How Alien: Isolation’s retro space station was built with fear in mind

[Corporal Hicks]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/alien-isolation-sevastapol-station

The challenge of making a videogame in the Alien universe is capturing what initially made it so, well, alien. When the first film came out in 1979 it changed sci-fi. Before then, popular space fiction was awash with the brightly-lit optimism of a world that had not long celebrated the moon landing. Sci-fi of the '50s and '60s borrowed the clean simplicity of mid-century modernism: flying saucers, silver space suits, empty white hallways, and control panels with flashing buttons that had no function. In space, everything had its place, it was envisioned to be perfect.

Not read it yet.

[The Old One]

Fantastic article, Jude Bond sounds like someone I'd like to work with and learn from.

[The Cruentus]

Great article, I immensely enjoyed this game. They really brought the franchise back up a bit after the disappointing A:CM and the AVP films brought it down.
They were brillaint in using the atmosphere and visual from the first film and the save system is genius, a lot of tension and its a small victory just to make it to the save station.

Isolation is unique and it worked because it didn't emulate Aliens like the previous games did, that is why I find it strange that after the success of Isolation some fans want Isolation 2 to be just like Aliens, marines and pulse rifles... basically going back to square one.

[D88M]

Thanks, it is really interesting. I am playing the game for teh first time (currently about to finish mission 10 if i did not finished already) and while the game is really really far from as great as some people said and the hype wanted me to believe (i will review it when i finish it), the station is for sure one of the best enviroments in a videgoame, is up there with Bioshock in scenery terms.

[Huggs]

the game is really really far from as great as some people said and the hype wanted me to believe

"you're not playing it right" 

[D88M]

The visuals and sounds are outstanding, is the gameplay i have a problem with, and the Alien. There is a difference between making something difficult and hard and making it unfair and almost impossible.
I promise to get more in depth once i finished it, but i am dissapointed honestly, maybe is because i did not played it when it was released, maybe it was because i played Outlast when it was released and that game is quite the unique experience, but Isolation gets really frustrating.

[Corporal Hicks]

The difficulty is part of the charm of it. It's not supposed to be easy going up against an Alien. Granted, it's not for everyone, but I loved how hard it was. It wasn't impossible by any stretch, but the difficulty was just one part of a massive package that makes this game so great in my eyes.

[Still Collating...]

Agreed. I adore the difficulty of the game so much! You have multiple ways of dealing with the Alien, but you can't just do whatever you want. The Alien is hunting you and you have to adept to it. It's faster and stronger than you and the most unpredictable enemy in game I've ever faced. The Alien feels almost alive to me and that's why this is the most fun game of cat and mouse I've ever had.

The visuals and sounds are outstanding, is the gameplay i have a problem with, and the Alien. There is a difference between making something difficult and hard and making it unfair and almost impossible.
I promise to get more in depth once i finished it, but i am dissapointed honestly, maybe is because i did not played it when it was released, maybe it was because i played Outlast when it was released and that game is quite the unique experience, but Isolation gets really frustrating.

The Outlast games are awesome! But very different when it comes to the behavior of the enemies. The enemies in Outlast rarely kill you in one hit, have obvious patrol patterns and are a lot more scripted than the Alien. It's a different style of gameplay IMO.
Though I have to admit the vanilla Alien feels a bit off sometimes because its leash/tether to the player is too tight. It feels a lot more natural when playing with the unpredictable Alien mod, it does improve the experience for me.

[The Old One]

Unpredictable Alien mod for life.

[D88M]

The difficulty is part of the charm of it. It's not supposed to be easy going up against an Alien. Granted, it's not for everyone, but I loved how hard it was. It wasn't impossible by any stretch, but the difficulty was just one part of a massive package that makes this game so great in my eyes.

I dont wanna derail this thread and i am waiting to end the game so i can get the full picture. But waiting/wasting 15 minutes in a locker because the Alien cant stop entering the room every 10 seconds without being able to do anything about it is not exactly my idea of fun. I played Outlast when it was released and while not perfect i think it was better realized than here.
In that part when you get into the medical room, that one that is like a round room with another room in the middle, like a mental asylum, i just could not advance at all, the Alien killed me all the time, i could not run, i could not go crouching, i could not do anything at all, literally, anything that i did got me killed. The first times it kills you is scary, then it becomes irritating, and then it becomes boring, and that is the worst thing that can happen to a game. The Alien became an annoying obstacle instead of a creature that i feared. I was surprised at how quickly i got bored by it.
I was also killed by a bug which was just ridiculous, i was hiding in a closet, the Alien enters the room, leaves the room out of the only exit possible, and when i come out it kills me, even though it was not even near the room...
Another moment was when i come out of a vent and a synthetic follows me, so i hide again. The robot then stares at me from his workstation, even though i am hiding and he cannot see me, it keeps looking at where i am, so i wait. 1 minute. 5 minutes. 10 minutes. It does not move, so i cannot advance. I go make myself some tea and when i come back he is gone, so i come out again and he starts following me, but i think i got out that time.
I was playing it hard, so i understand what they were trying to do, but even when i turned the difficulti to medium, it was the same thing, if i put it on easy, is the same too, i just could not get immersed.
What i had to do, and i dont like admitting this, and i like even less to do it, is download a trainer that removed the Alien until i could advance, then i put it back on, i have neved done this before, but i never was so frustrated and bored with a game, it was not fun, it was just a literal waste of time.
I just dont have the patience for this kind of thing anymore, it just does not feel fair to be an hour stuck in the same scenario because of constant death, now i am at the part where the synthetics with suits appear for the first time and nothing i attack them with kills them, so i put the trainer back on until i move pass that.
I also got the flamethrower at some point, which just killed all the tension the game had, but the first thing to do that was the game itself, and i was expecting to play this since it was released and i thought it was gonna be great, but is just frustrating.
Another issue is that the game is TOO long, i am currently on mission 10 out of i am not mistaken, 18. Really? I already i am tired of the game, how many more hours do i have to play it? It feels like a chore at this point. No point in making a game that long without something that justifies it, and this is just the same old: "go turn on the power engine at the other side of the map, oh no it has no power you have to search for batteries at the other side of the map, oh no the batteries are broken in three pieces, you have to search every one of them all over the map, ok now go power up the engine, oh no you got captured and it was all for nothing" kind of thing that is like a plague in modern games.
The game is not bad, is just crazy hard without a reason. And i just gave some examples, the ones who stood out to me more.

Agreed. I adore the difficulty of the game so much! You have multiple ways of dealing with the Alien, but you can't just do whatever you want. The Alien is hunting you and you have to adept to it. It's faster and stronger than you and the most unpredictable enemy in game I've ever faced. The Alien feels almost alive to me and that's why this is the most fun game of cat and mouse I've ever had.

The visuals and sounds are outstanding, is the gameplay i have a problem with, and the Alien. There is a difference between making something difficult and hard and making it unfair and almost impossible.
I promise to get more in depth once i finished it, but i am dissapointed honestly, maybe is because i did not played it when it was released, maybe it was because i played Outlast when it was released and that game is quite the unique experience, but Isolation gets really frustrating.

The Outlast games are awesome! But very different when it comes to the behavior of the enemies. The enemies in Outlast rarely kill you in one hit, have obvious patrol patterns and are a lot more scripted than the Alien. It's a different style of gameplay IMO.
Though I have to admit the vanilla Alien feels a bit off sometimes because its leash/tether to the player is too tight. It feels a lot more natural when playing with the unpredictable Alien mod, it does improve the experience for me.

Yes, but when he kills you 20 times in a row in the course of an hour, so you spent hours playing and you are just athe same point you were when you loaded the saved game, and you want to finish it so you can also play other sutff among doing regular life stuff, it feels almost like a mockery, and is a total waste of time, i play videogames to have fun and to enjoy the story, not to waste time.

Outlast 1 is awesome besides the last hour of gameplay, 2 is just awful in every sense but aduio/visuals, the story was terrible and gameplay was broken, the enemies found you every single time, it kills the suspense. The style of game is basically the same, but Isolation is way more "realistic" and near impossible. It lacks all the tension Outlast has.

Honestly, at this point of the walktrough the Alien feels like an excuse to make the game last longer than anything else, and that is an awful thing to say abotu a game.

I wrote too much, and i tried to keep it brief because i would have to have a recent gameplay fresh to explain exactly how the gameplay is flawed at the point of going from tense to irritating to boring, but at the second or third Alien encounter i had my heart broken about this game, i did not expected that.

Unpredictable Alien mod for life.

I can only imagine what horror awaits me if i even dare to install such a monstruosity. Besides i am one of those people who gets angry when it loses not because of himself, but because of the game desing, i am talking about punching the table and that kind of thing.

Jesus, what a wall of text, i am really sorry i was waiting to finish the game to upload my thoughts in the "fan reviews" thread, and i know i come out as a whining noob, and i dont want you make you all believe that i think the game is bad, because is not, is exquisiteively made in every aspect and with true love care and passion for the first film, but jeez did i got fed up by it by now.

[The Old One]

All the unpredictable Alien modification does is cut the AI's tether to the player, so that instead of the Alien being told the general area the player is in- it's told nothing and has to genuinely search the entire loaded area.


This way if you play the game stealthy you can go for hours without seeing it, because of the game's length; I ultimately wouldn't play it again without this modification. It corrects the pace.

If I had a couple of complaints about A.I;
One would be the awful cutscenes.
Two would be lame death animations.

Otherwise it's an excellent game, and a great basis for a better sequel or spiritual successor that's more polished.

[Still Collating...]

D88M, just because a group of fans like the game and what it does, doesn't mean you have to. And as someone who bought and played the game, it's normal for you to voice your opinion about it, especially when it differs from the majority and you've had such an intense experience with the game.

Too bad Alien Isolation didn't do it for you, maybe the next Alien game will be up your alley. Your points are valid I think, I guess it just depends on the person, how much they like getting punished by the Alien  and how cautiously they play. The game does punish you severely for what in other games wouldn't even be considered mistakes and for underestimating Stompy. The learning curve is very steep. 

If you're ever interested in trying Isolation again, I really do recommend the Unpredictable Alien mod because it makes Stompy feel more natural. Basically, it lets the Alien explore more. Farther away from you and for a longer period of time. It actually makes the game easier IMO but the point is it really does make it feel more natural. The encounters with the Alien are less numerous and less frequent. But it's more scary because you don't know where he is anymore since he's not around you so much. Gone are the 20 min. waiting sessions in a locker because the alien keeps entering the room. With the mod: he enters the room, hangs around a bit, leaves quickly if he hasn't found you and wont return 300 times. The reason I like the mod is because it's realistic in the sense that Stompy doesn't hang around you 24/7, It's scary when you haven't seen the alien in a while and because you die for getting cocky. The alien stops feeling like it's cheating.
Still, those are just my impressions, I just believe the mod might help you feel less frustrated with the game.

EDIT: As The Old One already explained the mod, I wouldn't recommend playing the game again without it. 

[SM]

i play videogames to have fun and to enjoy the story, not to waste time.

Go play a Lego game then.  I do; I love them.

Isolation was exceedingly difficult in parts - which made it immensely satisfying and a huge relief when you beat a part and reach a save point.  Plus it had a fantastic story.

[Samhain13]

Isolation wouldn't even make into the top 5 (maybe even 10) hardest games I played. Maybe some are not used to playing games who take more work, and that's what the easy difficulty is for. I only had trouble on nightmare because you can't make much itens, so there isn't much to defend yourself with. There are more unfair games, those that give you game over due to bad RNG and stupid friendly AI, games which depends much more on luck than skill, games with bad checkpoint placement and there are the ones that have difficulties with no checkpoints. Imagine having to play Isolation with one life, one death and you need to start the whole game again. Isolation at least let you save on all difficulties.

To use another game of the franchise as comparison, I died much more on AVP2 Primal Hunt Hardcore mode than in Isolation's Nightmare, no checkpoints, you take even more damage than in the original game, enemies can endure so many bullets making your ammo end fast, I only finished the last corporate mission which only gives you basic weapons against hordes of aliens by exploiting places where the aliens can't reach you. That mission was on a whole another level of difficulty. And the first 2 missions are only possible because for some reason they made the flamethrower a 1 one hit kill for drones and runners.

There are several videos on youtube of people beating Isolation on Nightmare but only 1 of someone beating that last corporate mission on hardcore. And just like me he cheated by exploiting the game limitations.

[Still Collating...]

I dare not try the AVP2 games on Hardcore, I'm so not ready for that, but I am curious. Probably I'll try it one day when I'm feeling especially masochistic. 

Right now I'm trying a mod for Isolation that makes Stompy less Stompy. It takes out the sound of his footsteps while he's walking and running (there's nothing yet to just make them less noisy) and the roar when he charges at you but keeps all the other sounds like when he exits the vents, the hisses when he spots you and body movement sounds. The amount of dread I feel now when I play is phenomenal. The bastard has sneaked up on me so many times! And when you face two together like this, it becomes horrific.