Alien: Isolation - 10 Ways To Create The Perfect Experience

3. Total Isolation

Despite its title, one thing early information about Alien: Isolation has made clear is that you are not alone. Even ignoring the invincible exoskeletal monster wondering about the space station, E3 demos have shown that human scavengers, rogue androids and a small number of other human characters are all on-board the installation, with some willing to speak to the player. While just about all of them are still a threat, it's difficult to maintain a sense of real isolation when the player is constantly surrounded by other people, hostile or not. Very few games have managed to escape the failing of making the player feel too familiar with the environment, or build a chilling sense of isolation while at the same time offering plenty of enemies. System Shock 2 is a rare example of this being successfully pulled off, primarily thanks to its sheer number of foes lacking even the slightest resemblance to humans and many being vastly more powerful than the player. By comparison Bioshock's splicers only managed to stand out in a few controlled moments and audio diaries, often being far too human to truly terrify anyone. With enemies often lacking any vocal distortion or spouting lines, they seemed more like mildly deranged individuals than true monsters. The Creative Assembly will need to be very inventive in order to maintain a constant sense of isolation and loneliness while at the same time offering a wide variety of enemies. Methods to prevent players from feeling too at home within the crumbling station thus far have been random behavioral patterns and shifting environments, meaning you won't run into the exact same kind of enemy twice. While this will leave players second guessing how to approach certain foes or levels, the question is if it will be enough to truly make the player feel scared and alone.