If the confined corridors of the Sevastopol space station provided claustrophobic chills and encounters in Alien: Isolation, the new planetary setting of the sequel, Alien: Isolation 2, will provide a very different experience in terror, according to the developer team.
The sequel game is currently in development for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and the Nintendo Switch 2, with the game taking place in the colony known as Kurasaki Station. In a Q&A video on YouTube, the dev team revealed more details about the Alien: Isolation 2 player experience, including new details on Blake, the game’s new protagonist, and how the new setting alters the horror experience.
To start, Creative Director Al Hope shared that the sequel game picks up just a short period after the events of the first game: “The Isolation experience is really closely connected to that 1979 original Alien movie. The first Alien: Isolation took place about 15-16 years after the events of the movie with Amanda. And Alien: Isolation 2 takes place months after the events of the first game. So, we’re really closely connected to both Alien: Isolation and the movie. We’re still in that same kind of time and space. We still get to take advantage of all that lovely lo-fi, sci-fi look and feel. It’s just really exciting to be telling the next chapter in the Isolation story.”
Alien: Isolation 2 retains its core concept, in that the player will be relentlessly hunted throughout the journey, but the new setting opens up the world in a way that provides new opportunities for the Xenomorph to evolve its hunting behaviors.
As Art Director Ana Sopikova teases, no playthrough of this sequel will be the same.
“The core Isolation experience is all about being hunted and really just fighting for your life, ultimately,” Sopikova said. “It’s unscripted. No playthrough is going to be the same. It’s kind of all about the systems interacting together in all the weird and fun ways. Your play style affects it as well. As for the sequel, we are expanding it by adding more of that. Obviously, being on the planet is a new and big thing for us. So you can be outside. You’re in exteriors. The weather is terrible. So you’re going to be battered by the storm, hail, rain, and all sorts of things. How does that affect your senses? How does that affect [the] Alien? How does that affect gadgets? It’s kind of all about all these things interacting and working together in new and unexpected ways.”
The Xenomorph Will Adapt to New Surroundings, Leaving You More Exposed Than Ever
The exteriors won’t give players a reprieve from the terror. At all. But it will deliver new set pieces and an exciting evolution.
Noelie Prost, Senior Core Gameplay Designer, explains, “First of all, we had to make it work in the exterior, because in the first game, it was only in very small corridors, sometimes quite a bit bigger space, but always inside. We had to make sure that it would work outside, in a space that was maybe 10 times bigger than what we had in the first game. We also gave it some new behaviours.
“Now it will be even more intelligent. It will react to the player better. It will react to all the new items, gadgets, and tools. The creature is not going to stop hunting you when you go outdoors.”
Prost continued, “It will use the fact that exteriors are exposed to hunt you more aggressively. It will use weather to hide its movements. It will have new things it can learn over the original game. It will change its behaviour each encounter, so that every time you face the Alien, you can’t just use the tricks you used the last time, whether that’s in interiors or exteriors. For us, it’s obviously all about experiencing Alien the way you haven’t experienced it before. You used to be in the interior. It was all fairly claustrophobic, confined, very tight spaces. So now, obviously, you are in the exterior. You’re exposed. The wind is howling. The storm is raging. You can’t see, you can’t hear. Everything about that obviously contributes to your senses. It contributes to [the] Alien’s senses and how it perceives you. So for us, this is the main area of focus for the Alien for the next game.”
Audio Continues To Play A Role In Building Fear For A New Protagonist, Blake
“From an audio perspective, we’ve wanted to focus on how we can make the Alien feel more natural,” Audio Lead James Magee answers about the game’s sound role. “Working a lot on its vocal content and dynamic systems around that to give the player better information about which state it’s in, working a lot on its vocal content and dynamic systems around that to give the player better information about which state it’s in.”
That also means audio is critical to gameplay. Magee notes to pay attention to the audio cues: “Similarly, working on spatial audio technologies to help the player understand where the Alien is, whether or not it’s backstage, lurking in the vents above you, or behind a wall. All of these things kind of aid you in gameplay and also the believability of the space.”
But what about the new character being introduced? Hope provides new details on Blake, the playable character fighting for her life on Kurasaki: “She’s a Weyland-Yutani employee, which gives us a chance to tell the story from a slightly different perspective. It was a really exciting opportunity to introduce a new character into the Alien universe and a strong female character. As for Amanda Ripley, we’re super proud of Amanda; she was obviously a big part of our story so far. But for Alien: Isolation 2, we really wanted to tell a new story in a new world.”
Watch the full Q&A below.