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alt="Character in Alien: Isolation holding up a device she’s crafted, with a bottle strapped to a radio and visible wires showing.”
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Crafting in Alien: Isolation has a lot more purpose than in most first-person games.
Credit: Sega
Unlike almost any other game, you do not build out a skill tree, pile up an inventory, and blast your way through xenomorphs. You hide, you rig, you discover the remarkably rich backstory of the station you are on, and you try not to get found and killed by the alien, who will learn from your behavior and poke at new ways to get you. It’s such an effective horror game that some people might have avoided it, or at least avoided finishing it.
“But that’s the thing—it has to deliver on the scares because that’s what we set out to do,” Hope told Eurogamer in an interview released today. “It would have broken that idea if we’d altered it and made it less scary. Alien: Isolation asks the question: how are you going to survive? And, yeah, maybe that’s too much for some people. But if it was too easy, it would have broken that spell.”
The recent Alien: Romulus film, itself a kind of return to horror form for the series, makes direct references to plot points from Isolation.
No specific details on release date or platforms were announced. The original Alien: Isolation is now on PS4/5, Xbox One/X/S, and Nintendo Switch and is on deep sale right now (21 hours left as of this writing) on PC on Steam, GOG, and Epic.
This post was updated at 4:50 p.m. to remove the “universally” positive reviews language.