Prey 2 Still "Not Good Enough," Claims Bethesda

[Earnest Cavalli]

Prey 2 Still "Not Good Enough," Claims Bethesda

Why hasn't Prey 2 been released yet? According to Bethesda, the game just isn't up to snuff.

First announced in March of 2011, Prey 2 has been stuck in a weird development limbo since that time. As far as anyone officially knows, the title is being published by Bethesda and developed by Human Head Studios, though recent rumors suggest that the game's current progress may be scrapped and development might shift to Dishonored creator Arkane Studios. In the midst of all this turmoil, IGN approached Bethesda's vice president of marketing, Pete Hines, to ask exactly what's going on.

"We appreciate that folks are displeased that we haven't had any update or any info on Prey 2, but whatever your displeasure is, you can't even be remotely as unhappy about it as us," Hines states. "We spent years and millions of dollars and a ton of effort trying to help Human Head make a great Prey 2 game. What we said the last time we said anything was that it's not up to our quality standards."

It's interesting that he'd mention Bethesda helping Human Head in the past tense in light of those rumors I mentioned above, isn't it?

Hines continues: "[Prey 2] is simply not good enough. We're not going to just proceed blindly with something that isn't good enough.

"We spent a lot of time and money and effort trying to make this thing happen and support folks, but at the same time, you just can't keep throwing money at it and saying, 'sure, it'll eventually work.' You have to have the discipline to say, 'it's not good enough. It's not hitting the quality bar. Why isn't it? We've been at this for a while, and what we have is not what we talked about.' So that's where we are."

The more Hines talks, the more those aforementioned rumors sound legit. Fortunately IGN picked up on this, and asked Hines to comment on the idea that the game has been taken away from Human Head.

"I think all of the stuff that you've heard at this point has been from one side of this, and it's been somebody putting spin on it, like, 'here's what happened.' No, that's your version of what you think happened," Hines says.

Curiouser and curiouser. Finally, Hines again reiterates that Bethesda will have more info for us just as soon as it's good and ready to share whatever it might know. "As we said in our last update, it's not good enough. It's not where it needs to be. When we have more info than that, we'll let you know."

Whether you believe the scuttlebutt or not, it's pretty apparent that Prey 2 will remain in limbo for at least the foreseeable future. Here's hoping Bethesda will have some big news for us sooner, rather than later.

Source: IGN [http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/06/18/bethesda-explains-prey-2-silence]

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[Detroit]

I just hope they release the game with the mechanics and aesthetics it has now. If they just need to polish and tweak, I don't mind waiting.

 

[1337mokro]

They sabotaged it pretty hard.

Quite frankly I don't give a flying fuck what Bethesda thinks. Release a demo to the public. Show it off at E3. See what people say about it. I doubt you did all of that. What I think you did Bethesda was fund a studio with an IP then IP jacked them. Now it sits with the rest of the collection dusting up.

Never to be played because someone decided it wasn't good enough. Probably someone who knows nothing about games.

 

[CriticalMiss]

Maybe they just want Prey 2 to take 11 years to develop like the first game? For traditions sake.

 

[Mr Cwtchy]

Sounds great to me. I'd rather a game have a good amount of time taken to make it(although not to the Valve extreme), and I can definitely agree that throwing a load of money to make a game does not make it good.

 

[V8 Ninja]

"Not Good Enough"? I do question that as E3 demos looked solid, at least from a gameplay standpoint. I could understand Human Head not having completed deadlines on-time and thus shifting stances on the game, but gameplay quality is questionable.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Bethesda have already got a long history of screwing over other developers. Just look at how they screwed Obsidian out of royalties for New Vegas, a game that sold over 5 million copies.

Bethesda didn't screw Obsidian out of anything. Obsidian failed to meet the requirements of the contract THEY AGREED TO. That's no ones fault but their own.

http://www.destructoid.com/obsidian-missed-metacritic-bonus-for-fallout-new-vegas-223897.phtml
"Obsidian's Chris Avellone was recently asked by a fan if they made a boatload of cash from Fallout: New Vegas, and was informed that the studio received a straight payment, with no royalties from sales. Extra money would only have been awarded if the game scored over 85% on Metacritic -- which it just missed. "

The company CEO is a former lawyer who was barred from the entire profession after being charged for financial fraud and lying to US regulators.

-First off, he was deemed NOT GUILTY to those charges. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,979117,00.html
-Secondly, he was acquitted of all later charges
-Thirdly, HE AGREED TO BE BARRED to settle a lawsuit. He didn't just lose his license, he agreed to give it up so people would stop bothering over shit he was already proven NOT GUILTY of.

I suggest you actually read the wiki page, and its sourced links, before you try to site it.

 

[SuperSamio64]

Well it better be fucking impressive if and when it ever comes out.

 

[Smashingpass]

But the PS3 edition of Skyrim was perfectly fine to release?

Huh.

 

[SajuukKhar]

A contract they were likely strongarmed into. If the article on Human Head is true, Bethesda has absolutely no qualms with using every last dirty trick to try and lowball developers.

Lol conspiracies.

Also, the reason New Vegas didn't receive a higher Metacritic score was because of all the bugs... which Bethesda were responsible for doing QA on. As publisher, bugtesting and QA is their job, but instead they rushed the game out without testing it. They literally didn't pay Obsidian royalties because of a fuck-up they themselves made.

Well that ignores that many of New Vegas's problems lay beyond the bugs. Such as how faction armor, and faction reputation, were both broken, the expanded crafting system was useless, the world design sucked, the game was heavily imbalanced in favor of the NCR, amongst a myriad of other problems, all of which were Obsidian's fault. To say that New Vegas's poor score was only because of bugs, is frankly, disingenuous.

Not to mention that all of Obsidian's other games, NWN2, KOTOR 2, Alpha Protocol, are super buggy themselves, makes Bethesda is hard to blame for the bugs of a game company that is known to be bugger then sin.

Ever hear of Echelon? It was a game that came out in 2001, developed by Madia, a Russian studio, and published by Bethesda under license. The developers ended up sending an open letter to Bethesda asking them to pay them the royalties they were due from the game. Even worse, the lack of money meant they weren't able to put resources to patching the game, actively hurting its reception.

A largely one-sided letter without any real expiation from their home publisher about whats going on? How biased!

There is a recurring trend with Bethesda. Firstly, they seem to have an aversion to paying royalties to the developers who make their games. Secondly, they seem to be fond of trying to screw. The same claims have come out regarding both Human Head and Arkane regarding Bethesda holding out on milestone payments in order to try and buy out studios for cheap.

They seem to have an aversion to paying royalties to companies that fail to met their contract requirements.

Bethesda bought Arkane due to money problems they ran into while making "The Crossing" with Valve. Which was before they started making Dishonored!

Who was the last AAA publisher inXile worked with before going full-indie? Bethesda.

Seems like hes just mad that they made the ever so shitty Hunted: The Demon Forge, and are trying to shovel their own failures as devs onto publishers.

Given that their management seems to be made up of lawyers, and crooked ones at that, I don't find it hard to believe that Bethesda uses unscrupulous means to strong arm smaller developers. This is the company that put out Skyrim on PS3 in a knowingly broken state. This is the company that didn't bother QAing New Vegas. They clearly have no morals to speak of if they can repeatedly charge gamers for broken games. I have no doubt they'd also be willing to treat their developers like shit.

Hmm, Lawyers who where proven not guilty of all charges, later acquitted of other charges, and who agreed to not particle banking, unless the FEDs agreed to, so people would stop harassing him.

-Skyrim on the PS3 does work though........ and it was broken when they tsted it.
-They did QA New vegas though.... Obsidian games are just naturally buggy.

If this guy was so innocent, he wouldn't have agreed to be barred from the industry. A guilty verdict would have seen him barred anyway, so voluntary disbarrment is essentially an admission of guilt, except without the US Court being able to actually punish him in any way.

Or it means that he knows his reputation is stained anyways, and thus, sees no reason to continue. Its like being accused of being a child molester, eve if you are proven innocent, that shit stays with you, and a person accused of that wouldn't try to get, or continue, a job around kids.

 

[SajuukKhar]

-If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I'm calling it a fucking duck.
-If Altman had gone on his merry way after the court case and we'd never heard from him again, maybe I wouldn't be so suspicious............
-They have a history of releasing broken games.........
-If Bethesda are a paragon of moral virtue.....
-To address your point about Obsidian: it is well known at this point that Obsidian have repeatedly gotten the short end of the stick from publishers.....
-Once again, it is on the publisher to be responsible for QA......
-And it is not a conspiracy to point out that companies engage in shady shit.......
-I don't know why this has got you so wound up.....

-K

-The scrolls incident was something that was a dick move, that they legally had to do to maintain their copyright. Its like if someone make a new soda just called Coke, or something, Coka cola would have to do something about it due to copyright reason, no matter how douchy it seems.
-Interplay failed to meet the funding deadlines for the MMO that they agreed to, Bethesda no more screwed them over then they did Obsidian.
-Id's layoffs are NORMAL. Really, many game devs hire people for big projects, such as RAGE, and then lay them off after the project is done. This is 100% normal game development.

-That I dont deny, although, their broken games are usually the fault of Bethesda(the dev) then Bethesda(the publisher). Also, failing to meet contractual requirement, no matter if its 1 point, or 10, is still failure. I wouldn't have given them their royalties either, and if the situation was reversed, with Bethesda being in Obsidian's place and voice-versa, I wouldn't expect Obsidian to have given it to Bethesda either.

-Never said they were. they are a company, their job is to make money at any means possible.

-I'm sorry but I simply cant accept the "ITS ALWAYS THE PUBLISHERS fault" excuse for Obsidian. If it happened once or twice, I could, but when you have to pull out the exact same excuse, for LITERALLY every game they have made, maybe, just maybe, they are bad game devs.

Also
-NWN2 was made using the Electron engine, a updated version of NWN1's Aurora toolset, made by Obsidian. Obsidian made their own broken engine. And Aurora actually worked quite well compared to Electron.
-RIFT, the MMORPG, uses gamebryo, and it works fine.
-Obsidian's would have only gotten the royalty cash after the game was done, them not getting had had ZERO effect on the game itself, and despite the tools being so shitty, Bethesda managed to make games with gamebryo that worked 10X better.

-The publisher shouldn't have to fix so many bugs either, frankly, I'm surprised the publishers Obsidian as had were able to get the games in the ha;f-working state they were in.

-Never said it was.

-I'm really not wound up, your the one swearing all the time, with our entire first post being a unrestricted hate/rage post. Im just pointing out several flaws with your argument.

 

[Ignatz_Zwakh]

But...these guys released Brink.

But the PS3 edition of Skyrim was perfectly fine to release?

Huh.

Second this. That and they released Brink. Prey 2 couldn't be anywhere near as broken or dull as Brink was.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

But...these guys released Brink.

But the PS3 edition of Skyrim was perfectly fine to release?

Huh.

Second this. That and they released Brink. Prey 2 couldn't be anywhere near as broken or dull as Brink was.

do not challenge the gaming gods, they are cracking their knuckles as we speak.

OT: well lets hope something good comes of this, it sounds like they were trying to sweep all that under the rug before some public scuffles put them in a bad spot.

then again, i've never been able to play a bethesda game at launch without something needing a work around or fixing, so i'll keep my eyes watchful on it for interest otherwise not expecting much.

 

[VoidWanderer]

Hey Bethesda, before you 'Duke Nukem Forever' this fucking game, release some GAMEPLAY footage and let the people who want to FUCKING BUY IT decide!

Just remember, the idiot that came up with 'Too Human' thought his game was amazing, while reviewers thought of it as about equal to used toilet paper!

Show us the money, and we'll throw ours at you, IF the game is what we are expecting!