Two things Sega must change for Alien Isolation 2 – Reader’s Feature

Whether you’re a Nintendo fan or not I don’t think anyone can fail to have been amused by the announcement of the Alarmo alarm clock this week. The fact that it came out while everyone was hoping for the Switch 2 has got to be purposeful trolling by Nintendo and I salute that.

However, for me, the most exciting news of the week was the reveal that Sega is making Alien Isolation 2. And not just that but with the original director too. Not only was this completely unexpected but as far as I’m concerned it’s the best news I’ve heard in gaming for a very long time.

I loved the original game but, as we all know, it wasn’t a massive hit, and it cost Sega a lot of money to make. It also didn’t review that well – some liked it, some loved it, and others were not impressed at all. None of that adds up to a sequel and yet here we are, so I want to try and lay out what I think should happen next.

1. A more original story

One of the problems with the game is that despite being around 18 hours long (we’ll get to that in a minute) the story doesn’t really amount to much. Ripley’s daughter trying to find her mum is a great hook but that’s pretty much forgotten about for most of the game, which is just trying to escape and dealing with the company being its usual evil self.

That could describe 75% of Alien media up to this point (I read a lot of the comics and books) and it was unoriginal and predictable. It thought when they introduced a rival to Weyland Yutani that the other company would be different, perhaps even ‘nice’ but they completely ignored that potential and then ended the game… without an ending.

Even if they had a guaranteed sequel deal that was still a terrible way to finish the game, with a dumb cliffhanger that didn’t make you wonder or theorise about what was going on, it just made you think that the developer was trolling you.

2. More variety

Alien Isolation is long for a linear story-based game, there’s no doubting that. Around 12 hours is more normal for that sort of thing, and I think if you edited it down to that it probably would’ve have been a better game. But… I want a long Alien game! I want to spend as long as possible in that world. So, for me the issue is not that the game’s too long but that there’s not enough variety it.

The answer here is simple: more enemy types and more gameplay elements like puzzles and action. For the first game I am glad there’s no real combat and that it’s just you and the xenos (and the androids) but for a second game I think it’s fair to have some more action and enemies.

Have a farm or zoo be involved somehow, perhaps, so you get lots of variants of xenomorph. Maybe even have other alien creatures, from other worlds, that are infested by aliens. But also, we barely saw facehuggers in the first game, and yet we saw in Alien: Romulus how effective they are as an enemy.

That film has its flaws but things like the zero-G and acid sections shows there are things you can do with the concept that doesn’t mean going crazy with the lore. But I am fine with there being proper action in Alien Isolation 2, at least limited to the scale of Romulus, and more variety in locations – ideally involving multiple planets.

But really these are the only things I’d change. Sega has already got an amazing starting point because the game looks perfect and it is really scary, and those are the most important things to get right and the reason people like me can love it while still admitting its problems.

Fix those issues though, while still keeping what you’ve got, and I believe Alien Isolation 2 can be the best survival horror game and best movie tie-in of all time.

By reader Mester