Alien: Isolation

[Sodafish]

God I remember that Jaguar one. It was total shit

 

[Jick Magger]

I tried to play AvP a few months back, but it crashed without fail after completing the first level on both computers I ran it on.

 

[Lyric Suite]

With the gog version?

I have that but never even installed it. In fact, i haven't played this game since, well, 1999. Maybe its time i rectify that.

 

[MapMan]

 

[Unkillable Cat]

It is also a better game, despite being made by an unknown (who apparently hasn't done anything else that is worth a shit) with what i'm assuming was a smaller budget.

Rebellion isn't exactly an "unknown". Sadly their finest hour was AvP (1999), they've done games like Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and the new AvP.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Big and insightful post about Alien

I watched a few streams and shit is wrong right on the start. On Alien:
You have the heavy and tense as fuck foreshadow to the Alien appearance until the chestbuster scene.
The chestbuster scene is the inciting event of the movie, the Alien is stabilished as an evil presense that corrupts their most sacred place, the dining table.
The Nostromo stops being their home and become a technological hallway nightmare, the Alien corrupted their home and assumed control. There is an evil and unstoppable force of nature on the loose.
The characters after being on the defensive for some time, go on the offensive and show they are willing to do anything to survive. They show they are clever, get the flamethrowers and the motion detector and use them to try to fight the alien and have a plan. They prove they are clever, resouceful and creative, worthy of survive and we really hope they succeed even if we suspect they won't.
Dallas abandon the safety of the company of the other characters, underestimating the power of the thing, place the plan in practice with perfection and try to trap it, the thing is too clever and strong now, he pays with his life. After this point, all hope is lost. Any feeling of safety the characters had is deteriorating fast.
The alien starts hunting each one of them, it takes it's time, it's unsure if it acts on instinct but there is the big suspicion that it is more than just a creature. It could be an evil intelligence playing hide and seek with them with them at that point.
The characters seeing the writing on the wall, know it's time to abandon ship. They cling together as they know that separated they are no match against it. They try to get the oxygen to flee.
The alien crush their hopes and show that the evil presense is just too strong now.
Ripley could flee but she does a decision that could mean her death, she activates the self destruct protocol on the ship. She doesn't want the thing escaping the ship and reaching earth and wants revenge for the people it killed. This act makes us respect her and want her to survive.

Is there any gut punching, thrilling, emotional moment or setpiece on the game? Is there any connection with the place and people you are knowing? Ripley feels too much detached from the Sevastopol as a place and the people that live in there. From what I seen so far, the idea of Amanda being an outsider to the Sevastopol seems a dumb decision as a strong theme on Alien is the pervertion of the safety of home that becomes a prison where the charcaters are tortured and "raped" (the Alien has alot of sugestive biological attributes) by an evil presense. Sevastopol doesn't achieve the illusion that Nostromo did, it isn't a place but just a video game set.

I was thinking about this today and managed to cook up a narrative in the space of 5 minutes that would incorporate this better and therefore have stronger connections to the film.

Trigger warning: Wall of text.

Warning, spoilers ahead

The story begins with Amanda Ripley already on the Sevastopol, and has lived there for the past 4 years or somesuch. She's an engineer and is one of the people currently charged with slowly decommissioning the station (due to age) while keeping it intact. The station is Weyland-Yutani built and owned, but is maintained by a subcontractor, Seegson. Seegson oversees the Working Joes, the APOLLO AI core and other day-to-day stuff on the station just like in the game now. (They're cheaper than having W-Y (android) staff doing the same job.) Ripley chose to be on the Sevastopol for the same reason Samuels mentions in the intro: She's still looking for her mother, and Sevastopol is the only station in the region of space where the Nostromo was last known to be.

The game begins just like any other day for Ripley: Get out of bed, have breakfast, download her duty roster of items to find and fix and get to work. This "Day 1" part of the game serves as the tutorial, shows the player Sevastopol station in all its "glory" without interruptions. The player will have to guide Ripley around the station as she has to solve a few menial tasks, she starts with things like a blowtorch, the maintenance jack and possibly even the hacking tuner.

What does this accomplish?

# It explains why the Sevastopol station looks like the Nostromo; it's built by the same manufacturer.
# It establishes that the Sevastopol is Ripley's home, which will tie wonderfully into DeepOcean comments about the Alien film.
# The player gets to explore the station without fear of nasty things coming to get them. This breeds familiarity with the station in players and helps build tension.

---

After a couple of her jobs for the day are finished, a Working Joe comes to find her to inform her that her presence is requested in an Executive meeting. While the WJ escorts her to the meeting the game uses the opportunity to show us the Seegson droids and that they're...not exactly up to par. Anyway, Ripley arrives at the meeting where she is greeted by a Sevastopol station exec, along with Samuels and Taylor. They explain their purpose (which is the same as in the game) but they request Ripley's attendance because they quote company regulations that state that as a next of kin to a crew member, Ripley is entitled to know what's on the flight recorder. (This can be further enforced by Taylor disclosing that they could have done this without her, but it would have required more paperwork. They're using Ripley to cut through the red tape to get quicker access to the flight recorder.)

Next follows a expostionary segment where Ripley, Samuels and Taylor are walking towards the impound storage where the flight recorder is kept. They talk and chat among themselves, we learn more about the station this way as Ripley tells them, the newcomers, about the station, about her home. This is also a great opportunity to inject depth and personality into these characters. S & T state that they came here on the Torrens, which is hired to transport them and to stay at Sevastopol for a maximum duration of one week. The flight recorder came to Sevastopol just like in the game, found by the crew of the Anesidora salvage ship. The Anesidora is currently in drydock while tending to "unspecified damages" and its crew and cargo are currently stored on Sevastopol. This will become important later.

The trio arrives at the impound, sign all the necessary papers and inspect the flight recorder...empty, just like in the game. Someone has violated protocol and accessed the flight recorder. The only possible culprits are the Anesidora crew, so next stop is the Marshal's office to inform him of the crime and have him locate and detain Captain Marlow. But while en route a large explosion rocks the station; some critical system fails and the station suffers critical damage. Ripley is injured and left in a near-unconscious state. We see as Samuels and Taylor try to get her to the San Cristobal Medical Facility, but are refused admittance as the entire facility has been locked down. Ripley blacks out...

...

...when Ripley finally regains consciousness she is alone in a secondary medical facility onboard Sevastopol. There is no one around, it's like the facility is abandoned. Except for being woozy, her wounds have healed and she can move about. Here is where the game starts for real, with Ripley alone aboard a station that's falling apart in every conceivable manner. A station she used to call her home. Just like in the game. She tries to get around the station, finding anyone she knows (including Samuels & Taylor) and getting answers. Turns out she's been unconscious for several days, and a lot has happened in that time. People have begun disappearing on the station, and the Marshall's office has imposed martial law without stating the reason. Survivors have formed into various groups each looking out for themselves. It's Business As Usual for the Seegson droids and Ripley is trying to find answers.

The biggest difference with this section is that Ripley knows some of the survivors she encounters. She may know Axel when she runs into him, and be shocked and surprised by his new behavior and attitude. She'll find other survivors that will only help her to get her out of their way. Internal comms don't work aboard the station so she decides to go to Comms herself to fix it and try to get answers from people. This section is pretty much as in the game, with Ripley dealing with hostile Seegson droids and finally raising S & T, whom have holed up somewhere for the past few days because Taylor was injured during a riot. This prompts Ripley to go into San Cristobal, and from there on right until the segment in the Apollo core things play exactly like in the game, with one exception, more on that later. But from there on things become different.

Ripley learns that W-Y, in order to ensure that the creature is contained, buy out Seegson completely and upload new commands to the Apollo core. (Taylor may be involved in this.) Ripley soon also realizes that Marlow didn't tell her the whole story. While it was true that Foster was attacked by a facehugger, it didn't happen in the derelict, but onboard the Anesidora. Marlow's crew somehow managed to bring back dozens of eggs from the derelict to the Anesidora (they could have realized that they were eggs and put clamps on them, the eggs may have decided not to do anything, pretty much any explanation works here) and it wasn't until aboard the ship that containment failed. One facehugger attacks Foster, while another is killed and the acid eats through the hull, necessetating drydock repairs for the ship. They manage to get themselves aboard the Sevastopol using the flight recorder as a bargaining chip, and not only hide their "cargo" from inspection and discovery, but also Foster's condition. Foster's chestburster emerged only a few hours before the W-Y execs came onboard, and the explosion that injured Ripley could be connected to the Alien's arrival on Sevastopol.

What does this accomplish?

# It gives a better explanation why there are multiple xenos aboard Sevastopol. Trying to shoehorn in the "deleted scene" from Alien as an explanation for the Alien's life cycle is, frankly, preposterous. That scene invalidates the Aliens film entirely and is a huge ret-con. This version of events stays consistent with the Alien life cycle as established by Aliens WITHOUT cramming in an Alien Queen into the game.
# It establishes that there is a finite number of aliens on Sevastopol, but if neither Ripley nor the Marshals can handle ONE Alien, how are they going to handle two dozen of them?
# It makes the reactor purge sequence more relevant as it cuts down the number of aliens on Sevastopol down to maybe around a dozen, which is still more than enough to kill everyone aboard the station.
# Instead of being an impossible predicament, it is now merely hopeless.
# Personally I would make Samuels sacrifice himself in the reactor purge rather in his conversation with Apollo. Samuels may be an android from the company, but surely he must understand and conclude that the danger to the lives on everyone onboard the station is greater than any potential benefit of the creatures. (It may be alright to sacrifice one freigther and its crew for this purpose, but Sevastopol is a SPACE STATION.)
# Taylor, however, has no inhibitor programming to stop her from sacrificing an entire space station for a good profit percentage.

After the purge we learn, just like in the game, that Taylor and Marlow have returned to the Anesidora and have managed to release it from drydock. Ripley makes her way onboard the Anesidora and things play out there as in the game. (If the Anesidora had multiple eggs onboard at one point then there's a logical explanation as to why there are facehuggers onboard the Anesidora, which is NOT the case in the game as is.) Taylor shows her true colours, however, and reveals that she wants to save the xenos for her own personal gain. It would be an interesting point of conflict whether Ripley would be given the choice of leaving her to die or try to save her regardless of this.

Anyway, Ripley barely escapes the Anesidora's destruction and limps back to the Sevastopol as the station starts to lose orbital integrity. This section plays out just like in the game as it's suddenly revealed that the Torrens has been hanging around the whole time, trying to get a response from either Taylor or Samuels before beginning on its return trip to Earth. Ripley returns to Comms, contacts the Torrens (though I'd skip the whole orbital spacewalk thing) and manages to convince them to come pick her up. The rest of the game would play out exactly as it does, though at a more accelerated and less convoluted rate.

What does this accomplish?

# The end segment of the game won't obviously be such a huge clusterfuck.
# It adds character to Taylor, which is badly needed considering how much emphasis she seems to play in the overall story.

Where would this leave the game?

In a much better position than it is now. There are fewer contradictions in the settings and plot developments, and players are given a better chance to become familiar with Sevastopol. If done right, maybe it could incur a sense of loss into the player that Sevastopol is going down at the end of the game.

There is one obvious downside, and that is that the start of the game drags on much longer than it does now. Some will consider this to be a bad thing, but remember that the Alien wasn't revealed in the film until after the one hour mark. That long buildup of suspension is one of the cornerstones of what made the Alien film the legendary icon that it is today.

Thoughts?

 

[chestburster]

wall of texts

I like this narrative it certainly makes more sense. But there are two things I think the game did better:

1. the game starts with Sevastopol already in trouble. So the first two hours of tutorial stuff is still filled with tension. If the game starts with a peaceful Sevastophol, the first two hours would essentially be just boring interactive cutscenes. Unlike in Alien the film, there is no mystery to hold people's attention here; and unlike in the Aliens sequel, the game writer probably won't be able to write cool characters and memorable dialogues (e.g. --Vasquez have you ever been mistaken for a man? --No, have YOU?) So the sooner the alien shows up in the game, the better.

2. in the game, the alien has terrorized the station for maybe months before your arrival. Not days. Sevastopol fells into civil disorder over a long period of time, with a beast hunting people, who don't even know what it is (few survived the alien's attack). This is superbly atmospheric. It's like Newt's line "They MOSTLY come at night. Mostly." I like to imagine how people deal with this kind of horror in a span of several months/weeks. There is rich background story that your imagination (and the game's audiolog/emails) can fill in.

 

[DeepOcean]

Big and insightful post about Alien

I watched a few streams and shit is wrong right on the start. On Alien:
You have the heavy and tense as fuck foreshadow to the Alien appearance until the chestbuster scene.
The chestbuster scene is the inciting event of the movie, the Alien is stabilished as an evil presense that corrupts their most sacred place, the dining table.
The Nostromo stops being their home and become a technological hallway nightmare, the Alien corrupted their home and assumed control. There is an evil and unstoppable force of nature on the loose.
The characters after being on the defensive for some time, go on the offensive and show they are willing to do anything to survive. They show they are clever, get the flamethrowers and the motion detector and use them to try to fight the alien and have a plan. They prove they are clever, resouceful and creative, worthy of survive and we really hope they succeed even if we suspect they won't.
Dallas abandon the safety of the company of the other characters, underestimating the power of the thing, place the plan in practice with perfection and try to trap it, the thing is too clever and strong now, he pays with his life. After this point, all hope is lost. Any feeling of safety the characters had is deteriorating fast.
The alien starts hunting each one of them, it takes it's time, it's unsure if it acts on instinct but there is the big suspicion that it is more than just a creature. It could be an evil intelligence playing hide and seek with them with them at that point.
The characters seeing the writing on the wall, know it's time to abandon ship. They cling together as they know that separated they are no match against it. They try to get the oxygen to flee.
The alien crush their hopes and show that the evil presense is just too strong now.
Ripley could flee but she does a decision that could mean her death, she activates the self destruct protocol on the ship. She doesn't want the thing escaping the ship and reaching earth and wants revenge for the people it killed. This act makes us respect her and want her to survive.

Is there any gut punching, thrilling, emotional moment or setpiece on the game? Is there any connection with the place and people you are knowing? Ripley feels too much detached from the Sevastopol as a place and the people that live in there. From what I seen so far, the idea of Amanda being an outsider to the Sevastopol seems a dumb decision as a strong theme on Alien is the pervertion of the safety of home that becomes a prison where the charcaters are tortured and "raped" (the Alien has alot of sugestive biological attributes) by an evil presense. Sevastopol doesn't achieve the illusion that Nostromo did, it isn't a place but just a video game set.

I was thinking about this today and managed to cook up a narrative in the space of 5 minutes that would incorporate this better and therefore have stronger connections to the film.

Trigger warning: Wall of text.

Warning, spoilers ahead

The story begins with Amanda Ripley already on the Sevastopol, and has lived there for the past 4 years or somesuch. She's an engineer and is one of the people currently charged with slowly decommissioning the station (due to age) while keeping it intact. The station is Weyland-Yutani built and owned, but is maintained by a subcontractor, Seegson. Seegson oversees the Working Joes, the APOLLO AI core and other day-to-day stuff on the station just like in the game now. (They're cheaper than having W-Y (android) staff doing the same job.) Ripley chose to be on the Sevastopol for the same reason Samuels mentions in the intro: She's still looking for her mother, and Sevastopol is the only station in the region of space where the Nostromo's last known position.

The game begins just like any other day for Ripley: Get out of bed, have breakfast, download her duty roster of items to find and fix and get to work. This "Day 1" part of the game serves as the tutorial, shows the player Sevastopol station in all its "glory" without interruptions. The player will have to guide Ripley around the station as she has to solve a few menial tasks, she starts with things like a blowtorch, the maintenance jack and possibly even the hacking tuner.

What does this accomplish?

# It explains why the Sevastopol station looks like the Nostromo; it's built by the same manufacturer.
# It establishes that the Sevastopol is Ripley's home, which will tie wonderfully into DeepOcean comments about the Alien film.
# The player gets to explore the station without fear of nasty things coming to get them. This breeds familiarity with the station in players and helps build tension.

---

After a couple of her jobs for day are finished, a Working Joe comes to find her to inform her that her presence is requested in an Executive meeting. While the WJ escorts her to the meeting the game uses the opportunity to show us the Seegson droids and that they're...not exactly up to par. Anyway, Ripley arrives at the meeting where she is greeted by a Sevastopol station exec, along with Samuels and Taylor. They explain their purpose (which is the same as in the game) but they request Ripley's attendance because they quote company regulations that state that as a next of kin to a crew member, Ripley is entitled to know what's on the flight recorder. (This can be further enforced by Taylor disclosing that they could have done this without her, but it would have required more paperwork. They're using Ripley to cut through the red tape to get quicker access to the flight recorder.)

Next follows a expostionary segment where Ripley, Samuels and Taylor are walking towards the impound storage where the flight recorder is kept. They talk and chat among themselves, we learn more about the station this way as Ripley tells them, the newcomers, about the station, about her home. This is also a great opportunity to inject depth and personality into these characters. S & T state that they came here on the Torrens, which is hired to transport them and to stay at Sevastopol for a maximum duration of one week. The flight recorder came to Sevastopol just like in the game, found by the crew of the Anesidora salvage ship. The Anesidora is currently in drydock while tending to "unspecified damages" and its crew and cargo are currently stored on Sevastopol. This will become important later.

The trio arrives at the impound, sign all the necessary papers and inspect the flight recorder...empty, just like in the game. Someone has violated protocol and accessed the flight recorder. The only possible culprits are the Anesidora crew, so next stop is the Marshall's office to inform him of the crime and have him locate and detain Captain Marlow. But while en route a large explosion rocks the station; some critical system fails and the station suffers critical damage. Ripley is injured and left in a near-unconscious state. We see as Samuels and Taylor try to get her to the San Cristobal Medical Facility, but are refused admittance as the entire facility has been locked down. Ripley blacks out...

...

...when Ripley finally regains consciousness she is alone in a secondary medical facility onboard Sevastopol. There is no one around, it's like the facility is abandoned. Except for being woozy, her wounds have healed and she can move about. Here is where the game starts for real, with Ripley alone aboard a station that's falling apart in every conceivable manner. A station she used to call her home. Just like in the game. She tries to get around the station, finding anyone she knows (including Samuels & Taylor) and getting answers. Turns out she's been unconscious for several days, and a lot has happened in that time. People have begun disappearing on the station, and the Marshall's office has imposed martial law without stating the reason. Survivors have formed into various groups each looking out for themselves. It's Business As Usual for the Seegson droids and Ripley is trying to find answers.

The biggest difference with this section is that Ripley knows some of the survivors she encounters. She may know Axel when she runs into him, and be shocked and surprised by his new behavior and attitude. She'll find other survivors that will only help her to get her out of their way. Internal comms don't work aboard the station so she decides to go to Comms herself to fix it and try to get answers from people. This section is pretty much as in the game, with Ripley dealing with hostile Seegson droids and finally raising S & T, whom have holed up somewhere for the past few days because Taylor was injured during a riot. This prompts Ripley to go into San Cristobal, and from there on right until the segment in the Apollo core things play exactly like in the game, with one exception, more on that later. But from there on things become different.

Ripley learns that W-Y, in order to ensure that the creature is contained, buy out Seegson completely and upload new commands to the Apollo core. (Taylor may be involved in this.) Ripley soon also realizes that Marlow didn't tell her the whole story. While it was true that Foster was attacked by a facehugger, it didn't happen in the derelict, but onboard the Anesidora. Marlow's crew somehow managed to bring back dozens of eggs from the derelict to the Anesidora (they could have realized that they were eggs and put clamps on them, the eggs may have decided not to do anything, pretty much any explanation works here) and it wasn't until aboard the ship that containment failed. One facehugger attacks Foster, while another is killed and the acid eats through the hull, necessetating drydock repairs for the ship. They manage to get themselves aboard the Sevastopol using the flight recorder as a bargaining chip, and not only hide their "cargo" from inspection and discovery, but also Foster's condition. Foster's chestburster emerged only a few hours before the W-Y execs came onboard, and the explosion that injured Ripley could be connected to the Alien's arrival on Sevastopol.

What does this accomplish?

# It gives a better explanation why there are multiple xenos aboard Sevastopol. Trying to shoehorn in the "deleted scene" from Alien as an explanation for the Alien's life cycle is, frankly, preposterous. That scene invalidates the Aliens film entirely and is a huge ret-con. This version of events stays consistent with the Alien life cycle as established by Aliens WITHOUT cramming in an Alien Queen into the game.
# It establishes that there is a finite number of aliens on Sevastopol, but if neither Ripley nor the Marshalls can handle ONE Alien, how are they going to handle two dozen of them?
# It makes the reactor purge sequence more relevant as it cuts down the number of aliens on Sevastopol down to maybe around a dozen, which is still more than enough to kill everyone aboard the station.
# Instead of being an impossible predicament, it is now merely hopeless.
# Personally I would make Samuels sacrifice himself in the reactor purge rather in his conversation with Apollo. Samuels may be an android from the company, but surely he must understand and conclude that the danger to the lives on everyone onboard the station is greater than any potential benefit of the creatures. (It may be alright to sacrifice one freigther and its crew for this purpose, but Sevastopol is a SPACE STATION.)
# Taylor, however, has no inhibitor programming to stop her from sacrificing an entire space station for a good profit percentage.

After the purge we learn, just like in the game, that Taylor and Marlow have returned to the Anesidora and have managed to release it from drydock. Ripley makes her way onboard the Anesidora and things play out there as in the game. (If the Anesidora had multiple eggs onboard at one point then there's a logical explanation as to why there are facehuggers onboard the Anesidora, which is NOT the case in the game as is.) Taylor shows her true colours, however, and reveals that she wants to save the xenos for her own personal gain. It would be an interesting point of conflict whether Ripley would be given the choice of leaving her to die or try to save her regardless of this.

Anyway, Ripley barely escapes the Anesidora's destruction and limps back to the Sevastopol as the station starts to lose orbital integrity. This section plays out just like in the game as it's suddenly revealed that the Torrens has been hanging around the whole time, trying to get a response from either Taylor or Samuels before beginning on its return trip to Earth. Ripley returns to Comms, contacts the Torrens (though I'd skip the whole orbital spacewalk thing) and manages to convince them to come pick her up. The rest of the game would play out exactly as it does, though at a more accelerated and less convoluted rate.

What does this accomplish?

# The end segment of the game won't obviously be such a huge clusterfuck.
# It adds character to Taylor, which is badly needed considering how much emphasis she seems to play in the overall story.

Where would this leave the game?

In a much better position than it is now. There are fewer contradictions in the settings and plot developments, and players are given a better chance to become familiar with Sevastopol. If done right, maybe it could incur a sense of loss into the player that Sevastopol is going down at the end of the game.

There is one obvious downside, and that is that the start of the game drags on much longer than it does now. Some will consider this to be a bad thing, but remember that the Alien wasn't revealed in the film until after the one hour mark. That long buildup of suspension is one of the cornerstones of what made the Alien film the legendary icon that it is today.

Thoughts?

Massive wall of text incomming:

Spoiler

Awesome, the game feels disjointed the way it is, pretty typical AAA design, place random shit together and see if it works. You nailed how it should had been done, the main challenge would be to keep that "Oh boy, things will soon get scary." on the beginning . Maybe delaying that falling unconscious a bit would work out for that, I think it would be important for you getting some first experience with the alien before things blow up. The sense of normalcy contrasted with the suspicion that there is something terribly wrong is delicious, nothing better than hearing that someone from Anesidora was strangely sick and just died and seeing the marshal men behaving strangely, they seem paranoid and even scared while being hostile to you when you ask questions. Like on the movie, the crew saw the strange creature on Kane's face before the dinner, that only made the dinning scene even more nerve wrecking.

There seems to be some unconfortable feeling on the station, the higher ups on the station are acting tense and people seem to be noticing their strange behavior and commenting on that. You will get to hear all that juicy foreshadowing. On the confusion, the higher ups don't care in changing you schedule, you have to go on a section of the station that is going to be decomissioned while you have all that juicy foreshadowing on your head that there is something wrong and has something to do with the death of the guy from Anesidora.

There should a transition between the working parts of the station and the deactivated bits, as soon as you open the door, on your side there is light and a clean space. In the other side of the door, there is darkness and a technological hellscape of disasembled parts with cables, dirty looking walls, a mess. You get in there to work and while I hate scripted events, now would be a good time to use one, you get in there on darkness while after some time you start hearing some sounds, Ripley asks if there is someone in there with her. While you are in there for some time, you hear the order to suspend all the work on the unhabited areas of the Sevastopol on your comm and that they are going to be locked down, the excuse is some leaking of gas or any bullshit. The trouble is that you are going to be locked out with the alien.

You start hearing some strange noises and shadows moving, when you get your motion detector it shows something moving. You get the feeling of getting the hell out of there, it appears hat while you retreat, the thing moves to intercept your exit, showing intelligence. After the first stealth section almost on complete darkness, Amanda run to the exit and pound the door for help. You hear a discussion on the other side with the guards debating if they should open the door or not. The thing locked in there with you seems to notice you and you see a lightining fast dot on your movement tracker going on your direction and you only see darkness. When it is getting close, one of the guards after shouting to the others, opens the door and save your life.

They all point their revolvers in the darkness but are as scared as you and Amanda get out of that hellhole to "safety". When you go after the higher ups for some answers for what the hell is going on, there is a explosion and you fall down unconscious. The first mission after when you wake up is to get out of the medical bay and fix the comms and get your stuff on your room, the trouble is that the only people you meet are on a sort of improvised enclave, it is a hell to get in there but they help you. Once you get in there and say your plans, they strongly discourage you leaving them.

You feel that the once friendly parts of the station are now dangerous, people try to convince you not to go(they seem as happy of meeting you as you are of meeting someone) and say it is certain death, nobody knows what is going on but it is clear that the marshal lost control, they say you can stay with them and you will be safer but you feel they are doomed. The only two flame throwers and a revolver with the blocked doors don't seem all that confidence inspiring defense after your previous experience.There is a guy with a revolver that after looking for his gun for a few seconds, decides to give it to you to make you safer(build symphaty).Amanda promises to help them out and return there if she discovers what is going on(they will all be brutally murdered, of course). You should feel the plunging on the unknown as the people look at you as if you are dead already and when they block all the exits again, you are alone again on the dark with faint red alarm lights everywhere, now the game really start.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

chestburster Yes, getting the game off to a good start is the biggest problem with this version. It WILL take too long. I understand perfectly that many will want to cut that time down, but how?

As for the time period...yes, more time will be needed for Sevastopol to deteriorate, but the dates in Alien Isolation (every log has a timestamp) point to a month at the MOST having passed since the Alien got on board until the arrival of the Torrens, though I think 3 weeks is the actual time elapsed.

DeepOcean Interesting. It COULD work having Amanda be doing her "chores" when suddenly she has an encounter with the Alien out of the blue that she barely escapes from, and she mentions to everyone that there's a creature on the station but no one believes her (though Taylor would obviously make a note and use an opportunity to contact W-Y). This helps introduce the tension and scare parts MUCH earlier than in my draft and would help loads with the pacing. The draft could even be altered to make it so that the trio are on their way to Waits to inform him about the flight recorder AND the alien sighting when all hell breaks loose.

But in other news, Sega has just announced what will be featured in the first post-release DLC scheduled for Oct. 28th: A storyline DLC called "Corporate Lockdown", some new survivor maps and a new "Gauntlet mode":

In ‘Corporate Lockdown’, you step in to the shoes of Ransome, a Seegson Executive. On discovering that he’s been abandoned by his paymasters and aware that the Torrens is on the way, he decides to hitch a ride and escape, taking with him valuable decoded Nostromo data.Before he does this, however, there are still a few loose ends he wants to tidy up...

Across three new challenging, tense and terrifying maps, ‘Severance’, ‘Scorched Earth’ and ‘Loose Ends’, you’ll be pitted against other players on our online leaderboards. Will you escape the station in the fastest time possible? Or achieve the highest score with the side quests and hidden bonus objectives to claim the elevated top positions?

New to ‘Corporate Lockdown’ is also Gauntlet Mode. You’ll be challenged to top the Gantlet Mode leaderboards by completing all three challenge maps back to back – without dying. Will you succeed?

‘Corporate Lockdown’ will be available to download online for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3 and PC from October 28th, with four more packs to follow – ‘Trauma’, ‘Safe Haven’, ‘Lost Contact’ and ‘The Trigger’.

...that actually makes 6 DLCs, not the previously announced 5. Unless Sega counts "Last Survivor" and "Crew Expendable" as one DLC.

 

[chestburster]

It COULD work having Amanda be doing her "chores" when suddenly she has an encounter with the Alien out of the blue that she barely escapes from, and she mentions to everyone that there's a creature on the station but no one believes her (though Taylor would obviously make a note and use an opportunity to contact W-Y). This helps introduce the tension and scare parts MUCH earlier than in my draft and would help loads with the pacing. The draft could even be altered to make it so that the trio are on their way to Waits to inform him about the flight recorder AND the alien sighting when all hell breaks loose.

Which reminds me, you know what would be really interesting, a Riddick Escape from Butcher Bay/Alien mash-up. There is no way Amanda would be able to escape from an Alien encounter. She's nothing special. But Riddick can. Hell the Escape from Butcher Bay even had similar mechanisms to A:I (stealth, vent crawling, weak guns, revisiting previously explored maps, etc.). Just put Riddick in a prison, an Alien got into the prison, Riddick escapes from an encounter, no one believes him, now he must escape from both the prison AND the Alien.

Actually this is the plot of David Twhoy's unused script for Alien 3.

 

[Higher Animal]

Are they right though?

They sound like stupid faggots to me. Their opinion is no different from IGN.

 

[Jick Magger]

I think they were too hard on it, but overall I agreed with alot of their points, especially in regards to the length, pacing, and story. Their comments near the end about how this game symbolizes the 'end' of the game industry did come off as a bit tryhard to me, though. Sure, I think this game's getting alot of unwarranted praise heaped upon it, and sure, I think this is probably due to the fact that this game is basically one giant apology for Aliens: Colonial Marines, but as it stands its a solid 6/10 with me. Probably would've been a 7 or an 8 if it ended at around 5 hours earlier, but still worth a look at during the sales.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

Warning, spoilers ahead

# It gives a better explanation why there are multiple xenos aboard Sevastopol. Trying to shoehorn in the "deleted scene" from Alien as an explanation for the Alien's life cycle is, frankly, preposterous. That scene invalidates the Aliens film entirely and is a huge ret-con. This version of events stays consistent with the Alien life cycle as established by Aliens WITHOUT cramming in an Alien Queen into the game.

Spoiler

How the apparently initially sole alien reproduced aboard the Sevastopol is bound to spawn debate amongst fans. I think it's an interesting one. A couple thoughts on this. We could assume that CA only multiplied the Alien thread to ramp up the climax towards the end of the game and not bother with continuity -- what some of here would consider a typical "gamey" thing. However, looking straight at the evidence, there is actually none of the egg morphing going on in any part of the game, and CA had plenty opportunity to show it off. The portrayal of the Alien itself is certainly much more "Alien" than "Aliens" in a lot of ways (even though, probably for playability reasons, it's never quite the creepy stalker it is in the actual film). However the game tiptoes the "issue" and actually never really opts for a straight retcon of Aliens, nor does it fully embrace Alien either. Otherwise we'd seen the egg morphing actually, happening. There's plenty of hosts in the hive, but none of them looked any different to what you get to see in Aliens. Meaning that, maybe they kept some ambiguity for a reason.

A couple of questions: Is it established in any film how a queen actually gets to be? Some of the franchise "fluff"; like novels and comics and whatnot have some theories, some actually have it that when an alien is alone, it would transform hosts into eggs until a queen is born, melting both means of reproduction from the original movie and the sequel, depending on the situation at hand. Ripley carries a queen inside her in Alien³, and I think there were even parts in the script or even props that hinted at there being a "super face hugger" that implanted it, but that's all there is to it.

Expanding on that: The game never says there isn't a queen present (some claim they heard screams coming from off-screen that would sound very Aliens Queen-ish in what brief bit you get to see in the hive section, but I can't tell). Nor does it say there is one either. Interestingly, it also doesn't claim that you had been hunted by one and the same alien all along. I will eventually replay this, also for getting some missing logs, but I remember I stumbled upon another opened chest a good chunk before the plot twist beneath the Apollo core.

Going further, it also never says much about the actual first alien. Going by Alien³, that could have been a queen already, for instance. In any case, I certainly don't think CA necessarily just ret-conned Aliens in terms of the life-cycle (as far as the Alien itself is concerned, they did by making it unstoppable, but then that was part of the reason going back to the original vision in the first place -- that lone, unstoppable killing organism). If they did want to do that, they had shown the egg morphing straight (which Scott had also re-inserted into the Alien Director's Cut, too. Plenty of opportunity to straight out ret-con. However, the egg morphing isn't the only theory that would plausibly explain the nest under the reactor, just saying.

Thinking about it, keeping this ambitious would fit in with CA's goal to re-mistify some of it all, rather than linking it to mere animals we know on Earth and further exploiting all the details, opening it up to a more scientific debate in which all the dots can be connected, and after which what was once alien is only really "Alien" by its honorable namesake. Personally I don't care much about 100% continuity, and that's because the movies are all so different themselves already. They might all tell the story of Ripley, but other than that the actual Aliens are portrayed very very differently in each film.

[/spoiler]

.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Post

Spoiler

No, nowhere is it directly explained how an Alien Queen comes to be. The "explanation" from Alien 3 is unverified, i.e. it's one of the huge gaping BLEEDING plot points of the film. So there IS ambiguity there.

Looking back at the sequence (I just returned to the game after a week's hiatus and just finished the Reactor segment) I see that CA chose to go with "vaguely ambiguous" rather than choose one canon explanation over the other about how come there is a nest aboard the Sevastopol.

Frankly, I think they were just a bunch of lazy bastards. Case in point:

Ripley takes an ambulance shuttle to the Anesidora. We see the shuttle undock from Sevastopol, but not dock aboard the Anesidora. Likewise we don't see the shuttle undock from Anesidora, escape the explosion of the Anesidora, nor dock again at Sevastopol. No cutscenes, no QTEs required, there's just a void there.

Speaking of the Anesidora, I did an experiment. On purpose, while departing the Anesidora, I walked back to the shuttle real casual-like, as if I was just returning to my car. No problems, no injury. Looking back I should have crawled back, or even moonwalked back to the shuttle, and I would STILL have made it back without harm. Oh, scripted sequence, why must you be so bad?

Now I'm at the "freeroam" segment of the game, and I can finally track down those missing thingies.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Flamethrower makes the Alien much more manageable.

 

[Sodafish]

Flamethrower makes the Alien much more manageable.

Unless you're in a vent with it. Then you're still fucked.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Flamethrower makes the Alien much more manageable.

Unless you're in a vent with it. Then you're still fucked.

Untrue. I was in a vent with the Alien the other day and still managed to drive it away (playing on Hard). Just don't try and use it point blank or he'll kill you anyways.

 

[Sodafish]

Flamethrower makes the Alien much more manageable.

Unless you're in a vent with it. Then you're still fucked.

Untrue. I was in a vent with the Alien the other day and still managed to drive it away (playing on Hard). Just don't try and use it point blank or he'll kill you anyways.

Hmmm OK. Every time I tried it he killed me, but it was when he would come round a corner close to me, so maybe it doesn't work then.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Flamethrower makes the Alien much more manageable.

Unless you're in a vent with it. Then you're still fucked.

Untrue. I was in a vent with the Alien the other day and still managed to drive it away (playing on Hard). Just don't try and use it point blank or he'll kill you anyways.

Hmmm OK. Every time I tried it he killed me, but it was when he would come round a corner close to me, so maybe it doesn't work then.

Yeah if you go around a corner and try and use it he'll get you. In the vents you NEED to be at a distance compared than in non-vent places. His behavior is much more binary in the vents: he'll either come right at you or go away. He won't stop in his tracks out of fear of a burst of flame in the vents. I believe you also need to use more flamer fuel (confirm/deny?) while in the vents.

It's best to minimize vent usage when the Alien is around and looking for you.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

In vents it takes a LOT more flaming to drive off the Alien. I found this out the hard way.

In other news, I finished my second playthrough of the game. Found all ID tags, all Nostromo logs and all Sevastopol logs but one. Turns out there's one log (which included a password for a loot locker) which is only handed out RANDOMLY by talking to innocent humans and warning them about the creature.

Fortunately the "Voices of Sevastopol" achievement is bugged so that it only counts the player having collected 151 logs, not ALL 151 logs.

But now I'm done with this game. I'm gonna check out the upcoming DLC's, but the main campaign can go suck a facehugger for all I care.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I did a little retrospective, read abit about the game on other forums - how did I NOT spot the sound bug? When all the sfx are switched out for other sounds. Like suddenly every sound is like Ripley is a sloshing barrel of water, or her footsteps sounds like the Alien is dropping out of the vent. It's happened countless times, but for some retarded reason I never thought to attribute it to a bug.

This also reminded me about another funny bug. If you go the launch bay for the ambulance shuttle AFTER you've taken it and returned to the Sevastopol, and look out the window, you see a couple of light just floating there in space. And if you stand in JUST the right place, a part of Sevastopol will flicker in and out.

And the game got patched today, but all it seems to have done is patched the main .exe file. Nothing else changed, no patch notes, no noticeable changes found.

Weird.

 

[Sodafish]

Never had that sound bug. The ones I had were when the saves on certain levels wouldn't load unless the game was run in administrator mode, and the random crashes when trying to reload after dying (this latter one was very common).

 

[Curious_Tongue]

 

[MapMan]

I've never in my life watched a video like that. Who the fuck watches that? The guy's annoying as hell.

 

[Robert Jarzebina]

Welcome to internet, sir.