Ripley's Daughter Is The Star Of Survival Horror Game 'Alien: Isolation' [Video]

We don't cover a lot of games here, but when one cuts back to the heart of one of our favorite movies, it's difficult to resist. Almost all of the games derived from the Alien series of films have been action-oriented, but the upcoming Alien: Isolation, for PC, Xbox One and PS4, is (finally!) a survival-horror take on the storyline. Developed over the past three years by Creative Assembly, this looks very much like a deliberate attempt to fix many of the shortcomings of previous games.

Upping the ante, this one is more directly related to Alien and Aliens than many of the prior games, as it features the daughter of Ellen Ripley as the main playable character.

First up, here's the first Xbox trailer for the game, to give you some idea of what it's all about.

In the film Aliens, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) was told that her daughter had died while the elder Ripley was in cryogenic sleep aboard a lifeboat for over fifty years. So how is Amanda Ripley (a) alive and (b) menaced by a xenomorph that somehow got to her before her mother did? Good questions! Some of the workings of the story are based on questions such as "what might have happened if a crew went out to seek the missing Nostromo?" and "what if Amanda Ripley was brought in once some evidence of the ship was found?"

There are a few small answers in the long video below, and many more questions are answered in that interview, as well. It showcases some of the PS4 footage, and explains just what the ethos of the game is. In short: it's about fear and survival, and pits a very under-prepared human against one xenomorph. (And while some of the environments here look very much like the Nostromo, the interview says that the game takes place on a space station, and some of the similarities could simply be chalked up to the relationship between two Weyland-Yutani owned craft.)

Sounds like the first game that really gets close to the atmosphere of the original film, and that's fantastic.

[Kotaku]