While we’re on the subject of what we’ll actually be doing in the game, I miss the time when action and spectacle weren’t consistently required to keep a player’s attention. Believe it or not, but you don’t have to hurl waves of enemies to keep us engaged. You don’t need to bring one jaw-dropping set piece or intense firefight after the another. That isn’t what this series is about. It’s a brilliant mixture of action and horror, with enough of the former to keep things interesting while the latter is built up patiently and with a deft hand.
Isolation needs to take its time. Just build up the tension, embrace the quiet moments and let us explore and immerse ourselves in this horrifying world.
Aesthetically, this game should look like it’s set in the Aliens universe. Outside of that, keep the rest unfamiliar. It’s supposed to follow Ripley’s daughter, who we know next to nothing about outside of a few bits of information regarding the last years of her life — she died at age sixty-six, was married, etc. — so there’s a clean slate there. The technology, like the weapons and radar, will look and sound familiar, as will the cold, futuristic industrial look to the world.
Outside of that, I’d really like to see Isolation take the Silent Hill approach by being its own self-contained story. It will have obvious ties to the films, but it shouldn’t rely on them for content. I don’t need to see familiar faces, the only exception to that being the lovely face of everyone’s favorite alien.
