Bethesda VP Pete Hines was asked about the status of Prey 2 at QuakeCon 2013, and answered the rumors of Arkane’s involvement.
“All of (the Arkane rumors), I have no idea where it came from. The Human Head Prey 2 thing is the Human Head Prey 2 thing. Arkane is over here, and they’re doing their thing, and that’s for them to work on. We’ll be ready to talk about what they’re working on when it gets closer to release,” Hines insisted.
When asked why Prey 2 was in limbo, he explained, “It just wasn’t where it needed to be. It wasn’t meeting expectations that we had and – in some respects – Human Head had. We’re not just gonna proceed with a plan of putting this thing out until that gets addressed in a way that we feel like will be worth all this time and attention.”
“Yes, we could ship it and put it in a box and be done with it, but it won’t meet anybody’s expectations. Not ours, not yours, not the consumer’s. It’d just be like, ‘What happened to this?’ Well, that’s what we would like to know. It’s not fun to make a call to pull back the reins on something like that and say it’s not coming out this year. It’s certainly not an easy decision, especially after you spent years and millions and millions of dollars creating it.”
Hines became more hesitant on discussing on whether Prey 2 would ever be released, “It probably doesn’t help me to define that any further. The reason that it got delayed the way it did is because it was not hitting the quality bar that it was supposed to and needed to. That was ultimately the problem. It had nothing to do with what it was trying to do. It just didn’t hit the quality bar. It’s kind of like Wolfenstein, which is getting delayed to next year because it’s showing promise, but it needs more time and polish to hit the quality bar we expect. Prey 2 is not the first time that we’ve moved something because of that. It’s gonna come down to quality.”
That isn’t the tale developer Human Head has told, stating that Bethesda tried to acquire the developer at a cheap price, and the publisher is holding Prey 2 hostage til they do.
