Bethesda’s Prey gives us a rare Asian main character in a blockbuster game

Prey debuts today as the latest science-fiction blockbuster video game for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. It has an unusual kind of enemy in amorphous black alien creatures, but it also has a rarity for interactive entertainment: an Asian main character as its hero.

You can choose to be a man or a woman as Morgan Yu, a half-Chinese, half-German character trapped on a space station where mimic enemies can take the shape of anything around you. That this Asian character is noticeable tells you where we are on the march to diversity in video games, a media that white men dominate.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.