Probably the best comparison of Prey 2017 is to System Shock 2. Except for the lack of a central villain -- not necessarily a bad thing -- Prey is comparable to SS2 in both its mechanics (meaning RPG elements and the feel of moving and fighting) and its world-building (meaning the level design, lore, and story/dialogue).
And what I mean by that in particular is that I thought the gameplay of Prey wasn't as good as the world-building, just as I thought the story of SS2 was OK but was outshone by the love that went into constructing the ships/lore/story of SS2. Prey's gameplay was not bad! Based on what I've read, I'm not the only person who found mimics too hard early on, but with some perseverance that challenge evens out as you obtain enough weapon mods. (As for later on, popping on the psychoscope solved most "is there a mimic in here?" problems.)
I also need to add that I yelled at Arkane Austin more than a few times when doing Prey's horrific "hacking" minigame. The "pipes" minigame in BioShock was far better than Prey's, which was nothing but an exercise in fast-twitch muscle control with zero connection to either the world or the gameplay of Prey.
So when I say the gameplay of Prey was good, but the world-building was better, I mean that it is the world-building that kept pulling me back to play this game. Even when I was really frustrated with some aspect of the gameplay, there were always just enough unanswered questions, and missions that were
almost done, and unexplored areas, to make me want to keep playing long past when I should have gone to bed.
The world-building team for Prey obviously enjoyed what they were doing, and demonstrated an almost-Looking Glass level of attention to plausibility and coherence in the placement of people and items, and in the structure of the world. That's pretty close to the highest praise I can give a game.
Also, as rabid as I've been that NightDive's System Shock "reboot" is changing too much of the original, I have to say that I'm going to be disappointed that it won't include flying around outside the station in microgravity.
That aspect of Prey made So Much Sense. One could, if one were that sort of person, nitpick that there were "too many" airlocks in Prey, or that they were located in odd places, but nitpicks is exactly what those are. The ability to jet around the exterior of Talos 1 was a fantastic touch in both gameplay and world-immersion. I think I'm going to have to demand that all my science-fiction/horror computer games have this feature from now on.
So overall, I think Dishonored 2 was a better game than Prey 2017; the former's gameplay mechanics and world meshed more effectively. (Human NPC opponents helped, too.) But Dishonored 2 was a superb game. To say that Prey was nearly as good means I thought Prey was outstanding. To compare it to BioShock, I felt Prey was marginally less gripping in its storytelling than BioShock, but on a par with BioShock in the levels and lore of its world, and definitely better than BioShock mechanically.
It's impossible not to think of this Prey as a loving and frequently faithful homage to System Shock. It succeeds in that thanks to its fantastic world-building.
And as a game assessed strictly on its own merits, this Prey is a very good immersive sim game. Anyone who enjoys immersive sims would be missing out by not playing it.