Alien: Isolation Lifeless Early on, But Now Scares Entire Studio

Making survival horror games isn’t easy. More often than not, the player should feel much less powerful than the opposition, but not so much so that the actual gameplay becomes a grind. There’s a careful balance that needs to be struck, and it’s one that Creative Assembly struggled with during the early portions of the Alien: Isolation development. Speaking with OXM, creative lead Alistair Hope explained how the upcoming licensed game went from a mostly lifeless experience to one that got each of the developers out of their seats.

"We used to have these morning meetings where we'd look at the Alien, in a room like this – we'd have a white-box environment, and we'd be playing, and it would behave okay, but it was a very cold, flat experience, and there was a lot of soul-searching going on,” he explained. "Working in games is incredibly difficult, not to flatter ourselves. There's a lot of questioning going on all the time. But I was sure that once we got everything together, it would work. So we had one day where we thought, let's put it all together and try it. So we pulled in lighting, we pulled in the world, pulled in the effects, so that it had some kind of atmosphere, and we pulled correct geometry and all the music.

"And we played it again the next day, with all the main stake-holders in the room. And we were playing, and the Alien grabbed the player, and the whole room just leapt. And it was like, that's it. Like you said, it was the eureka moment.”

That “eureka moment” is one that many Alien fans seemed to have when they saw the initial trailer, which captures the frightening magic that Gearbox failed to deliver with Colonial Marines. You can expect to play the game later this year on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, and PS4.