Alien: Isolation developer The Creative Assembly has explained that while the anger over Aliens: Colonial Marines was particularly messy, it only reaffirmed the studio that there’s still a passionate series fan base out there.
Speaking with GI.biz, Alien: Isolation’s lead designer Gary Napper reflected on the backlash concerning Aliens: Colonial Marines.
“It did completely reaffirm to us that there was a massive Alien fanbase out there,” he began, “and they’re all after something very specific, and everyone has their own idea of what the alien should be
“But just to see such a vocal reaction to the game, everything that they’ve said they want is something that we’re building and we’re very excited about that.”
Senior producer Jonathan Court then discussed the reasons for going back to the series’ horror roots, and why there’s only one alien in the game. “That original movie was all about that one alien,” he explained, “and that’s what we decided we wanted to deliver.
“We thought the alien had been done effectively a disservice in a lot of games, it had been boiled down to fodder and we wanted to make a really meaningful experience with our alien and make it such an important part of the game.”
He added, “When we built this alien, when we first set out we said ‘we’re going to build the exact alien from the first film,’ but if you look at the alien from the first film the alien doesn’t really move much.
“It stands around, and they generally walk into him rather than him hunting and attacking them. So we found ourselves building people’s perception of what the alien was, rather than an exact copy from the first film.”