Alien: Isolation 2 Hands-On Preview – An Early But Unclear Look At The Changes Ahead

Platform:
PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC

Publisher:
Sega

Developer:
Creative Assembly

Release:
TBA

Rating:
Mature

Alien: Isolation has been touted as one of the best Alien games ever made, if not the best. Despite the praise, it’s taken a surprising 12 years for a proper sequel to be announced, but we finally saw the full reveal of Alien: Isolation 2 during Summer Game Fest. At the show’s Play Days event in Los Angeles, I got to play the opening section of the long-awaited sequel to see how its scares are coming together. Afterwards, I spoke with creative director Al Hope and art director Ana Sopikova to learn how their team is applying over a decade of feedback to the follow-up. 

Warning: This preview contains spoilers for the end of Alien: Isolation

The sequel begins a few months after Alien: Isolation protagonist Amanda Ripley, daughter of the series’ hero Ellen Ripley, thwarted the Xenomorph that had terrorized the Sevastopol space station in the first game. Following in her mother’s footsteps, she managed to contain the creature in a smaller ship and eject it – and herself – into space.

My demo begins in the evening forest of a remote colony planet owned by Weylan-Yutani, the feared corporation and arguably the true main antagonist of the Alien franchise. I control a woman named Blake, Alien: Isolation 2’s new lead, who works for a Weyland-Yutani survey team. Her small team locates a crashed vessel – the very ship players jettisoned in the first game – but must move quickly to investigate it for potential salvage as a dangerous storm threatens to flood the area. One of Blake’s team members doesn’t think this effort is worth the risk the storm poses, so he treks back to their vehicle and gives us 10 minutes to conduct our search before he abandons us. Blake and her remaining partner, Otto, find a way into the small vessel.

Although I only get to move through a very small slice of this opening forest area, art director Ana Sopikova describes it, and the planet as a whole, as being very dangerous. “It’s a very hostile world; storms, there’s weather. It’s definitely not a nice walk in the park.” Al Hope adds that Creative Assembly is creating a “survival sandbox” featuring a mix of exterior and interior spaces with a narrative framework keeping it all together.

While Otto waits near the ladder we used to enter the vessel, I begin exploring the dark interior. I need to restore power, but the fuse panel is damaged. Restoring it requires searching around for scattered parts and electronics. Once I gather enough materials, I fix the panel and bring the ship to life. As I enter the main control room, a prone humanoid figure awakens and lunges at me. It’s a Working Joe, the synthetic service androids that served as enemies in the first game. It’s been torn in half and malfunctions as soon as it grabs me, to the relief of a startled Blake. Sopikova teases not only the return of Working Joes but confirms that players will confront new, non-Xenomorph threats without giving away too much.

I use a computer to access the ship log. Before I can dig too deep into the data, an alert hits the screen warning of a containment breach. As I look through a nearby window into the corridor, the familiar silhouette of the Xenomorph emerges. Panicked, Blake slips under a table just before the creature enters the room. She can barely contain her nerves as the alien slowly investigates the area. Blake has no idea what this thing is, but it thankfully seems oblivious to her presence. For now, at least.

From here, I have one objective: escape the ship. I watch the Xenomorph from under the table until it finally moves elsewhere, stepping out once the coast is clear. I can hear its heavy footsteps nearby as I begin to formulate an escape plan. I look around and spot the familiar save station from the first game and record my progress. From here, the demo becomes extremely similar to Alien: Isolation as I use my eyes and ears to track the Xenomorph’s whereabouts. Whenever I see it approaching – or at least suspect it to – I crouch behind nearby cover, or into one of the floor grates used to enter a small network of ventilation shafts. As in the first game, the Xenomorph can enter the ceiling ventilation to move more undetected, as well as slink into the same floor tunnels available to me.

It was tough to tell in this small slice how much smarter the Xenomorph has become compared to the first game. Exploring exterior spaces is the biggest change from the last game, and I wasn’t able to see how Xenmorph behaves in that type of environment. Al Hope only states that the fundamentals of the creature’s behavior will remain the same, with some necessary tweaks, but declines to elaborate further and promises to share more details at a later date.

I died twice during my demo. The first came when I relied a bit too much on crawling under the floor and, upon hitting a dead end, the Xenomorph slipped into the floor vents and immediately found me. It didn’t end well. The second death came when I became too bold and began speed-walking toward an exit. A door opened in front of me, and the Xenomorph spotted me standing in full view. Running doesn’t seem like a viable escape because it swiftly closed the gap and pinned me down to, presumably, bore its second mouth into my skull. At least, that’s what appeared to happen before the screen cuts to black, and I’m met with a Game Over screen.

Each failed attempt reloaded me at the start of the Xenomorph’s first appearance, meaning I had to sneak from that initial room all over again. It gave me flashbacks to the lengthy runbacks between save stations in the first game. The harsh penalty for death, combined with the exhausting runtime, are among the biggest complaints when people discuss Alien: Isolation, so I ask Hope how these critiques will be addressed in the sequel. “We wanted the game to be kind of tough but fair, and so I think one of our main responsibilities is to make sure it feels balanced, that that balance of tension release fits that tough but fair approach,” Hope explains. “Just simple things, like save station placement, to ensure that it actually feels like the kind of cadence or the rhythm of the experience is maybe a little bit fairer.” Hope adds that Creative Assembly is relying more heavily on user testing for Alien: Isolation 2 to ensure a more balanced – but still challenging – experience.

The third time manages to be the charm as I manage to successfully sneak back to the ladder undetected. Otto is gone; she didn’t respond to an earlier comms message, which probably means she’s completely unharmed and everything is totally fine. As Blake climbs the ladder, the creature ambushes her out of nowhere for a nice jump scare. It knocks her back down and pins her to the floor, giving me the terrifying visual of the creature’s drooling black maw pressed face-to-face with mine. Just before it ends me using its second mouth, the ship is suddenly rocked by the force of the forewarned flood waters. The alien is thrown off me, allowing Blake to scramble up the ladder to escape. My demo comes to an end at this point.

Alien: Isolation is a love letter to Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic, and although two Alien films have been released since that game’s launch in Alien: Covenant and Alien: Romulus, Creative Assembly seemingly won’t be mining these modern films for ideas or references for the sequel.

“We really love the IP, obviously, but again, I think our focus is that original movie,” says Hope, “and we still feel like, though we made one game, it feels like there’s still a real rich vein for us to tap into. So Alien: Isolation took place a couple of years after the first movie; Alien: Isolation 2 takes place months after the events of Alien: Isolation. So there’s a real close connection, both to the first game and the movie, so it feels like we’re pushing our narrative and our world in that space, so we’re very much still focused on that original movie.”

Despite sticking to the first film, Hope gushes about the team’s excitement at seeing the Alien: Isolation save station appear in Alien: Romulus. He also shares that the film’s director, Fede Álvarez, attended SGF the day before to check out the demo of Alien: Isolation 2 I’d played. Speaking of the films, Creative Assembly has once again been granted vast access to 20th Century Studios’ archive of Alien film materials as references for crafting new elements that remain authentic to the source material. “We are a team full of Alien nerds who are just really, really deep into the source,” says Sopikova.

It was neat to check out this early slice of Alien: Isolation 2, but the demo didn’t feature any of the more open level design or other features unique to the sequel. The enclosed space made it feel exactly like the first game, so while it was a nice reminder of what made Alien: Isolation such a tense and memorable experience, we’ll need to wait for a more substantial gameplay showing. I’m also looking forward to learning answers to questions such as who Blake is as a person, how Weyland-Yutani factors into the plot, and how the Xenomorph behaves outside of interior areas.

Alien: Isolation 2 appears to be a ways off – it currently has no release window – so Creative Assembly seemingly has plenty of time to cook. But with a strong foundation to work with, I’m confident it will deliver another terrifying stealth adventure.