Dishonored developer rebooting Prey 2 as System Shock successor, report says

Despite Bethesda and Arkane Studios' repeated protests, the Dishonored developer is in fact making Prey 2, according to leaked emails obtained by Kotaku. The new Prey 2 includes none of Human Head's open-world bounty-hunting game--it's a clean slate pitched as a "spiritual successor to System Shock 3."

Prey 2 surfaced in 2011 with an impressive E3 trailer, but its development (and Human Head's relationship with Bethesda) became stuck in a poorly communicated limbo--kinda like Prey 1's decade-long creation.

Bethesda VP of marketing Pete Hines ridiculed rumors in June that Bethesda had gone a dark on Prey 2 to reboot it with a new developer, saying "what is the chance that we have some amazing, unbelievable game and we’re just not talking about it for no reason? Zero."

Arkane Austin studio head Raphael Colantonio told Rock, Paper, Shotgun in an interview published yesterday he had no idea where the rumors came from.

But Kotaku produced emails allegedly sent from Colantonio in May which announced Arkane Austin would start Prey 2 anew, and then implored his developers not to answer questions from media. Bethesda said only that it had nothing to share about Arkane's next project or Prey 2 when reached for comment.

We already have at least three spiritual successors to System Shock in the BioShock series, but it's exciting to hear the team behind Dishonored give it a try, despite its strange secrecy.

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.