Alien: Isolation Leaked Game Concept Art Shows Female Protagonist — Possibly Ripley’s Daughter

By David Wharton | Published 10 years ago

Video games based on the Alien franchise haven’t typically fared too well. That’s not really surprising, given that licensed games based on a pre-existing property typically suck with a force that would put a black hole to shame. But the bad Alien games always sting a little bit more, simply because that universe is so intriguing and the whole “space marines vs. critters in claustrophobic settings” has been riffed on countless times in other non-Alien games. Science fiction-loving gamers such as myself are still stinging from the bomb that was this year’s Aliens: Colonial Marines, a project that looked amazing but which failed utterly in its execution. Now our next best hope for an awesome Alien game is on the horizon, and leaked concept art may have provided our first look at it.

The game is called Alien: Isolation, and it’s in the works from British developer Creative Assembly. We first reported on the game this past October, when somebody noticed that Twentieth Century Fox had trademarked the Alien: Isolation title. Kotaku dug deeper and revealed a tidbit that made the project sound even more intriguing: the female protagonist is rumored to be Ripley’s daughter, Amanda, as referenced in Aliens. If you recall, Ripley’s long nap in hypersleep meant she arrived back to Earth many years after her daughter had grown old and died. We never really knew much else about her, but it looks like Alien: Isolation may change that.

Here’s how Kotaku described the game at the time:

You, as Amanda, spend most if not all of the game on a single space station, according to our source. There’s only one alien for ‘most’ of the game, our source said; you’ll mostly be shooting through ‘clones and soldiers.’ Vents, lockers, and melee weapons are a big part of Isolation, our source said, and the game is heavily inspired by the first Alien movie.

So from the sound of things, this will be more of a survival/horror game such as Dead Space — which was, itself, heavily influence by the Alien movies — rather than a high-action bug hunt. And that’s good, because Colonial Marines somehow managed to make the terrifying xenomorph creatures mundane. They deserve to be pants-wettingly scary again.

The alleged Isolation concept art popped up in the forums of NeoGAF, so there’s no way to confirm that the art is genuine at this point, but the female protagonist and the space station seen below do seem to jibe with what is known about the game and its setting. What isn’t known is, if Isolation is indeed the story of a grown Amanda Ripley, how she will find herself having a close encounter with the titular aliens. We’re guessing that during the time her mother was missing, Amanda went looking for her. Odds are good that search also put her on the wrong side of nefarious mega-corp Weyland-Yutani.

There’s no word when we’ll get to see Alien: Isolation, but stay tuned to GFR for more news when there is any.

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