“But I was adamant that we had committed ourselves to creating this Alien experience that I felt wasn’t available anywhere else. No one had ever made a game like this, so that was the promise. We had to deliver on that unpredictable game of cat and mouse which is at the heart of the Alien: Isolation experience.”

Cat and Mouse

That cat and mouse gameplay elevated Alien: Isolation to the peak of the survival horror genre, putting you in the shoes of Amanda Ripley, Ellen Ripley’s daughter looking for closure with her search for the flight recorder buried deep within the labyrinth maze of the Sevastopol Station. The cat in this scenario? None other, of course, than the infamous, snarling monster itself – the iconic 1979 Alien.

“It’s a fearsome creature that you cannot defeat,” says Technical Director Mike Bailey. “You have to avoid it, get around it, distract it, whatever it might be. There are so many of those elements that kind of come together to really to give it that kind of enduring legacy, I think.”

It still has the power to surprise. Alien: Isolation earned immense praise for the artificial intelligence powering the alien upon its release and now, 10 years later, that same AI even catches the team who created it when they revisit the game.

“There are some areas where I’m very confident,” continues Bailey, talking about his Alien: Isolation playthroughs. “I know the level and think okay, I can duck behind that table, sneak around this bit and it was still catching me out. I was a bit too confident! It’s difficult to master. It’s unpredictable but not unfair. If I’d been a bit slower, if I’d used the motion tracker, I probably would have been able to handle the situation better. It wasn’t purely random.”

Animating the Alien

One key moment in development was the switch from making a third-person game to first-person, amplifying the intensity and horror at the heart of Alien: Isolation. That’s when Creative Assembly realised, they had something special on its hands but that shift to first-person also put a bigger spotlight on the alien itself, as you had to keep an eye on the menacing creature stalking you through the numerous corridors and vents. That added pressure to make the alien to look even more convincing.

“The first “Alien” film was the main point of reference, it was what we wanted to honour,” says Simon Ridge, the animator responsible for how the Alien moved. “There’s not much of the actual alien itself on screen, so it was about extracting the feeling you had when it was on screen, which was that it was quite odd. Quite eerie.

“I started looking around at different things that tapped into that very feeling of being eerie and odd. I looked at Nosferatu, the original old school Dracula. We looked at dinosaurs as well, looking at how the feet like went on the ground. I remember making quite an effort to make the feet feel really graceful. And then with the alien’s ability to go very, very fast at the same time, I thought that would play into these odd contrasts. It was creating a mixture of all sorts and then hoping that amalgamation would create that weirdness, that oddness.”

New Generation of Fans

Animation was just one ingredient in the dynamic cocktail of fear that Creative Assembly mixed together. They created a dynamic and reactive audio system because unlike most survival horror games, Alien: Isolation wasn’t choreographed or scripted. They replicated the Lo-Fi-Sci-Fi art direction that defined the movies, from the monitors with chunky buttons to the dirt and grime that caked the metallic walls.

It was that attention to detail that really brought the monstrous alien and its world to life, with the original Alien movie even playing on a loop in Creative Assembly’s office (“I must have watched it a few thousand times!” jokes Bailey).

And with Alien: Romulus bringing in a new generation of fans via the big screen, it also means a new generation of players are also discovering this standout survival horror experience for the very first time.

“It’s fantastic seeing people inspired by watching “Alien: Romulus” and playing Alien: Isolation for the first time and see how it still holds up,” concludes Hope. “The fact that people are still finding it today, picking it up, enjoying themselves… it’s just a great testament to the work that the team did. It’s incredible.”

You can play Alien: Isolation today on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S via Backward Compatibility. It’s available on the Microsoft Store in two versions: Alien: Isolation and Alien: Isolation – The Collection which contains the base game and seven packs of additional content. Keep up to date with Alien: Isolation news at AlienIsolation.com — and with a sequel confirmed to be in development after 10 years, there’s plenty more to come from the team.