10 Things Alien: Isolation Will Do Better Than Aliens: Colonial Marines
4. The Story
Despite being hyped as a true sequel to Aliens, the whole story of Colonial Marines felt like an uninspired waste of time. The setup was that a new squad of marines gets sent in to investigate the Sulaco 17 days after losing contact. From that point the story evolved to yet another conspiracy of Weyland-Yutani to study Aliens. If that sounds like its been done before in other Alien games, thats because it has. The entire premise was just an excuse to get back on LV-426 for nostalgias sake. Hicks is discovered alive, which is poorly explained and brushed aside. Despite this, nothing is gained by the end and the status quo remains the same. Even with only a few weeks left before release, we know very little about Isolations story except for the premise. The black box of the Nostromo has been found and Amanda Ripley is given the chance to find out what happened to her mother. When they get to the space station Sevastopol to retrieve it, they find that it is being terrorised by an Alien, and Ripley has to figure out what is going on. The key ingredient that makes this premise better than Colonial Marines is its connection to Ripley. If you are a fan of the films, playing as Ripley's daughter as she attempts to find out what happened to a character we know and love is an emotional connection lacking from before. Instead of following a bunch of new characters with no historical relevance to the films, Isolation wisely keeps the story within the Ripley family. The story could end up dropping the ball overall, but this connection automatically adds value to Isolations narrative, at least conceptually.
