Alien: Isolation

[Zombra]

Did the game not sell well enough or something? I mean, it certainly seemed pretty popular. How come no one's planning a sequel or a prequel or a spiritual successor etc?

I guess making sequels to anything good is de rigueur but I can't really picture why they would make one. Isolation pretty much nailed it and its biggest shortcoming was that it ran too long. What the hell would Isolation II even look like? More of the same? Add a jet ski level?

 

[Multidirectional]

Yeah I think another game that plays like Alien Isolation would be too much. Best thing they could do is to make a sequel that is what "Aliens" was to "Alien" and make it more action oriented.

 

[Zombra]

Yeah I think another game that plays like Alien Isolation would be too much. Best thing they could do is to make a sequel that is what "Aliens" was to "Alien" and make it more action oriented.

Yeah, it's funny, I was thinking the same thing. And look what released just a week ago

Not actual art from the game.

 

[Multidirectional]

Full action co-op shooter is not what I had in mind though. Sequel could still have some of the same stuff, like you could still have a reason to hide occasionally, due to limited resources. You could be much better equipped than in first game, making xenos actually killable but not to the point of you actually killing them left and right. They should still remain really tough enemies, just not unbeatable.

 

[Razor]

Ok, I give it another shot using that mod.

Didn't you have a headset? It has the best non premium VR mod out there. Its like walking around on the Nostromo as the ship was the design basis for Sevastopol.

 

[Morgoth]

Did the game not sell well enough or something? I mean, it certainly seemed pretty popular. How come no one's planning a sequel or a prequel or a spiritual successor etc?

I guess making sequels to anything good is de rigueur but I can't really picture why they would make one. Isolation pretty much nailed it and its biggest shortcoming was that it ran too long. What the hell would Isolation II even look like? More of the same? Add a jet ski level?

The devs spoke briefly after A:I launched about ideas they had for a sequel. Basically a space station, with everything that made AI already great amped up. Size, Levels, Complexity, Artifical Intelligence, etc.

The inept marketing of Sega, the Aliens Colonial Marines fiasco, the idiot millennial game journos nitpicking over some bullshit they don't udnerstand, and Sega putting the game on 75% sale after 3 months of launch (which was still usual in 2014 'cuz Gaben said that's cool) killed the game. The game proved to be a slow burn seller, but that wasn't good enough for Sega, so they never greenlit a sequel. Core team left, and the rest was offloaded to Microsoft's payroll to make some Halo Wars 2 bullshit or whatever.

 

[gerey]

What the hell would Isolation II even look like? More of the same? Add a jet ski level?

If they were to make a sequel, I'd genuinely wish for them to take the immersive sim approach. Isolation was already halfway there, all it needed was less restrictions in terms of exploring the station (and yes, I know you can backtrack, but it's usually neither required not worth the bother), a proper inventory system, fleshed out combat and ways to improve skills and attributes.

The devs spoke briefly after A:I launched about ideas they had for a sequel. Basically a space station, with everything that made AI already great amped up. Size, Levels, Complexity, Artifical Intelligence, etc.

Issue is that Isolation was already too long to begin with, to the point it stopped being scary/tense and became tedious around the halfway mark. The alien was less of a threat and more a way to force the player to just walk/crawl everywhere - which already made a needlessly long game feel all the longer.

A sequel would require them to go back to the drawing board and figure out a way to structure the game in such a way that the alien isn't constantly glued to your ass.

I think something akin to the remake of Resident Evil 2 or the original Resident Evil 3 would work - actually limiting the exposure to the alien to specific parts of the station or plot chapters and introducing sections where the player is allowed to explore and combat regular enemies.

 

[mastroego]

It wasn't perfect but it didn't deserve to get killed by soy "journalists".

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Yeah I think another game that plays like Alien Isolation would be too much. Best thing they could do is to make a sequel that is what "Aliens" was to "Alien" and make it more action oriented.

Yeah, it's funny, I was thinking the same thing. And look what released just a week ago

Not actual art from the game.

So is this any good?

 

[Zombra]

It wasn't perfect but it didn't deserve to get killed by soy "journalists".

Eh? Kotaku upvoted it, Eurogamer gave it the "recommended" stamp and PC Gamer gave it an outstanding 93%. Of the sites I checked only IGN and Gamespot crapped on it. They're lowest common denominator sites with big audiences to be sure, but is that really enough to kill a game?

 

[mastroego]

Ok I admit I didn't run statistics on the actual articles. I remembered the press coverage being an issue back then.
And no, probably not enough to kill it, by itself.
But it didn't help for sure, and I don't hold game journos in high regard, you see.

 

[J_C]

Silly me, it turns out that you can change the difficulty midgame, it is on the options menu. So I turned it up to hard, while using the Unpredictable AI mod, and I'm having a blast. This mod should be mandatory for the game. Using this mod the Alien is not rubber banded to my character all the time, I encounter it just enough to keep up the tension.

And after I acquired the flamethrower, it is payback time bitch!

 

[udm]

Thas right. Keep using the flamethrower on the xenomorph when you get it later. Absolutely nothing will go wrong

 

[Morgoth]

Thas right. Keep using the flamethrower on the xenomorph when you get it later. Absolutely nothing will go wrong

 

[J_C]

Ouch. Fucking bitch rammed me!

No biggie, it was still satisfactory to roast her ass.

 

[orcinator]

Thas right. Keep using the flamethrower on the xenomorph when you get it later. Absolutely nothing will go wrong

Nothing will go wrong if you figure out you can just spray as it pounces.

 

[J_C]

Alright, I'm done with this game. I'm just fucking tired that every animation locks you into position and you can't break out of it until the animation is ended. This is what is wrong with fucking AAA games nowadays. Everything has to be smoothly animated.

The alien is just around the corner, coming closer, but you have to show the player the computer login animation for the 100th time. Oh, the alien has just entered the room and you should hide right now. Sorry, we have to finish the box opening animation. Fuck! You! But wait, the alien is coming, but for some goddamned reason the Press E to Climb prompt is not showing when I'm standing in front of a vent-hole, and can't enter. Then the alien gets me. Fuck You Too!

I'm not wasting my precious time when there is Psychonauts 2 waiting for me.

 

[mastroego]

I happened to comment before on this.
Those moments where you have to go through all the motions to perform a task may indeed seem annoying (ok, they are) but I've come to appreciate how perfectly they fit the theme and how they add to the later portions of the game.
Sure, you hate wasting time in mundane tasks, at first. But when it comes the time when you have to perform them with the alien coming after you, it's another kind of feeling entirely.
So many moments of movie-like tension.
It might not be for everyone, but it adds realism, and makes managing to elude the alien after opening a door in a hurry truly memorable.

 

[Zombra]

It might not be for everyone, but it adds realism, and makes managing to elude the alien after opening a door in a hurry truly memorable.

I agree, but J_C is right too. The critical piece is that the animations can't be interrupted. I don't want to take 25 seconds to take out the special door-opening tool, leisurely test the tightness, then push it around to twist the door open when the alien is running straight at me. I want to move my ass. There were several moments like J_C's in my playthrough also and far from an improved cinematic feel, it broke immersion and stomped on the chunks.

 

[J_C]

Unfortunately I can't appreciate these moments, I hate them in every game. I really dislike long-winded animations, when they are for mundane tasks you perform hundreds of times throughout a game.

My best example is Thief vs Thi4f. In the original Thief games, when you wanted to pick something up, you just looked at it, clicked, and the item just disappeared and you picked it up. In Thi4f, your character goes through an animation where he leans forward a bit, holds out the hand, grabs the item and pulls it back. It takes almost a second. Now imagine that in the game you have to pick up hundreds of items. I just can't stand it. I'm not getting immersed, I'm not like "wow, I almost feel like I'm in the game, grabbing the items". No, I just want to progress in the game, but the game is not letting me.

 

[Zombra]

Unfortunately I can't appreciate these moments, I hate them in every game. I really dislike long-winded animations, when they are for mundane tasks you perform hundreds of times throughout a game.

Disagree here. Sure, sometimes animations are repetitive and add nothing, but other times when they are done well they add a nice sense of pace. We were just talking about this in the RDR2 thread earlier this week. Personally I'm not one who plays games to get them over with as soon as possible.

 

[Inconceivable]

I didn't notice any problem at all with the animations, when I played the game.
Alien: Isolation is one of the few first-person games I felt compelled to tune down from Hard to Normal though. Usually I play most games on hard, since most games nowadays are tuned for squishy casual gamers. But on hard-mode the alien was just a bit too omniscient and annoying for me to have fun.

 

[Morgoth]

Rumor:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeak...a/jurassic_park_horror_fps_game_in_the_works/

Jurassic Park Horror FPS Game in the works.
4chan
Details of Survival Action horror Jurassic Park game by Alien Isolation team reportedly popped up. 4chan, so take with a grain of salt as always.

• Semi open world first person game.
  
  
• Titled LOST WORLD: Jurassic Park
  
  
• Isla Nublar
  
  
• Main character is a gun for hire trying to survive on the island.
  
  
• Velociraptor and 't rex look alike" as main enemies.
  
  
• Mature Game with lots of gore.
  
  
• Next gen only.
  
  
• Stealth mechanics.

I'd buy that.

 

[Wunderbar]

by Alien Isolation team

there is no such thing anymore, they got disbanded a while ago.

 

[Morgoth]

by Alien Isolation team

there is no such thing anymore, they got disbanded a while ago.

Bullshit.