I’ve been playing Dune: Awakening, and it made me realize what my absolute dream Predator game would be.
Not another match-based Predator game.
A full open-world survival/base-building game set on a Yautja hunting world.
Imagine something with the scale and survival systems of Dune: Awakening or Conan Exiles, but built around humans, Yautja, hunting, survival, settlements and Predator culture.
You could choose to play as either a human or a Yautja, but your species would NOT determine how you had to play.
A human could begin as vulnerable prey and eventually become an accomplished hunter, learning alien technology, building specialized equipment, taking trophies and perhaps even gaining the respect of certain Yautja.
A Yautja could play traditionally as a trophy hunter, but could also become a builder, explorer, clan leader, protector, trader, or someone who works alongside humans.
Both could build permanent bases.
Like Conan Exiles, you could recruit NPCs to live and work there: guards, hunters, armorers, mechanics, medics, workers, scouts, scientists, cooks, etc.
A human base might begin as a desperate little fortified camp and eventually become a technologically advanced colony.
A Yautja base might grow into a hunting lodge or clan settlement with trophy halls, training grounds, weapon workshops, landing pads and defenses.
And the hunting system could be much deeper than simply following glowing tracks.
You could study footprints, kills, nesting areas, sounds, thermal traces and animal behavior while hunting huge alien creatures across different biomes.
The creatures could hunt you too.
Trophies could actually matter. Rare kills displayed around your settlement could affect reputation, NPC reactions and standing with Yautja clans rather than simply functioning as stat bonuses.
There could be multiple human factions and multiple Yautja clans, including traditional hunters, more progressive clans and Bad Bloods.
Being human wouldn’t automatically make another human friendly.
Being Yautja wouldn’t automatically make another Yautja friendly.
You could encounter another player in the wilderness and genuinely not know whether they’re going to hunt you, trade with you, help you, challenge you, or simply decide you’re beneath their attention.
The biggest thing for me is this:
Predator games usually let us participate in a Predator story.
I want a game that lets us LIVE in that universe.
Let me survive there.
Let me hunt there.
Let me build a home there.
Let me gather people around me.
Let my trophies and scars tell the history of my character.
Let a human eventually become something the Yautja respect.
Let a Yautja decide that honor means something different from what his clan taught him.
Basically:
Dune: Awakening / Conan Exiles scale and survival systems, but on a Yautja prey world.
I’ve never developed a game and I’m not pretending I know what something like this would cost or require technically.
I’m just a Predator fan who would play the hell out of this, and I desperately wish somebody with the ability to make it would consider the concept.