Entertainment | Why Alien : There’s a tendency, when we talk about upcoming games or recently announced sequels, to view them through a very singular, personal lens. I like the look of this game, or liked the original, so it’s good news.
This game looks boring, or I hated the original, so I don’t care about this. And so on. It’s natural and normal, and I do it too, all the time. When I first heard Alien: Isolation was getting a sequel, my thoughts were ‘I love Alien: Isolation, so this is great news!’, but it’s more important than just me. Alien: Isolation getting a sequel is good news for the industry.
Alien: Isolation only reviewed okay, with a 79 on Metacritic and 81 on OpenCritic. You can give the big speech about how 5/10 means average and 8/10 still means really, really good, and I do wish game reviews offered a little more depth at the top end instead of 10/10 meaning everything from ‘probably one of my six favourite games this year’ to ‘this is the best game of the decade’. But it is what it is. An 81 means it did okay. ‘Okay’ doesn’t always mean sequels.
Alien: Isolation Deserved Another Chance
Why Alien : Of course, critics don’t hold all the cultural power. While Alien: Isolation has grown into a cult classic (ironically, often lauded by critics these days far more than fans), it was not a smash hit. Racking up two million in sales, it wasn’t a flop either. It did okay. And, well, you saw what I just said about okay and sequels.
Alien: Isolation’s sequel is the result of a multitude of factors. Some of those will be behind the scenes, and we may never know the full extent of them. Creative Assembly was most recently working on Hyenas, a live-service experiment terminated before it even arrived once it became clear that not all live-service rainbows lead to pots of gold. A refocus on single-player experiences (as fans tend to prefer), a bump in Alien’s popularity following Romulus and the upcoming TV show Alien: Earth, and the team’s leadership possibly advocating for a return to a project they were proud of may have put a thumb on the scales.
But externally, it’s down to the game’s consistent popularity. While perhaps not reflected in sales or scores, Alien: Isolation is now looked back on as a must-play horror experience, one with an exceedingly clever use of the Xenomorph learning your movements, and a staple of the survival horror genre. It is fans who have continued to go to bat for the game, even when a sequel seemed an impossible concept, that helped make this impossible possible.
Why Alien : Remakes Freeze A Game In Time, Sequels Let Them Grow
That is why Alien: Isolation matters so much. Though the IP will have helped, this is not getting a sequel as an easy cash grab. It’s not a mindless follow up being rushed through to churn out more profit, and it’s not a remake that offers no artistic value besides making skin shinier. It’s a completely new game, being made in a series that has a track record executives don’t always sign off on. That in itself is a victory.
Of course, for Isolation fans like myself, the moral victory is besides the point. It’s just a new game in a series we like, and that’s good news any day of the week. But having been told Dead Space was ‘back’ thanks to a remake whose primary aim was to sell enough copies that the sequel could be remade too (it failed), it’s deeper than just personally liking the game. Alien: Isolation is exactly the sort of game I’d expect to get a remake to ‘test the waters’, then be abandoned again despite a positive reception. In a land of remakes, a new game is king by default.
Why Alien : I am a hypocrite with this view, at times. I enjoyed Tomb Raider’s recent remaster of the original trilogy, even if I feel there should be a greater focus on fresh Tomb Raider games rather than selling our own childhoods back to us. I was also, foolishly, excited for Lollipop Chainsaw: RePop, even though I’m against remakes on principle and knew we’d never get a sequel. Turns out that one didn’t even have the decency to be a good game in its own right.
Why Alien : Isolation getting a sequel is great news, and despite middling sales initially, there will be no shortage of people who think so. But it’s good news for people who don’t think so too – for people who have never played Isolation, would never play a horror game, or even those who played it and hated it. Isolation getting a sequel, not a remake, not a cameo appearance in another Sega game, but an actual factual sequel, means whatever game out there you think deserves a second go around just edged closer to getting it.
