Metafuture, in cooperation with the Prey demo, is pleased to present this handy, concise guide to the history and customs of the Native American tribe known as the Cherokee.

• The central tenet of the Cherokee tribe is, as noted by the opening voice-over of the Prey demo, that “the world is full of stories, and from time to time they permit themselves to be told.” The Cherokee are proud of their centuries of peaceful and harmonious co-existence with the obstinate herds of story in their lands. In the Cherokee tongue, the story that tells of a brave single-handedly stopping an invasion is known as a “hacknee”.
• The Cherokee talk to themselves almost all the time, to the point where psychiatrists now have a separate DSM classification for their unique predilection for schizotypal personality disorder.

  

  Here we see Prey’s actually-named-Tommy-Hawk protagonist, Tommy Hawk, looking in the bathroom mirror of the bar his girlfriend owns and being sarcastic with himself about being scared of women. That may seem somewhat whiny and nebbishy, but being a total dipshit is the traditional Cherokee hero’s tragic flaw. For instance, the great Cherokee hero Kanati, also known as “The Luckiest Hunter”, was so perplexed by the concept of vaginas and the people who own them that he ended up marrying an ear of corn.

• The Cherokee, like all Native Americans, love nothing more than drinking themselves into a stupor whenever they can sell enough turquoise to buy booze.

  

  Pictured above: This is the very first thing Tommy’s grandpa does after giving him a prophetic warning that he will need to embrace his Cherokee heritage to survive.

• The Cherokee are from what is now the southeastern United States, namely Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Here is a screenshot of the spirit lands of the Cherokee, where Tommy goes after dying.

  

  This is, as grandpa says, the ancient land of the Cherokee forefathers, before the white man came and filled in all the canyons and replaced the desert climate with the more temperate and less arid conditions the region is known for today.

• A Cherokee brave, even those that reject their heritage like Tommy, can instantly learn the ability to “spirit walk”, which looks cool and makes you immortal.

  

  All that is required is for your mystical dead grandpa to tell you to “let your spirit carry you where your body cannot pass”, which you can simulate by pressing the ‘E’ key. For unknown reasons the Cherokee saved this secret specifically for the case of alien invasion, giving the Trail of Tears and the smallpox stuff a pass. Luckily Tommy is not smart enough to think about this, because it would probably make him hate being a Cherokee even more.

  Also pictured: a Cherokee “spirit guide” in the form of a hawk. Cherokee spirit guides have all played Quake IV, and thus have the ability to translate alien gibberish on a computer screen just by sitting on the top of it.

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