Alien: Isolation Reveal Preview

[Proverbial Jon]

Also, I'm calling bullshit on the final scene of that video. If Ripley is sucked out an airlock into space she'd have been frozen dead in the few seconds of space we were shown before the video cut out. They better have a good explanation for that one.

Not sure how true it is, but I remember hearing that you would actually have a hard time freezing to death in space, since it's a vacuum, and therefore there's nowhere for your body heat to actually go.

That's an interesting point I had not considered. Curse you science fiction movies for inappropriately portraying exposure to the vacuum!

Research! Wikipedia seems to think that the decompression itself is more deadly, essentially sucking the oxygen from you and collapsing your lungs. Grisly.

 

[Chester Rabbit]

Yeah it would be really easy to get excited over this. They seem to understand that this creature and property would better suit a horror game than it would a shooter.
It looks like they are on the right track.

Then again it?s looked like that before hasn?t it? And I don?t just mean with CM. It?s not like Gearbox were the only ones to completely botch up an Aliens game. Aside from AVP2 I can?t really think any other Alien game I would call good.

Sorry but until they give me a demo I?ll just roll my eyes and say shut up and earn my money guys.

 

[Right Hook]

My only gripe is that the main character is Ripley's daughter. Just, why? That's so dumb! Ripley didn't have some special genetics that made her better suited to fighting xenomorphs (At least in the first three...), and Aliens really seemed to imply that Amanda lived a long, happy, boring life.

I agree that it is sort of a stretch to except Ripley's daughter to end up dealing with this but it isn't like she's fighting the thing anyway, she's hiding, her mothers horrible legacy scarred her life, making the Alien universe (somehow) more tragic than it already is. As for the impression of a happy, boring life? Who did we hear this from? BURKE. Who does Burke work for? We are told that Amanda arrives on station with a team from Weyland Yutani. You really think they'd tell Ripley about this or that they'd tell the truth about anything?

AVP, the 1999 one, was scary to an extent.
You, alone, with your gun and simply not enough light. Aliens can come from any vent or spawn location, your ammo is limited, your light also is limited, you can not simply outsneak them (and how do you hide from a species that sees your IR signature anyway...). You HAVE to fight. That gets the heart pounding - the combination of setup, atmosphere and the ever present specter of YOU being inadequate at shooting aliens fast enough before they claw your heart out of your torso.


Its always scarier if you have the impression of being able to fight.

AVP 1999 is a sweet game, I think non-fighting horror can work but I completely agree that having a weapon doesn't kill the tension if it is done right. My first playthrough of Resident Evil 4 can attest to that, half a clip of ammo for a weak pistol, eight foreign dudes in robes slowly stalking towards me with pointy objects, only way through is to kill them all, I shudder at the memory.

 

[Agayek]

Also, I'm calling bullshit on the final scene of that video. If Ripley is sucked out an airlock into space she'd have been frozen dead in the few seconds of space we were shown before the video cut out. They better have a good explanation for that one.

Not in the slightest. It takes a very long time for things to cool in space, as there's no medium by which to transfer the heat, it can only be emitted by radiation. That's actually one of the major hurdles of space travel (and especially space warfare). The craft will keep building up heat the more energy is used inside it and without a very efficient way to handle that build up, it can easily reach levels that damage components or crew. In this case, that means, depending on her metabolism and state of exertion, she's more likely to overheat than freeze.

Being exposed to the vacuum of space does terrible things to the human body, such as causing your blood to boil (potentially going so far as bursting your eyes, if your blood pressure is high enough), and you will suffocate in short order, but you're not going to freeze to death.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

Now this here ladies and gentlemen, is an interesting concept and true to the franchise. Where I could smell the shit from Colonial Marines from a hundred miles away I think this can truly do very well.

You know game devs, if I wanted to play amnesia twenty times I could just do that, you don't need to all jump up and make the exact same game.

Amnesia doesn't have just one creature. Nor does it pay as much attention to the actual creatures in the narrative.

It's the Alien franchise, if anything has the right to a game that puts that creature in a special role it's that one.
Something that has been totally ignored by most of the previous games, as you slaughtered the things by the millions.

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

So there's a competent studio working on this one, even if they have previously focused on strategy games so this will be kind of new for them.

What really caught me off guard was the fact that this is a AAA release... and it's a survival horror title. As in a proper survival horror, not a shooter with monsters jumping out of closets. That to me is pretty amazing. It's a tremendous oportunity for this industry to get something right. To release a niche title, fairly unique in what it is, in a genre that was thought to be dead (at least when AAA was concerned). If they get this right, it's going to mean much more than just a good game. It's going to be a good aliens game. It's going to be the first proper AAA survival horror in years. It's going to become an example for a lot of other developers, a new direction in which the industry might start heading.

just... please don't suck...

 

[Barbas]

The article is entertaining and the game looks interesting, but we shall see...we shall see.....

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

She flushed herself out of an airlock, without a suit.

Well she got off the station at least.

 

[Darkbladex96]

Why can't we hit the sweet spot like Dead Space 2, but a little less action? God. I'm tired of all these intriguing games that go the hide, run, run, run more gameplay route. I love the aliens franchise, but I love all of it. Parts of the game being super survival mode and helpless would be awesome, but you also need your pulse rifles, and smart guns.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

Oh man, that looks so cool, but I'm going to go with the cautious crowd on this one (which looks like most of us) and wait for some reviews.

 

[The Salty Vulcan]

Wow another alien game yay...

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

I'm trying to be cautiously optimistic, but I'm extremely excited in spite of myself.

That the first look that any journos seem to have gotten (OK, so I've only read this and PC Gamer's coverage) is actually playing the game (as in, they weren't shown it, but actually played it) makes me believe that SEGA has learned from what Gearbox did with CM...

 

[white_wolf]

They removed the clone soldiers! Or atleast I hope they did I don't want to have to be fighting an army of clone soilders that was a very dumb thing. If it remains a survival horror then that would be great looking at the footage it reminds me when I played the alien trilogy on the genesis now it'll be seen if she's too much of a crying wuss or a unfeeling brick for main lead personas I'm hoping that she'll react to things when they're appropriate like falling from really high places you'd imagine she'd scream some or if she sees the alien she might gasp I just get really annoyed that my FPleads are either super silent bricks or way to over emotional for what is happening on screen.

 

[Jingle Fett]

Two words...

Oculus Rift.

Oh man, that could be terrifying...

 

[VoidWanderer]

Well I think I speak for a good number of us who would just like to say SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

I thought it was 'Shut up and leave my franchise alone!'

But, then again, play a single character going up against a naturally stealthy enemy with little to no way to defend yourself.

"Keep talking and maybe we will buy it."

 

[Revolutionary]

Please don't be another colonial marines style bait-and-switch.
Please don't be another colonial marines style bait-and-switch.
Man I want this to be good.

 

[ckam]

I think that Marines has taught all of us to never trust a trailer, especially Alien-related trailers.

 

[Olas]

Why does there always have to be either an army of aliens or one alien? Can't there be a middleground? How about, I don't know, a few aliens? It's almost like the Alien series is actually 2 series, one where xenomorphs are cannon fodder that can be killed with a few bullets and one where they're unstoppable death machines. It just feels inconsistent.

Whatever, these guys seem to know what they're doing, however I'm a bit worried about how much this game seems to be trying to hump the original movie's leg. Isn't it enough that we're following the original thematically? Do we really have to fill the game with constant direct references to the original all the way down to the knick-knacks on tables? It just kinda feels like they're trying to play it safe and familiar rather than be creative.

 

[DocZombie]

> snip <

Probably because it might not be, unlike Colonial Marines, which IS.

Yeah, I get that - but since retcon-ing the canon with A:CM worked out SO well, I'm glad they're not (yet) trying to with Isolation...

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Yes, but then the preview of Aliens Colonial Marines looked awesome, and remember what happened with that? Cant get excited until a proper review, hell even a review with Angry Joe being positive about it would be a good starting point.