The news of one Alien: isolation sequel is excellent for fans of the broader Alien franchise, the first game, the best horror games, and for those who appreciate the art of video games themselves.
For me, though, I’m conflicted. I am at the same time Real I’m looking forward to it, but also dreading the prospect of an even smarter and scarier enhanced Xenomorph chasing me in another beautifully designed spaceship.
I know, “The player finds the familiar scary horror game scary” isn’t a new concept, but this, combined with a genuine and deep appreciation for environmental design and the way Creative Assembly has provided Sebastopol’s ship with a faithful, detailed representation of the source material means I’m put in an interesting position for the sequel.
In short, Alien: isolation is so well made, designed and executed, but it can often be so cripplingly scary. If the sequel follows suit, I may find myself in a tough spot where I have to balance the desire to explore a breathtakingly detailed ship (or planet?) that’s full of sense of place and excellence in environmental design versus, well, pure and utter terror, and suspense and suspense so thick you can almost touch it.
Hide away
I picked up the first game in 2017, three years after it came out, after hearing about it Strangerfanatics once again talk about how good it is incredibly highly recommend. Of course, I knew it was a super tense survival horror game, but I always love video game interpretations of movies and other media (and vice versa, for the record).
I’m not a big horror fan by any means (in any media), but my aforementioned appreciation for environments, a sense of place, and the craft of placemaking have always helped me dip my toe into the genre – especially in games as Dead space And Alien: isolation. As a result, I vividly remember spending hours examining the retro-futuristic details and technical close-ups, taking screenshots of the signage and materials, and scouring archival logs to immerse myself in the atmosphere and environment of Sevastopol.
But then there was the Xenomorph. The brilliant, horrifying and incredibly smart Xenomorph. This enemy is one of the scariest I’ve encountered in games, and made into the terror, suspense and suspense Insulation. After the first encounter with the Alien, even the parts without his presence were terrifying – in an anticipatory, invisible terror way.
Alien: isolation‘s Xenomorph walks the line between a terrifying enemy and a video game ‘villain’ at powerful and beautiful the perfect thought provoking tension building stalker. The mix of slow, deliberate movements and fast sinking and sprinting, the Giger-inspired form and his perfect build as a ruthless killer, make him a perfect enemy – and one that you can only avoid; it is too powerful to tackle and defeat.
Add to this that even the tools you have to navigate the ships and locate and avoid the alien can turn against you – for example, the motion detector can give away your position due to its volume – And the fact that it ‘learns’ the way you play and can even use noise detection via the microphone in your controller to locate you, and your journey as Ripley through Sebastopol is a sweat-inducing, stressful affair to say the least. I certainly didn’t need the added stress of the Xenomorph learning my cowardly ways to track me down faster or use my panicked cries to kill me sooner.
That was the result of this terror: at one point my Ripley was in a closet for a few weeks. Honestly, it was the safest place for her. Let the Alien wander around Sevastapol at his leisure, and Ripley can stay safe in this desk cabinet. Simple.
Then, even after I finally returned and finished the game, I just had to get it out of my house, and it’s probably my record trade-in after completing a game ever. I haven’t had any desire to play it again, and I never want to feel that kind of stress or tension when I play a game again.
The light at the end of the tunnels
However, what carried me through the game was indeed Sevastopol as a setting for a horror game and the sense of place it achieved through authenticity, detail and place-making. attention to detail that the game has received so much appreciation for over the past decade. There’s a reason why the game’s attention to detail is still praised a decade after its release; a whole book recently appeared dedicated to it.
I am deeply invested and interested in game design environments, so fell back on that – and a sense of dread of finally outwitting and defeating the Xenomorph – to carry on and endure the terror and tension. It’s a nice example of a game’s environmental class and details that are almost the only thing that kept me completing the game; to see it all and drink it all in.
The craftsmanship of the environments goes beyond a basic recognition factor or the pleasant spotting of details that people may also remember from the film series; it’s a functional retro-futuristic sci-fi that you can relate to and use in place of something wild and fantastical; everything is created on a recognizable human scale, and spaces and rooms are designed and decorated accordingly.
This contrast between a fantastic sense of place just about made up for the fear in the first game, but the sharpness of the latter is so sharp that I really hope the sequel can be navigated in a similar (cowardly) way.
So herein lies my current “predicament”: Me already Real I want to play the sequel, but I’m wondering if I should make my character take long breaks in closets again to get through it.