According to purported leaked emails from Raphael Colantonio, the CEO of Arkane Studios, the company is indeed beavering away on a sequel to the critically-acclaimed Prey.
That’s according to Kotaku, which claims to have received the emails from Colantonio to staff members that clearly mentions Prey 2 by name.
“For the ones who were not at least week’s company meeting: Austin has officially been greenlit for its own project,” the email reads, titled ‘Prey 2.’
"This is super exciting of course. Doing a new IP was not a possibility because it’s adding risk to the challenge of growth, so after going back and forth with Todd, Harvey, Ricardo, we decided that Prey 2 presented an interesting opportunity if we could reboot it. Zenimax accepted our pitch which was ‘the spiritual successor to System Shock 3’.
"So there you go," it continues. "This year is going to be intense and exciting: growth, design, handling 2 projects. It’s a new chapter to the super Arkan adventure, let’s make it awesome."
Prey 2 has had a troubled history. Originally in development at Human Head Studios and announced in March 2011, the game was pegged for a 2012 release before reports cropped up that the game had been cancelled.
Bethesda was quick to deny these reports and later commented that the game would miss its targeted release date as it hadn’t yet met the publisher’s quality standards.
Earlier this year, Kotaku reported that the game was in development at Arkane Studios’ Austin branch, and that work on the game had started completely from scratch. Prey 2 is now allegedly pencilled in for a 2016 release.
Unsurprisingly, Bethesda was quick to shot down these rumors.
However, it’s worth noting that around 90 minutes after Kotaku’s initial report on the email, Colantonio sent another mail reading, “Now that the news is out, we’ll be contacted left and right by press sneak f**ks who will want to know more. Please don’t answer any of their requests.”
Arkane Studios is best known for producing last year’s critically-acclaimed Dishonored.
Stay tuned for more details on Prey 2 at PSU.com as they break.