Alien: Isolation

[DeepOcean]

I agree on the not trusting RPS part, but alot of their criticisms ring true with these sorts of games, which worries me. "Outlast," for example, was sporadically awesome, especially in its first portions, but other parts of the game were awful trial and error as you died and died again until you found the correct path to take.

If the developers aren't lying through their teeth (totaly possible), there aren't correct paths. The alien is impredictable. You aren't supposed to run from it, you are supposed to keep track of it with the motion sensor , predict it's movements and try to make it lose interest on the area you are, that may require adjustments of tactics from the usual: see monster = run and many players mayl find that frustrating but not exactly trial and error.(Who am I kidding? This is AAA, it will be easy as shit and the alien blind as fuck.). RPS complain could be the result of they playing an incomplete version of the game, failing to understand how the motion sensor works or they just being retards as usual.

 

[Ebonsword]

Being invaded and totally powerless to fight back is the very definition of horror.

CA is doing it right.

No, it sounds like they're doing it wrong.

Being totally powerless to fight back in real life is scary because, once you're dead, you stay dead.

In a video game, though, once you die, you just hit the reload button and you're back to life again. At that point, facing an opponent that can insta-kill you just gets annoying, not scary.

For a good example, play through the section of Arx Fatalis where you get chased by the unkillable monster.

 

[Morgoth]

Perhaps you should play Candy Crash Saga then if dying annoys you.

 

[Athelas]

He is right though. Horror games are never scary, because they never lose that artificiality that comes with being able to save/reload/etc. By contrast, there is no game over death in Dark Souls, but exploration is thrilling because you can lose a bunch of souls at any moment.

 

[Morgoth]

You're right, I think "thrilling" and "suspenseful" is what we can expect from Alien.

Horror is like a 500 pound black woman that is about to raid the grocery store.

 

[Infinitron]

Give It A Whack: Alien: Isolation’s Clunky Tech

They knew how to dream of futures, those film makers of the late 1970s and early ’80s. The dusty leather of Mad Max, rain refracting flickering neon in Blade Runner, and chunky busted technology in Alien. What are we teaching the next generation to hope for, Google Glass and cloud computing? It’s all too clean and too tidy, covering up the inevitable doom. Thankfully The Creative Assembly are putting an awful lot of work into recreating that analogue “low-fi sci-fi” vibe with Alien: Isolation, as a new video developer diary thing shows off.

The TCA gang are on hand to gab about analysing the film’s concept art, trying to emulate prop-making techniques of the era, and committing VHS vandalism to get a fuzzy UI. It is very pretty.

However, we’re still at a point in the marketing campaign where publisher Sega will only hint at Isolation’s combat. They’re not yet willing to say what we’ll be fighting, with what, and how often. It’d be odd if they put this much effort into atmosphere–and from what I played, Isolation has bags of the stuff–only to turn it into an arcade-y shooting gallery but worse things have happened in licensed video games. We’ll only know for certain when it arrives in October.

The Alien: Isolation we’ve seen so far is not how the final game will look. But it is pretty:

 

[Morgoth]

I love gentle female hands against the backdrop of gritty retro-tech devices.

These things have a strange erotic effect on my psyche.

 

[Morgoth]

Not sure whether this has already been posted, but there's a commentary-free version of the January walkthrough that let's you have a close listen to the game's auditory splendor.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Chunkiness is still a realistic possibility for portraying high-tech devices in space settings along the lines of the Alien. If your computer breaks, there's nowhere to get it fixed. Nowhere to replace the screen on your ipad or motion tracker. On a colony, these devices would be expected to last for decades, and whilst a spaceship might have the opportunity to replace equipment every few years they'd want absolute certainty that their gear won't break if someone accidentally drops it on the floor 2 weeks into a 5 year round trip.

 

[Luzur]

just let Aliens die already.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Being invaded and totally powerless to fight back is the very definition of horror.

CA is doing it right.

No, it sounds like they're doing it wrong.

Being totally powerless to fight back in real life is scary because, once you're dead, you stay dead.

In a video game, though, once you die, you just hit the reload button and you're back to life again. At that point, facing an opponent that can insta-kill you just gets annoying, not scary.

For a good example, play through the section of Arx Fatalis where you get chased by the unkillable monster.

For me, there's nothing more boring than a horror movie where the villain/malevolent entity is all-powerful and the characters have no means of escaping or fighting. At that point, the story is over and the film is just going through the motions - it's no different than just putting up a screen saying 'Everyone dies. The end.' Sure, you've got the randomness/inescapability of death and all that, but that isn't horror, just misadventure. Without any sense of character agency, a character getting killed by space-Cthulu is no different to a character tripping over a chair and hitting his head on the concrete. Perhaps interesting in an existentialist sense, but hardly scary.

That's why most great horror films don't completely eliminate any means of escaping or fighting. Alien is a good example - for most of the film, fighting is definitely on the table, as the characters try to hunt down the small-but-growing alien while it picks them off one at a time. Through-out that stretch, the alien is strictly an ambush predator. By the time it is full-size and able to attack the remaining characters as a group and headon, there's a new option on the table - get supplies and escape via the shuttle. At no stage does the film remove the characters' agency.

Conversely, 'horror' films where the villain is invulnerable, or has poorly defined but seemingly limitless powers, and the characters have no avenue of escape, is almost exclusively the domain of dull B-grade schlock.

 

[Morgoth]

just let Aliens die already.

Aliens is already dead. Alien however deserves at least one resurrection.

 

[agentorange]

Yeah. There are great examples of games that have invulnerable enemies which still allow you to fight back: Clock Tower 3, Haunting Ground, Resident Evil 3. They are making a video game, after all, and it is more interesting to have options to resist the threat rather than just run from it. Penumbra got away with it because the game made up for the lack of options to fight with an original setting and various puzzles, but this game looks to be strictly on-rails, and is taking place in a setting that has already produced one masterpiece; I've already seen Alien and loved it, so why would I want to go through the motions again in an almost completely uninteractive series of set-pieces.

As Azrael said, the best horror films of this type are the ones in which there is a believable struggle, and the possibility of victory; if you get rid of either of those and make it a hide and seek from an invulnerable monster there is absolutely no suspense, it just becomes an exercise in going through the motions as you try to find the single correct way to navigate through the environment.

 

[sser]

So the alien stomps around upright with its arms extended like some castoff Scooby-Doo villain. Doing patrol routes, no less.

How fucking bizarre that a video game adaptation looks more like a man in a suit than a 1970s horror flick.

 

[retardation]

The engine looks nice.

 

[Morgoth]

 

[DragoFireheart]

All your hyping is making me interested.

This game better be good or I'm blaming you.

 

[Morgoth]

You can trust me, Metro will be proven wrong on this one wuahahahaha!!!

 

[zerotol]

All this Morgoth hype, sometimes i wonder if he gets payed to do this.

 

[mikaelis]

Being invaded and totally powerless to fight back is the very definition of horror.

CA is doing it right.

No, it sounds like they're doing it wrong.

Being totally powerless to fight back in real life is scary because, once you're dead, you stay dead.

In a video game, though, once you die, you just hit the reload button and you're back to life again. At that point, facing an opponent that can insta-kill you just gets annoying, not scary.

For a good example, play through the section of Arx Fatalis where you get chased by the unkillable monster.

And that is precisely, why a real horror game cannot ever be made.
Crippled alternative is, not to allow the save function all together. Which was proven with 99% accuracy, that it is not what majority want. So, designers need to look for other alternatives.
The best alternative is distraction, i.e., you allow some side activities, like shooting respawning robots/aliens/blabla from time to time and have the story developed a bit faster. One of the greatest gaming gems is exactly like that - System Shock 2. I wouldn't mind if Alien: Isolation moved that way. In fact, I would be overjoyed.
I just recently found out about this game and, what strikes me, are some similarities with SS2.
But maybe it is just me being nostalgic.

EDIT:
The obvious difference is, that in SS2, the "respawning-enemies-mode" is used to simulate the constant threat, while in Alien: Isolation, it is an alien. You cannot cheat the "respawn-mode" in SS2 (aside from stealth), and so you cannot kill Alien in A:I.
At the same time, in SS2 you were allowed to kill the waves of respawns, once you fucked up with stealth (and you have plenty of choices - amazing how they fit it there, like chemistry, psi, weapons etc. to react to the situation).

Then, from time to time, you had staged bosses in SS2(I, personally, don't like it).

In, Alien:I, you will likely have an Alien, that can be avoided (substitution for "respawn-mode"), and once you are discovered, you will hopefully have some alternative mechanics,- escaping while slowing the Alien down, for example.

And hopefully, some degree of other threats that will be driven by the story.

Fuck, I know it won't happen...

 

[Morgoth]

Wrong. Once the Alien discovers you, you're dead. There are no, at least not any known to date, combat abilities in the game (at least not against the Alien). But you can make tools and shit.

 

[mikaelis]

Then, it is another Penumbra...

 

[Caim]

Alien: Isolation. So bad it killed Giger.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/giger-dies.91618/

 

[Morgoth]

Tasteless.

 

[Morgoth]

Then, it is another Penumbra...

Nah, it's more than that, just not combat focused. Perhaps you can combat androids or crazies, we don't know yet.