14 DAY TRIAL // Jonathan Court, the senior producer working on Alien: Isolation, says that his team initially wanted to entirely replicate the xenomorph that was seen in the first movie set in the universe but was unable to do so.
He tells GamesIndustry that, “We thought the alien had been done effectively a disservice in a lot of games, it had been boiled down to fodder and we wanted to make a really meaningful experience with our alien and make it such an important part of the game.”
When the team at The Creative Assembly first talked about the project, they wanted to replicate the Ridley Scott movie in order to give fans a very similar set of emotions.
But they soon discovered that a movie monster created with limited means was not a good gameplay mechanic for a title that was supposed to launch in 2014.
Court adds, “It stands around, and they generally walk into him rather than him hunting and attacking them. So we found ourselves building people’s perception of what the alien was, rather than an exact copy from the first film.”
The Creative Assembly is trying to make sure that it re-creates the atmosphere of the movie, even if the xenomorph itself might have slightly different capabilities and some new design elements.
The studio has already explained that it is trying to make a traditional survival horror experience, with the player only able to craft a limited number of weapons and with no access to plasma rifles or other powerful guns.
They also plan to create a set of challenges that make the environment that Ripley’s daughter is exploring hard to navigate, with confusion one of the prevailing emotions.
Alien: Isolation will be launched in 2014 on the PlayStation 4 from Sony, the Xbox One, the PC and current-gen consoles.