20 Things You Didn’t Know About Alien: Isolation
12. All Items Had To Look Like They Were From 1979
As mentioned, part of what made Alien: Isolation so remarkable was just how faithfully the design team were able to recreate the distinctive look of the original film. Most of which revolved around the clunky, analogue technology that players would spend a lot of their time interacting with during their time aboard the Sevastopol.
Thanks to all the reference information that was available to the team, recreating the props and areas that were featured in the film was simple enough. But the real challenge came whenever they had to introduce new items into the world they were building.
In order to stay consistent with the Alien aesthetic, the team limited themselves to basing these props on technology that was available in 1979. The hacking tool, for example, which is one of the main gameplay mechanics, was based on Cold War-era technology.
Similarly, the motion tracker was designed to look and feel unreliable.