Thank you everyone who watched and enjoyed this. Despite this being the fixed audio version we still had a lot of complaints of music getting in the way of their enjoyment. The video now has english subtitles taken directly from the original transcript. I hope that helps.
watched this video whilst im in a work call, the captions really helped as i couldnt really hear it over people talking. This was a W. Great video, and great captions
It's a great video and a great theory albeit flawed at least. Spoilers warning ( the nullwave device works in defeating the typhon) this is proven by the fact that the reason that the aliens made it to earth is because of the Talos smuggling ring sending neuromods which have the typhon dna to earth without Alex's or Morgan's approval + the fact that in prey mooncrash claire (I may have the name wrong I am talking about the custodian spying for kasma) also sending the data to earth and lastly the shuttle that lands in the Seattle facility if not blown up in the captains office in the bridge (I think. I could be wrong)
I feel you missed one additional layer of eldritch horror present in the story. Alex takes a simple animal, operating on instinct, unable to recognize that even others of it's own kind feel (if they feel at all), and forces upon it comprehension of all the pain and suffering and horror that it and it's kind have inflicted. And does so solely because the result of this act might be useful to him. The ant, understanding the true nature of the keyboard, can never return to being an ant, the typhon, understanding the true nature of empathy, can never return to being a typhon.
I sort of mentioned this in a single line, but I probably could have made it clearer. Alex is the Typhon's eldritch god, which is why it works so well as a role reversal once it's revealed. How you put it is a better way though.
What I think I liked most about Prey was how deeply flawed the entire premise of Alex's actions are. While Alex's testing was trying to induce empathy in the Typhon, the majority of the actual tests they reference in the ending can be explained as survival decisions. It helped people! It was hugely outnumbered and needed allies. It avoided Typhon-neuromods! Why would it infect itself if it didn't need to? It did things just to be nice! As opposed to actively antagonizing its only information sources. By using his sibling as the basis, he also practically ensures that he can't view the subject objectively. In-narrative evidence also indicates Morgan wasn't the most empathic individual to begin with, given that, since their cells are still available for Alex to experiment with, it can be presumed that the Nullwave was the original Morgan's solution to the Talos I situation. Lobotomizing all the Typhon to harvest their material isn't exactly a good decision. On top of this, there's actually very little evidence that the Typhon even have a sense of self. They're suicidally aggressive and appear to act on instinct at every stage of their progression. I mean, just repeated exposure to Typhon dna was enough to cause personality drift in Morgan in the first place. I'd argue the only thing Alex achieved in his testing was 'awakening' one. And this is Alex's plan to save the world! Stick the cells of a scientist who went crazed on psychic alien dna _into_ a psychic alien that may not even have a sense of self _and then teach it to feel empathy by _*_putting it through life-or-death horror scenario._*
Keep in mind that this isn’t the first time Alex has done this and when given the information that you were already in a virtual experience how do you know that you didn’t simply exit into a second virtual experience. The ending is just another test to see if you really are human enough to survive, kind enough to survive. If not, execution awaits. Also, this isn’t eldritch horror. We can understand the Typhon. The Typhon can’t understand us. It’s the opposite.
For The reasons you like Prey 2017 I hate it. I like Villains who are intelligent, driven and powerful in some way. If not physically, then in shear presence. And actually seem like they are emotionally invested in the story. The delivery of the reveal is so flat and boring. This fat idiot in Prey sounds like he is talking to someone around the water cooler on a Tuesday afternoon. My last complaint is the line "we failed this isint the one". No one in the scene cares that the experiment is a failure so why should I as the player.
@Captain Sargas Empathy IS survivalistic. It's a group survival ability. Harming yourself to help another gives you and the group an advantage. Gives your children and friends and workers the ability to perpetuate life. Bees will endanger themselves so the hive may live. Without the hive there will be no bees. I scratch the back of humanity and it scratches mine.
@@adaroben1104 Bees do that as a matter of instinct, don't they? Isn't that different from a mental process of empathizing, considering, and then acting on it? Empathy is a matter of survival only because humans are social creatures, not because it serves to improve chances of survival on your own. The Typhon was in an environment where empathy would be beneficial since humans were involved, but there are still actions which they could take which aren't explainable by survival incentives. Perhaps the survival incentives are long-term, but I feel like that's reaching too far to explain it away as merely survival instinct.
@@mithril7272 i find the notion that being unable to understand what you're looking at... and what you're looking at being unable to understand you... ISNT eldritch horror... is patently false. to look upon the true form of Cthulhu is to go mad. you lose your sanity by a simple glance, nothing more. to assert that Cthulhu understands what you are, who you are... how you feel... would be hubris, and nothing more. no, eldritch horror functions solely off of the fact that you CANNOT know if they understand you. you CANNOT understand them. that is the integral component of the genre. that it isn't a known known; an unknown known; or even a known unknown. it is an unknown unknown. you don't know. you can't know. it's not that you can't, per se, but that it is literally impossible for you to empathize with something that does not feel. you cannot step into the shoes of the typhon. you cannot see things how they see things. you cannot begin to fathom how they interact with the world, when its done through such an alien way... you cannot ***understand*** them. you can document behaviors all you want, but you will never understand them. that's the beauty of it, the human condition... our perspective is based entirely around (get this) being a human. it is borderline impossible for us to ***actually*** imagine what it might be like to be ANYTHING else... because we have no basis to go off of other than our own. it would be a fundamentally flawed assertion to claim anything otherwise.
I could say you could also interpret this as a the Typhon gaining the empathy Alex wanted, empathy for the victims. Anger and disgust. It hates now, it hates because it cared. The dead due to Alex's experimentation and negligence, its horrifying to comprehend. Kill them all doesnt have to apply to Humanity as a whole or even humanity. But to kill the assailants, the manipulative, the vile.
@@TheNewtC One that indeed went out of it's way to save people within the simulation, as it is a requirement to unlock the ending. Makes sense, the Hybrid hates both humans like Alex and the uncaring Typhon. It fits the realisation of futility in the face of a cosmic horror, barely comprehened new perspective of the world and barely surviving the story told. In addition it also hits the note of the bitter-sweet; The sweet sucess of the Mirror Neuron implantation, with Bitterness of the Hybrid using those neurons to realise how cruel and inhumane Alex is. Because the Hybrid now knows that Alex did all these terrible things despite Alex already having mirror neurons himself. Ultimately it sums up the realisation that Alex is a monster by choice, whereas the monsterous Typhon lack that choice. It's entirely understandable why the Hybrid would kill Alex, the Hybrid is slaying a monster. Alex is a human that chose to be a monster in order to give our monster a choice to be human. Alex wanted the Hybrid to slay monsters, he got his wish.
When he mentioned the idea of the Typhon lashing out in anger, this is what I thought as well. I do like the irony of Alex 'succeeding' but only making the Typhon hate humanity as a result
@@TheNewtC No? Pretty sure Sol is saying the Hybrid, realizing through the simulation that Alex is a threat to humanity, kills him and those like him out of sympathy and a desire to protect the innocent.
2:25 Small correction you can actually scan the apex with increased psychoscope scanning range module only at the cost of instant terror and being dropped to 1 hp which could mean that trying to learn something anything about that thing made Yu have a heart attack.
I think an interesting thing to note is that while Alex yu is clearly a bastard he may not be as much of a bastard as he appears. The whole game Is a simulation "based" on Morgan's memories, meaning alex had the ability to edit them however he wanted. At the same time Alex is clearly remorseful over what happened on talos and wants to make amends. But the most interesting aspect of this is the portrayal of the other employees. Throughout the game every other worker on talos is portrayed to be completely innocent and ignorant of the atrocities that happened on talos and horrified when they find out except for Alex. But that's just logistically impossible, the whole station was dedicated to human experimentation it's not possible for Alex to be the only one that knew about the experiments. Unless of course Alex edited the memories to remove other people's complicity and leave him the sole villain. I think Alex is playing the role as the sole villain of the story he's given us as a form of atonement. By pretending to be the sole monster on talos he can cover for the dead employees he feels responsible for killing. Imo he's wants to make amends for their deaths by making sure all their sins are blamed on him, thereby making sure their legacies remain intact. I might be reading too much into that but I thought it was an interesting perspective to bring up.
I think you're on to something here. As I was replaying it, I actually kept looking for more evidence in Alex's actions. He doesn't seem monstrous, just inept. There's no question that he could have handled the events on Talos I far better, but he never seemed like he was trying to make things worse, and his actions had a clear throughline to both his desire to keep Morgan safe and his fear of losing control. Under stressful situations, he wasn't thinking clearly. That's the Alex in the simulation. Then we get to the Alex at the end of the game, who asks you for help. He shows all of this to the hybrid, then puts forth an act of trust by reaching out his hand to you. He knows what you've seen, how you understand his role in the simulation, and I suspect he may have been asking for judgement from something that's as close to his own brother as he could make it. Even at the end, if you accept his hand he addresses you almost identically to Morgan. "We're going to shake things up, just like old times." Alex needs to know he either succeeded and failed, and makes probably the only smart decision at the end: He put his own life on the line. "Its life depends on it. Ours too." But the operators are just machines that can be copied. HE was the only one present in person, putting himself at risk. Alex may be a bastard, but he definitely learned from his mistakes, and he learned that people need to trust him. He's no longer trying to hide the facts from anyone, least of all his subjects.
@@TheNewtC In a way it makes the kill them all ending that much more tragic and thematic, especially if you believe the idea that the hybrid killed him out of disgust of what he did. The dude helped bring about the end of humanity and got away with it with his skin intact only to be killed in his attempt to make amends and even possibly because his attempt succeeded. And all because he couldn't give up the madness of trying to teach an understanding of humanity to something beyond any human's understanding. His death is both incredibly cruel and unfair and yet completely predictable and logical. In other words it's the perfect ending to a cosmic horror story. Great video BTW! I was really glad to have some more food for thought over this game so thanks for that!
@@TheNewtC You know for all that Kill Them All is the only ending you accept I really love the Take Alex's hand ending for a pretty similar yet different reason. In the kill them all ending the typhon as you said lashed out in anger or managed to trick Alex that it cared before killing him while in the take his hand it shows that it does care or atleast thinks it cares. In the kill them all ending the gap between human and monster proves insurmountable and Alex fails. But to me a player that played tons of Skyrim and a then few playthroughs of Dishonored as my earlier bethesda games it really shook me. In Skyrim avoiding killing is mostly impossible except a few missions and most npcs respawn as identical copies so it is without consequenses. I didn't see the npc bandits as alive and sentient just amusing bugs or toys to destroy for my pleasure and gaming experience. In Dishonored I avoided killing not because I cared about the individual npc guards or that I thought that it was more merciful to sentence the conspiracy targets to their fates instead of killing them, but because I wanted the good ending. I didn't spare any npc because I cared about them as living beings but because I didn't want to lose out on story by destroying the props that tell it. In Prey where all humans are uniquely named and don't respawn if killed making sure they all possible lived was a checklist to see if all collectible survivors could be found and saved. I still didn't really care about them beyond a few favorites I just wanted my story then the ending came and the reveal. All the npcs I saved where npc's/AI ingame too and Alex was the first real human in the game world I was trusted to interact with. Alex who was an invincible game boss by virtue of being able to kill me and shut of the simulation from outside it trusted me with his life. Ingame Alex trusted an alien to have empathy for a human but out of game I as a player passed a first graded morality test by the developers to see if I cared about the npcs they created and was given the ultimate test "I need to know if you see us. I mean really see us." Do I as a player look this NPC in the eye and believe him when he says he is real? That he exists? I know that he is preprogrammed and is nowhere near able to even pass the turing test but do I still reach out to him and accept him when he says he is real? I love the Take Alex's hand ending both because that is one of the deepest moments of empathy I have had with a game npc but also because it made me feel so much more like an eldritch horror than any other game I have played. I wasn't the dragonborn a magical hero, I wasn't a lovecraft themed monster or even the game character Morgan Yu. Alex removed the mask and tried to glipse what was behind the curtain, I was this unknowable entity that could manipluate time if I lost or wished a different set of circumstances to happen and I viewed his entire world as an artificial dream world to experience for the sake of entertainment one among many and I would move on from it to other worlds when I grew bored. Never have I felt so one the other side of a person reaching out to a being they don't understand. Sure I know Alex Yu isn't sentient and real but just for a short moment I had to mentally double check the facts to make sure that it was impossible for him to be sentient. And then I choose Take Alex's hand because I'd rather lie and pretend that I thought Alex was sentient and see where this game of pretend would take me than shatter Alex elaborate stunt by killing him and confirming that the game couldn't make me care about the lives of their npcs. So we both as the typhon didn't think Alex was real but while you wanted to preserve the purity of that gap I wanted to pretend that I saw Alex as an equal because I wanted to see the next story he would involve me in. What could we experience together next and what would his next actions for making me empathise with him be. This has become a wall of text but I really appreciated your take on the ending of prey.
When I played Prey for the first time, I earned the achievement for being as empathetic as possible on my first run and chose the take his hand ending. There's a reason why I did that, and that reason lies in another perspective on the relationship between the player and the typhon-human hybrid. When the game revealed to me that Morgan Yu's personality kept changing after each test cycle, a thought occured to me. My role, as a player, in this story is that my own personality is the latest version of Morgan Yu's personality. In this sense, for the first time ever in a video game, I was playing as myself in a very real way- my own personality and choices were canonized by the game as a part of the story itself. This still remains true after the simulation reveal at the end. The "soul" that Alex had given that Typhon was truly the player's soul- my soul. That's why I took Alex's hand. I had resolved to uphold my morals and principles throughout the game, and I would continue to do so even if I was in the body of a monster, and even if I had to work with a man I clearly couldn't trust to save the world.
Well this makes me upset because in my first playthrough I accidentally killed Dayo Igwe because I was panicking and trying to get him out of his pod before he succumbed to oxygen deprivation and opened it thinking I could just drag him to safety. It still bothers me.
"You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality." -Ash, Alien (1979)
@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl Yeah but only with other xenomorphs. Humans ability to pack bond with just about anything seems stupid at first, until you realize that at some point in our history some jackass brought a baby wolf back to camp. And thus mankind’s greatest predator became our closest hunting buddy, and to this day remains man’s best friend. Well except for the breeding of the pug, let be known humans are also petty as hell.
This game is the only instance of "It was all just a dream" (that I know of) that wasn't a cheap copout for a twist. It not only makes sense and had subtle hints the whole time, but the "dream" actually happened. Awesome.
Yeah I got spoiled that it was a simulation beforehand and was expecting the ending to be really terrible as a result only for it to shock me by all being a fabrication while still having an amazing ending. It’s funny how when you learn one part about the ending of something it causes you to completely drop your guard and expect no further twists about what you heard because you think you’re already two steps ahead
I think this is the only piece of medium where I also accept it. But I think it is because generally, "it was all a dream" tends to be used as a copout way because someone wrote themselves in a corner. Whereas in this game it's pretty much sortof hinted at (things like all the trolly problem variations within this game) as well as what happens when you try to escape the simulation too early.
Eh. "It's a simulation" is a lot different than "it was a dream and you were everything was a metaphor for your inner demons." The former can work easily. The latter is almost always a corny cop-out to not have to flesh out the lore or make it make sense.
every time you get the little flashes of "the real world" it always tells you that -- 'they're lying to you' or something in that regard. usually these would come with milestones in the story or maybe a typhon neuromod was just installed. every time, that's your inner typhon mind trying to unbrainwash you. your own mind while you're in this looking glass simulator, sends this giant 'Nightmare' to pull you back to your original typhon senses. if you install too many typhon neuromods, the nightmare comes for you. i think that in particular is very specific to the simulation
@@alcole-holic8779 This actually makes a lot of sense. If you install Typhon mods, the Nightmare appears only rarely, I think it's like only 2 or 3 times total. Perhaps as a representation of you embracing the illusion of being Human and therefore "starving" the Typhon side of you... ...while if you install more and more Typhon mods, the Nightmare appears more and more, until it's basically constantly hunting you. Perhaps representing you "feeding" the Typhon side and unknowingly making "cracks in the mirror" so to speak.
A take on the ending I personally think encapsulates the 'Cosmic horror' ever more is interpreting that the Typhon hybrid always knew it was playing Alex's game and it outplayed him at it with ease. Alex in his hubris thought he can set up a keybord, but he was always just an ant dealing with something beyond his comprehension, thinking that he found a key to understand it.
My personal theory is that Alex succeeded in granting the hybrid empathy, for the typhon, not for humanity. In a similar way that the proverbial ant may return to uplift it's colony to better plan the downfall of the now better understood threats they face.
I love that every person has a slightly unique justification for their choice, especially if it was that one. I kind of accidentally wrote an essay on it in here.
Conversely, I think even the "good" ending could be a failure of the experiment. It is entirely possible that the now aberrant typhon would go along with the new course of action even without having experienced a shred of empathy, simply because it feels committed to the role, like an advanced mimic. Alternatively, its alien mind has already formulated a plan to which Alex Yu is instrumental, or perhaps, having been introduced to human way of thinking has established a sense of individuality in the subject and it doesn't want to be a drone anymore. It's scary to think what such a creature could do when infused with human ambition.
Which is another reason why Alex is kind of an optimistic moron; there are half a dozen possible endings to teaching a typhon hybrid how to feel, and only ONE of them is good
@@Vagabondobiondoso, in the good ending the typhoon helps Alex, not because he really meant to, but because he wanted to be free? That's what I got from what you said, so I can be wrong tho
I mean, but does it matter much? The humanity is already destroyed, there is only Alex left alive, with couple robots, so what is the use for hiding, if he could just end them right there
@@parisulki729You don't actually know that everyone is dead though. Sure there was a city with a lot of coral, just like the station when it still had thirty or so people alive on it. Could be overrun with typhon, but not necessarily everyone is dead.
I think other option is also possible. When Morgan was in simulation, it thought it was human, hence he helped humanity with no remorse. Once Alex revealed it was Typhon, it helped Typhon with no remorse.
An interesting thought… in my simulation I tried to avoid killing any typhon, they may be hunting us but they’re still living…. And Alex’s choices and lack of empathy towards both typhon and humanity…. He was the only one I chose to kill. I chose kill them all because he showed to be the monster worse than even the typhon…. Idk how you play changes the context of prey so much it’s interesting to me
In a way that makes it even worse for Alex and his hopes of finding a solution. Because for the hybrid, it's not a conscious choice, it's not a matter of 'you did Y, therefor X'. When the hybrid realized it was Typhon, it became a matter of us v.s. them, of biological allegiance overriding any kind of higher level of empathy. Alex never had a chance, his efforts futile from the very start. Yeah, that sounds like cosmic horror alright...
You're missing a trick Duke. Typhon or human, *sim-Morgan does what The Player chooses to do.* The big reveal is just an excuse for the player to rationalize their behaviour after the fact.
@@ClockworkBlade -- I'm not talking about a player role-playing as a Typhon within the game. I'm talking about the experience of playing the game itself. Even when a player goes into the game knowing the ending and can recognize the different psychological and moral tests laid out in front of them, they are still a human being having a personal experience interacting with a video game. The game thus gives the player the chance to examine their own behaviour from an outside perspective.
TL;DR: What if it's acts are in the best interests of both species? It's clear that the people "infected" with it can eventually regain their human state and even become a form of hybrid. Perhaps Typhon believes that it is doing an empathic act for humanity by ultimately bringing all of them into it's fold in a mixed species that is incapable of death, can move easily in a vacuum, has no need of safety protocols, and has a full understanding of every mind that eventually becomes part of it and truly believes that everyone and everything would be better off as a part of it's own species, which is in and of itself, a collection of every species it's ever encountered. What appears as suffering to humanity to Typhon is nothing more than growing pains in an evolution to a higher species that really doesn't have to take anything at all from the individuals it is evolving and instead is bestowing upon them the greatest of gifts available in the universe: immortality, mind to mind level unconditional understanding, and complete physical freedom. Original early comment that eventually became the one above: still pretty early in the video I want to talk about their supposed lack of empathy. It isn't because of a lack of concern for others, instead, the way their species operates and incorporates other species into their own, it is because they do not and can not die. They have no capacity to understand suffering, because suffering doesn't exist because their lives are not finite, and eventually the entire universe will be part of their larger organism the Typhon. The mimics and the converted are like single cells in a larger organism, and as the consciousness of those who initially may resist eventually they will always become part of the larger organism, and do so eventually by their own choice once they understand what has happened to them and realize that their mortality no longer exists while they are still allowed to retain their independence of will and are granted a form even more suited to enact that will due to it's new immortal nature. The wild thing about it is that given enough time, everyone will eventually break down and become a part of the larger organism as it will be the only way to truly become an independent actor once again. I realize this comment is a big mess and repeats a few times. That is due to four hours of sleep. I'll clean it up later. Consider this a groundwork outline that will be expanded upon later with better detail and structure and grammar.
This is a super spicy theory and it differs vastly from all of the other theories I've read. This gets a pin. So this is another theory I didn't even think about. What if the "cult" mentality gets to the newly established empathy? In theory, I could definitely see the hybrid taking this as a way to assimilate a species they consider less able than them. We don't know if the Typhon like their way of life, and I don't think it's even considered if they're capable of thinking that way. But once they are GIVEN that capability, it's a pretty logical step that the hybrid might pick joining the winning side as a way to end a war.
Eldritch horror is something I spend way too much time pondering lol. I know if there were something like the Typhon I'd probably welcome it with open arms. To travel the stars without a suit or ship and having an immortal's amount of time to explore them? I can't even begin to say a big enough Hells Yes!! 😂
One thing I do want to correct here, the Typhon don't "infect" humans. Those are just corpses they've reanimated. The human minds that used to be their are now trapped in the Coral, ready to be fed to an Apex.
8:22 The Earth was invaded not because advanced nullwave device, but because of the mimic from moonbase Pytheas, which was disguised as a toy in the ending of Prey: Mooncrash, so the station explosion wouldnt really change anything
Fair point, but that does nothing to invalidate the fact that Alex's best chance at containing the typhon was to annihilate Talos I. Alex didn't know that the invasion could still begin based on a single mimic from the moon, did he?
This interpretation mixes interestingly with my own roleplay experience from the game. I had a running joke with some friends about a gravely-voiced guy named Mike who has a bad attitude but considers himself the greatest security guard in the world, and so I started Prey roleplaying as him, even though I knew I was "really" Morgan Yu. Then, as the game progressed, I "discovered" that when TranStar was doing brain scans of the world's greatest athletes and musicians and whatnot, they also scanned Mike to make neuromods out of his leet security skills. Morgan then instituted a contingency that if the Typhon got out of control, a complete copy of Mike's brain scan would be downloaded into Morgan, essentially overwriting his mind with the personality and skills of the one man who might be able to reestablish containment. So I really WAS playing as Mike! Mike, using only human neuromods, saved everyone he could (even the cleanup crew guy and the murderous chef, who were nonlethally detained) and secured the station. Then I learned that Mike/Morgan is actually a Typhon that Alex has essentially downloaded both Morgan and Mike's memories into. This not only gave the Typhon some empathy towards humans, but a feeling of protective responsibility from Mike, which caused the Typhon to work with Alex. It was a fun arc, considering it came completely out of an inside joke. In contrast, my second playthrough had subject "Jane" as a nearly-feral ball of uncontrolled rage as the Typhon lashed out at its surroundings, using only Typhon neuromods and killing everything (human, Typhon or robot) it could. Obviously, Alex found this one to be unsuitable for diplomacy. It really is fun how many ways the player's actions can be interpreted!
The ending does a great job of legitimizing pretty much any playthrough. They have a past, but due to the way Typhon neuromods cause personality shifts that past means about as much as you want it to. The Morgan you play as really is just the player behind the screen, who gets to decide how they act to all of this new information.
Alternatively, the mirror neurons injected into the hybrid only gave it just enough empathy to pretend it genuinely cared wether or not the people around it lived or died. - Creating a superior predator. Much like how a psychopath can masquerade as a functioning human being up until the point they crack someone's skull because it suited them. - To get at the most elusive prey of them all, - its captors. Thank you Alex. You've made a bad situation infinitely worse by improving the typhons ability to mimic human beings.
@themostracistofthemall According to the DSM-5-TR (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; Antisocial Personality Disorder. That is to say you won't find either in that book because "psychopath" and "sociopath" are layman terms.
@@James_Bee God I hate that euthanised term. APD sounds like someone who's a bit of a dick but it actually covers such a large area from a neurotic borderline to a crazed killer and every type of narcissist and sociopath in between. It's such a useless term for a world where the well hidden, and not so well hidden (on social media), of these types are thriving. If they can't empathise or can choose not to empathise then, they are a psychopath. Clear and direct. The dark triad of Psychopathy - Narcissism - Machiavellianism need to be separated from the rest. APD is fine for those others but the really harmful disorders need to be clear. Not having a go at you by the way, I just can't help bringing this up when DSM-5 is mentioned 😂
It really makes you wonder, if they did come out with a second prey game, would it be based on spreading mirror neurons into the Typhon ecology? Say this was the case, would anything really change? Would the Typhon leave humanity and go to another place in the universe, leaving us to rebuild from our ruin? Would the Typhon remain, and being able to empathize, assist us in rebuilding and even co-exist with us? Or would it simply not matter, would everything be in vain and all is lost? So many questions, yet it's likely they'll never get answered, at least directly.
It's possible that by spreading mirror neurons it would break apart the Typhon ecology completely. It's unclear if the Typhon even have an individual will or if they just act like cells in a body. Imagine if every cell in your body suddenly had its own goals. It would be complete chaos.
I'd probably see it as a crew returning to earth that's currently being destroyed by the apex and trying to save it. Then reduce the human experience to worse than the aliens until they get eaten away. Look up hellstar remina by junji ito, and look up the side story where the rich family lands on the hellstar.
@@TheNewtC The idea of the Typhon each being individual cells and it being utter chaos if the mirror neurons ended up working is interesting. Assuming each Typhon type retained their base intelligence and instincts, the way they would react to suddenly having empathy for other living beings would vary quite a bit. For example; Would one consider if the transformation process of the mimics to other types is painful? Nessasary? Would it consider the possibility of possible transformations other that the limited options it initially had? What would a Mimic do differently with the neurons? It's seemingly more of an instinctual creature, with limited higher function. So would a Mimic actually become more friendly, docile or merely just attack anything when it's provoked or in need of doing so? More generally speaking, using the analogy to cells within a body; It would be like each type of Typhon that had mirror neurons was a cell from different organs. A cell that was afflicted with a disease specific to the type of cell it was. If there were only a few of each type affected, it wouldn't make much of a difference. However, if you focused on two vital types and had many affected within those limited types. Then that would be enough to cause the equivalent of that organ failing or being significantly damaged. It's quite likely the Typhon affected by the mirror neurons would just become confused or individually feel bad about what they are doing. Because if they are all subservient entities to the Alpha with little individual autonomy then they would still be bound & compelled by the Alpha's will. Even falling back to a base instinctual need and acting only in desperation to fulfil that need is something Humans do. So at best the mirror neurons in non-hybrid Typhon may delay their actions until they become desperate to survive and act on basic survival instinct. At worst we would just be making the Typhon suffer unnecessarily while they carry out the Alpha's will.
Well, we're basically livestock to them. I think cows are cute. I also think they're really tasty. So giving them the abillity to recognize and empathize with us frankly won't change the fact they gotta eat. Eat our consciousness.
I have made it clear that Prey is my all-time favorite game. But I must admit, despite the fact that my entire first play-through is available to view in the vods on my channel, that is not the play-through that cemented in my mind that Prey was my favorite game. That goes to my second play-through. In my second play through, that the world will never see the way I saw, I read every single log, found every single body, rescued every single person, and more. I put so much effort into being a good person that I could genuinely say I KNEW the characters. And in my efforts to do that, I ran into a realization. Even in the game world, every character I interacted with was dead. The only one to survive the events of Talos 1 was Alex yu in his sealed chamber. Imagine going through that, putting that effort into SAVING everyone that could be saved, only to be told at the end that you could never have succeeded. All those people who knew you and that you felt like you knew were dead before you even tried. To lash out and kill Alex would be so human it would hurt. You are reacting to the reality that despite doing everything you could to be the good guy, to be the perfect human, you were never more than the experiment of a deranged megalomanic who still believes he can fix his mistake. The only one who survived despite every ounce of effort you put in is the guy you just had to hinder your every chance to save those people just a moment quicker. Not just anger but grief, despair, and so much sadness that it would be unbearable for a mind never meant to feel those emotions. That is why Prey is my favorite game, because no matter what ending you choose, no matter how you go through the game, EVERY ENDING MAKES SENSE. Taking Alex's hand would be just as human as killing him. Killing every person on the station and getting chopped at the end for not being the one would be just as likely as creating the first Typhon to feel human empathy. All of the possible endings are just as likely as the rest.
Just like that killing them all can be considered a human ending, taking his hand can be interpreted as a Typhon one. Empathy gives people the ability to model another person's mind in our own. This can make us care for them, but it also makes us being able to lie. Mimics didn't impersonate humans before because they couldn't replicate this model in their minds, thus being unable to truly lie. But after the tempering and the simulation the Morgan-mimic can. In the end Alex still only made things worse.
@@hurricanelily_ja YES. That's both why I want a sequel but also don't. If they had us play as that mimic Morgan, they might explore that line of thinking. But they also might just make the Morgan mimic mentally human and possibly negate some if the beauty of the ending we have. Does the Morgan mimic actually care about humanity, or not? I loved that no matter what you choose from the "good ending" it will never be clear. I unfortunately doubt that a sequel could give us that option to be the mimic hiding amongst its prey.
@@FlamelessSoulImagine if the sequel put us in the shoes of a different survivor, and mimic-Morgan was the antagonist. If done right, it could be kept entirely ambiguous which ending is the “canon” ending. Alex could be dead from an unspecified cause of death. Mimic-Morgan could be an antagonist for a reason entirely Byzantine to our way of thinking. It could be a really interesting avenue to explore, seeing mimic-Morgan’s story continued through the eyes of an outsider
I prefer to think that the human/Typhon hybrid chose to shake Alex's hand to play the long game. Now he has empathy, so he doesn't need to rely on direct methods to consume. Earth has already been invaded, so there would be little to gain by killing Alex. Instead, by letting Alex live, the hybrid convices him that it's safe for humans to inject Typhon-based neuromods. Eventually, humans and Typhon become indistinguishable. Humans have turned into more Typhon, but most important, they did so wilfully.
My actual reaction if I were the monster: "Don't you know why we don't have mirror neurons? Look at what you did, Alex. Along with your staff. You killed both humans and typhons, and even worse things than that to them. Typhons don't betray each other, because they know it would result in their death, as other Typhon wouldn't hesitate to kill them. But humans fool themselves into thinking other members of their species will leave them alone, for the sake of being left alone; as if believing it hard enough can bend reality to their will. We eat you because we know you would've destroyed yourselves anyway. Aren't you proof alone of that?" *Kills them all.
I'm pretty sure the reason that both endings happen is not because the Null Wave/ self destruction failed, its because Morgan failed. In Mooncrash, it is shown that the simulations could be used for "WHAT IF" scenario. The real Morgan was able to save his brother, but thats where his story ends, and these two endings are the "what if" Morgan was able to stop the Typhon.
I like to imagine that Alex managed to give the hybrid empathy but failed to realise that it might hate humanity for experimenting on his kind afterwards
I really liked this take on the situation. I've watched many essays on Prey and this is by far the only one that explores this option. Thanks for the video
i always took the kill them all ending to be the most human response. you cant get the ending without saving many people on talos 1, so the only reason youd save people is if the experiment succeeded and you did gain some empathy (the subject could have become aware it was a typhon, but theres nothing in the story to indicate that). in the process of gaining this empathy you got to relive the horror these people experienced, and as you said in the video, alex yu hindered morgans progress every step of the way, so the logical conclusion is that alex is responsible for this suffering. he unleashed a predatory species on the station, actively hindered safety protocols, stopped earth from intervening until it was too late and actively encouraged the sacrifice of the people on the station to further his research. he is the villain. he's the reason people suffered and died and hes the reason the typhon are destroying humanity. from empathy comes a sense of justice, and that justice requires alex's death sentence. the process of making morgans avatar more human necessitates and outrage as to the injustice of it all. alex succeeded but in doing so damned himself.
From empathy also comes a sense of empathy, the ability to understand the feelings and perspectives of others, including but not limited to understanding that Alex wants to help humanity and this is the only way he knows how to.
Actually Alex isn't the reason for the Typhon being on Earth, they reached Earth at the end of the Mooncrash DLC. Earth was already ravaged while Morgan was on Talos
i imagine the typhon developing empathy and witnessing everything Alex does would probably make it pretty angry at him, maybe it was just stopping another one of alex’s plans that would just make things worse.
Like a third option where Typhon takes Alex' hand, but then proceeds to give him a non-deadly, but completely violent spanking. And the other operators are like "Yeah, well, honestly, based".
In my own game, I tried to destroy the station AND use the bomb to lobotomize the Apex Typhon. After all, it's a Grey Goo scenario. I didn't want people to go right back to injecting Typhon material into their brains.
The problem with eldritch horror is that it’s contradictory, it’s based on the idea that human thoughts and emotions are insignificant to the universe as a whole, but the very universe in which it exists is a human mind.
Option 3, as I see it, the Typhon-Human hybrid _can_ empathize, but isn't forced to. The option to choose (instead of previous choises locking you into an ending) is only there because for hybrid it's no significant difference between those options. They can see the suffering of others and choose to alleviate. But there is just no moral consequence for killing them all. No qualms. As easy as a button press.
I also don't get why so few people talk about the fact, that while cosmic horror is fun... It doesn't work. We pretty much live in unfathomable world, that might as well be a god, our place in the universe is unimaginably small and yet we're exactly where we are here the way we are because this just the way the world is. We are as insignificant, as everything else. We are as important as everything else. At the end of the day, we are reality, universe looking at itself, all the marvels under the stars, it just exists for no particular reason and we're there for a very short period of time. We might hope for some special destiny, but we might also completely disappear. In two hundred years or two million. The cosmic mundanity of things is that Cthulhu doesn't care of us ants, and so aren't we. Except we care about a lot of things we deem important, but that doesn't matter. Now we exists. Once we didn't exist. Some day we won't exist any longer. We do, what we do. There are no mindshattering revelations, because our life is one big mind shattering revelation and we still need to survive, put food on a table, and reach consensus with each other.
I think the cosmic mundanity of it adds to the unfathomable nature of cosmic horror. No matter what we do, we can go our entire lives without knowing there is something far beyond us in the universe. Look at bloodborne for humanity’s reaction to gods.
I already have one in mind, though it's going to be a while before it's out. This video took about a month to research, record and edit. Thanks for the vote of confidence though!
@@pach6678 Personally I love listening to someone talk about a subject they're passionate about in the background. Gives me stuff to think about or zone out to
There is a gamble with the kill them all option that I'm not sure if I've ever seen explored well in fiction but I have seen mentioned in discussion of AI morality through paranoia. With the capability of simulated realities proven to the hybrid, it has to be asked if the simulation actually ended for the debriefing, or similarly with any "release" or "escape" from any morality-test-simulation. The kill them all option could very well be a final test of the Hybrid's morality not in the real world but rather in a final simulated room pretending to be as such. A hybrid that fakes morality out of fear of being in a simulated test in the first place could continue the process out of the continued uncertainty that the new reality they are supposedly in isn't simply another layer of simulation. Of course, it would be entirely unlike Alex to use that level of safeguard.
Doesnt this also happen in ghost in the shell? A hacker guy can hack the brains of the two characters that ask him for imformation, so as a funny, he puts them in a simulation. After they get what they need, one of them goes, "wait, what if im still in the simulation?" And the other one basically just shrugs and says "well, theres no way to really know, now is there?
I found the ending particularly effective because after playing through the game and picking up lots of mods I was striding around the station like a god, swatting anything that dared look at me wrong, and I had a little fantasy of what it would be like to return to Earth with that power. Only to discover Earth had been lost, presumably years ago, to something with far more power, through the hubris of humans thinking they could control that power. Extremely memorable for me. Really effective at delivering on the game's themes.
Seeing no value in human life is also a very human thing to do, testing for empathy in a Typhon, especially with all the annoyances that Alex poses during the game, really wasn't the best idea when humanity itself has a million and one ways to be violent and only a couple ways to make up for it. Odds are (and odds that can come to fruition in this ending), the Typhon just learned to be selfish or to be vengeful or just straight murderous, rather than the slim chance of being a reasonable 'fellow'.
Yep, and the endings support that. Teaching empathy is not the same as teaching morality. It's not enough to teach an alien to feel, you also have to teach it to care. Alex forgot that.
@ProstyProtos71 You know how you can be angry for someone else or if someone you care about gets hurt? That can send people into a murderous and/or violent rage
@ProstyProtos71 Knowing that killing someone is painful does not stop soldier from killing enemy soldiers and civilians. If anything it makes killin easier because you know what and how to do to demoralise your enemy. Prison guards, surgeons, criminal gans and etc. do you think they all lack empathy? No. They just know how to control primitive impulses and maybe visit a therapist from time to time.
I loved Prey, and I'm sad that I'll never be able to play it for the first time again-because I think my first playthrough was perfect. I adopted a persona. As a player and character. "I'm a tool," I said. "I am in this body to carve out the Typhon infection with utter certainty. A scalpal. A missile. *Designed,* inside and out. I need to become the monster until every last scrap of exotic matter is burned away." I failed the empathy test in I think the most complete way possible. I didn't know anything about Prey going into it, I didn't even really piece together the simulation thing very quickly. I just took two things that I now think you might not be supposed to latch onto too closely, judging by how other people play it, and I made them my central tenets. Morgan Yu's instructions to her past self that she HAS to blow up the station, and the fact that I, as the player, don't remember anything. I wake up and am TOLD that I am basically an earlier scan, that I am Morgan Yu from just before joining Talos I. But I don't remember anything up to this point. I don't remember the character's backstory, I wasn't given material to read to prepare for this role, there are no flashbacks. All I have is being told, by other characters, that they share memories with Morgan Yu. I'm not Morgan Yu. Prey was the ultimate dissociative experience because I put myself in the role of someone waking up with total amnesia. There had been nothing before this point. I built an identity based solely on what I was told. And not what I was told about myself-I never thought of myself as Morgan Yu. Morgan Yu was someone else who lived a previous life in the body I now own. I am a fresh mind. No, instead of what and who I was told I was, I built my identity off of what I was told about the world. I built my identity *as it was needed*. I became what the world I was told about needed-someone to destroy it. It was an incredibly, viscerally strange experience. I didn't sleep much over the weekend I played Prey. I think my playthrough ended up being like 45 hours (just checked-43.8 hours in the game on Steam). I didn't eat much, or well. I dove headfirst into the Typhon upgrades. I maxxed out every skill tree in the entire Neuromods menu before I let myself end the main quest. I knew I was infected. She told me-one of the first communications from the old future Morgan Yu, "nobody on the station can make it back to Earth. Not even you." I didn't know how much time I had. It would have to be enough. I had to be the ultimate weapon. I killed mimics, Phantoms, Etheric Phantoms, Thermal Phantoms, Weavers, Cystoids, Telepaths, Technopaths, Nightmares. I killed people. Man in a cargo crate outside the station, running out of air, you can hear the desperation in his voice. How's this puzzle work? Hack the keypad outside his storage unit, the doors open and he dies, exposed to the void of space. Oh. Didn't mean to do that quest so quickly. Should I reload a save? Well...he'll die anyway, I suppose. Felt bad about that, but wouldn't it have been crueler to save people like this, to befriend them, only to kill them later? A cluster of security officers who've barricaded themselves inside the cargo bay. There's Typhons outside, they want you to get them better turrets so they can hole up better. The turret plans are outside, with the Typhons. They're offering you the passcode to the doors if you get the turret plans for them in a roundabout way, but you have Hacking 4, and why do they need better turrets anyways? You can kill that many. Open the doors, let the Typhons in, kill them all with your three offensive psychic powers and arsenal of weapons. The security officers turn on you, start shooting. It's a video game. Kill them all. Well, you didn't mean to aggro them by not following the proper protocal they wanted, but you did everything right, and really, why should you jump through hoops just to do things in a way the humans are comfortable with? Well, now you've terrorized this whole cluster, better wipe them out. Don't want them to suffer, doubt there's a plan in the code for this scenario that's good for them or you. And besides, now that you've failed the quest they were offering, you need to get the quest items anyways. They were offering you something, I can't remember now-go to the main room, empty that of life, strip the corpses of resources. There was one girl, in a back room, whose AI hadn't caught up to the social situation. She greeted me as I came in. Was friendly. I went through her dialogue then murdered her with Psychoshock. That whole situation felt pretty bad. But I'm the monster. This is my job. We're all gonna die anyways. I have to do this alone. I think a few quests for people in the game went like that-I'd run around pressing every button I could, confused by the puzzles, and eventually someone would wind up dead and I'd murder everyone to clean up. Other quests I'd gain access to the survivor's place then just wipe them, because I guess I'm doing this now. I accidentally let Mikhaila die alone in pain because I put the quest to fetch her medicine on the backburner not knowing there was a time limit-found out later she and Morgan had been dating, she'd been given the cold shoulder unfairly. That felt bad, to know "I" had abandoned her twice in probably the most cruel ways the game would let you choose. Nobody made it off the station under my care. I made damn sure of that. Humans are too unpredictable an element-can't leave any of them alive once I find them. What if they find some way to escape? Increasingly aware of how little I can trust myself. The glitches, the Neuromods, the choices I made just accidentally, instinctively-I clung to my first precept harder and harder over the course of the game. No one makes it off the station alive. I felt like I was going insane. Constantly told I couldn't trust anyone. That they were all lying. Were they? Maybe. Probably. How COULD I trust anyone in this godforsaken facility, really? If everything I've been told is all lies, then *I'm* all lies, because my whole identity is just what I've been told since waking up. If I can't actually let myself internalise any of this, if I have to treat every source of information as an enemy or controlled by the enemy, what can I trust? I have to pick something and stick to it. I clung to the one sentence that informed my every action even harder. Nullwave or explosion? Will the explosion really kill the apex? It seems like something designed to target these aliens' weakpoint will work better against something like that, right? Well, it's not like the Nullwave's safe. It's Alex's idea, and I can't trust Alex. Anything Alex wants to do will inevitably go so easy on the Typhon that it lets them escape containment, that's how every choice he's made has panned out. Explosion it is. My mission completed. I wake up. This time, I have memories, I have a backstory. I built one, after all. "At every turn, it displayed ruthlessness," Alex says to his jury. Of course I did! You goddamn told me to! You said no one can make it out alive and I made sure of that! I was your tool and I did my duty! He pulls the plug, or flips the switch, or whatever it was he did, I don't remember. Game over. Run ended. Do I want to start Newgame+? Ha, no. Nothing can top that. I fucking loved Prey.
I like the idea that in teaching the Typhon to feel it also teaches it to be betrayed. It teaches it that this species is dangerous and tricky and rather than wandering around killing, maybe puts a target in humanities back as something that can trap, and alter their species. So it waits and plays the game and then lashes out when it gets the chance.
If you've read Dune there's a test for humanity in that. They describe humans as something that will remain in the trap to kill the thing that set it. It fits this conversation quite well I think.
I think there is even an interpretation of the take his hand ending, that is just as dark and cthulean as the kill them all ending. Because I instantly think, if all this experiment was meant to teach a typhon how to be human and empathize with humans, the ending reveal and choice is just as much a misstep as the whole experiment in general. Alex thinks it proves he was successful. But what if all the experiments do is teach the Typhon how to lie? To lie on an emotional/mental/human level, instead of just a physical level like the rest of the species does. That the typhon could make the take his hand choice, knowing it would get them out of the simulation, and get them that much closer to their true goal.
Honestly I think people also forget humanity in of itself can be a eldritch horror and we are far from weak. What they did was rip out and adapt at a ungodly fast rate by taking alien abilities. Then when we were threatened? We placed some of ourselves into a part of an alien to empathize with us before putting it back with the others like a virus. Damn, I love humanity. One day I hope we get another one of these games, I liked being the eldritch monster. Maybe next time turning into the nightmare? Yeah~
@@agamemnonofmycenae5258 Ironically, most of Lovecraft's eldritch horror writing was a metaphor about racism and colonialism, so Humanity can be the Eldritch Horror and the Ant at the same time, from the word go. Christopher Columbus was basically Cthulhu. Edit: Then again, if Columbus was Cthulhu there would have been cannon tentacle stuff, because old Cristobal Columbo was into some messed up stuff. F that guy.
@@albertsaffron7582 Oh yeah I have seen it. It is awesome. Adore the ones where aliens find us adorable, or weird for wanting to pet everything even deadly creatures. Another trait that makes me love humanity. Very cute.
It did always seem suspiciously easy. Giving a typhon mirror neurons and naturally it would choose to react with love and understanding, rather than cursing you for the unwanted curse. Or assuming that it would choose to work towards understanding, rather than go down the same paths of murder and anger that we excel at. Fantastic video! You earned a sub and I'm looking forward to any and all work you do in the future.
This is one of my favorite breakdowns of this games plot and, like the game, it deserves more attention. Glad this popped into my recommended. Edit: replaced "underrated" with the more appropriate "deserves more attention"
I personally like Game Theory’s interpretation. (Yes point and laugh at the fnaf man’s ramblings). You kill then all not as a murder machine, not as an enemy to humanity as we know it but as a moral decision. Alex has just unleashed upon the world the Titan menace. He is a dangerous man playing with forces outside of his understanding and control callously disregarding the people he prays on despite being able to understand the pain he inflicts. So you take the opportunity to stop him before he can cause any more damage.
My choice in Prey was to save as many people as I could (except the fake cook) and it was as simple as helping people who had done no clear wrong. They all seemed to be victims of circumstance outside their control. Anyone who had been responsible was already dead, and innocents didn’t deserve to suffer. So when I didn’t kill the “clean up” officer, it was because I trusted Igwe had a solution. It wasn’t my call to decide who didn’t deserve to live. The survivors were no more responsible for this outbreak than the typhon who had no awareness at all. That’s my reason for choosing the Nullwave, because the Typhon aren’t evil. They’re a hive. Ants aren’t inherently evil, they do what benefits the colony first and foremost. The typhon were just trying to survive, to protect themselves
There's another secret ending where you follow the 'December' robot, it leads you to Alex's shuttle and you can escape that way, but then the simulation ends and Alex says "We failed, this isn't the one" then it reloads your last save.
Also if you are looking for "an inhuman look from a humans eyes" (opposite of what you stated at the end of the video) then I recommend reading the book "Reverend Insanity". Truly a masterpiece of writing that delves into the human psyche, human nature, the selfish choices one has to make in a harsh world, and how one human chooses to be inhuman for the sake of his goal *while fully understanding humanity. An innate demon, if you will.
Empathy doesn't take away from logical thinking most of the time, Typhon are a species of hive mind so whatever was their interest before getting mirror neurons and feeling empathy doesn't change from whatever their plan was to begin with, your take on kill them all is actually pretty reasonable. I'd do the same if I were them.
The 'best' ending of the store, saving everyone and being empathetic through the game, comes with the best results for both sides. Either you kill them all, and 'best' is that you the typhon finally figured out how to behave to escape in the real world. Or you join them, and 'best' is that Alex finally figured out how to make a human-typhon hibrid. Both endings are canon, and your decision determines if the genre of the story is either Eldritch Horror or hopeful transhumanist sci-fi.
An interesting take on the eldritch being part it by simply creating a reality through which you do save everyone, it is real, because by thinking of it, it is then brought into existence as possibly another reality, be it lesser or equal, such as the rpg players
The way the Typhon work in Prey is similar to the Necromorphs in Dead Space if you think about it. Kill and "turn" intelligent life, accumulate biomass/coral, summon the Eldrich God once the process is complete.
Lovecraft was known not just for how he wrote the fear of the unknown, but for how he was able to give us so much information on the unknown, and still make them feel unpredictable and alien. Sometimes, the more you knew about his monsters, the more incomprehensible they got. That seems to strike a cord here. We seem to get lots of info on these Typhon(never played the game, sorry), but despite that, humans still really don’t understand them and are terrified of them because of that.
Чёрт, как же хорошо в видео проспекулировали на тему многих аспектов истории prey. Пожалуй, моя любимая игра; на первое прохождение которой я потратил 38 час, просто наслаждаясь самим процессом игры, иногда просто гуляя по Талосу, ищя какие-нибудь записки, интересные предметы и т.п. К сожалению, концовку понял не сразу, но когда посмотрел её разбор - просто был в шоке. Никогда не забуду эту игру!
People were so apathetic to Prey when it first came out but here we are almost half a decade later and people are still making videos about it. I knew this game was a hit.
Oh man, this is making me want to replay this game. I went in with no expectations and I couldn't stop playing, was fully immersed, the art style, the atmosphere, the story, the sound design (except for the guns, I felt that the gunplay lacked a bit of punch). Loved this experience. Truly magnificent.
I always took the Kill Them All Ending to mean that the Typhon Hybrid is perfectly capable of experiencing empathy. It's now perfectly capable of perceiving humans as thinking, feeling entities... ...and it's HORRIFIED and DISGUSTED by them (particularly Alex) as a result. All throughout the story you've been presented with humans acting with callous disregard for others. Now the Typhon understands that they all did that with full awareness of the suffering of other thinking feeling beings. It suddenly understands just how manipulative, cruel and selfish humans can be, not just to IT but TO ONE ANOTHER. It knows EXACTLY what we are now. We're MONSTERS.
I personally chose to take his hand for the opposite reasons. It learned to empathize, and killing them all flies in the face of that imo. The reason we take his hand is because we know not ALL humans are monsters. We saw the survivors and helped them, we know of their potential for greatness. Just another perspective for the hat.
A thought I've ways had is nobody really seems to bring up the very potential negative downsides to granting a Typhon human empathy. You can give a Typhon organism the ability to empathize, but there's also the opportunity for it to learn and embrace human cruelty as well. In Alex's attempts to impart our best features onto the Typhon, he may have unfortunately imparted our worst traits instead.
It's crazy to me that Prey ranks among the best science fiction horror stories, joining the likes of Alien and Carpenter's The Thing, yet so many people HAVEN'T played it. This absolute gem is a must-buy, must-play. It's almost perfect. I hope it continues to grow its audience over the years
Man, you kept me entertained through the whole video. Made me realize just how much I enjoy the eldritch horror stuff. I feel a tinge of inspiration coming.
Half a million views in 5 days??? Prey gang RISE UP! Feels so good to see prey being popular, especially as someone who played (and loves) prey because of a video i saw 3 years after its release.
Prey was the last full game that I streamed right after it was released and just before I had a falling-out with twitch and haven't seriously streamed since. In my play through, I played it super humane. I even refused to do any of the Typhon powers and went on pure skill-building. I saved everyone I could and escaped in the shuttle. Then when I reached the choice at the end, much to the shock of some of my regular viewers, I had a reaction very similar to yours. I got pissed and I killed them all.
It is implied that the typhon we were playing as has been given mirror neurons, likely the same belonging to Morgan Yu. It was basically a test if the typhon could use these mirror neurons and empathize.
The "kill them all" ending isn't so cut and dry as "the Typhon was mad," by the time Alex is executing Project Cobalt the world is essentially over, best case scenario for this ending is a mercy killing for the last humanity has to offer, worst case scenario is altering the mind of the Typhon has ejected it from the hive mind and lowered it on the "food chain" to a yummy outsider from the perspective of the rest of the Typhon, which I'm sure the Typhon we play as is more than intelligent enough to see and consider.
This was an absolutely fantastic analysis, gonna have to replay Prey again, so that's a win :D Empathy is a powerful tool... and in the hands of a predator: a weapon.
You know after listening to this it also makes the second ending terrifying because if you can give a typhon the ability to experience empathy then who's to say that it can't use that new ability to trick them into thinking that it is the best chance for hope only to take away that hope when it is at its highest. After all if one hated others would they not try to take away all that they put their believes in for one's amusement, and isn't that the greatest form of revenge for a being who has slowly become aware of what it is and has been experiencing. To toy with its prey and see their horror at the end when it all fades as you show to them the truth.
Prey is definitely my favorite Arkane game, my first play through was just indescribable. What absolutely blew my mind and had me know this was one of my favorite games of all time was when I could exit the station and go into space. That, even though it seems so small, is the type of thing that brings a game to the next level for me, all the little details in Prey just make it an absolute masterpiece
@@Kserijaro agreed. I tried to enjoy Dishonored & that's when I realized their formula just isn't for me. Prey was a complete break from that & boy they did well. Not genre defining or ground breaking, but they did well.
I don't understand how anyone could even consider it dream sequence trope enough to take issue with it. Your actions literally shape the ending. Which bots are there, which endings you have access to. Dream sequences fail as a concept so often specifically because they don't have ramifications in the real world. That's 100% not the case here. You'd have to be an idiot to criticize the game for something it doesn't even do just because you're too easily triggered by a buzz word.
There could be a flaw to my theory and there almost definitely is, and now that I hear it it makes sense for the kill them all ending, but I just love the outher one because as you play through the game you (you whenever I say it I'm referring to the player) slowly learning you are in a simulation, and by playing the game you might as well literally be playing the simulation, and as you are a human with mirror neurons you have empathy, the experiment worked because you the player are seeing through your own eyes. You are the typhon experiment, the one that worked and had empathy. Though also as a immersive sim this ending works if you played as if you were yourself in the game. Also I'm bad at conveying ideas lol so I hope this makes sense.
I like the "Kill them all" ending because it is just... logical. You ARE a mimic. You appear harmless, then strike. Acting selfless is mimicry. The "Kill them all" action - is the strike.
I'm exhausted so I won't be giving this the deep dive that it deserves, but you earned yourself a new subscriber and I cannot wait for your next video essay
One detail I really like about the kill ending is how Typhon Morgan actually takes Alex's hand. At first glance you might think that Morgan is just pulling a fast one on Alex but he's actually being completely honest. Alex told Morgan to take his hand if he had a human level of sentience, he didn't say anything about allegiance. Morgan is responding truthfully here, he completely understands his situation but through his own decisions he decides to kill Alex. Maybe it's because he felt like Alex turned him against his own species, maybe he wants revenge for all the cruel things Humanity did to the Typhon, maybe he just personally hates Alex, but the point is that Morgan is no ordinary Typhon. He is intelligent and fully understands his situation, but in spite of being able to do otherwise, he still kills them all and that is truely scary! But I don't really choose this ending. Sure it looks cool, but at the end of the day I can't bring myself to do it. Throughout my playthroughs I tried to save as many people as possible, to suddenly decide to kill everyone goes against everything I stood for.
Enjoyed this! I first played and didn't think much of that ending when I went back and tried it after reloading. Now? You brought more to my playthrough than I initially had.
@@Skullkan6 Glad to hear it. This doesn't really reflect my current opinions on the ending (see the second Prey video I made) but it seems a lot of people missed out on the depth of the ending.
The ending kinda reminds me of the thought experiment where if we made a super intelligent AI we should run it through a simulation where it has free reign over our world to see if it is "good" or not. But the AI is so smart it can know if it is in a simulation and will play along until it is let free.
Random thought: One shortcoming of games like Prey is that they don't really give you time to breathe in the world before calamity. You know it's been lived in, but you don't really get a "feel" for it. It doesn't become your home. So that makes the calamity have less weight. What if a game like Prey released a "demo" of sorts, where it's just some subsection of the space station, before the calamitous event, and you just wander around, seeing people doing stuff, seeing the comfortable life as usual going on...
There's definitely some merit to that idea. Bioshock Infinite had a DLC that let you finally experience Rapture before its fall. Though I think Prey does a better job of characterizing its crew than the BioShock series did. It's the things the crew members left behind, like Glooey McGlooface, that help bring life to the dead station.
Prey is truly the best game of all time. The mimic typhoon mimicking as objects and you consistently on edge scanning every item if they're mimic is truly an amazing experience. Not to mention the amazing application of GLOO cannon.
This is such an underrated game. It is one of 5 games in the last decade I was able to sit down and complete without playing other games in between sessions.
This game got rave reviews, but there's been little discussion of it, because it's hard to say anything really meaningful without spoiling the F out of it.
As someone who has platinumed Prey (and every Arkane game since Dishonored) it makes me smile to know people are still figuring things out about this absolute masterpiece.
I respect your work to convey the important details that players pass over too quickly in Prey. I hope to do the same with Little Nightmares one day, and you've given me hope that I can do it well.
Your music is too loud compared to your voice or the game-play voice. For example at 5:45 I feel as though the music is on the verge of covering your words into incoherency (for me). I like your voice, so I think a boost of 5-10% or lowering the music by 5-10% would help. Experiment, if you so choose.
Thank you everyone who watched and enjoyed this. Despite this being the fixed audio version we still had a lot of complaints of music getting in the way of their enjoyment. The video now has english subtitles taken directly from the original transcript. I hope that helps.
watched this video whilst im in a work call, the captions really helped as i couldnt really hear it over people talking. This was a W. Great video, and great captions
A shame, could barely understand the video at all. Gave up on it halfway through
It's a great video and a great theory albeit flawed at least. Spoilers warning ( the nullwave device works in defeating the typhon) this is proven by the fact that the reason that the aliens made it to earth is because of the Talos smuggling ring sending neuromods which have the typhon dna to earth without Alex's or Morgan's approval + the fact that in prey mooncrash claire (I may have the name wrong I am talking about the custodian spying for kasma) also sending the data to earth and lastly the shuttle that lands in the Seattle facility if not blown up in the captains office in the bridge (I think. I could be wrong)
Oh my! See you in the dark forest? Someone has read the three body problem!
I was just about to write you should've put music louder, i can almost hear you.
I feel you missed one additional layer of eldritch horror present in the story. Alex takes a simple animal, operating on instinct, unable to recognize that even others of it's own kind feel (if they feel at all), and forces upon it comprehension of all the pain and suffering and horror that it and it's kind have inflicted. And does so solely because the result of this act might be useful to him.
The ant, understanding the true nature of the keyboard, can never return to being an ant, the typhon, understanding the true nature of empathy, can never return to being a typhon.
I sort of mentioned this in a single line, but I probably could have made it clearer. Alex is the Typhon's eldritch god, which is why it works so well as a role reversal once it's revealed. How you put it is a better way though.
@@TheNewtC well he isnt quite an eldritch god, since he's now on ice
the ant thing is a reference to that one Tumblr post, isn't it?
@@barkbork7528 As far as I know, it was made up by Steve.
prey isn't a lovecraftian game you idjits, it's just another survival horror bioshock cash in
What I think I liked most about Prey was how deeply flawed the entire premise of Alex's actions are.
While Alex's testing was trying to induce empathy in the Typhon, the majority of the actual tests they reference in the ending can be explained as survival decisions. It helped people! It was hugely outnumbered and needed allies. It avoided Typhon-neuromods! Why would it infect itself if it didn't need to? It did things just to be nice! As opposed to actively antagonizing its only information sources.
By using his sibling as the basis, he also practically ensures that he can't view the subject objectively. In-narrative evidence also indicates Morgan wasn't the most empathic individual to begin with, given that, since their cells are still available for Alex to experiment with, it can be presumed that the Nullwave was the original Morgan's solution to the Talos I situation. Lobotomizing all the Typhon to harvest their material isn't exactly a good decision.
On top of this, there's actually very little evidence that the Typhon even have a sense of self. They're suicidally aggressive and appear to act on instinct at every stage of their progression. I mean, just repeated exposure to Typhon dna was enough to cause personality drift in Morgan in the first place. I'd argue the only thing Alex achieved in his testing was 'awakening' one.
And this is Alex's plan to save the world! Stick the cells of a scientist who went crazed on psychic alien dna _into_ a psychic alien that may not even have a sense of self _and then teach it to feel empathy by _*_putting it through life-or-death horror scenario._*
Keep in mind that this isn’t the first time Alex has done this and when given the information that you were already in a virtual experience how do you know that you didn’t simply exit into a second virtual experience.
The ending is just another test to see if you really are human enough to survive, kind enough to survive.
If not, execution awaits.
Also, this isn’t eldritch horror.
We can understand the Typhon.
The Typhon can’t understand us.
It’s the opposite.
For The reasons you like Prey 2017 I hate it. I like Villains who are intelligent, driven and powerful in some way. If not physically, then in shear presence. And actually seem like they are emotionally invested in the story. The delivery of the reveal is so flat and boring. This fat idiot in Prey sounds like he is talking to someone around the water cooler on a Tuesday afternoon. My last complaint is the line "we failed this isint the one". No one in the scene cares that the experiment is a failure so why should I as the player.
@Captain Sargas
Empathy IS survivalistic. It's a group survival ability. Harming yourself to help another gives you and the group an advantage. Gives your children and friends and workers the ability to perpetuate life. Bees will endanger themselves so the hive may live. Without the hive there will be no bees. I scratch the back of humanity and it scratches mine.
@@adaroben1104 Bees do that as a matter of instinct, don't they? Isn't that different from a mental process of empathizing, considering, and then acting on it?
Empathy is a matter of survival only because humans are social creatures, not because it serves to improve chances of survival on your own. The Typhon was in an environment where empathy would be beneficial since humans were involved, but there are still actions which they could take which aren't explainable by survival incentives.
Perhaps the survival incentives are long-term, but I feel like that's reaching too far to explain it away as merely survival instinct.
@@mithril7272 i find the notion that
being unable to understand what you're looking at...
and what you're looking at being unable to understand you...
ISNT eldritch horror... is patently false.
to look upon the true form of Cthulhu is to go mad. you lose your sanity by a simple glance, nothing more.
to assert that Cthulhu understands what you are, who you are... how you feel... would be hubris, and nothing more.
no, eldritch horror functions solely off of the fact that you CANNOT know if they understand you. you CANNOT understand them.
that is the integral component of the genre. that it isn't a known known; an unknown known; or even a known unknown.
it is an unknown unknown.
you don't know. you can't know. it's not that you can't, per se, but that it is literally impossible for you to empathize with something that does not feel.
you cannot step into the shoes of the typhon. you cannot see things how they see things. you cannot begin to fathom how they interact with the world, when its done through such an alien way...
you cannot ***understand*** them. you can document behaviors all you want, but you will never understand them.
that's the beauty of it, the human condition... our perspective is based entirely around (get this) being a human. it is borderline impossible for us to ***actually*** imagine what it might be like to be ANYTHING else... because we have no basis to go off of other than our own. it would be a fundamentally flawed assertion to claim anything otherwise.
I could say you could also interpret this as a the Typhon gaining the empathy Alex wanted, empathy for the victims. Anger and disgust. It hates now, it hates because it cared. The dead due to Alex's experimentation and negligence, its horrifying to comprehend. Kill them all doesnt have to apply to Humanity as a whole or even humanity. But to kill the assailants, the manipulative, the vile.
Oooo, I love this idea. It seems Alex created a sociopathic alien, one with a real understanding of the worst of humanity.
@@TheNewtC One that indeed went out of it's way to save people within the simulation, as it is a requirement to unlock the ending.
Makes sense, the Hybrid hates both humans like Alex and the uncaring Typhon.
It fits the realisation of futility in the face of a cosmic horror, barely comprehened new perspective of the world and barely surviving the story told.
In addition it also hits the note of the bitter-sweet; The sweet sucess of the Mirror Neuron implantation, with Bitterness of the Hybrid using those neurons to realise how cruel and inhumane Alex is.
Because the Hybrid now knows that Alex did all these terrible things despite Alex already having mirror neurons himself.
Ultimately it sums up the realisation that Alex is a monster by choice, whereas the monsterous Typhon lack that choice.
It's entirely understandable why the Hybrid would kill Alex, the Hybrid is slaying a monster.
Alex is a human that chose to be a monster in order to give our monster a choice to be human.
Alex wanted the Hybrid to slay monsters, he got his wish.
When he mentioned the idea of the Typhon lashing out in anger, this is what I thought as well. I do like the irony of Alex 'succeeding' but only making the Typhon hate humanity as a result
Or maybe the empathy trainning caused it to empathise with the "wrong" side
@@TheNewtC No? Pretty sure Sol is saying the Hybrid, realizing through the simulation that Alex is a threat to humanity, kills him and those like him out of sympathy and a desire to protect the innocent.
2:25 Small correction you can actually scan the apex with increased psychoscope scanning range module only at the cost of instant terror and being dropped to 1 hp which could mean that trying to learn something anything about that thing made Yu have a heart attack.
I think it's more that while you scan it it can actually detect you doind so and just uses its psychic power to attack you
Where can I get the module
@@nullFahrenheit I think it was one of earlier modules in psychotronic(?)
@@jexx2974 ight
Cuz I really want to learn about the Apex
@@nullFahrenheit sorry to disappoint but you don't get any research in doing so you just get a heart attack
I think an interesting thing to note is that while Alex yu is clearly a bastard he may not be as much of a bastard as he appears. The whole game Is a simulation "based" on Morgan's memories, meaning alex had the ability to edit them however he wanted. At the same time Alex is clearly remorseful over what happened on talos and wants to make amends.
But the most interesting aspect of this is the portrayal of the other employees. Throughout the game every other worker on talos is portrayed to be completely innocent and ignorant of the atrocities that happened on talos and horrified when they find out except for Alex. But that's just logistically impossible, the whole station was dedicated to human experimentation it's not possible for Alex to be the only one that knew about the experiments. Unless of course Alex edited the memories to remove other people's complicity and leave him the sole villain.
I think Alex is playing the role as the sole villain of the story he's given us as a form of atonement. By pretending to be the sole monster on talos he can cover for the dead employees he feels responsible for killing. Imo he's wants to make amends for their deaths by making sure all their sins are blamed on him, thereby making sure their legacies remain intact.
I might be reading too much into that but I thought it was an interesting perspective to bring up.
I think you're on to something here. As I was replaying it, I actually kept looking for more evidence in Alex's actions. He doesn't seem monstrous, just inept. There's no question that he could have handled the events on Talos I far better, but he never seemed like he was trying to make things worse, and his actions had a clear throughline to both his desire to keep Morgan safe and his fear of losing control. Under stressful situations, he wasn't thinking clearly. That's the Alex in the simulation.
Then we get to the Alex at the end of the game, who asks you for help. He shows all of this to the hybrid, then puts forth an act of trust by reaching out his hand to you. He knows what you've seen, how you understand his role in the simulation, and I suspect he may have been asking for judgement from something that's as close to his own brother as he could make it. Even at the end, if you accept his hand he addresses you almost identically to Morgan. "We're going to shake things up, just like old times."
Alex needs to know he either succeeded and failed, and makes probably the only smart decision at the end: He put his own life on the line. "Its life depends on it. Ours too." But the operators are just machines that can be copied. HE was the only one present in person, putting himself at risk. Alex may be a bastard, but he definitely learned from his mistakes, and he learned that people need to trust him. He's no longer trying to hide the facts from anyone, least of all his subjects.
@@TheNewtC In a way it makes the kill them all ending that much more tragic and thematic, especially if you believe the idea that the hybrid killed him out of disgust of what he did. The dude helped bring about the end of humanity and got away with it with his skin intact only to be killed in his attempt to make amends and even possibly because his attempt succeeded. And all because he couldn't give up the madness of trying to teach an understanding of humanity to something beyond any human's understanding.
His death is both incredibly cruel and unfair and yet completely predictable and logical. In other words it's the perfect ending to a cosmic horror story.
Great video BTW! I was really glad to have some more food for thought over this game so thanks for that!
@@TheNewtC You know for all that Kill Them All is the only ending you accept I really love the Take Alex's hand ending for a pretty similar yet different reason.
In the kill them all ending the typhon as you said lashed out in anger or managed to trick Alex that it cared before killing him while in the take his hand it shows that it does care or atleast thinks it cares. In the kill them all ending the gap between human and monster proves insurmountable and Alex fails.
But to me a player that played tons of Skyrim and a then few playthroughs of Dishonored as my earlier bethesda games it really shook me. In Skyrim avoiding killing is mostly impossible except a few missions and most npcs respawn as identical copies so it is without consequenses. I didn't see the npc bandits as alive and sentient just amusing bugs or toys to destroy for my pleasure and gaming experience.
In Dishonored I avoided killing not because I cared about the individual npc guards or that I thought that it was more merciful to sentence the conspiracy targets to their fates instead of killing them, but because I wanted the good ending. I didn't spare any npc because I cared about them as living beings but because I didn't want to lose out on story by destroying the props that tell it.
In Prey where all humans are uniquely named and don't respawn if killed making sure they all possible lived was a checklist to see if all collectible survivors could be found and saved. I still didn't really care about them beyond a few favorites I just wanted my story then the ending came and the reveal. All the npcs I saved where npc's/AI ingame too and Alex was the first real human in the game world I was trusted to interact with. Alex who was an invincible game boss by virtue of being able to kill me and shut of the simulation from outside it trusted me with his life.
Ingame Alex trusted an alien to have empathy for a human but out of game I as a player passed a first graded morality test by the developers to see if I cared about the npcs they created and was given the ultimate test "I need to know if you see us. I mean really see us." Do I as a player look this NPC in the eye and believe him when he says he is real? That he exists? I know that he is preprogrammed and is nowhere near able to even pass the turing test but do I still reach out to him and accept him when he says he is real?
I love the Take Alex's hand ending both because that is one of the deepest moments of empathy I have had with a game npc but also because it made me feel so much more like an eldritch horror than any other game I have played. I wasn't the dragonborn a magical hero, I wasn't a lovecraft themed monster or even the game character Morgan Yu. Alex removed the mask and tried to glipse what was behind the curtain, I was this unknowable entity that could manipluate time if I lost or wished a different set of circumstances to happen and I viewed his entire world as an artificial dream world to experience for the sake of entertainment one among many and I would move on from it to other worlds when I grew bored. Never have I felt so one the other side of a person reaching out to a being they don't understand.
Sure I know Alex Yu isn't sentient and real but just for a short moment I had to mentally double check the facts to make sure that it was impossible for him to be sentient. And then I choose Take Alex's hand because I'd rather lie and pretend that I thought Alex was sentient and see where this game of pretend would take me than shatter Alex elaborate stunt by killing him and confirming that the game couldn't make me care about the lives of their npcs.
So we both as the typhon didn't think Alex was real but while you wanted to preserve the purity of that gap I wanted to pretend that I saw Alex as an equal because I wanted to see the next story he would involve me in. What could we experience together next and what would his next actions for making me empathise with him be.
This has become a wall of text but I really appreciated your take on the ending of prey.
@@simonwahlen7150 To an eldritch being, we would probably seem like NPCs. So you kind of were an eldritch being in your playthrough.
deltarune
When I played Prey for the first time, I earned the achievement for being as empathetic as possible on my first run and chose the take his hand ending. There's a reason why I did that, and that reason lies in another perspective on the relationship between the player and the typhon-human hybrid.
When the game revealed to me that Morgan Yu's personality kept changing after each test cycle, a thought occured to me. My role, as a player, in this story is that my own personality is the latest version of Morgan Yu's personality. In this sense, for the first time ever in a video game, I was playing as myself in a very real way- my own personality and choices were canonized by the game as a part of the story itself.
This still remains true after the simulation reveal at the end. The "soul" that Alex had given that Typhon was truly the player's soul- my soul. That's why I took Alex's hand. I had resolved to uphold my morals and principles throughout the game, and I would continue to do so even if I was in the body of a monster, and even if I had to work with a man I clearly couldn't trust to save the world.
That's fucking amazing
That's some fine writing of yours.
Well this makes me upset because in my first playthrough I accidentally killed Dayo Igwe because I was panicking and trying to get him out of his pod before he succumbed to oxygen deprivation and opened it thinking I could just drag him to safety. It still bothers me.
A true role-playing story, the one you told. I'm glad you were able to have this kind of experience with Prey.
This. This is why I love video games. Thank you. 😊
"You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
-Ash, Alien (1979)
Morality is actually a great survival tactic
@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl Only, if you are a social animal.
@@akishorekumarr yes humans by nature are social animals. And ironically enough the the alien as well
@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl
Yeah but only with other xenomorphs. Humans ability to pack bond with just about anything seems stupid at first, until you realize that at some point in our history some jackass brought a baby wolf back to camp. And thus mankind’s greatest predator became our closest hunting buddy, and to this day remains man’s best friend.
Well except for the breeding of the pug, let be known humans are also petty as hell.
Can’t bargain with a alien that’s fighting on instinct and survival blood and bones will be on the menu of the creatures
This game is the only instance of "It was all just a dream" (that I know of) that wasn't a cheap copout for a twist. It not only makes sense and had subtle hints the whole time, but the "dream" actually happened. Awesome.
Yeah I got spoiled that it was a simulation beforehand and was expecting the ending to be really terrible as a result only for it to shock me by all being a fabrication while still having an amazing ending. It’s funny how when you learn one part about the ending of something it causes you to completely drop your guard and expect no further twists about what you heard because you think you’re already two steps ahead
Pathologic does it well.
I think this is the only piece of medium where I also accept it. But I think it is because generally, "it was all a dream" tends to be used as a copout way because someone wrote themselves in a corner. Whereas in this game it's pretty much sortof hinted at (things like all the trolly problem variations within this game) as well as what happens when you try to escape the simulation too early.
Eh. "It's a simulation" is a lot different than "it was a dream and you were everything was a metaphor for your inner demons." The former can work easily. The latter is almost always a corny cop-out to not have to flesh out the lore or make it make sense.
It also worked in Total Recall, where the dream aspect is well laid out within the preceding story.
every time you get the little flashes of "the real world" it always tells you that -- 'they're lying to you' or something in that regard. usually these would come with milestones in the story or maybe a typhon neuromod was just installed. every time, that's your inner typhon mind trying to unbrainwash you. your own mind while you're in this looking glass simulator, sends this giant 'Nightmare' to pull you back to your original typhon senses. if you install too many typhon neuromods, the nightmare comes for you. i think that in particular is very specific to the simulation
The nightmare comes for you even if you install zero typhon neuromods.
@@aejhluits able to find you easier if you have more
That’s a clever way to think about it, the nightmare is your true self trying to destroy the facade that’s been built around you
@@alcole-holic8779 Shotgun is the best way to solve your psychological problems then
@@alcole-holic8779 This actually makes a lot of sense.
If you install Typhon mods, the Nightmare appears only rarely, I think it's like only 2 or 3 times total. Perhaps as a representation of you embracing the illusion of being Human and therefore "starving" the Typhon side of you...
...while if you install more and more Typhon mods, the Nightmare appears more and more, until it's basically constantly hunting you. Perhaps representing you "feeding" the Typhon side and unknowingly making "cracks in the mirror" so to speak.
A take on the ending I personally think encapsulates the 'Cosmic horror' ever more is interpreting that the Typhon hybrid always knew it was playing Alex's game and it outplayed him at it with ease. Alex in his hubris thought he can set up a keybord, but he was always just an ant dealing with something beyond his comprehension, thinking that he found a key to understand it.
My personal theory is that Alex succeeded in granting the hybrid empathy, for the typhon, not for humanity. In a similar way that the proverbial ant may return to uplift it's colony to better plan the downfall of the now better understood threats they face.
Fuck that’s it isn’t it?
I love that every person has a slightly unique justification for their choice, especially if it was that one. I kind of accidentally wrote an essay on it in here.
@@MrFelblood Man we love essays! Everyone's sharing them here. Perfectly acceptable contribution
Precisely why I went for "Kill Them All" - for my Typhon bros!
that would be cool, but nothing in the game indicates that the protagonist feels empathy for the typhon. pure headcanon
Conversely, I think even the "good" ending could be a failure of the experiment.
It is entirely possible that the now aberrant typhon would go along with the new course of action even without having experienced a shred of empathy, simply because it feels committed to the role, like an advanced mimic. Alternatively, its alien mind has already formulated a plan to which Alex Yu is instrumental, or perhaps, having been introduced to human way of thinking has established a sense of individuality in the subject and it doesn't want to be a drone anymore. It's scary to think what such a creature could do when infused with human ambition.
Which is another reason why Alex is kind of an optimistic moron; there are half a dozen possible endings to teaching a typhon hybrid how to feel, and only ONE of them is good
@@Vagabondobiondoso, in the good ending the typhoon helps Alex, not because he really meant to, but because he wanted to be free? That's what I got from what you said, so I can be wrong tho
I mean, but does it matter much? The humanity is already destroyed, there is only Alex left alive, with couple robots, so what is the use for hiding, if he could just end them right there
@@parisulki729You don't actually know that everyone is dead though. Sure there was a city with a lot of coral, just like the station when it still had thirty or so people alive on it. Could be overrun with typhon, but not necessarily everyone is dead.
that would be a display of empaty, being able to predict your enemy´s actions is the greatest advantage of empaty
I think other option is also possible.
When Morgan was in simulation, it thought it was human, hence he helped humanity with no remorse.
Once Alex revealed it was Typhon, it helped Typhon with no remorse.
An interesting thought… in my simulation I tried to avoid killing any typhon, they may be hunting us but they’re still living…. And Alex’s choices and lack of empathy towards both typhon and humanity…. He was the only one I chose to kill. I chose kill them all because he showed to be the monster worse than even the typhon….
Idk how you play changes the context of prey so much it’s interesting to me
In a way that makes it even worse for Alex and his hopes of finding a solution.
Because for the hybrid, it's not a conscious choice, it's not a matter of 'you did Y, therefor X'.
When the hybrid realized it was Typhon, it became a matter of us v.s. them, of biological allegiance overriding any kind of higher level of empathy.
Alex never had a chance, his efforts futile from the very start.
Yeah, that sounds like cosmic horror alright...
You're missing a trick Duke. Typhon or human, *sim-Morgan does what The Player chooses to do.* The big reveal is just an excuse for the player to rationalize their behaviour after the fact.
@@Grizabeebles or are we just the many possible subjects as Alex attempts to get the one ‘perfect’ test?
@@ClockworkBlade -- I'm not talking about a player role-playing as a Typhon within the game. I'm talking about the experience of playing the game itself.
Even when a player goes into the game knowing the ending and can recognize the different psychological and moral tests laid out in front of them, they are still a human being having a personal experience interacting with a video game.
The game thus gives the player the chance to examine their own behaviour from an outside perspective.
TL;DR: What if it's acts are in the best interests of both species? It's clear that the people "infected" with it can eventually regain their human state and even become a form of hybrid. Perhaps Typhon believes that it is doing an empathic act for humanity by ultimately bringing all of them into it's fold in a mixed species that is incapable of death, can move easily in a vacuum, has no need of safety protocols, and has a full understanding of every mind that eventually becomes part of it and truly believes that everyone and everything would be better off as a part of it's own species, which is in and of itself, a collection of every species it's ever encountered. What appears as suffering to humanity to Typhon is nothing more than growing pains in an evolution to a higher species that really doesn't have to take anything at all from the individuals it is evolving and instead is bestowing upon them the greatest of gifts available in the universe: immortality, mind to mind level unconditional understanding, and complete physical freedom.
Original early comment that eventually became the one above:
still pretty early in the video I want to talk about their supposed lack of empathy. It isn't because of a lack of concern for others, instead, the way their species operates and incorporates other species into their own, it is because they do not and can not die. They have no capacity to understand suffering, because suffering doesn't exist because their lives are not finite, and eventually the entire universe will be part of their larger organism the Typhon. The mimics and the converted are like single cells in a larger organism, and as the consciousness of those who initially may resist eventually they will always become part of the larger organism, and do so eventually by their own choice once they understand what has happened to them and realize that their mortality no longer exists while they are still allowed to retain their independence of will and are granted a form even more suited to enact that will due to it's new immortal nature. The wild thing about it is that given enough time, everyone will eventually break down and become a part of the larger organism as it will be the only way to truly become an independent actor once again. I realize this comment is a big mess and repeats a few times. That is due to four hours of sleep. I'll clean it up later. Consider this a groundwork outline that will be expanded upon later with better detail and structure and grammar.
This is a super spicy theory and it differs vastly from all of the other theories I've read. This gets a pin.
So this is another theory I didn't even think about. What if the "cult" mentality gets to the newly established empathy? In theory, I could definitely see the hybrid taking this as a way to assimilate a species they consider less able than them. We don't know if the Typhon like their way of life, and I don't think it's even considered if they're capable of thinking that way. But once they are GIVEN that capability, it's a pretty logical step that the hybrid might pick joining the winning side as a way to end a war.
Damn, first like here, brand new comment, and just pinned
Eldritch horror is something I spend way too much time pondering lol. I know if there were something like the Typhon I'd probably welcome it with open arms. To travel the stars without a suit or ship and having an immortal's amount of time to explore them? I can't even begin to say a big enough Hells Yes!! 😂
One thing I do want to correct here, the Typhon don't "infect" humans. Those are just corpses they've reanimated. The human minds that used to be their are now trapped in the Coral, ready to be fed to an Apex.
@@TheNewtC haha yeah I just couldn't think of a better word to describe it.
8:22 The Earth was invaded not because advanced nullwave device, but because of the mimic from moonbase Pytheas, which was disguised as a toy in the ending of Prey: Mooncrash, so the station explosion wouldnt really change anything
Fair point, but that does nothing to invalidate the fact that Alex's best chance at containing the typhon was to annihilate Talos I. Alex didn't know that the invasion could still begin based on a single mimic from the moon, did he?
@@Vagabondobiondoand the end it doesn't even matter tho. Whatever you do earth is surrounded by Coral
"Alex thought he could play god with a species which specialises in killing things that can worship."
This line goes so hard.
I dont get it, things that can worship? Is that not literally any being?
@@MICROKNIGHT3000 No, it is not. Mice will never worship, and neither will psychopaths.
Time stamp please
@@benjaminizquierdo4700 9:18
@@VexWerewolf thanks
This interpretation mixes interestingly with my own roleplay experience from the game. I had a running joke with some friends about a gravely-voiced guy named Mike who has a bad attitude but considers himself the greatest security guard in the world, and so I started Prey roleplaying as him, even though I knew I was "really" Morgan Yu. Then, as the game progressed, I "discovered" that when TranStar was doing brain scans of the world's greatest athletes and musicians and whatnot, they also scanned Mike to make neuromods out of his leet security skills. Morgan then instituted a contingency that if the Typhon got out of control, a complete copy of Mike's brain scan would be downloaded into Morgan, essentially overwriting his mind with the personality and skills of the one man who might be able to reestablish containment. So I really WAS playing as Mike! Mike, using only human neuromods, saved everyone he could (even the cleanup crew guy and the murderous chef, who were nonlethally detained) and secured the station. Then I learned that Mike/Morgan is actually a Typhon that Alex has essentially downloaded both Morgan and Mike's memories into. This not only gave the Typhon some empathy towards humans, but a feeling of protective responsibility from Mike, which caused the Typhon to work with Alex. It was a fun arc, considering it came completely out of an inside joke.
In contrast, my second playthrough had subject "Jane" as a nearly-feral ball of uncontrolled rage as the Typhon lashed out at its surroundings, using only Typhon neuromods and killing everything (human, Typhon or robot) it could. Obviously, Alex found this one to be unsuitable for diplomacy.
It really is fun how many ways the player's actions can be interpreted!
The ending does a great job of legitimizing pretty much any playthrough. They have a past, but due to the way Typhon neuromods cause personality shifts that past means about as much as you want it to. The Morgan you play as really is just the player behind the screen, who gets to decide how they act to all of this new information.
Alternatively, the mirror neurons injected into the hybrid only gave it just enough empathy to pretend it genuinely cared wether or not the people around it lived or died. - Creating a superior predator. Much like how a psychopath can masquerade as a functioning human being up until the point they crack someone's skull because it suited them. - To get at the most elusive prey of them all, - its captors. Thank you Alex. You've made a bad situation infinitely worse by improving the typhons ability to mimic human beings.
Finally someone gets it!👍
@liamsteamwalsh8421 that's sociopaths silly man
@themostracistofthemall According to the DSM-5-TR (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; Antisocial Personality Disorder.
That is to say you won't find either in that book because "psychopath" and "sociopath" are layman terms.
@@James_Bee God I hate that euthanised term. APD sounds like someone who's a bit of a dick but it actually covers such a large area from a neurotic borderline to a crazed killer and every type of narcissist and sociopath in between. It's such a useless term for a world where the well hidden, and not so well hidden (on social media), of these types are thriving.
If they can't empathise or can choose not to empathise then, they are a psychopath. Clear and direct. The dark triad of Psychopathy - Narcissism - Machiavellianism need to be separated from the rest. APD is fine for those others but the really harmful disorders need to be clear. Not having a go at you by the way, I just can't help bringing this up when DSM-5 is mentioned 😂
It really makes you wonder, if they did come out with a second prey game, would it be based on spreading mirror neurons into the Typhon ecology? Say this was the case, would anything really change? Would the Typhon leave humanity and go to another place in the universe, leaving us to rebuild from our ruin? Would the Typhon remain, and being able to empathize, assist us in rebuilding and even co-exist with us? Or would it simply not matter, would everything be in vain and all is lost? So many questions, yet it's likely they'll never get answered, at least directly.
It's possible that by spreading mirror neurons it would break apart the Typhon ecology completely. It's unclear if the Typhon even have an individual will or if they just act like cells in a body. Imagine if every cell in your body suddenly had its own goals. It would be complete chaos.
@@TheNewtC sounds like the creature from IT
I'd probably see it as a crew returning to earth that's currently being destroyed by the apex and trying to save it. Then reduce the human experience to worse than the aliens until they get eaten away.
Look up hellstar remina by junji ito, and look up the side story where the rich family lands on the hellstar.
@@TheNewtC The idea of the Typhon each being individual cells and it being utter chaos if the mirror neurons ended up working is interesting.
Assuming each Typhon type retained their base intelligence and instincts, the way they would react to suddenly having empathy for other living beings would vary quite a bit.
For example; Would one consider if the transformation process of the mimics to other types is painful? Nessasary?
Would it consider the possibility of possible transformations other that the limited options it initially had?
What would a Mimic do differently with the neurons? It's seemingly more of an instinctual creature, with limited higher function.
So would a Mimic actually become more friendly, docile or merely just attack anything when it's provoked or in need of doing so?
More generally speaking, using the analogy to cells within a body; It would be like each type of Typhon that had mirror neurons was a cell from different organs. A cell that was afflicted with a disease specific to the type of cell it was.
If there were only a few of each type affected, it wouldn't make much of a difference.
However, if you focused on two vital types and had many affected within those limited types. Then that would be enough to cause the equivalent of that organ failing or being significantly damaged.
It's quite likely the Typhon affected by the mirror neurons would just become confused or individually feel bad about what they are doing.
Because if they are all subservient entities to the Alpha with little individual autonomy then they would still be bound & compelled by the Alpha's will.
Even falling back to a base instinctual need and acting only in desperation to fulfil that need is something Humans do.
So at best the mirror neurons in non-hybrid Typhon may delay their actions until they become desperate to survive and act on basic survival instinct.
At worst we would just be making the Typhon suffer unnecessarily while they carry out the Alpha's will.
Well, we're basically livestock to them.
I think cows are cute.
I also think they're really tasty.
So giving them the abillity to recognize and empathize with us frankly won't change the fact they gotta eat.
Eat our consciousness.
I have made it clear that Prey is my all-time favorite game. But I must admit, despite the fact that my entire first play-through is available to view in the vods on my channel, that is not the play-through that cemented in my mind that Prey was my favorite game. That goes to my second play-through.
In my second play through, that the world will never see the way I saw, I read every single log, found every single body, rescued every single person, and more. I put so much effort into being a good person that I could genuinely say I KNEW the characters. And in my efforts to do that, I ran into a realization. Even in the game world, every character I interacted with was dead. The only one to survive the events of Talos 1 was Alex yu in his sealed chamber.
Imagine going through that, putting that effort into SAVING everyone that could be saved, only to be told at the end that you could never have succeeded. All those people who knew you and that you felt like you knew were dead before you even tried.
To lash out and kill Alex would be so human it would hurt. You are reacting to the reality that despite doing everything you could to be the good guy, to be the perfect human, you were never more than the experiment of a deranged megalomanic who still believes he can fix his mistake.
The only one who survived despite every ounce of effort you put in is the guy you just had to hinder your every chance to save those people just a moment quicker.
Not just anger but grief, despair, and so much sadness that it would be unbearable for a mind never meant to feel those emotions.
That is why Prey is my favorite game, because no matter what ending you choose, no matter how you go through the game, EVERY ENDING MAKES SENSE.
Taking Alex's hand would be just as human as killing him. Killing every person on the station and getting chopped at the end for not being the one would be just as likely as creating the first Typhon to feel human empathy. All of the possible endings are just as likely as the rest.
Just like that killing them all can be considered a human ending, taking his hand can be interpreted as a Typhon one.
Empathy gives people the ability to model another person's mind in our own. This can make us care for them, but it also makes us being able to lie. Mimics didn't impersonate humans before because they couldn't replicate this model in their minds, thus being unable to truly lie. But after the tempering and the simulation the Morgan-mimic can.
In the end Alex still only made things worse.
@@hurricanelily_ja YES. That's both why I want a sequel but also don't. If they had us play as that mimic Morgan, they might explore that line of thinking. But they also might just make the Morgan mimic mentally human and possibly negate some if the beauty of the ending we have.
Does the Morgan mimic actually care about humanity, or not? I loved that no matter what you choose from the "good ending" it will never be clear.
I unfortunately doubt that a sequel could give us that option to be the mimic hiding amongst its prey.
@@FlamelessSoulImagine if the sequel put us in the shoes of a different survivor, and mimic-Morgan was the antagonist. If done right, it could be kept entirely ambiguous which ending is the “canon” ending. Alex could be dead from an unspecified cause of death. Mimic-Morgan could be an antagonist for a reason entirely Byzantine to our way of thinking. It could be a really interesting avenue to explore, seeing mimic-Morgan’s story continued through the eyes of an outsider
Shameless plug 😂
I prefer to think that the human/Typhon hybrid chose to shake Alex's hand to play the long game. Now he has empathy, so he doesn't need to rely on direct methods to consume. Earth has already been invaded, so there would be little to gain by killing Alex. Instead, by letting Alex live, the hybrid convices him that it's safe for humans to inject Typhon-based neuromods. Eventually, humans and Typhon become indistinguishable. Humans have turned into more Typhon, but most important, they did so wilfully.
My actual reaction if I were the monster: "Don't you know why we don't have mirror neurons? Look at what you did, Alex. Along with your staff. You killed both humans and typhons, and even worse things than that to them. Typhons don't betray each other, because they know it would result in their death, as other Typhon wouldn't hesitate to kill them. But humans fool themselves into thinking other members of their species will leave them alone, for the sake of being left alone; as if believing it hard enough can bend reality to their will.
We eat you because we know you would've destroyed yourselves anyway. Aren't you proof alone of that?" *Kills them all.
I'm pretty sure the reason that both endings happen is not because the Null Wave/ self destruction failed, its because Morgan failed. In Mooncrash, it is shown that the simulations could be used for "WHAT IF" scenario. The real Morgan was able to save his brother, but thats where his story ends, and these two endings are the "what if" Morgan was able to stop the Typhon.
I like to imagine that Alex managed to give the hybrid empathy but failed to realise that it might hate humanity for experimenting on his kind afterwards
I really liked this take on the situation. I've watched many essays on Prey and this is by far the only one that explores this option. Thanks for the video
Glad you enjoyed it! It's something that's been brewing in my mind ever since I first watched it. Now I suddenly have the time to spell it all out.
i always took the kill them all ending to be the most human response. you cant get the ending without saving many people on talos 1, so the only reason youd save people is if the experiment succeeded and you did gain some empathy (the subject could have become aware it was a typhon, but theres nothing in the story to indicate that). in the process of gaining this empathy you got to relive the horror these people experienced, and as you said in the video, alex yu hindered morgans progress every step of the way, so the logical conclusion is that alex is responsible for this suffering. he unleashed a predatory species on the station, actively hindered safety protocols, stopped earth from intervening until it was too late and actively encouraged the sacrifice of the people on the station to further his research. he is the villain. he's the reason people suffered and died and hes the reason the typhon are destroying humanity. from empathy comes a sense of justice, and that justice requires alex's death sentence. the process of making morgans avatar more human necessitates and outrage as to the injustice of it all. alex succeeded but in doing so damned himself.
Hell of a take, I love it
From empathy also comes a sense of empathy, the ability to understand the feelings and perspectives of others, including but not limited to understanding that Alex wants to help humanity and this is the only way he knows how to.
@@mithril7272 it's much more personal and self-centered than that, and even then you can still comprehend it and be violently furious with him
Actually Alex isn't the reason for the Typhon being on Earth, they reached Earth at the end of the Mooncrash DLC. Earth was already ravaged while Morgan was on Talos
@@mithril7272As a man once said: “We cannot blame them for this. We can only despise them.”
Duke Leto Atreides, Dune
i imagine the typhon developing empathy and witnessing everything Alex does would probably make it pretty angry at him, maybe it was just stopping another one of alex’s plans that would just make things worse.
Like a third option where Typhon takes Alex' hand, but then proceeds to give him a non-deadly, but completely violent spanking. And the other operators are like "Yeah, well, honestly, based".
In my own game, I tried to destroy the station AND use the bomb to lobotomize the Apex Typhon. After all, it's a Grey Goo scenario. I didn't want people to go right back to injecting Typhon material into their brains.
The problem with eldritch horror is that it’s contradictory, it’s based on the idea that human thoughts and emotions are insignificant to the universe as a whole, but the very universe in which it exists is a human mind.
Killing Alex is right, and while I love your take I still subscribe to the “it killed Alex because it _hated_ Alex. And hate needs empathy.”
Hate is often seen as just another form of Passion, alongside Love. In this sense, the opposite of Love is Apathy, not Hate.
And the inversion of love is hate
@@pancakes8670 Knights of the Old Republic II said as much.
Option 3, as I see it, the Typhon-Human hybrid _can_ empathize, but isn't forced to. The option to choose (instead of previous choises locking you into an ending) is only there because for hybrid it's no significant difference between those options. They can see the suffering of others and choose to alleviate. But there is just no moral consequence for killing them all. No qualms. As easy as a button press.
I also don't get why so few people talk about the fact, that while cosmic horror is fun... It doesn't work. We pretty much live in unfathomable world, that might as well be a god, our place in the universe is unimaginably small and yet we're exactly where we are here the way we are because this just the way the world is. We are as insignificant, as everything else. We are as important as everything else. At the end of the day, we are reality, universe looking at itself, all the marvels under the stars, it just exists for no particular reason and we're there for a very short period of time. We might hope for some special destiny, but we might also completely disappear. In two hundred years or two million.
The cosmic mundanity of things is that Cthulhu doesn't care of us ants, and so aren't we. Except we care about a lot of things we deem important, but that doesn't matter. Now we exists. Once we didn't exist. Some day we won't exist any longer. We do, what we do. There are no mindshattering revelations, because our life is one big mind shattering revelation and we still need to survive, put food on a table, and reach consensus with each other.
I think the cosmic mundanity of it adds to the unfathomable nature of cosmic horror.
No matter what we do, we can go our entire lives without knowing there is something far beyond us in the universe. Look at bloodborne for humanity’s reaction to gods.
You should do more videos like this, you did a really good job and even got picked up by the algorithm
I already have one in mind, though it's going to be a while before it's out. This video took about a month to research, record and edit. Thanks for the vote of confidence though!
Why does the Algorithim LOVE "here's a thinky opinion on video game" videos so much? This was a good one, but my recommendations are full of them.
@@pach6678 because the good ones have a high viewer retention rate so they can get away with more ads on them.
@@pach6678 Personally I love listening to someone talk about a subject they're passionate about in the background. Gives me stuff to think about or zone out to
There is a gamble with the kill them all option that I'm not sure if I've ever seen explored well in fiction but I have seen mentioned in discussion of AI morality through paranoia. With the capability of simulated realities proven to the hybrid, it has to be asked if the simulation actually ended for the debriefing, or similarly with any "release" or "escape" from any morality-test-simulation. The kill them all option could very well be a final test of the Hybrid's morality not in the real world but rather in a final simulated room pretending to be as such. A hybrid that fakes morality out of fear of being in a simulated test in the first place could continue the process out of the continued uncertainty that the new reality they are supposedly in isn't simply another layer of simulation. Of course, it would be entirely unlike Alex to use that level of safeguard.
False positive loop.
Great take.
exactly, the typhon would be stuck in a hell of mimicry maybe that's the point of the simulation, not true empathy but a simulated one.
Doesnt this also happen in ghost in the shell? A hacker guy can hack the brains of the two characters that ask him for imformation, so as a funny, he puts them in a simulation. After they get what they need, one of them goes, "wait, what if im still in the simulation?" And the other one basically just shrugs and says "well, theres no way to really know, now is there?
"Alex thought he could play god with a species that specializes in killing things that can worship"
fuck... that line alone made me like and sub.
I found the ending particularly effective because after playing through the game and picking up lots of mods I was striding around the station like a god, swatting anything that dared look at me wrong, and I had a little fantasy of what it would be like to return to Earth with that power. Only to discover Earth had been lost, presumably years ago, to something with far more power, through the hubris of humans thinking they could control that power. Extremely memorable for me. Really effective at delivering on the game's themes.
Seeing no value in human life is also a very human thing to do, testing for empathy in a Typhon, especially with all the annoyances that Alex poses during the game, really wasn't the best idea when humanity itself has a million and one ways to be violent and only a couple ways to make up for it.
Odds are (and odds that can come to fruition in this ending), the Typhon just learned to be selfish or to be vengeful or just straight murderous, rather than the slim chance of being a reasonable 'fellow'.
Yep, and the endings support that. Teaching empathy is not the same as teaching morality. It's not enough to teach an alien to feel, you also have to teach it to care. Alex forgot that.
@@TheNewtC damn bro Typhon learn to reply "who asked"
@ProstyProtos71 You know how you can be angry for someone else or if someone you care about gets hurt? That can send people into a murderous and/or violent rage
@@majorblitz3846 LMAO
@ProstyProtos71 Knowing that killing someone is painful does not stop soldier from killing enemy soldiers and civilians. If anything it makes killin easier because you know what and how to do to demoralise your enemy.
Prison guards, surgeons, criminal gans and etc. do you think they all lack empathy? No. They just know how to control primitive impulses and maybe visit a therapist from time to time.
I loved Prey, and I'm sad that I'll never be able to play it for the first time again-because I think my first playthrough was perfect.
I adopted a persona. As a player and character. "I'm a tool," I said. "I am in this body to carve out the Typhon infection with utter certainty. A scalpal. A missile. *Designed,* inside and out. I need to become the monster until every last scrap of exotic matter is burned away."
I failed the empathy test in I think the most complete way possible. I didn't know anything about Prey going into it, I didn't even really piece together the simulation thing very quickly. I just took two things that I now think you might not be supposed to latch onto too closely, judging by how other people play it, and I made them my central tenets. Morgan Yu's instructions to her past self that she HAS to blow up the station, and the fact that I, as the player, don't remember anything. I wake up and am TOLD that I am basically an earlier scan, that I am Morgan Yu from just before joining Talos I. But I don't remember anything up to this point. I don't remember the character's backstory, I wasn't given material to read to prepare for this role, there are no flashbacks. All I have is being told, by other characters, that they share memories with Morgan Yu. I'm not Morgan Yu.
Prey was the ultimate dissociative experience because I put myself in the role of someone waking up with total amnesia. There had been nothing before this point. I built an identity based solely on what I was told. And not what I was told about myself-I never thought of myself as Morgan Yu. Morgan Yu was someone else who lived a previous life in the body I now own. I am a fresh mind. No, instead of what and who I was told I was, I built my identity off of what I was told about the world. I built my identity *as it was needed*. I became what the world I was told about needed-someone to destroy it.
It was an incredibly, viscerally strange experience. I didn't sleep much over the weekend I played Prey. I think my playthrough ended up being like 45 hours (just checked-43.8 hours in the game on Steam). I didn't eat much, or well.
I dove headfirst into the Typhon upgrades. I maxxed out every skill tree in the entire Neuromods menu before I let myself end the main quest. I knew I was infected. She told me-one of the first communications from the old future Morgan Yu, "nobody on the station can make it back to Earth. Not even you." I didn't know how much time I had. It would have to be enough. I had to be the ultimate weapon. I killed mimics, Phantoms, Etheric Phantoms, Thermal Phantoms, Weavers, Cystoids, Telepaths, Technopaths, Nightmares. I killed people.
Man in a cargo crate outside the station, running out of air, you can hear the desperation in his voice. How's this puzzle work? Hack the keypad outside his storage unit, the doors open and he dies, exposed to the void of space. Oh. Didn't mean to do that quest so quickly. Should I reload a save? Well...he'll die anyway, I suppose. Felt bad about that, but wouldn't it have been crueler to save people like this, to befriend them, only to kill them later?
A cluster of security officers who've barricaded themselves inside the cargo bay. There's Typhons outside, they want you to get them better turrets so they can hole up better. The turret plans are outside, with the Typhons. They're offering you the passcode to the doors if you get the turret plans for them in a roundabout way, but you have Hacking 4, and why do they need better turrets anyways? You can kill that many. Open the doors, let the Typhons in, kill them all with your three offensive psychic powers and arsenal of weapons. The security officers turn on you, start shooting. It's a video game. Kill them all. Well, you didn't mean to aggro them by not following the proper protocal they wanted, but you did everything right, and really, why should you jump through hoops just to do things in a way the humans are comfortable with? Well, now you've terrorized this whole cluster, better wipe them out. Don't want them to suffer, doubt there's a plan in the code for this scenario that's good for them or you. And besides, now that you've failed the quest they were offering, you need to get the quest items anyways. They were offering you something, I can't remember now-go to the main room, empty that of life, strip the corpses of resources. There was one girl, in a back room, whose AI hadn't caught up to the social situation. She greeted me as I came in. Was friendly. I went through her dialogue then murdered her with Psychoshock. That whole situation felt pretty bad. But I'm the monster. This is my job. We're all gonna die anyways. I have to do this alone.
I think a few quests for people in the game went like that-I'd run around pressing every button I could, confused by the puzzles, and eventually someone would wind up dead and I'd murder everyone to clean up. Other quests I'd gain access to the survivor's place then just wipe them, because I guess I'm doing this now.
I accidentally let Mikhaila die alone in pain because I put the quest to fetch her medicine on the backburner not knowing there was a time limit-found out later she and Morgan had been dating, she'd been given the cold shoulder unfairly. That felt bad, to know "I" had abandoned her twice in probably the most cruel ways the game would let you choose.
Nobody made it off the station under my care. I made damn sure of that. Humans are too unpredictable an element-can't leave any of them alive once I find them. What if they find some way to escape?
Increasingly aware of how little I can trust myself. The glitches, the Neuromods, the choices I made just accidentally, instinctively-I clung to my first precept harder and harder over the course of the game. No one makes it off the station alive.
I felt like I was going insane. Constantly told I couldn't trust anyone. That they were all lying. Were they? Maybe. Probably. How COULD I trust anyone in this godforsaken facility, really? If everything I've been told is all lies, then *I'm* all lies, because my whole identity is just what I've been told since waking up. If I can't actually let myself internalise any of this, if I have to treat every source of information as an enemy or controlled by the enemy, what can I trust? I have to pick something and stick to it. I clung to the one sentence that informed my every action even harder.
Nullwave or explosion? Will the explosion really kill the apex? It seems like something designed to target these aliens' weakpoint will work better against something like that, right? Well, it's not like the Nullwave's safe. It's Alex's idea, and I can't trust Alex. Anything Alex wants to do will inevitably go so easy on the Typhon that it lets them escape containment, that's how every choice he's made has panned out. Explosion it is. My mission completed.
I wake up. This time, I have memories, I have a backstory. I built one, after all. "At every turn, it displayed ruthlessness," Alex says to his jury. Of course I did! You goddamn told me to! You said no one can make it out alive and I made sure of that! I was your tool and I did my duty!
He pulls the plug, or flips the switch, or whatever it was he did, I don't remember. Game over. Run ended. Do I want to start Newgame+? Ha, no. Nothing can top that.
I fucking loved Prey.
Daaaaaayum that's a hell of a roller coaster of a post. :o What a freakin' phenomenal story.
Take care of your health.
"Ha, no. Nothing can top that."
This is an extremely reductive way of thinking. The other endings/playstyles are all quite entertaining as well.
I like the idea that in teaching the Typhon to feel it also teaches it to be betrayed. It teaches it that this species is dangerous and tricky and rather than wandering around killing, maybe puts a target in humanities back as something that can trap, and alter their species. So it waits and plays the game and then lashes out when it gets the chance.
If you've read Dune there's a test for humanity in that. They describe humans as something that will remain in the trap to kill the thing that set it. It fits this conversation quite well I think.
I think there is even an interpretation of the take his hand ending, that is just as dark and cthulean as the kill them all ending. Because I instantly think, if all this experiment was meant to teach a typhon how to be human and empathize with humans, the ending reveal and choice is just as much a misstep as the whole experiment in general. Alex thinks it proves he was successful. But what if all the experiments do is teach the Typhon how to lie? To lie on an emotional/mental/human level, instead of just a physical level like the rest of the species does. That the typhon could make the take his hand choice, knowing it would get them out of the simulation, and get them that much closer to their true goal.
Honestly I think people also forget humanity in of itself can be a eldritch horror and we are far from weak. What they did was rip out and adapt at a ungodly fast rate by taking alien abilities. Then when we were threatened? We placed some of ourselves into a part of an alien to empathize with us before putting it back with the others like a virus.
Damn, I love humanity.
One day I hope we get another one of these games, I liked being the eldritch monster. Maybe next time turning into the nightmare? Yeah~
Have you ever been on “r/hfy”?
Might have a lot of what you’re looking for
Bruh, "Humanity can be an Eldritch Horror". You philosophised so much, you called white black!
@@agamemnonofmycenae5258 Ironically, most of Lovecraft's eldritch horror writing was a metaphor about racism and colonialism, so Humanity can be the Eldritch Horror and the Ant at the same time, from the word go. Christopher Columbus was basically Cthulhu.
Edit: Then again, if Columbus was Cthulhu there would have been cannon tentacle stuff, because old Cristobal Columbo was into some messed up stuff. F that guy.
@@MrFelblood It was all actually just his extensively unique and never done before critique of capitalism
@@albertsaffron7582 Oh yeah I have seen it. It is awesome. Adore the ones where aliens find us adorable, or weird for wanting to pet everything even deadly creatures.
Another trait that makes me love humanity. Very cute.
It did always seem suspiciously easy. Giving a typhon mirror neurons and naturally it would choose to react with love and understanding, rather than cursing you for the unwanted curse.
Or assuming that it would choose to work towards understanding, rather than go down the same paths of murder and anger that we excel at.
Fantastic video! You earned a sub and I'm looking forward to any and all work you do in the future.
This is one of my favorite breakdowns of this games plot and, like the game, it deserves more attention. Glad this popped into my recommended.
Edit: replaced "underrated" with the more appropriate "deserves more attention"
I personally like Game Theory’s interpretation. (Yes point and laugh at the fnaf man’s ramblings). You kill then all not as a murder machine, not as an enemy to humanity as we know it but as a moral decision. Alex has just unleashed upon the world the Titan menace. He is a dangerous man playing with forces outside of his understanding and control callously disregarding the people he prays on despite being able to understand the pain he inflicts. So you take the opportunity to stop him before he can cause any more damage.
My choice in Prey was to save as many people as I could (except the fake cook) and it was as simple as helping people who had done no clear wrong. They all seemed to be victims of circumstance outside their control. Anyone who had been responsible was already dead, and innocents didn’t deserve to suffer. So when I didn’t kill the “clean up” officer, it was because I trusted Igwe had a solution. It wasn’t my call to decide who didn’t deserve to live. The survivors were no more responsible for this outbreak than the typhon who had no awareness at all. That’s my reason for choosing the Nullwave, because the Typhon aren’t evil. They’re a hive. Ants aren’t inherently evil, they do what benefits the colony first and foremost. The typhon were just trying to survive, to protect themselves
“Alex takes the part of the Eldritch God within his own story” wowowowow that’s wild
"This thing is so perfect a copy IT doesnt even know its a copy till it needs to." -Doctor from The Thing (paraphrased)
There's another secret ending where you follow the 'December' robot, it leads you to Alex's shuttle and you can escape that way, but then the simulation ends and Alex says "We failed, this isn't the one" then it reloads your last save.
Also if you are looking for "an inhuman look from a humans eyes" (opposite of what you stated at the end of the video) then I recommend reading the book "Reverend Insanity". Truly a masterpiece of writing that delves into the human psyche, human nature, the selfish choices one has to make in a harsh world, and how one human chooses to be inhuman for the sake of his goal *while fully understanding humanity. An innate demon, if you will.
Oh my god. This video was amazing and really well done. I pray to god that the youtube algorithm blesses you, you deserve it.
Empathy doesn't take away from logical thinking most of the time, Typhon are a species of hive mind so whatever was their interest before getting mirror neurons and feeling empathy doesn't change from whatever their plan was to begin with, your take on kill them all is actually pretty reasonable. I'd do the same if I were them.
the typhon might even view humanity as a threat because of what Alex did.
The 'best' ending of the store, saving everyone and being empathetic through the game, comes with the best results for both sides.
Either you kill them all, and 'best' is that you the typhon finally figured out how to behave to escape in the real world.
Or you join them, and 'best' is that Alex finally figured out how to make a human-typhon hibrid.
Both endings are canon, and your decision determines if the genre of the story is either Eldritch Horror or hopeful transhumanist sci-fi.
An interesting take on the eldritch being part it by simply creating a reality through which you do save everyone, it is real, because by thinking of it, it is then brought into existence as possibly another reality, be it lesser or equal, such as the rpg players
I like this take lol
The way the Typhon work in Prey is similar to the Necromorphs in Dead Space if you think about it. Kill and "turn" intelligent life, accumulate biomass/coral, summon the Eldrich God once the process is complete.
It's not a dream. It's a replay of the memory.
Lovecraft was known not just for how he wrote the fear of the unknown, but for how he was able to give us so much information on the unknown, and still make them feel unpredictable and alien. Sometimes, the more you knew about his monsters, the more incomprehensible they got.
That seems to strike a cord here. We seem to get lots of info on these Typhon(never played the game, sorry), but despite that, humans still really don’t understand them and are terrified of them because of that.
Чёрт, как же хорошо в видео проспекулировали на тему многих аспектов истории prey. Пожалуй, моя любимая игра; на первое прохождение которой я потратил 38 час, просто наслаждаясь самим процессом игры, иногда просто гуляя по Талосу, ищя какие-нибудь записки, интересные предметы и т.п. К сожалению, концовку понял не сразу, но когда посмотрел её разбор - просто был в шоке. Никогда не забуду эту игру!
Loved the analysiis. Watched the other version right before this one was suggested to me. Keep up the great work
People were so apathetic to Prey when it first came out but here we are almost half a decade later and people are still making videos about it.
I knew this game was a hit.
Prey is one of my favorite games of all time, and seeing a discussion of this ended in particular makes me ecstatic, also here is a like 👍
Thanks! Happy you enjoyed it.
Oh man, this is making me want to replay this game. I went in with no expectations and I couldn't stop playing, was fully immersed, the art style, the atmosphere, the story, the sound design (except for the guns, I felt that the gunplay lacked a bit of punch). Loved this experience. Truly magnificent.
I always took the Kill Them All Ending to mean that the Typhon Hybrid is perfectly capable of experiencing empathy. It's now perfectly capable of perceiving humans as thinking, feeling entities...
...and it's HORRIFIED and DISGUSTED by them (particularly Alex) as a result.
All throughout the story you've been presented with humans acting with callous disregard for others. Now the Typhon understands that they all did that with full awareness of the suffering of other thinking feeling beings. It suddenly understands just how manipulative, cruel and selfish humans can be, not just to IT but TO ONE ANOTHER. It knows EXACTLY what we are now.
We're MONSTERS.
I personally chose to take his hand for the opposite reasons. It learned to empathize, and killing them all flies in the face of that imo. The reason we take his hand is because we know not ALL humans are monsters. We saw the survivors and helped them, we know of their potential for greatness. Just another perspective for the hat.
A thought I've ways had is nobody really seems to bring up the very potential negative downsides to granting a Typhon human empathy. You can give a Typhon organism the ability to empathize, but there's also the opportunity for it to learn and embrace human cruelty as well. In Alex's attempts to impart our best features onto the Typhon, he may have unfortunately imparted our worst traits instead.
Prey really is an amazing game - it's so sad that it didn't get more initial success as it truly is an amazing game.
It's crazy to me that Prey ranks among the best science fiction horror stories, joining the likes of Alien and Carpenter's The Thing, yet so many people HAVEN'T played it. This absolute gem is a must-buy, must-play. It's almost perfect. I hope it continues to grow its audience over the years
So basically an eldritch horror inside an eldritch horror.
Amazing.
Man, you kept me entertained through the whole video. Made me realize just how much I enjoy the eldritch horror stuff. I feel a tinge of inspiration coming.
Half a million views in 5 days??? Prey gang RISE UP! Feels so good to see prey being popular, especially as someone who played (and loves) prey because of a video i saw 3 years after its release.
Prey was the last full game that I streamed right after it was released and just before I had a falling-out with twitch and haven't seriously streamed since. In my play through, I played it super humane. I even refused to do any of the Typhon powers and went on pure skill-building. I saved everyone I could and escaped in the shuttle. Then when I reached the choice at the end, much to the shock of some of my regular viewers, I had a reaction very similar to yours. I got pissed and I killed them all.
This video has given me a new appreciation for this game, I kinda want to go back and play it again thanks to you
2:24 but you can scan the apex, if you actually find a spot that isn't glass. It gives you fear status and reduces your health and PSI to 1.
You can only scan it with the range mod, and even then you never get any entry. So it's functionally unscannable.
@@TheNewtC I did it without any range mod because there is a part where the glass is broken like i said lol
The only unknown to fear about Lovecraft is the name of his cat.
N-word man, for any curious. Although he changed a good deal as he matured
I just love how there is spoiler alert… Right after literally showing the game ending and final choice XD.
Benedict Wong doing a Mike Ehrmantraut impression for Alex Yu's voice acting always has me in stitches.
It is implied that the typhon we were playing as has been given mirror neurons, likely the same belonging to Morgan Yu. It was basically a test if the typhon could use these mirror neurons and empathize.
You've got my subscription! Can't wait to see more content like this!
The "kill them all" ending isn't so cut and dry as "the Typhon was mad," by the time Alex is executing Project Cobalt the world is essentially over, best case scenario for this ending is a mercy killing for the last humanity has to offer, worst case scenario is altering the mind of the Typhon has ejected it from the hive mind and lowered it on the "food chain" to a yummy outsider from the perspective of the rest of the Typhon, which I'm sure the Typhon we play as is more than intelligent enough to see and consider.
This was an absolutely fantastic analysis, gonna have to replay Prey again, so that's a win :D
Empathy is a powerful tool... and in the hands of a predator: a weapon.
You know after listening to this it also makes the second ending terrifying because if you can give a typhon the ability to experience empathy then who's to say that it can't use that new ability to trick them into thinking that it is the best chance for hope only to take away that hope when it is at its highest. After all if one hated others would they not try to take away all that they put their believes in for one's amusement, and isn't that the greatest form of revenge for a being who has slowly become aware of what it is and has been experiencing. To toy with its prey and see their horror at the end when it all fades as you show to them the truth.
Prey is definitely my favorite Arkane game, my first play through was just indescribable. What absolutely blew my mind and had me know this was one of my favorite games of all time was when I could exit the station and go into space. That, even though it seems so small, is the type of thing that brings a game to the next level for me, all the little details in Prey just make it an absolute masterpiece
The only amazing game they made.
@@Kserijaro agreed. I tried to enjoy Dishonored & that's when I realized their formula just isn't for me. Prey was a complete break from that & boy they did well. Not genre defining or ground breaking, but they did well.
That was a wonderfully constructed and laid out examination of the game's themes.
Well done.
Glad you enjoyed it!
lmao bro put the spoiler warning AFTER the plot twist of the whole game! incredible
You took the typhon out of the cave without even considering if it liked the shadows on the wall.
I don't understand how anyone could even consider it dream sequence trope enough to take issue with it. Your actions literally shape the ending. Which bots are there, which endings you have access to. Dream sequences fail as a concept so often specifically because they don't have ramifications in the real world. That's 100% not the case here. You'd have to be an idiot to criticize the game for something it doesn't even do just because you're too easily triggered by a buzz word.
There could be a flaw to my theory and there almost definitely is, and now that I hear it it makes sense for the kill them all ending, but I just love the outher one because as you play through the game you (you whenever I say it I'm referring to the player) slowly learning you are in a simulation, and by playing the game you might as well literally be playing the simulation, and as you are a human with mirror neurons you have empathy, the experiment worked because you the player are seeing through your own eyes. You are the typhon experiment, the one that worked and had empathy. Though also as a immersive sim this ending works if you played as if you were yourself in the game. Also I'm bad at conveying ideas lol so I hope this makes sense.
I like the "Kill them all" ending because it is just... logical.
You ARE a mimic. You appear harmless, then strike. Acting selfless is mimicry. The "Kill them all" action - is the strike.
I'm exhausted so I won't be giving this the deep dive that it deserves, but you earned yourself a new subscriber and I cannot wait for your next video essay
One detail I really like about the kill ending is how Typhon Morgan actually takes Alex's hand. At first glance you might think that Morgan is just pulling a fast one on Alex but he's actually being completely honest. Alex told Morgan to take his hand if he had a human level of sentience, he didn't say anything about allegiance.
Morgan is responding truthfully here, he completely understands his situation but through his own decisions he decides to kill Alex. Maybe it's because he felt like Alex turned him against his own species, maybe he wants revenge for all the cruel things Humanity did to the Typhon, maybe he just personally hates Alex, but the point is that Morgan is no ordinary Typhon. He is intelligent and fully understands his situation, but in spite of being able to do otherwise, he still kills them all and that is truely scary!
But I don't really choose this ending. Sure it looks cool, but at the end of the day I can't bring myself to do it. Throughout my playthroughs I tried to save as many people as possible, to suddenly decide to kill everyone goes against everything I stood for.
Enjoyed this! I first played and didn't think much of that ending when I went back and tried it after reloading. Now? You brought more to my playthrough than I initially had.
@@Skullkan6 Glad to hear it. This doesn't really reflect my current opinions on the ending (see the second Prey video I made) but it seems a lot of people missed out on the depth of the ending.
The ending kinda reminds me of the thought experiment where if we made a super intelligent AI we should run it through a simulation where it has free reign over our world to see if it is "good" or not. But the AI is so smart it can know if it is in a simulation and will play along until it is let free.
Why you let it into a secondary simulation of the "real world" to see what it does if it thinks it's free.
@@hartianx1698 Then it discovers that world is indeed a simulation due to its incredible intelligence, repeat ad nauseam
@@themrplgthemrplg2872 Then you just kill it and run a new test at that point lol.
Random thought: One shortcoming of games like Prey is that they don't really give you time to breathe in the world before calamity. You know it's been lived in, but you don't really get a "feel" for it. It doesn't become your home. So that makes the calamity have less weight. What if a game like Prey released a "demo" of sorts, where it's just some subsection of the space station, before the calamitous event, and you just wander around, seeing people doing stuff, seeing the comfortable life as usual going on...
There's definitely some merit to that idea. Bioshock Infinite had a DLC that let you finally experience Rapture before its fall. Though I think Prey does a better job of characterizing its crew than the BioShock series did. It's the things the crew members left behind, like Glooey McGlooface, that help bring life to the dead station.
1:05 man you're already spoiled the ending wtf lol
Congrats on such a huge response! I hope this guides you, I like you editing and narration!
Personally always been interested in eldritch horror that is more than just "murderhobo".
Prey is truly the best game of all time. The mimic typhoon mimicking as objects and you consistently on edge scanning every item if they're mimic is truly an amazing experience. Not to mention the amazing application of GLOO cannon.
This is such an underrated game. It is one of 5 games in the last decade I was able to sit down and complete without playing other games in between sessions.
This game got rave reviews, but there's been little discussion of it, because it's hard to say anything really meaningful without spoiling the F out of it.
@@MrFelblood It got good reviews, averaging 80%. The sales, however, were quite low.
As someone who has platinumed Prey (and every Arkane game since Dishonored) it makes me smile to know people are still figuring things out about this absolute masterpiece.
I respect your work to convey the important details that players pass over too quickly in Prey. I hope to do the same with Little Nightmares one day, and you've given me hope that I can do it well.
It's a lot of research and footage gathering, both in and outside the game. Hope you can get something interesting together!
We're gonna shake things up, just like old times.
9:07 Someone hasn't heard of Old Man Henderson...
This is one of the best videos I’ve ever watched…and that amazes me considering that sometimes I’ve already watched everything I can. W vid🍷🗿
Your music is too loud compared to your voice or the game-play voice. For example at 5:45 I feel as though the music is on the verge of covering your words into incoherency (for me). I like your voice, so I think a boost of 5-10% or lowering the music by 5-10% would help. Experiment, if you so choose.