Few video games capture the essence of their inspiration quite like Alien: Isolation. Creative Assembly’s 2014 survival horror looks as if it were made by the set designers of Ridley Scott’s movie themselves, such is the incredible attention to detail. But it’s the groundbreaking use of the xenomorph that makes Alien: Isolation such a triumph; this perfect organism is an engine for fear.
The game’s fifth mission, The Quarantine, marks the first moment in which the xenomorph actively hunts you through Sevastopol Station. Armed with little more than the iconic motion tracker, you must evade and escape cinema’s most terrifying predator. This is where Creative Assembly truly brought the Alien fantasy to life. But recreating the terror experienced by Ellen Ripley in the original film took more than authentic visuals and sound effects.
To find out how The Quarantine was made we spoke to two of the game’s developers about how Creative Assembly brought together astonishing AI, clever looping level design, and cutting edge lighting to inject pure terror into your first encounter with the alien.
The core of Alien: Isolation is a cat and mouse chase between your protagonist, Amanda Ripley, and the xenomorph. Prior games in the franchise depicted the aliens as cannon fodder for gung-ho Colonial Marines, but Creative Assembly looked to Ridley Scott’s tense original film, not James Cameron’s action-packed sequel, for inspiration. Much like in the 1979 horror classic, there’s just a single xenomorph in Alien: Isolation and you’re powerless to stop it. The only thing you can do is try to survive.
