Conclusion

After running Prey on the most popular graphics cards out there, there is no denying that the game runs very very well on all hardware. Even a weak card like the GTX 1050 non-Ti manages 60 FPS at 1080p. For fluid 4K gaming, a GTX 1080 is sufficient, something you usually better have a GTX 1080 Ti for. Memory consumption is modest with roughly 4 GB, barely depending on the game's resolution. A high-res texture pack would definitely be a huge improvement; let's hope Bethesda considers releasing one soon.

The secret sauce seems to be CryEngine, which is well-proven and has seen many driver optimizations over the years. Arkane also didn't jump head on into any DirectX 12 experiments, which of course means a lost opportunity to dial up the eye candy. Overall graphics quality is by far not the best we've ever seen. Prey looks slightly dated and more like a late 2015 title, which is also slightly rooted by the art style that's not trying too hard to deliver a photo-realistic rendering approach.

What can't be forgiven, however, is the lack of field of view control, especially when Bethesda promised a good PC port. Luckily, the FOV can be changed with a simple config file edit, where you can also remove the hidden FPS cap. Why the devs didn't just put two additional options for that into the settings menu puzzles me. It would have also been nice to see more advanced rendering techniques, but that would result in increased hardware requirements, too.

Gameplay so far is solid. I'm about two hours in and can't wait to return to the space station after this article. Immersion is excellent, and whoever came up with the idea that enemies can disguise into objects lying around to then scare the hell out of you deserves a medal. The character progression system looks promising, and various approaches exist to overcome the challenges and puzzles the game confronts you with.