Leaked footage of Human Head's long-buried Prey 2 reveals a cyberpunk shooter with a spring in its step

It’s never too late to get mad about the untimely fate of Human Head Studios’ Prey 2. It helps that people keep leaking videos of the thing. The latest batch includes an opening sequence, a full mission playthrough from an open world, a flythrough of an undercity area, a prototype chase sequence, and scenes of combat. Watch the bulk of them below, and grieve. Alas for Killian Samuels, the beanie-wearing US marshal turned alien bounty-hunter. He looked so humdrum back in 2012, especially when compared to the original 2006 game’s Cherokee protagonist Domasi "Tommy" Tawodi. Still, he has a certain tragic charisma, in hindsight.

If you missed the original Prey, ‘twas an uneven, UFO-ransacking first-person shooter with fancy level-splicing portal technology that has now been almost totally eclipsed by comparable features in Narbacular Drop 2. A lot of people liked it, not including John Walker (RPS in peace). Human Head started making a sequel shortly after the original’s release, but according to a few former studio members, they only began developing Prey 2 in earnest after the rights had passed to ZeniMax Media, parent company of Bethesda.

Where the first game had been relatively linear, the second was to be an open world affair with a bounty-hunting theme. Bethesda announced it in 2011. But then something went wrong. Human Head quietly called time on the project near end of 2011, despite being “very close to an alpha state, with all major content pieces represented”, in the words of former project lead Chris Rhinehart. Rumours of Prey 2’s cancellation swirled around over 2012, with Bethesda removing the game from their website.

Then, in 2013, it was reported that the project had been reassigned to Dishonored developers Arkane, scrapping all previous work by Human Head in the process. Bethesda officially cancelled Prey 2 in 2014. In 2016, they announced that Arkane would develop a series reboot.

Released in 2017, Arkane’s Prey is a dashedly fine game, one of the swooniest and spaciest of immersive sims, but it's hard not to mourn for Human Head. The full story of Prey 2's cancellation has yet to be told, but according to reports at the time, Bethesda pushed tough deadlines and feature requests on an increasingly cash-strapped Human Head while simultaneously looking to acquire them. Human Head eventually downed tools in protest, and the two companies were unable to haggle it out before Human Head’s contract with Bethesda ran out in 2012.

Accounts of events differ between the companies, as you’d expect. Bethesda have resisted the idea that they were conniving to acquire Human Head, arguing that the project simply didn’t meet their standards. Having watched these videos, I'm inclined to say that Human Head should have been allowed to go the distance.

The leaked videos show off a little of the game’s planned open world bounty action. The game would have let you travel around a teeming alien city that reminds me of Coruscant and G-Police. You’d have been able to boost-glide and ledge-grab to surprise opponents.

The video reveals a bustling population of aliens, all of whom sound like they have acute laryngitis, and some nightclubs featuring holographic erotic dancers, because no self-respecting blade runner’s local can do without a holodancer or two. You’d have been able to profile NPCs with a scanner, take them down with electric boladeros, and enlist the odd Klatoonian as a meatshield.

I’m more sold on the setting than the mechanics – there are passing hovercars, cargo trains, and distant flying billboards with a whole other FPS playing on them – but it looks, out of context, like a project that had legs. We will never know whether the studio could have seen it through: Human Head eventually closed doors in 2019. Beanieman RIP.