Alien: Isolation - 10 Ways To Create The Perfect Experience

5. Space Station Of The Damned

The environments of the first two Aliens films have long stood out as classic locations of the genre, evoking a near perfect mixture of horror and science fiction with their aesthetics. Many aspects are evocative of classic horror conventions from the deep shadows to maintain a semi-gothic look to the almost completely empty corridors, with reviewer Chuck Sonnenberg infamously describing the Nostromo's outwards appearance as looking like "a Star Destroyer knocked up Dracula's castle." It's important that Sevastopol - which already outwardly resembles the Starfreighter's basic design - maintains the sort of industrial pragmatism of the original films' locations. Yet at the same it also needs to evoke this horror element as much as possible and distance itself from being merely a copy of Ron Cobb's work. One easy way the developers could do this without relying too heavily upon the visual imagery of Alien would be taking a look into the works of the game's writer Dan Abnett. Best known for his work in Marvel Comics and Black Library, many of Abnett's books feature industrial locations or seemingly normal places which have a truly horrifying unearthly quality to them. The mutant slums in Malleus stood out as with their unearthly quality and constant rain, heavy industrial equipment and despite their human behaviour, the sheer description of the physical disfigurements of the population. The Gaunt's Ghosts series offers a wealth of such environments which prove his skill too; the warzone of Vervunhive kept Chaotic influence to a minimum yet delivered some creepily unsettling details before the fighting had even started. Hinzerhaus meanwhile was riddled with moments where the character suffers hallucinations, communications echoes and the lights within pulsing as if the building were breathing. Allowing Abnett to have a greater say in the overall look of the game, or taking inspirations from his works, could be the key to giving the game a real edge upon release - offering some points which could ultimately make it stand out as something truly memorable.