Bethesda confirms that Prey 2 is really, most sincerely dead

More than two and a half years after rumors first emerged that the sequel was canceled, Bethesda has confirmed Prey 2 is no more. "It was a game we believed in, but we never felt that it got to where it needed to be," Pete Hines, vice president of Bethesda, told CNET at PAX Australia, "We never saw a path to success if we finished it."

"It wasn't up to our quality standard and we decided to cancel it. It's no longer in development. That wasn't an easy decision, but it's one that won't surprise many folks given that we hadn't been talking about it."

First announced in 2011, Human Head's science fiction bounty hunter game impressed Joystiq and others in early showings but was publicly troubled within months of its reveal. First it was delayed, then removed from Bethesda's website, and finally rumored to be in development at Dishonored studio Arkane. When Bethesda would even acknowledge the game's existence after that, it would simply say that the game wasn't up to the publisher's quality standards. Hines' words reflect that view in the final decision to cancel the game.

Fans of Prey's unusually suggestive doorways shouldn't give up hope just yet. Hines explained that Bethesda still considers Prey a potential series."It's a franchise we still believe we can do something with. We just need to see what that something is."

[Images: Bethesda]