Rumor: Alien: Isolation Will Feature Ripley's Daughter and Just One Alien

[Andy Chalk]

Rumor: Alien: Isolation Will Feature Ripley's Daughter and Just One Alien

The word on the street is that Alien: Isolation, rumored to be the next game in the Alien franchise, will be set on a single space station and focus on Ellen Ripley's daughter Amanda.

We Metacritic [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/128864-Trademark-Suggests-More-Aliens-Despite-Colonial-Marines-Debacle]. But Kotaku says that according to its source, the game is in fact happening, and that it will be a little different than Alien shooters that have preceded it.

Alien: Isolation will star Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen, who was a child when her mother disappeared after the incident aboard the Nostromo and died three years before she was found. Most or all of the game will be spent aboard a space station, and there will be only one xenomorph for most of it; clones and soldiers will comprise the bulk of the game's enemies. Stealth and horror will both feature prominently in Isolation, which the source said will be "heavily inspired" by the original Alien.

Perhaps most importantly, even though it probably goes without saying, Sega has looked very closely at the failure of Aliens: Colonial Marines to figure out what went wrong, and is determined to do better with Alien: Isolation.

It's all just rumor at this point and Kotaku noted that some of the information is six months old, which is more than enough time for things to change, but if Sega is serious about restoring respectability to the franchise it needs to either wait ten years for the Colonial Marines business to blow over, or do something genuinely and dramatically different. An Alien game that's more like Alien than Aliens? That might just do it - if it's done right.

Source: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/source-the-next-aliens-game-stars-ellen-ripleys-daugh-1449318113]


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[CJ1145]

Why not just make it a full-on horror game instead of trying to be an action title? The initial success of Alien and then Aliens was in the fact that it wasn't trying for repeat performances. Alien was a great horror movie, so Aliens focused on more action. Having multiple enemies seems pointless, especially if we're trying to make it a horror game. Here's a good rule of thumb I've found:

If more than five enemies die at the hands of the character you control, it's no longer a horror game. You can't believably make the player feel scared and vulnerable by letting them eviscerate multiple opponents, because they start to feel invincible. If you just have a single enemy, a single alien who relentlessly hunts you, and no matter what, you just can't keep down I think you'd be more on track for a genuinely scary Alien title.

 

[Rad Party God]

Silly Sega, there's already a better game that's about to release pretty soon.

 

[Werewolfkid]

Not sure what to think about this. On the one hand, I have always wanted a pure survival horror game set in the Alien Universe, because all the Alien games seem unable to divorce themselves from Aliens and the Space Marine and it would be nice to finally have a game that went back to the tone of the movie that started it all. On the other hand, the pure awfulness that was Alien Colonial Marines is too big a scandal to ignore and it has made it impossible to trust anyone involved with its creation. I'll be cautiously optimistic, but there is no way in hell am I going to even consider buying this game until someone I trust can tell me that the game isn't yet another piece of crap being passed off as a good game.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Well fuck, there goes my hope of playing as an alien.

It's probably going to be a "survival-horror" in that you have ammo and guns and you shoot things or in other words not a survival horror at all. Most likely won't be as bad as A:CM but probably won't be that great either. Not really anything out of the ordinary.

 

[Mahorfeus]

I really hope that the Amanda Ripley stuff is just a rumor. The Ripley family bloodline doesn't need some contrived space destiny, and the series has already been retconned to hell. The idea that she died of old age without ever getting to see her mother again was a tragic touch that I think just needs to be left alone. Unless that was just an elaborate cover story made up by Weyland-Yutani.[/eyeroll]

I do however, like the idea of the game following the original Alien formula. It's hard to feel helpless against a xenomorph when you and your buddies can mow down swarms of them.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Really now, making a great Aliens game shouldn't be hard, all they need to do is make a HD remake of Alien Resurrection on the PS1.

It's dark, the ship is falling apart, there's smoke and shit leaking out the pipes everywhere, you have a rifle, but you've only got twenty rounds, at the other end of the section something twitches, it could have been that steam pipe breaking, it might have been something else, you sit in total silence and scrutinise the darkness, definitely a steam pipe, you decide to press on... and your motion tracker chirps into life.

I mean it's so easy, why do developers keep trying to reinvent the wheel with Aliens and Call of Duty-ise it? I guess an Amnesia style game could work, but I think the old school horror game motto of "Twenty monsters, nineteen bullets," should be followed instead.

 

[Bleidd Whitefalcon]

EDIT: Why not just go back to Obsidian's Aliens RPG? It looked awesome.

I'm not sure Sega would want to work with Obsidian again after Alpha Protocol bombed

 

[Stevepinto3]

Yeah, I liked what I was reading up until "clones and soldiers will comprise the bulk of the game's enemies." Why? Weyland-Yutani is the least interesting thing about the Alien franchise, they're just pointlessly evil/stupid/incompetent.

Survival horror with a xenomorph as the main threat could carry the game alone. Already this has the stink of a game that's trying to have it both ways. The biggest joke here is that horror games have been thriving in the indie scene ever since Amnesia. Horror fans have more options now, so they won't want a watered down horror/action game, and people that want action games won't bother with a game that looks like horror (or with an Alien game after Colonial Marines).

 

[Frezzato]

Eeeh, I dont think I like it featuring Ripley's daughter. Stuff like that always makes the universe feel small, and smacks too much of destiny. It's what I don't like about the new Star Wars movies featuring the Skywalker kids (And also JJ Abrams). There's an entire universe of heroes and villians. Why not give some of them the spotlight for a bit.

I love Ripley, but a strong female character facing off against xenomorphs doesn't need to be related to Ripley, does she?

EDIT: Why not just go back to Obsidian's Aliens RPG? It looked awesome.

Holy crap, that's exactly the kind of astute comment that nobody at Sega wants to hear. And upon reflection, your comment is so matter-of-fact and full of common sense that it's entirely likely that Sega will go ahead and use Ripley's daughter (Amanda Ripley McClaren) anyway.

I don't think I'm being cynical, I just think that corporations nowadays probably rely on only the stupidest, most outdated marketing techniques to make major decisions (see: Microsoft).

I imagine that the planning that led to this tentative announcement was comprised mainly of checkboxes, read by young marketing teams that had no idea what this "alien" series is all about.

 

[Doopliss64]

I was on board until he whole "soldiers and clones" thing. What's wrong with just having one alien and ONLY one alien? That's such a great idea! I'm picturing a 2-3 hour Slender-esque adventure with a slow tension build and lots of replay value, what with the alien's movements being based on AI instead of scripting. I mean, it would be tough to pull off, but with some clever pacing it could work. Not that Sega has the balls to make a game without large amounts of mooks to thoughtlessly kill.

I mean, God forbid we get a real horror game, with, like, scares and atmosphere and stuff. It's not like Alien is a horror franchise or anything.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I could almost see this playing out like the first FEAR game- where you spend the bulk of your time fighting human mooks of various persuasions, but once in a while find yourself the plaything of a nigh-unstoppable nightmarish creature.

If handled right, that could actually be good... though that's a pretty big "if".

 

[marurder]

A better game would drop any reference to Ripley. Have a game where we ARE the evil corp soldier who knows how to screw over the good guys in an effort to catch the alien (alive).

 

[rofltehcat]

I'm sure they'll have awesome demonstration footage to show off!

 

[Neta]

Will she die at the end of the game to explain why she didn't live past 70 in a future where we have space travel but no geriatric care?

Perhaps in the future, 70 is the new 35 and she was in the prime of her alien-fighting life?