? To change one's conception of human nature and rewrite the rules of biology? This is only a sample of what is possible, but as a player, it is our duty to decide the case and make the choices that seem the most fair, without imagining would not- what a moment we would have the right answer.

In fact, Prey is constantly alienating us, forcing us to reorient our ideology, putting us in front of the various realities, pushing us to do what we would not do in a more conventional circumstance in a video game. I was surprised in my first part to totally experience the story, to force myself to put a point to what is happening on Talos I, in defiance of the lives that remained, committing genocide so to speak at the same time. To that, there is frankly nothing to be proud of, but not to be ashamed of, because, before that, I considered all the consequences of leaving the station Talos I to continue being, and this idea scared. So I acted accordingly, with a hint of cowardice in the grand finale.

This is also why the end of the game is in my opinion a success, far from being there to defuse any tension as I heard him say. I saw a real lesson, a real lesson of what the player in its context: a guinea pig, a subject of experience that measures what it is in different conditions. The judgment of your actions is extremely reductive, but ultimately quite realistic with the conclusions that science can draw from the logic of objectivity.

Prey's result means what he points out, no more, no less, and he just points the vision you have in the direction of the facts, without over-interpreting what all that means. Science is a tool for the use of men, and can not be held responsible for the misdeeds that are committed for its use. However, the man can very well decide that the progress and advances of the latter lead to evils too big to be tolerated.

We see it every day: science is used in everything and for everything, while its use is at the service of ideologies, great ideas to which powerful individuals (or weak from the point of view) would like you to join. The question is to know what you are, if you are only the pure result of this conditioning and therefore be in perfect agreement with the answers that it invites you to give, or if you have made the synthesis of learning and have decided to take what's right for you and throw away the rest.

Two visions, with multiple variations, and it is this set of possibilities that defines freedom: choosing one's own chains, starting from a conditioning to come out free. Adherence to ideas by comfort, on the other hand, is not the positioning of a free individual, and I have learned it again by thinking about my first game on Prey: I had been the victim of a conditioning that had made a decision that did not resemble me, for fear of aggravating my situation in the game, and probably for fear of doing wrong.

Emotions are also powerful tools, although the domination of these on the human mind is destructive. Beware of persuasion; Someone who persuades you, even if you do not particularly mean it to yourself, does so because he does not have the means to convince you. The characters in Prey are little to try to convince you, and it is those who will most appeal to your free will who will try to trap you. Studies show it: if the person in front of you remembers too much that it depends on your decision, it is because she tries to manipulate you.

A person does not have to remind you that his opinion is his, nor does a person need to tell you that you are free. If she reminds you of these two things: that is, she takes you for a fool, either she manipulates you, or she herself is not aware that they are pleonasms of the language (obviously that what we say does not is our opinion and our vision, if not who would be capable of universalism?).

After this long parenthesis that only shows where Prey has guided my thinking, I also want to point out that the characters in the game are not very deep, but they are just developed enough to be able to empathize in their respect. They are mostly enough worked so that they orient us according to the conditionings of which you must be the subject to give the good answers to the questionnaires of Prey. Each choice is fairly delimited; in spite of quite organic consequences to these, the outcome is the same. Depending on the box checked in the test, you join a category, a box in which we put people very different, but who, depending on their differences, ticked the same answer.

Because even if each person is different, the finite possibilities offered by our daily life and our life experiences lead us to large groups, without this being an attack on free will. Do not deny conditioning, science, or even categories; they are only there to give clues and trends to our world, not to define us as individuals. Thank you Arkane, Avellone hat. Be curious, stay human, defend yourself for what deserves it, and beware of those who do not jostle (figuratively, if it deserves to be clarified).

Never forget: you are your memory.

As you read, I saw in Prey more than I thought I would see in starting it. Although I obviously enjoyed the fun experience, I also loved its psychological test dimension, as well as its attempt to take a step back from the status of player experiment subject. Maybe it was not necessarily the intention of departure of Avellone and Arkane, but the obsession with the MCQ of the American screenwriter finds here a particularly interesting echo. From there to see the main theme of the game, there is a step that I crossed without hesitation. Glad to see that I'm still sensitive to the guy's pen, and that a game can still take my mind over a week after finishing it!