Creative Assembly still hasn’t announced a release date for Alien: Isolation 2, but its first Q&A video brings plenty of other new details. Senior game designer Noélie Prost, for instance, revealed that the sequel has spaces that are “maybe ten times bigger” than the first game.
Of course, it’s not a simple case of “bigger is better.” The story is set on Kurosaki several months after its predecessor’s events, and involves a new protagonist, Blake, discovering a Xenomorph and struggling for survival. That means traversing different locations on the planet, including a settlement packed with other humans.
How does that affect the Xenomorph’s behaviour? Prost revealed, “We had to make it work in exteriors, because in the first game, it was only in very small corridors, sometimes quite a bit bigger space, but always inside. So we had to make sure that it would work outside, so in a space that was like maybe 10 times bigger than what we had in the first game.
“We also gave it some new behaviours. So now it will be even more intelligent. It will react to the player better. It will react to all the new items, gadgets, and tools.”
Don’t let that increased space fool you into thinking it won’t hunt as relentlessly. “The creature is not going to stop hunting you when you go outdoors,” lead game designer James Green reveals. “So it will use the fact that exteriors are exposed to hunt you more aggressively. It will use weather to hide its movements.”
It can also sense your tactics and adjust accordingly, meaning the same plan (and Blake, by extension) may not survive the second time around. “It will have new things it can learn over the original game. It will change its behaviour each encounter, so that every time you face the Alien, you can’t just use the tricks you used the last time, whether that’s in interiors or exteriors.” But if you’re brave enough, you can try snapping a few shots of its mean mug, and perhaps even frame it against Kurosaki’s stark landscape, courtesy of the new Photo Mode.
Alien: Isolation 2 is coming to Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2. Despite an increasingly digital future, it will have a physical edition. Whether that includes a disc remains to be seen, so stay tuned for more details (and head here to learn more about how the new weather system comes into play).
