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"How will you survive?"
Alien: Isolation tagline

Alien: Isolation is a 2014 first-person survival/horror/stealth video game developed by Creative Assembly and published by SEGA for the PlayStation 3 through 5, Xbox 360 through Series X, and PC. Ports for Linux/SteamOS and MacOS were developed by Feral Interactive and released in October 2015. Additional ports to the Nintendo Switch and iOS/Android were released in December 2019 and December 2021 respectively. Set between Alien and Aliens, the game follows Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley, as she searches for answers surrounding the disappearance of her mother following the loss of the Nostromo. Her search leads her to the decommissioned space station Sevastopol, where she encounters a deadly Alien that has massacred the station's inhabitants.

Publisher's summary[]

Discover the true meaning of fear in Alien: Isolation, a survival horror set in an atmosphere of constant dread and mortal danger. Fifteen years after the events of Alien, Ellen Ripley’s daughter, Amanda, enters a desperate battle for survival, on a mission to unravel the truth behind her mother's disappearance.

As Amanda, you will navigate through an increasingly volatile world as you find yourself confronted on all sides by a panicked, desperate population and an unpredictable, ruthless Alien. Underpowered and underprepared, you must scavenge resources, improvise solutions and use your wits, not just to succeed in your mission, but to simply stay alive.

Plot[]

Fifteen years after the disappearance of her mother, Amanda Ripley is approached by Samuels, a representative of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, who informs her that the flight recorder from her mother's lost ship, the Nostromo, has been found. The black box is being held aboard Sevastopol Station, a remote freeport space station in orbit around the gas giant KG-348. Samuels offers Amanda the chance to join the team being sent to retrieve it, in order that she might learn her mother's fate. Ripley agrees, and travels to Sevastopol with Samuels and Weyland-Yutani lawyer Taylor aboard the cargo ship Torrens. Upon arrival at Sevastopol, Captain Verlaine finds the station damaged and communications with its occupants scrambled and unintelligible. Unable to dock, Ripley, Samuels and Taylor attempt to spacewalk over to the station to investigate, but their EVA line is severed by debris from an explosion and Ripley is separated from the others.

Entering Sevastopol alone, Ripley finds herself unable to contact the rest of her team. The station itself is largely deserted, its inhabitants reduced to small bands of frightened, paranoid looters who hoard scavenged resources and react violently to anyone outside their group. Ripley encounters a man named Axel, whom she convinces to help her in exchange for a ride off the station aboard the Torrens. Axel explains the current breakdown in society is due to a "monster" that is loose aboard Sevastopol and killing its inhabitants. Ripley remains dubious until Axel is killed by the creature, a Xenomorph, which drags his body into a nearby vent. A terrified Ripley flees the area on Sevastopol's transit system.

Ripley eventually locates the Nostromo's flight recorder, but discovers that the data it contains has been corrupted. She travels to Sevastopol's communications center, hoping to re-establish comms and contact Samuels, but finds that the station's Working Joe androids are attempting to prevent this, killing a resident who precedes her. After acquiring a modified motion tracker, Ripley successfully contacts Samuels, who tells her that Taylor was injured in the earlier EVA accident.

After joining her crewmates in person, Ripley goes to the station's medical facility to recover a trauma kit to treat Taylor. She is helped by Dr. Kuhlman, who directs her from his office via the intercom, and must again avoid the Xenomorph, which stalks her through the medical facility's corridors. Kuhlman is killed by the creature when he ventures out of his office, but Ripley manages to locate the necessary medical supplies and escape. However, just as she is about to leave the area, the Xenomorph suddenly appears, cornering her; she is saved when a nearby cache of explosives detonates, driving the Xenomorph away. As she makes her way back to Samuels and Taylor, Ripley learns that the explosive trap was set for the Xenomorph by Sevastopol's Colonial Marshals.

Ripley and her shipmates are found by Marshal Waits and his deputy Ricardo, who explain that the Xenomorph was brought aboard the station by the Anesidora, the ship that recovered the Nostromo flight recorder. As a result, Waits has been holding the vessels' captain, Henry Marlow, at the Marshal headquarters. Ripley speaks with Marlow and learns that the Anesidora crew followed the flight data stored on the Nostromo's black box in the hopes of finding and salvaging the ship itself. Instead, they found the derelict on LV-426. Within, Marlow's wife Foster was impregnated by a Facehugger. Marlow subsequently brought her to Sevastopol for treatment, unwittingly unleashing the Xenomorph on its populace.

With their explosive traps having thus far failed to harm the Xenomorph, Waits has developed a new plan to trap the creature in a remote section of the station that can be jettisoned. He convinces Ripley to act as the bait in the scheme, giving her a flamethrower with which she can defend herself. While the plan is successful, Waits ejects the module with Ripley still inside to ensure the Xenomorph's demise. Ripley performs a risky space jump back to Sevastopol, while the jettisoned module falls into the crushing atmosphere of KG-348 with the Xenomorph still aboard, killing the creature.

Ripley makes her way back to confront Waits, but Ricardo reveals that the Working Joes have abruptly started slaughtering the remaining human inhabitants, including Waits and most of his men. Ripley tracks down Samuels, who interfaces with the station's controlling artificial intelligence, APOLLO, to cease the rampage. However, APOLLO's defensive countermeasures kill him after he opens a path for Ripley to APOLLO's control core. While on the way to the core, Ripley learns from Ricardo that just prior to android attack, Taylor made a secret deal with Marlow, offering him freedom in return for the coordinates of the derelict on LV-426. Upon communicating with APOLLO's core, Ripley discovers that Sevastopol was purchased by Weyland-Yutani shortly before the Torrens arrived. The company subsequently programmed APOLLO with Special Order 939, instructing it to protect the Xenomorph at all costs so that the company might recover it — when Ripley and Waits blasted the Xenomorph into space, APOLLO deemed all humans aboard the station a threat to the creature, and thus instructed the Joes to kill them.

Ripley demands to know why APOLLO is continuing to follow out this directive now that the Xenomorph is no longer aboard the station; APOLLO directs her to the station's reactor core where she discovers a nest, inside which many of the original creature's victims have been cocooned and used as hosts for more Xenomorphs. Ripley initiates a reactor purge to destroy the nest, but multiple Xenomorphs manage to escape the electrical discharge and flee into the station.

Ricardo informs Ripley that the reactor purge briefly lifted APOLLO's communications blackout, enabling Marlow to contact the Anesidora and bring it to the station. Ripley pursues him in an ambulance shuttle in the hopes of using the Anesidora to escape Sevastopol. On board, Marlow shows Ripley the data from the Nostromo flight recorder, which includes a personal message from her mother regarding her motives for destroying her own ship. Marlow, who has taken Taylor hostage, then reveals he plans to detonate the Anesidora's fusion reactor to destroy Sevastopol, thereby ensuring the Xenomorphs do not come into contact with the rest of humanity. Taylor knocks Marlow unconscious with a wrench when he is distracted and helps Ripley prevent the reactor explosion, but they are only partially successful — both Taylor and the unconscious Marlow are killed by an electrical overload while Ripley barely escapes as the ship explodes. While the reduced blast is not large enough to destroy Sevastopol, it damages the station's gravity stabilizers and its orbit around KG-348 begins to decay.

With time running out, Ripley and Ricardo realign Sevastopol's communications array to contact the Torrens for evacuation, but Ricardo is subdued by a Facehugger and Ripley is forced to leave him behind. The Torrens docks with the station, but as the station's docking umbilical has been removed Ripley is forced to don an EVA suit and attempt a spacewalk to the ship. However, she is attacked by a Xenomorph and dragged into an air duct. She awakens to find she has been cocooned in another nest but manages to escape before she can be impregnated with a Chestburster. As the station begins to fall apart all around her, she returns to the airlock, dons an EVA suit and heads outside.

With the Torrens unable to detach, Ripley has to manually release the docking clamps securing the ship to Sevastopol, escaping moments before the station begins to disintegrate, finally exploding in KG-348's atmosphere. Back aboard the Torrens, Ripley abruptly loses contact with Verlaine, and subsequently discovers a Xenomorph has boarded the ship as well. The creature corners her in an airlock and prepares to kill her, but Ripley, still in her EVA suit, jettisons both herself and the Xenomorph into space. The game ends with Ripley drifting silently in space, waking as a searchlight crosses her face.

Voice Cast[]


Gameplay[]

The game is played from a first-person perspective and focuses heavily on slow-paced stealth and horror gameplay, in contrast to the frantic action-adventure tone prevalent in many preceding Alien video games. Creative Assembly have stated that inspiration for the game's setting, Sevastopol Station, was taken from BioShock and Dishonored. A key feature of the game is its Alien enemy. Whereas as many previous games feature entire swarms of Xenomorphs as enemies, only one Xenomorph is present for the majority of the game. While it will appear in certain pre-determined, scripted events, it more often appears at random, forcing players to be wary at all times.

Isolation screenshot

The player facing the Alien with a Flamethrower, the only weapon to have any real effect against it.

After first encountering the Alien near the beginning of the story, if the player remains in any one location for too long, the creature will appear and begin hunting them. Similarly, if the player makes too much noise (i.e. running, knocking over objects or shooting/being shot at by human survivors), the Xenomorph will appear and begin tracking the source of the noise. Vents and lockers can be used to hide from the creature. However, the Alien cannot be killed with the weaponry available to the player, and is capable of learning from the player's actions over the course of the game,[1] meaning evasive or offensive actions that are successful early on may become less so over time — for example, if the player frequently hides from the Alien in the ventilation ducts of Sevastopol Station, it will in turn begin searching these areas more aggressively. Typically, any damage taken from the Alien results in instant death, thus the player is forced to avoid and hide from the Alien rather than confronting it in combat, the latter of which typically proves fatal.

Despite the developers claiming the game would have no Facehuggers and no more than one Xenomorph ahead of release, several Facehuggers are encountered in the game, and multiple Xenomorphs stalk the player in some later sections (although in practice there are never more than two at once). The initial denial of such scenarios on the part of Creative Assembly was presumably in order to maintain the surprise for players upon reaching those sections of the game.

As well as the Xenomorph, the player has to deal with several other types of enemy, including hostile Working Joe synthetics, Seegson Security operatives and other desperate human survivors. Often, the player can choose to either confront or avoid these opponents. While the Xenomorph seemingly has no interest in synthetic enemies, it can be lured into conflict with human opponents, adding a tactical element to the gameplay. As well as traditional weapons, the game features a crafting system allowing the player to construct items to use against enemies, typically consisting of noisemakers, Molotov cocktails and other distraction devices.

Numerous archive logs and crewmember ID tags can be picked up throughout the campaign as collectibles.

As well as the main story campaign, the game also features an additional mode known as Survivor, which tasks the player with escaping a unique map in the quickest time possible, whilst being hunted by the Alien. Additional bonus objectives can be completed along the way for additional points. These points are then totalled up upon successful completion of the map and added to an online leaderboard. Players globally can therefore compete for the best score. The game initially shipped with a single map for Survivor mode, "Basement", but others were later made available as DLC.

Development[]

Alien-_Isolation_Pre-Production_Prototype

Alien- Isolation Pre-Production Prototype

The IL0 demo from 2009.

After development concluded on Viking: Battle for Asgard, Creative Assembly's console team began working on their next project, codenamed Legend. Legend was developed from around 2008-2009 before being scrapped.

Following the cancellation of Legend, the team put together a short "mood piece" demo (codenamed IL0) for an Alien project utilising the engine tech from Viking and Legend. While this demo captured SEGA's interest, the Alien license was fully saturated at the time with three Alien games in development (Aliens: Colonial Marines, Aliens: Crucible, and Aliens vs. Predator 2010). As a result of the demo however, the team started work on a 1st person sci-fi survival horror game around mid 2009 codenamed Moon, taking place outside the Alien universe to avoid licensing issues. Moon was scrapped some time around mid to late 2010 and began to be reworked into a 3rd person Alien game, likely related to the cancellation of Aliens: Crucible.

200973-alien

A job ad for Creative Assembly's then-unnamed Alien title.[2]

On 12th May 2011 the Alien project was announced on Twitter by Ed Vaizey,[3] who had recently visited Creative Assembly's studio.[4] No information was given about the project at the time, except that it was to be developed by Creative Assembly,[3] best known for their work on the Total War game series.[5] SEGA later confirmed to CVG that Creative Assembly was making a new Alien game and hoped the title would be a "peer to Dead Space 2". Neither the studio nor the publisher would be drawn on confirming a genre for the game, and neither would say if it was to be a strategy title — the genre Creative Assembly is best known for — or a more traditional Alien game. Creative director Mike Simpson said that he'd been given the directive to win awards by SEGA, but did not feel overly pressured because "[Creative Assembly] like winning awards". "This is very much a triple-A project," SEGA West boss Mike Hayes added. Creative Assembly began hiring new staff to handle the project, increasing its staff from 160 people to 200 in a matter of months.[6]

In February 2013, a verified SEGA QA Tester who had worked on the company's previous Alien title, Aliens: Colonial Marines, briefly mentioned the upcoming game in a post on Reddit, additionally shedding more light on the different tone the game was to take.

"we are making the new alien game with creative asembly who make total war. That game looks amazing. Very dark, very slow paced (in a good way). The textures and lighting look really really good. I've seen it running on a PC. The PS4 devkit looks like a computer. It looks as good if not better running as any super high end pc. We did not have those controllers, but they look like what was promised."
QA Tester

The game was intended to be announced in June 2013 at E3 as Alien Year Zero, but the reveal was pulled due to the poor reception of Aliens: Colonial Marines. In response to the criticism, SEGA conducted a review of Alien Year Zero, leading to a large story rewrite that took place around the middle of 2013. In this story rewrite the game's title was changed to Alien: Isolation.

AlienIso-TwitterleakJan6

The image leaked on Twitter in January 2014.[7]

In October 2013 it was revealed that 20th Century Fox had filed a trademark for "Alien: Isolation" for use with computer game and video game software, downloadable mobile software and decorative magnets.[8] In December, several pieces of conceptual artwork for the game were leaked on Twitter by user "lifelower".[9][10][11][12] The following month, lifelower leaked another image, this time of the game's Xenomorph antagonist.[13] Shortly afterwards the game was officially listed on the Xbox Marketplace, then being officially announced in January 2014.[14]

Alien: Isolation was the cover feature in the January issue of Italian gaming magazine Game Republic. The 10-page article within featured new images from the game as well as details from SEGA and Creative Assembly, including length and platform information.[15]

The game was developed alongside an engine named Cathode. During development, the creative team extensively researched the sets and props of Alien, which they sought to emulate as realistically and accurately as possible. To this end, they were provided with three terabytes of original production materials from the film by 20th Century Fox, including set blueprints, behind the scenes photos, prop notes and conceptual drawings by the likes of Ron Cobb and Mœbius.[16] Creative lead Alistair Hope recalled, "It was like that moment in Pulp Fiction where they open the suitcase. We were stunned that all this stuff existed. For them to be able to drop that amount of material on us was great. It gave us a really good insight into how that first film was made."[17] The huge amount of material provided and its detail in turn inspired the team to put a similar amount of effort into their own design work.

Despite the future setting, the game was designed from the point of view of late 1970s set design, in order to feel tonally consistent with the 1979 film. For example, the game features clunky machinery like telephone receivers, monochrome displays, CRT monitors and reel-to-reel tape recorders. Artist Jon McKellan noted, "We had this rule: If a prop couldn't have been made in '79 with the things that they had around, then we wouldn't make it either."[18] To create period authentic distortion on in-game monitors, the developers recorded their animations onto VHS and Betamax video recorders, then filmed those sequences playing on an "old curvy portable TV" while adjusting the tracking settings.[1]

Internally a series of major changes occurred during the game's development. The first happened around 6 months into production, which was a switch to a new scripting system named Cathode. This system was built into the Creative Assembly Game Editor (CAGE) and allowed for an editor interface similar to the Blueprint system in Unreal Engine 4. Although allowing a faster workflow after its introduction, a lot of work carried out prior to this system's introduction had to be rewritten or scrapped due causing large issues early on in development. The second major change during development was a switch from third to first person. This change happened to improve gameplay as early internal demos show the third person gameplay was less immersive than the final first person perspective - as developer Al Hope said, "in first person it's you that's being hunted". The third major change was a large story rewrite that happened around year before release, being where it is believed that the game's official title changed. In this rewrite a large number of maps such as the Gravity Anchors and Dry Docks were cut from the game, along with an entire introduction sequence aboard the Solace, which was reworked into the Anesidora in the final game. A large number of already completed cutscenes from Axis Animation were also scrapped in the story rewrite.

At some point in development planned multiplayer components were cut from the game, likely to distance the game's marketing from Aliens: Colonial Marines. Further gameplay elements cut from the game during development included a more extensive weapon/ammo crafting system, the effects of the Alien's acid blood [17], and a feature named Memento Mori which if enabled would have allowed players to leave messages and items in environments for others to discover, similar to the system found within Dark Souls.

Deleted Scenes[]

See: Alien: Isolation deleted scenes

Cut Content[]

See: Alien: Isolation cut content

Downloadable Content[]

See: Alien: Isolation downloadable content

Reception[]

Alien: Isolation received generally very positive reviews from critics, especially in contrast to SEGA's previous Alien game, Aliens: Colonial Marines. Aggregating review websites GameRankings and Metacritic gave the Microsoft Windows version 82.36% based on 11 reviews and 80/100 based on 30 reviews, the Xbox One version 78.92% based on 12 reviews and 77/100 based on 16 reviews and the PlayStation 4 version 78.22% based on 29 reviews and 78/100 based on 37 reviews.

David Houghton from GamesRadar gave the game 4.5/5, praising the graphics and its intelligent AI which keeps the game unpredictable. He also thought that the game provided a lot of thrilling, engrossing, profoundly fulfilling rewards and will probably make players feel more alive than a video game has in years.[19]

Andy Kelly from PC Gamer gave the game 93/100, stating that the game is the one the Alien series has always deserved. He praised the audio design, as well as the reactive AI of the Alien. He also thought that the pacing of the story was perfect, even though it took him about 25 hours to finish the game. However, he criticized the disappointing story as well as the flat voice acting and insubstantial characters, but he still summarized the game as a "deep, fun stealth game set in an evocatively realised sci-fi world...".[20]

Alex Dale from Official Xbox Magazine gave the game 9/10. He described the game as a "unique stealth-horror thriller that combines great pacing and smart design with razor-sharp AI that's unpredictable in all the right ways". However, he criticized the punishing difficulty of the game, saying players will suffer harsh punishment for small failures.

Chris Carter from Destructoid gave the game 8.5/10, praising the unscripted and dynamic Alien AI. He also praised the Survivor mode which could be unlocked roughly after 15 hours. He described it as the best part of the game because the mode offered different feelings and experiences for players every time when they played it.[21]

Dan Whitehead from Eurogamer gave the game 8/10. He praised the superb lighting and unusually compelling environment design. He said that the game has created some of his most tense and memorable horror gaming moments ever. He also described the Alien's free-roaming AI creation as "a stroke of genius". However, he criticized the crafting system as too simple to the point of being shallow. He also criticized the length of the game as it is too long and felt that the game overstayed its welcome.[22]

Dave Meikleham from Computer and Video Games also gave the game 8/10, praising its sound design and the horror moments, but noting he encountered occasional frame rate issues. He also thought that if the game were 30% shorter, it would be a much bolder and sharper experience.

Jeff Marchiafava from Game Informer gave the game 7.75/10. He too thought that it is the closest game to capture the promise of the Alien franchise and believed that it is the experience fans of the franchise have waited for a long time. However, he compared the game to Dead Space and believed that the environments and actions failed to instill the sense of dread that the movies or other horror games had delivered. He also criticized the 'wooden' animation of the characters, as well as the unhelpful map, unimpressive voice acting and dialogue.[23]

A notable negative review came from Ryan McCaffrey of IGN, who gave the game 5.9/10. He found it disappointing, despite being a perfect Alien game on paper. He believed that the genuine scares of being hunted by an unstoppable alien were diluted by repetition. He also criticized the Alien's AI being too hard to play against. However, this review was met with a large negative backlash from fans.[24]

Merchandising[]

To coincide with the release of the game, Dark Horse Comics released a prequel comic book that told several short stories involving survivors aboard Sevastopol before Amanda Ripley arrives. Initially only given away for free at San Diego Comic-Con 2014, a digital version was packaged with certain pre-order editions of the game and later made available as a free limited-time download from the game's website during December 2014. Titan Books later published a behind the scenes book, The Art of Alien: Isolation, which included a wealth of conceptual and development artwork from the game.

NECA also released three Alien: Isolation action figures for Series 6 of its Aliens figure line in July 2015; two Amanda Ripley figures, one in a compression suit, and a figure of the Drone.

In August 2018, author Keith R. A. DeCandido announced via Twitter that he was working on a novelization of the game, to be released the following year.

Virtual Reality Support[]

During showcase events prior to the game's release, playable VR support was shown off to the public using the Oculus Rift Development Kit 1 (DK1).[25] This demo caught a wide range of press attention as the game was one of the first AAA titles shown off in the VR space. SEGA later announced that VR support would not be available in the public build of the game, intended only for the demo.[26]

After release it was quickly spotted that full Oculus VR support using the DK1 SDK remained in the build, and by simply editing one of the game's config files it would activate. A community mod known as MotherVR was released to upgrade this DK1 SDK to support SteamVR, allowing the game's entire campaign to be played in VR on modern HMDs.[27]

It was later revealed through reverse engineering of the game's files that Creative Assembly had also been working on support for Morpheus (PlayStation VR) as well as Oculus, indicating that virtual reality support was originally intended to be included officially in the public build. [28]

In 2016 SEGA announced that they were open to the idea of revisiting VR support for Alien: Isolation in an interview with IGN. [29]

"We have a lot of VR kits in the office and people are playing with it. We are exploring ways to release games. We’ve not announced anything, but we are very close to making an announcement. We did Alien: Isolation about three years ago on Oculus Rift, it was a demo that was bloody scary, to bring that back to VR would be a dream and dreams can come true... VR will take time, but we will start releasing some titles just to learn. It is a platform for the future."
―Jurgen Post (Boss of SEGA Europe)

In a database leak from GeForce NOW in 2021, "Alien Isolation VR" was spotted among the listed titles in development at SEGA HARDlight[30], believed to be the revival of the game's VR support mentioned in the IGN article. It is unknown if the revival was cancelled or is still in development, however evidence hints at the project being shelved some time in late 2016.

Sequels[]

Although SEGA announced that the Alien: Isolation's commercial performance did not warrant a sequel, the game's story has been continued in several other mediums. In September of 2018, Dark Horse Comics announced that it would be releasing Aliens: Resistance, a four-issue comic miniseries that was a sequel to both Alien: Isolation and their previous comic series Aliens: Defiance.

On January 24 2019, Alien: Blackout was released, which saw Amanda Ripley trapped aboard Mendel Station under the duress of another Xenomorph. Following a negative fan backlash, Fox specified that Blackout was not a direct sequel to Isolation, despite it featuring the same protagonist and it occurring only a few days after the events of the first game.[31]

On February 28, 2019, Alien: Isolation - The Digital Series was released on the IGN website and IGN Youtube channel. The series adapted some of the game's cutscenes, combining it with newly-animated sequences to iterate the events of the game from Amanda's perspective, continuing on from the ending of the game and revealing new aspects of the story.

Trivia[]

Tristan Isolation sequel

Artowrk from Tristan Jones' unsuccessful sequel pitch.

  • In April 2018, writer and artist Tristan Jones revealed via Twitter that he had attempted to pitch a graphic novel sequel to Alien: Isolation the previous year. Included in his tweet was an illustration that he created for the unsuccessful pitch.[32]
  • While most of the cast from Alien reprised their roles in the game, Ian Holm (Ash) and John Hurt (Kane) were absent due to scheduling conflicts; Holm allowed his likeness to be used and another actor provided Ash's voice, while Kane was absent from the game entirely.
  • Notably, many of the game's characters have the original winged sun emblem for Weyland-Yutani (as seen in Alien) on their uniforms, indicating that the more recognizable interlocked W/Y logo seen in Aliens had not yet been adopted by 2137.
  • Small origami unicorns are found scattered around Sevastopol Station, a reference to the 1982 movie Blade Runner, which was directed by Ridley Scott (who also directed Alien, as well as Prometheus and Alien: Covenant).
  • In the novel Alien: Sea of Sorrows, Rollins mentions that both Ellen and Amanda Ripley have previously thwarted Weyland-Yutani's attempts to recover a Xenomorph specimen.[33] This was a pre-release hint at the events of Alien: Isolation.
  • An additional easter egg appears in the form of a poster of a well dressed man named 'Jean Mollo'. This is a direct homage to John Mollo and Jean Giraud, individuals who worked on the original 1979 film.
  • Previously, it was believed that the distress signal from the derelict ship on LV-426 had been deactivated by damage due to volcanic activity, but the game shows that was in fact Henry Marlow who disabled the signal when he and the crew of the Anesidora found the ship on LV-426.
  • The exact origin of the Eggs used to create the multiple Xenomorphs encountered later in the game was left deliberately vague by the developers, with both Eggmorphing and an unseen Queen being possibilities. The development team later confirmed that a Queen was responsible, but stated that showing her would not have fit with the game's focus on the first film in the series, and would also have led players to expect a boss-type battle with her, which went against the game's less action-oriented style.[34] As a result, they decided it was better to leave the issue a mystery. As writer Will Porter later said, "She's down there somewhere, in amongst the cacophony, but Ripley was lucky enough not to bump into her."[35]
  • This is the only "canonical" chapter in the franchise in which the Chestburster is conspicuously lacking an actual onscreen appearance, and a Chestbursting birth is never witnessed, although the aftermath is seen in the form of multiple corpses discovered by the protagonist/player Amanda.
  • While the revelation that there is more than one Xenomorph on Sevastopol is not unveiled until the player reaches the nest, there are clues to this earlier in the game, including the corpses that show evidence of having birthed Chestbursters.
  • Alien: Isolation is notably the only video game from the Alien franchise to be referenced in Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report, which otherwise focuses exclusively on the events of the films and ignores the plots of the games, including the supposedly canonical Aliens: Colonial Marines.
  • There are many leftover references in the game files to promotional marketing poses and animations for characters, showing that the trailer and promotional stills were taken in-game, with specific animations for the reveal trailer, Game Informer cover and character shots, including some mentions of unreleased promos.
  • The main font used is Alte Haas, however it was renamed to "Isolation" in the game files. A pre-release version of the game also refers to this font as "AYZ Test Font" (AYZ referring to the game's in-development title, Alien Year Zero). Another font (seemingly a slightly modified version of Bebas Neue or U.S. 101) was used in-game named "Nostromo Cond". Objective markers and Sevastolink Terminals use a font named "Jixellation" which was created by Lead UI Artist, Jon McKellan[36].
  • ID photos that can be seen on the collectable ID cards in-game were created using a tool known as "jp2a", a program that converts images to ASCII. They were set to have light backgrounds in grayscale with a width of 200. A leftover output from "jp2a" shows that these were generated by user "jon.mckellan", the Lead UI Artist for the game.

Goofs[]

See: Alien: Isolation goofs

Gallery[]

See Also[]

External Links[]

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 "Develop - 18 things we learned about Alien: Isolation last night". Retrieved on 2016-01-12.
  2. http://www.oxm.co.uk/28364/new-alien-game-creative-assembly-interview/
  3. 3.0 3.1 Ed Vaizey (May 12, 2011). "Twitter / edvaizey: Great visit to Creative Assembly ...". Retrieved on January 14, 2014. "Great visit to Creative Assembly one of UK's best developers. Now hiring for new blockbuster based on Alien"
  4. http://www.destructoid.com/creative-assembly-working-on-new-aliens-game-200973.phtml
  5. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/05/12/creative-assembly-birthing-alien-the-game/
  6. http://www.computerandvideogames.com/300998/new-alien-game-confirmed-for-console-will-be-peer-to-dead-space-2-sega/?cid=OTC-RSS&attr=CVG-General-RSS
  7. https://twitter.com/lifelower/status/420379933328695296/photo/1
  8. http://www.siliconera.com/2013/10/21/alien-isolation-trademark-suggests-fox-hasnt-given-aliens-games/
  9. https://twitter.com/lifelower/status/411298976088879104/photo/1
  10. https://twitter.com/lifelower/status/411299433947463680/photo/1
  11. https://twitter.com/lifelower/status/411299810197528576/photo/1
  12. https://twitter.com/lifelower/status/411300323798433792/photo/1
  13. https://twitter.com/lifelower/status/420379933328695296/photo/1
  14. http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Alien-Isolation/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8025345085e
  15. ikarop (January 8, 2014). "Alien: Isolation in Game Republic - AvPGalaxy". AvPGalaxy. Retrieved on January 9, 2014.
  16. Andy McVittie. The Art of Alien: Isolation, p. 12 (2014), Titan Books.
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