Raphael Colantonio, director and co-writer of Arkane's 2017 game Prey, has been interviewed by Kotaku about his game's famously divisive final act. As well as the ending itself, the build-up to it has come under criticism for being drawn-out, and introducing too many security bots. Colantonio told Kotaku that, "In this case, yeah there was definitely too much at the end, it was too intense, not only the security bots but there was some other stuff. In general, I think it was too intense, we were trying to ask the players to backtrack, and do some stuff. It was just too much. We should have cut it short."
As for why the ending turned out that way, he offered this explanation: "I think we did our best as far as planning — we thought on paper it'd be a nice change of pace toward the end, so it feels more intense and more like an acceleration as opposed to 'Here is more story.' So on paper it seemed right.
"The problem is when you implement those things, even the designers can only see so much of it, because they don't see the rest of the game, they only see their part. And it’s only, believe it or not, it's only around alpha, like three months before the game ships basically that you can see the entirety of the game in a state where you can fully comprehend it."
You can listen to the full interview on Kotaku's podcast. A funny thing about immersive sims is that giving players freedom to choose their own approach means it's hard to pace them for everyone. I'd maxed out the hacking ability, and so I stunned the security bots then turned them to my side. I didn't think it was badly paced at all, and loved the ending. So there you go.
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