I’m a huge Alien fan, and I’ve rewatched the movies dozens of times. I’m in love with this universe and how the retrofuturistic sci-fi environments look. When Alien Isolation came out, it was instantly one of my favourite games ever, and I could walk around the Sevastopol station for hours on end. When Alien Isolation 2 was confirmed, I screamed like a fangirl.
From the first footage shown, it looked like the game would take place on Earth and not so much on a spaceship. But even in this short demo, we only walked around the planet’s surface (definitely not Earth, just similar biomes with more storms) for a few short moments before we entered a crashed science unit, detached and evacuated from Sevastopol station. It looked amazing, especially from the inside, with the storm gushing by us outside and a flood of water being visible through the windows.
One little early nitpick, perhaps here already, is that the inside looked just a little bit too tidy for something that came crashing from space. Sure, there is debris everywhere, and sparks from loose wires, but some office supplies were still on desks and you’d expect the crash to have nearly destroyed the entire place.
Our first encounter on the craft is not with a Xenomorph but with a Seegson Synthetic, right before it shuts down. The whole thing made me curious about how much of the game will take place in this small ripped-off section of the space station and how much of it outside or in other locations, because the presence of these synthetics was the main reason you’d need to be equipped with weapons at all in the first game. The Xenomorph couldn’t be killed, so we needed something to shoot at. I wonder how they’ll address that in this game, and if it’ll be as action-heavy as the ending got in the original, or if they’ll take an even more “you’re hunted as prey” approach, which was the main selling point in the first place.
Soon after restoring power to the unit, it becomes clear that a Xenomorph is stalking through the corridors. And you’ll need to sneak back out to the exit as it listens for your every move. It’s a powerful feeling of dread, as it’s just you, without weapons, facing a fare more powerful creature in strength and senses. You don’t have your scanner yet, or any of your tools, just flares and throwable bottles to distract it for a second.
It’s also visually stunning, but the first game still looks amazing to me today, so I don’t blame them when I noticed that one of the kill animations, when the alien stabs you through the chest with its tail and grabs you with its claws, is exactly the same as in the original. It looked good then, and it looks great now. And I can’t wait to explore more of it to see if the game goes in a wildly different direction than its predecessor.
Robby lives and breathes video games. When he’s not playing them, he’s talking about them on social media or convincing other people to pick up a controller themselves. He’s online so often, he could practically list the internet as his legal domicile. Belgian games-industry know-it-all.
