Mar
09

Offworld Crossovers

11 years, 9 months ago 1
Posted in: Games, Prey 2

Part 1: Easter Eggs

When Blade Runner was first released, I begged my parents to let me watch it.  They told me I was too young at the time and it wasn’t the Han Solo adventure I imagined.  I eventually watched it on VHS years later.  It wasn’t until the Director’s Cut was released in 1992 to theaters that I really took notice.

I saw the film on a weekday night during college.  The audience was sparse, giving me plenty of seating choices.  I planted myself dead center, slouched back, and let the world of 2019 fill my senses with visual textures, ambient sounds, and soul searching.  The music was completely mesmerizing. With no narration to fill the void between dialogue, places became more alive, giving one time to absorb the moment.

Since then, I’ve used that fascination to create several Blade Runner projects.  The first one was creating a website.  This led to my contributions to Blade Zone in its early days.  A lot of time was spent trying to track down the original soundtrack in its complete form, but that’s a story for another day.

When I joined Human Head to work on Prey 2, my appreciation for Blade Runner naturally spilled over into the game.  I’ve always enjoyed Hidden Easter Eggs and wanted fans and players to be rewarded for exploring the world of Prey 2.

Being added throughout the game were several homages to Blade Runner and other sci-fi cult classics.  For example, if you sat and watched the ships flying across Centeral City’s skyline, you might spot the Swordfish, Serenity, Slave 1, and of course a Police Spinner.

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The planet Exodus is tidally locked, meaning the seasons and daylight never change. The lower half is a cold, frozen expanse cast in shadow while the upper half is a hot, desert wasteland, blasted by an unforgiving sun. It’s only the ring around the equator where the civilization thrives. All the cities are at the edge of night time. Some areas are covered in late evening dusk, fog, and occasional rain. Other areas are highlighted by the red and orange hues of an eternal sunset.

These city areas were the perfect location to recreate scenes from Blade Runner. They aren’t called out — you have to find them. And they might not be immediately recognizable, only a true fan of Blade Runner would be able to spot all of these locations below:

There’s one area I enjoyed spending a lot of time developing — re-imagining Deckard’s apartment from Blade Runner.  It took awhile to discover the physical layout after examining the film and watching hours of behind-the-scenes footage.  Once I realized the apartment never existed in a complete form (different parts were moved around to create different scenes), I started to adapt the layout to my own needs for the game.

Part 2: Deconstructing Apartment 9372

(coming soon)

 

One Response

  1. Awesome stuff, and I naturally recall all of those places :-)

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