New footage of axed Prey 2 emerges, and it's bound to open up some old wounds

The original Prey was one of the most striking and innovative FPS games of the 2000s - I mean, it had portals before Portal, for crying out loud. It was the excellent result of an admittedly turbulent development cycle that spanned roughly a decade, and that instability spread to its planned sequel, Prey 2. Set to be published by Bethesda, the company unfortunately scrapped it officially in 2014, breaking the hearts of many who were excited to see this ambitious sequel. Sure, we eventually got Arkane's interpretation with 2017's Prey, but it was a radical departure from what Human Head's Prey 2 was set to be. While I don't want to open up old wounds, some new footage of Prey 2 has emerged online, seemingly by the hand of a former Human Head developer.

With a few cinematic trailers and media coverage of a playable E3 2011 demo out in the wild, there's already a decent amount of Prey 2 footage to mourn over. While the beloved Tommy from the first game would feature as a key character, you would've taken control of a new protagonist, Killian, who was tasked with exploring several open-world locations on the alien planet of Exodus. With huge evolutions to movement, which Human Head packaged as its 'Agile Combat' system, and lots of immersive, interactive overworld moments, it was looking like a mighty promising sequel that could've ended up as one of the best FPS games of the decade. However, in 2014 after a couple of years of speculation, Bethesda confirmed that it had canceled Prey 2.

"It was a game we believed in, but we never felt that it got to where it needed to be - we never saw a path to success if we finished it," Bethesda's former vice president of marketing, Pete Hines, said at the time. "It wasn't up to our quality standard, and we decided to cancel it."

Out of the blue, some new development footage of Prey 2 has now appeared on a YouTube channel, seemingly posted by David Halsted, per the name of the channel. While I can't 100% verify that this is indeed his channel and not someone using his likeness as cover, Halsted worked at Human Head for around 20 years, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was recently caught up in the layoffs at Zenimax Online Studios as well following Microsoft's cancelation of its ambitious new MMO.

This channel contains five videos. One shows a playthrough of a similar demo section that was shown at E3 2011. Another shows the planned opening sequence of the game, which sees Killian emerge from a crashed airliner that was abducted by The Sphere, fending off aliens with nothing but his pistol. There's also a flythrough of the Undercity, one of the three main explorable cities planned to feature on Exodus. You can also see an early version of the chase scene from the demo, as well as a short snippet of its Agile Combat system in action.

What could've been, eh? Arkane's Prey reboot was of course a great game, but for those that cherished the 2006 original and wanted a continuation of that universe, Prey 2's cancelation was pretty gutting. With Arkane busy on Marvel's Blade, and knowing that a new Dishonored would be more widely well-received than a new Prey, I'm not optimistic we'll ever see a new entry in the series again. But who knows, stranger things have happened.

For more, check out some of the best single-player games that did actually see the light of day. For those getting all nostalgic about the original Prey, our best old games list is here to crank that feeling up a notch.

What are your favorite classic FPS games? Come on over to the PCGamesN Discord server to let me and the rest of the community know.