When Sega and Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation launched in 2014, I was deputy editor at Official Xbox Magazine. I remember getting the review copy from our contributor Alex “Game Over, Man” Dale, and asking him how long the game was. 35-40 hours, he said. WTF, I said. I can’t remember how Alex responded – possibly his transmission ended with a jangling scream and a burp of static, or possibly he agreed with me that 35-40 hours is indecently hefty for a horror game, even with the qualification that you can get through the main campaign in around 20. 35-40 hours? That’s a farking Final Fantasy, mate!
Over 10 years later, we finally know who to blame. Surprise surprise, it was the xenomorph all along. According to Alien Isolation writer Dion Lay, the Gigerbeast’s increasing capability during development made certain areas more time-intensive than they were originally supposed to be. There’s probably a relevant Alien quote to invoke, here, but I’m going to settle for that Jeff Goldblum line from Jurassic Park.
Speaking to FRVR in a recent interview, Lay conceded that “in a perfect world, yeah, I’d kind of shrink it down a bit, get down its core”.
“The Alien really evolved as we were making it,” he went on. “By the time it was perfect, it was like, ‘Oh, wow, everything takes a lot longer!’ So, it would be really nice to pare it down to its core, make it a lot shorter. At the time, it didn’t seem that long, and then you suddenly go, ‘Oh my God.’ So, yeah, I’d definitely shorten it, you know. But, yeah, at the time, there was some stuff where we were like: ‘Yeah, we can’t take that out now, that would kind of upend everything.'”
I’d like Lay to go into more detail about which particular aspects of Jack the Ripley-killer’s behaviour had the biggest impact on completion times. The xenomorph’s evolving AI was one of the game’s major marketing McGuffins before release. I remember devs telling me campfire stories about how distractions such as flares might gradually lose effectiveness. The third time you lob a flare, the Alien may deduce the presence or even the likely position of a flare-thrower. Eek!
Back in 2014, I tried to map out all the AI permutations in a big double-page magazine flowchart for OXM, which probably got a lot of launch day players killed. I can’t remember how this pre-release hype stacked up to the reality. Ten years is a long time, and my Isolation memories are mostly locker interiors, at this stage. Mostly.
Anyway, it’s credible that the creature’s smarts are one reason Isolation is such a marathon. Perhaps that’s something Creative Assembly will address in the forthcoming Alien: Isolation sequel – it’s not clear how many of the old Isolation team are still there. In terms of persistent, unkillable munsters, I’d say the perfect organism’s biggest competition right now is the Beast from Amnesia: The Bunker.
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