Twist on 7/1/2014 at 18:44
Two announcement trailers:
(
http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/01/07/alien-isolation-trailers-reveal-creative-assemblys-sci-fi-horror/)
Hands-on preview:
(
http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/alien-isolation-preview-hands-on-with-creative-assemblys-ambitious-sci-fi-horror/)
Quote:
The key's in the name. Creative Assembly claim to have ignored every development in the franchise that followed Ridley Scott's movie. That means no pulse rifles, no jarheads, no queens, Praetorians, predaliens, and so on. It's an Alien game, and as such it's in competition pretty much exclusively with the (surprisingly excellent) Spectrum RPG from 1984.
You play as Ellen Ripley's daughter, Amanda, fifteen years after her mother blew up the Nostromo and vanished. In Aliens, Ripley wakes up from cryosleep to find that eighty years have passed and Amanda has died of old age; Isolation posits that her daughter spent at least some of that time being chased around a space station by a xenomorph of her own. Creative Assembly have tapped veteran comic book writer Dan Abnett for the story, who you may know from the Warhammer 40,000 novels or his work for Marvel.
Haunted by her mother's disappearance, Amanda Ripley joins Weyland-Yutani as an engineer, where she is approached by a company executive claiming to have located the Nostromo's black box recorder on a remote space station called Sevastopol. Amanda signs on with a mission to investigate, but becomes separated from her crew on arrival and finds the station itself in crisis, its surviving population panicked and fighting among itself. Also, there's an alien.
The developer describes it as stealthy survival horror based on both the visual style and the horror style of the original Alien movie. You encounter only one alien, and the game involves a protracted game of hide and seek with that one alien.
Both the trailers and the hands-on preview made me think System Shock 2 meets Alien. It also reminds me of the in-development indie sci-fi horror game Routine.
EvaUnit02 on 7/1/2014 at 19:34
The gameplay trailer looks fantastic, however the plot sounds like fanfic-y tripe. Ripley's daughter, really now?
Briareos H on 7/1/2014 at 19:40
It's more Amnesia in space than System Shock 2. Here's to hoping I am wrong and it doesn't end up a QTE fest.
That said, the visual and sound design are marvellous.
LoLion on 7/1/2014 at 20:28
Definitely looks like Amnesia in space… which is getting little old by now.
I certainly hope that there are going to tons of ways to interact with the environment (hacking, using blow torch in various ways, crafting stuff, multiple paths to the objectives etc - ie the things that were not in Amnesia and its clones) and hopefully some combat as well. The combat itself would probably be not too frequent and see you go up against the crazed crew of the station rather than the alien itself. Also it would be great if the combat did not rely on guns too much (kinda like Condemned or Riddick), but rather on improvised weapons and environment.
In any case I don’t think the world needs another pure hide and seek game and I hope this will not turn out to be one.
That aside I am huge fan of Dan Abnett’s work, so I guess the story will be good at the very least even though I don’t like the idea of Ripley’s daughter being the main protagonist too much either.
Vivian on 7/1/2014 at 20:37
Oh god not Dan fucking Abnett, the Joss Whedon of Banbury. Dudes a hack. When will people hiring game writers fucking look beyond 'has written a book' when it comes to quality control? David Giler and Walter Hill are two of hollywoods finest scriptwriters. Dan Abnett writes WH40K tie-in novels.
Amensia in space is getting old? Because of all this flood of first-person sci-fi horror games where you don't have any weapons and have to think? Yeah you're right, it would be much better if we got to stab or shoot stuff all the time instead. Much more unusual, much more interesting.
This actually looks pretty good, I hope to god they stick to the brief they've given themselves and avoid the SHIT out of anything wankers might refers to as VISCERAL COMBAT!!! Also if you have to kill it by making it wander into some kind of rocket testing chamber I will be disapointed. I want this thing to be unstoppable, unpredictable, horrifying. I want to feel like I'd rather crawl into a locker and cry myself to death than risk going out into the corridor, just because I heard a slight creak. I want to feel a genuine emotional response. A horrible one.
Basically no guns and no BOO! QTE moments please.
Twist on 7/1/2014 at 20:51
Quote Posted by Briareos H
It's more Amnesia in space than System Shock 2.
I guess the weapons, minimal combat, computer hacking minigame, role of a corrupt corporation, and the sound design -- with the creaking and groaning of the spaceship -- all made me think System Shock more than Amnesia. But maybe it's more of a mix of the two than it is like just one or the other.
While the look and feel made me think System Shock 2, the gameplay may be more like the original System Shock.
In the RPS preview, the developers refer to Thief and Condemned as influences.
Quote Posted by EvaUnit02
The gameplay trailer looks fantastic, however the plot sounds like fanfic-y tripe. Ripley's daughter, really now?
Maybe so. I think it allows the developer to refer to the player protagonist as the iconic Ripley (even if Amanda Ripley rather than Ellen Ripley) while also fitting the game's plot into the original fiction, slipping it between the first and second movies. I guess for me, it's too early to tell anything about the quality of the writing or fiction.
I'm not comic book savvy, so I'm curious to know what comic book-savvy people here think about hiring Dan Abnett as the writer for this game.
Edit: Didn't see Vivian's post. It appears the first response to Mr. Abnett taking the job isn't very positive. Anyone else?
Muzman on 7/1/2014 at 21:07
Quote Posted by Vivian
Amensia in space is getting old? Because of all this flood of first-person sci-fi horror games where you don't have any weapons and have to think?
Please, it is the 2010s now. We get tired of trends before they even start.
I'm sick of you getting with the times shortly after I tell you to!
LoLion on 7/1/2014 at 21:20
Quote:
Amensia in space is getting old? Because of all this flood of first-person sci-fi horror games where you don't have any weapons and have to think? Yeah you're right, it would be much better if we got to stab or shoot stuff all the time instead. Much more unusual, much more interesting.
Why you mad though…?
So you say that Amnesia-like games require you to think? That was true in Penumbra series to some extend, but Amnesia itself had only extremely simplistic puzzles and IIRC the only “puzzles” in Outlast came down to “get in the room and press a button.” If the puzzles in this game will be as advertised in the preview (turn on generators, hack computer, run) it will definitely make you think at least as hard I am sure.
This whole “you are totally harmless and need to hide from everything” thing that Penumbra/Amnesia started was certainly a fresh idea back in the day (and I like all Penumbra and the first Amnesia game), but I do feel it is getting overused lately. On the other hand a first person sci-fi game featuring horror, stealth and occasional close combat indeed is something “unusual” and “much more interesting” that needs to happen more often.
Quote:
Dan Abnett writes WH40K tie-in novels.
And this is supposed to be a bad thing? Abnett´s 40k novels from Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies are extremely well written pieces of detective/space horror fiction. If you actually did read any of the above novels (which I highly doubt considering what you posted) and didn’t like them then fair enough, but if you just say “naaaaah its 40k so it sux and hence he sux tooo” then you need to punch yourself in the face. Repeatedly.
Phatose on 7/1/2014 at 21:28
I wonder how much they'll be able to avoid anything Aliens outside of the first film. The xeno in the first film was a very different creature then Cameron's version, and everything after pretty much based their xenos on Aliens, not Alien.
I mean, in the original the alien was actually pretty slow most of the time. The closest it ever gets to actually chasing anybody is whipping around to take out Parker when it got him and Lambert loading the oxygen. There's a jump scare when Dallas bites it, but it doesn't actually move much in that scene, and by and large the thing is fucking leisurely. I don't seem to remember the full grown xeno actually running in that movie ever.
It's pretty much invincible in the original. Ash call it a perfect organism, and it's essentially indestructible. At the end Ripley shoots it with a fucking grappling hook, and it shrugs that off and climbs into the engine. And after she turns on the engine, it's still intact, and really pissed, but fortunately floating off into space.
As I recall, the grown xeno wasn't established as having the facehugger's acid blood until the second movie as well. The grown alien never actually bleeds in the first.
Wonder if they'll incorporate the original lifecycle, with the egg-morphing and all.
Looks interesting, but I'm not going to get excited. A game in this universe made with loving detail by fans of the movies, with stunning pre-release screenshots? Yeah, heard that one before not too long ago.
