In a dimly lit strip club on the embroiled planet Exodus, we’re surveying the seedy scene from the bar. Several different breeds of aliens are relishing the view of neon-highlighted dancers gyrating. You could call us lonely as the only human in attendance, but we’ve come to this exotic dance club for reasons other than carnal pleasure. As bounty hunter Killian Samuels, every step in Prey 2 leads you closer to a potential jobsite or deathbed. Matters are complicated by the fact that you’re suffering from a major bout of amnesia that makes the guys from The Hangover 2 look like scholarly elephants.

A quick scan of the dingy area reveals a scumbag wanted dead or alive. Luckily, the ugly mark hasn’t made us yet. We take a breath, then try to make our way closer to him without attracting glances. The effort is short-lived, as our target senses danger and bolts for an exit. Chasing him full speed down the street, we launch our electric bolas and drop him quick. When he starts struggling to free himself, we plug a few holes in his head to finish the job. It’s survival of the fittest — and how you make a living in Prey 2.

“If Prey was Luke Skywalker’s story, Prey 2 is Boba Fett’s story,” says the game’s project lead, Chris Rhinehart.

Earlier this year, developer Human Head unveiled Prey 2 to us on a frosty winter morning at their Madison, Wisconsin headquarters, and we’ve seen some updated versions of the debut demo since. And if you’re one of the early Xbox 360 adopters who had a chance to play through the first Prey, know that things have changed for the sequel. “What gamers expect now is very different from what they expected in 2006,” Rhinehart says.

Paranoia and tension ran through the scenes we saw — Human Head claims the game will last a good 15-or-so hours. And with no co-op or multiplayer, it’s going to be just you, a battered planet, and legions of hostile aliens.

Back to the Beginning

Way back in 2006, Prey got a lot of buzz for its crafty use of anti-gravity combat and morphing portals. With Cherokee protag Domasi “Tommy” Tawodi in the lead role, you were snatched up by hostile aliens and stranded on The Sphere — a massive space SUV that guzzled humans and other life forces for energy. And like any good hero, Tommy eventually decimates the Sphere and — as Human Head tells it — the gravity-defying gameplay setting that went along with it. “Going into Prey 2, I think we felt Tommy’s story had been told,” associate producer Matt Bisenius says.

In 2009, Human Head left behind its publishing partnership with 2K Games and joined forces with Bethesda — the studio behind open-world sprawlers like Fallout and Elder Scrolls. Taking a cue from its new publishing buddy, Human Head began crafting Prey 2 as an open-world FPS that swaps out Tommy’s “alien invasion” escapades for the grittier backdrop of Samuels’ intergalactic bounty hunting. But even with the huge shift in theme and story, a thread of continuity still exists between the two games: Samuels is a marshal whose plane gets sucked onto the Sphere around the same time as the events of the first game.

Our first glimpse of Prey 2 shows Samuels coming awake after his craft “crashes” onto the aliens’ ship. As you gain some awareness of your surroundings, you stretch your hands out in front of you as if to double-check they weren’t burned off during the spaceship’s acquisition of the plane. Looking around, you see several pieces of burning airplane strewn about, which feels like a nod to the opening of TV’s Lost.

You are the only known survivor on the airplane. The rest of your fellow passengers have either died or been taken away by the ship’s aliens. Atmospherically, the Sphere feels a lot like how you may remember it, complete with distant, tortured ambient screams. Visually, it’s packing a sharp, slick new graphical polish. Through a skylight on the ship, a distant Earth hangs in space, but you won’t have much time to admire your home planet as alien gunfire quickly begins courtesy of the Hunters, who return from the first game.

Luckily, lawman Samuels was on assignment when his plane was confiscated, so you’re armed with a pistol — but you only get in enough time for some brief trigger-pulling before Hunters surround you and the screen goes blank.

We’re told that at some point following this sequence, a large chunk of time passes and Samuels wakes up with a major case of amnesia. He’s completely unaware of who he is, where he is, and what’s happened to him. It’s eventually revealed that Samuels left the Sphere and took to a life of space bounty hunting.

You’ll meet various characters in Prey 2 that will recognize you, even if you don’t know them. Samuels’ memory and past will be revealed, Memento-style, through sources like this, as well as an audio log.

Alien Noir

The majority of Prey 2 takes place on Exodus, a planet currently in turmoil. One half of Exodus is illuminated in darkness, the other in light. Central City, the area we’re shown, is a grimy, crime-infested environment somewhere in between. Developers describe Prey 2 as “Alien Noir,” and Central City looks like a sibling of Blade Runner’s 2019 dystopian Los Angeles. Exodus is engulfed in dark grays, maroons, and beiges, which are occasionally broken up by shards of fluorescent lights.

Skyward, spaceships stream through the air, and buildings rise all around you. These structures are there for your pleasure, as one of the key elements of Prey 2 is Samuels’ quick-paced, agile maneuverability. His Mirror’s Edge-ish approach to navigating cityscapes like a jungle gym comes in handy when pursuing targets.

To keep the adrenaline pumping, Human Head has added a combat system that encourages risky behavior. Samuels can be firing an auto-aiming weapon while running, jumping, sliding, vaulting, popping up from cover, and hanging from ledges. Performing these acts of acrobatic aggression will give you a short boost of power, allowing more damage to befall your targets.

Controlling Samuels during this hyper-action will be fairly simple. Human Head’s focus is less on how well you can grab a ledge, but more that you can do it quickly and efficiently.

And since Prey 2 is open world, your in-game choices will have consequences. For instance, the bounty-hunting missions you accept and how you execute them will build or break your reputation on Exodus.

Think Twice

Just because you’re the only known human on Exodus bounty-hunting it up doesn’t mean you don’t have competition for jobs. Sometimes you’re up against another bounty hunters, and other times you’re the one being pursued.

In our demo, we select a mission to track down a goon named Dra’Gar, who is wanted alive and kicking. There’s no location given on where we can find Dra’Gar, so we set out to ask one of our informants.

We maneuver through the city and approach our shady guy-in-the-know, Krux, who’s flanked by a security guard and admiring what looks like a holographic stripper. Krux doesn’t want to give up the information without payment, so we enter into one of the game’s decision mechanisms. Asked whether we want to comply with Kruck’s request or threaten him, we select the latter and blow off his guard’s head. Krux then decides to tell us where Dra’Gar is — free of charge.

As we head towards Dra’Gar’s location in a nightclub, we take a second to test the hover boots and glide down onto some distant surfaces from on high. When we get to our destination, a quick scan of the area reveals Dra’Gar’s lieutenant milling about. We creep up and surprise him, holding him hostage with our left arm, gun jetting out ahead in our right arm. We drag the protesting schlub up some stairs and, upon entering the club, use him as a shield in the ensuing firefight. Dra’Gar catches wind of our pursuit and uses a transport ability to escape the mayhem. Human Head’s mantra during development of Prey 2 has been that “missions are violent, messy, and don’t always go as planned.” So even if a job appears cut-and-dry, it’ll likely be anything but.

After a chase through Central City, including a chaotic stop in a casino and some train jumping, we catch up to Dra’Gar. He offers up a counter-proposal to let him go, but we decline and instead ship him off to our client. Shortly after, a massive Dra’Gar-associate bursts onto the scene as we run for our life, and the screen fades to black. Cliffhanger! From this taste of Prey 2, we’re left wanting more. What’s in store for Samuels next? We don’t know, and that’s what has us gripping our controller tight.