Who needs ChatGPT?
Alien Isolation lives rent-free in a lot of players’ minds — I myself brought it up as the pinnacle of the franchise’s gaming outings when recently reviewing Alien Rogue Incursion. While Isolation is top-notch, it’s also a little long… and now, we know why: the xenomorph’s AI was so smart that it slowed things way down.
Unlike Resident Evil 2‘s Mr X, who stalked you via scripts and somewhat predictable behaviour, Isolation’s xenomorph was designed to truly stalk you. The trouble is, it was very, very good at its job.
“The Alien is terrifying,” I wrote, way back in 2014. “Its artificial intelligence will constantly have you guessing. You will die in this game – a lot, even on Easy difficulty – and each time you re-load a sequence, the Alien will use a different tactic against you. As such, every little trick you’ve picked up from playing other games — hell, even prior missions in Isolation itself — needs to be disregarded. Ignored. Abandoned. You need to think outside the box or you’ll die, plain as that. What works at some points – hiding in a locker or under a bed – won’t help you every single time. Alien Isolation is a true survival simulator.”
Speaking with FRVR, Isolation writer Dion Lay confessed that Creative Assembly made too much game without taking this into account; as a result, players who needed to tread very carefully — and slowly — to survive would see their playthrough time blow out.
“The Alien really evolved as we were making it,” Lay said. “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.”
Creative Assembly considered reducing the size of the game, but it proved too troublesome.
“Now, in a perfect world, yeah, I’d kind of shrink it down a bit, get down its core,” Lay continued, adding, “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.’”
Creative Assembly can put its learnings to good use — a sequel to Alien Isolation was announced back in 2024.
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