We all might have sucked our teeth when we heard Sega had another Alien related game in development – the memory of Aliens: Colonial Marines is just too fresh – but it sounds like the publisher might have listened when the world and his dog said they hated what the franchise had become. It is only rumours for now, but one anonymous source is claiming that the new game, Isolation, has survival horror elements and is more akin to Bioshock and Dishonoured, than an alien meat grinder.
According to the Kotaku source, the game is indeed being made by Total War developer, The Creative Assembly, who's also busy working on a Warhammer fantasy inspired RTS. While it's a great studio, with a long history of great games behind it, it's been a long time since it did anything but strategy, so this could be interesting.
Isolation supposedly stars Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Ellen Ripley that we only hear about as having died between the first two movies while Sigourney Weaver's character is floating around in space having a laugh.
No, not that offspring… the 100 per cent human one
Amanda will spend much of the game being pursued by a single Alien on a single space station, which already makes this sound like a better game. While Aliens is a more badass title than any of the others in the series, the first Alien really nailed survival horror and it'd be interesting to see that in a game setting. The downside is that this is an FPS, so Sega wants something for you to shoot at. If you aren't mowing down aliens, what is it you will be hip firing into?
Not clone soldiers, which was my first thought, but “clones and soldiers.” Clones could be interesting and potentially pretty terrifying if they're anything like the abominations we saw in the abomination that was, Alien Resurrection. A “kill me,” scene in video game form with some next-gen graphics could be horrific to look at.
The only downside to this information – other than not all of it being welcome – is that it's about six months old, but it does at least sound like Sega has taken the negative backlash to ACM on its chin and is doing something about it. Fingers crossed it keeps doing so with Alien: Isolation and keeps shooting to a minimum.
KitGuru Says: I'm interesting to see what Sega/Creative Assembly can do with the new material too. Amanda has never been talked about much, so a daring rescue mission to find her mother could be an intriguing story to add to the canon.