Remember Human Head, the developer that created the first Prey and Prey 2, the latter which was cancelled and later rebooted as a completely different title from Arkane Studios? The developer is back and announced a new game – a sequel to Rune called Rune: Ragnarok. The open world sandbox RPG received an announcement trailer which you can see below.

As per the trailer’s description, the end of the world is very much real. Ragnarok is coming and humanity’s worlds have apparently been ravaged for seven years. It’s time to stand up and fight, though how we do that remains to be seen since no gameplay was showcased. There’s a real apocalyptic vibe though and Rune: Ragnarok could end up being a fairly dark story.

Human Head also didn’t reveal a release date or supported platforms though we can assume that Rune: Ragnarok will release on PS4, Xbox One and PC. Regardless, we’ll need to wait for more information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bViPhnt9Rk

One of the great big gaming conspiracy theories of our time has been that during the development of Prey 2 – not the upcoming horror shooter named Prey that was announced at E3 this year, and which doesn’t seem to have much to do with the original game or even its concept, mind, but an actual sequel to that game – Bethesda purposefully sabotaged the milestones set for developers Human Head, so that they would miss said milestones, which would in turn enable Bethesda to scoop them up and their IP for a lower price.

However, speaking to Metro, Bethesda’s marketing VP shot the allegations down, noting that they don’t actually make a whole lot of sense (which, to be fair, is true of just about every major conspiracy theory out there), and said that the sequel in development simply hadn’t turned out as Bethesda would have wanted.

“I will simply say this: I don’t know what possible good reason we would have for spending millions and millions of dollars to create something to then suddenly arbitrarily decide, ‘No, we don’t want to actually make our money back off what we’ve put into it’,” he said. “Because we were footing the bill, right? We’re the publisher, we’re paying the developer. We’re putting all the money into it.

“I’m spending my own time taking trips up to Madison, creating brand, creating trailers, putting effort into it, taking it to E3, doing all that stuff. And to take all of that time and investment, and for the notion to be, ‘Oh yeah, for arbitrary reasons we decided to fail the milestones and are just going to wave goodbye to all that and never see any of it returned is the dumbest argument I’ve ever heard.”

Specifically tackling the part of the reports about Bethesda wanting to acquire Human Head for a lower price, Hines said, “We don’t have any real predilection towards acquiring somebody or not We haven’t acquired anybody, that I can remember, in the last five or how many years. I think Tango [the studio behind The Evil Within] was the last acquisition. It’s not like we’re on some acquisition tear.

“We work with third party folks, like with The Elder Scrolls: Legends, like with Quake Champions. We have a perfectly good third party relationship with them. We’re gonna make the game, we’re not acquiring them, we haven’t failed milestones… again, it boils down to one thing and one thing only: we’re in the business of making games and we’re only going to put out and make games that we think raise to a certain level of quality.

“It’s no different to BattleCry, which isn’t anywhere. Isn’t being talked about, and it’s on hiatus because it also wasn’t rising to the level. Just like the DOOM game that we cancelled.”

All of this makes sense, and I have always maintained that the conspiracy theory about Bethesda manipulating Prey 2‘s development milestones was a load of crock. The new, rebooted Prey is due out some time over the next year.

Human head, the folks who brought us the excellent Prey, are now bringing us a brand new survival horror game. It is called Lost Within, and you can see what the game is like for yourself in the trailer above.

The game, which has been announced for Kindle and iOS devices so far, looks like a brand new, AAA take on the classic Resident Evil games (albeit on a mobile)- everything, from the setting being one mansion, to the kind of scares, fights, and interactions that are involved in the game seem to evoke the PlayStation and Gamecube classic.

‘Survive a haunted asylum and its monstrous Inhabitants,’ the developers said. ‘Confront a legendary killer who prowls the abandoned wards. Scavenge and create makeshift weapons or conserve your resources and employ stealth tactics to sneak past the lurking horrors. When all else fails, run for your life or find a place to hide. To escape, you must uncover the asylum’s dark mystery: the shattering secret that led to its condemnation. There are many doors, but there is only one way out.’

The game will be published by Amazon. Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more coverage.

Prey 2, the long anticipated sequel to the hit 2006 shooter, Prey, has had a long, troubled development history, possibly second only to Duke Nukem Forever’s infamous development cycle. But Bethesda definitely doesn’t seem to have given up on the project… yet. Talking to RockPaperShotgun at QuakeCon, Bethesda’s Pete Hines was pretty forthcoming about the title.

Asked about whether Arkane Studios, the developer behind last year’s surprise hit Dishonored (also published by Bethesda), was now working on Prey 2, he said, “All of that stuff, 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.”

So if the studios haven’t been changed, why has there been such an inexcusable delay?

“It just wasn’t where it needed to be,” Hines admitted. “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.”

Okay, that sounds reasonable, and it’s admirable when studios and publishers stick with creative vision or financial need. But then, is this even still the same game that people got so excited about when it was initially announced?

“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.”

Okay, that doesn’t clear anything up, and is actually a little evasive (which might be worrying- the last thing we want is Prey: Call of Duty Edition), but at least he seems to be adamant that the game needs to meet a certain standard of quality.