Game Discussion of the Week: Alien: Isolation

MeleeMaestro - Too much work last month, mate. I couldn't post as much as I wanted, so Alien just fell through the cracks. Let me borrow some of your points to comment on it:

The game is not perfect, but those points are not really a problem:

1. It's not like that. The impression that the game gives is that the Alien is always moving through the vents, as he is actively hunting its prey. He will sometimes come out - if he is nearby and the player makes noise, that's almost guaranteed, and he will come from a nearby vent; if not, he might come out from a random vent, look around for a bit (but not directly looking for the player character), then go away faster. Actually, except for scripted sections, it's very rare to see the Alien coming out without being attracted by noise. He sometimes will also come out attracted by other humans, that's even a legitimate way to get rid of human enemies - making noise to attract the Alien. The AI is quite inventive and doesn't feel tedious or unrealistic at all, especially since it has a few tricks up its sleeve: if you always use the same strategy, it will start picking up on it, like when I thought it was safe to hide in vents or under the tables and then the Alien started to look at those places. You have to keep changing your strategies, it's a very tense ordeal. Besides, the Alien is not the only enemy - humans and androids demand different strategies, so it doesn't get tedious in this aspect.

2. While I do agree that the emphasis on hiding could be toned down a bit, it is overstated by some players. The Alien isn't there in every section (the Alien itself is an unusual encounter for most of the game; I think the slower and dumber androids are a more common threat for a long time), and some levels are clearly focused on pure exploration. It's not very different from other stealth games in this regard. Besides, at some point, Ripley gets a flamethrower that, used wisely, scares the Alien for a time. That lets you explore more without having to hide even in sections with the Alien actively hunting Ripley.

3. If anything, the AI makes the game feel very unscripted. I only played the game on hard mode, and I remember playing a particularly difficult section over and over and it didn't feel tedious because every time I tried a different strategy and the AI was reacting differently.

That said, the game definitely has its share of real problems:

1. The story always felt too "fanfic" to me. Instead of going with completely new characters, they decided that you would play as "Amanda Ripley, the courageous daughter of Ellen Ripley!!!!11!!!1!" It's like that Half-Life parody fanfic starring "JOHN Freeman, Gordon Freeman's brother!!!" I won't get much into it to avoid spoilers, but they tried to find a way to insert places and characters from the Alien franchise and, while the game is not badly written, this aspect feels a bit corny.

2. It's too long. There's a particularly great section with a nicely built reveal and an absurdly tense mission, and then the game goes on for eight more hours or so without ever coming even close to that moment - so it just feels like the game is dragging on a bit. Besides, by then I got used to the AI quirks, so it was not surprising me as much. The game is around 20h long; I think it would be great being between 10-12.

3. One of the scripted Alien encounters early on was very badly designed, having to do a badly designed objective in a small area with the Alien chasing you non-stop - it's particularly bad because it's one of the very first encounters (I think it was a medical section or something). I remember I had to look at a board for a time so the game could register that Ripley had seen a name or something, but that wasn't very clear and the game had some trouble registering that action. It was the single most infuriating part in the whole game. As it was early in the game, I can see how some people would just give up on it and think the game was badly designed.

Now, even with those problems, I sincerely think of this game as the best thing to ever happen to the Alien franchise since Aliens. Even with the "fanfic" aspects of the story, they got right the setting, atmosphere and the Alien behaviour itself, besides being the first time that the Alien manages to actually be scary since the first movie. The ship, Sevastopol, is one of those places like Bioshock's Rapture: it suggests a lot of backstory just by how it's designed and you can piece together what must have happened there during the initial Alien attack, it's a very convincing place.