When Sega and Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation came out in 2014, I was the deputy editor at Official Xbox Magazine. I remember getting the review copy from our contributor Alex “Game Over, Man” Dale and asking him how long the game was.
35–40 hours, WTF. I don’t remember exactly how Alex replied—maybe his message ended with a scream and static, or maybe he just agreed that 35–40 hours is way too long for a horror game, even though the main campaign can be finished in around 20. 35–40 hours? That’s like a Final Fantasy game!
he said, then i said
Now, over ten years later, we finally know who’s responsible. Of course, it was the xenomorph all along. According to Alien: Isolation writer Dion Lay, the alien’s growing abilities during development made some parts of the game take more time than expected. There’s probably an Alien quote that fits here, but I’ll go with that Jeff Goldblum line from Jurassic Park.
In a recent interview with FRVR, Lay admitted that “in a perfect world, yeah, I’d kind of shrink it down a bit, get down its core. The Alien really evolved as we were making it. By the time it was perfect, it was like, ‘Oh, wow, everything takes a lot longer!’ So, it would be really nice to pare it down to its core, make it a lot shorter. At the time, it didn’t seem that long, and then you suddenly go, ‘Oh my God.’ So, yeah, I’d definitely shorten it, you know. But, yeah, at the time, there was some stuff where we were like: ‘Yeah, we can’t take that out now, that would kind of upend everything.’
He explained
I’d love for Lay to explain more about which parts of the Alien’s behavior affected how long the game takes to finish. The creature’s evolving AI was one of the big selling points before launch. I remember the developers telling me spooky stories about how distractions like flares might stop working as well over time. After you throw a flare a few times, the Alien might figure out where you are. Eek!
Back in 2014, I even tried to make a big double-page magazine flowchart for OXM to show all the AI behaviors, which probably got a lot of players killed on launch day. I can’t recall how that pre-release hype compared to the final game. Ten years is a long time, and most of what I remember about Isolation now is hiding in lockers. Mostly.
Anyway, it makes sense that the Alien’s intelligence helped make Isolation such a long game. Maybe that’s something Creative Assembly will fix in the upcoming Alien: Isolation sequel—it’s not clear how many of the original team members are still working there. When it comes to unkillable monsters, I’d say the Alien’s biggest rival right now is the Beast from Amnesia: The Bunker.
Source: FRVR