One of the biggest changes in Alien: Isolation 2, when compared to its predecessor, is the fact that it will take players planetside rather than keeping them confined to a spaceship. This, Hope said, opened the door for the studio to explore how it could tell an entirely new story. However, he also confirmed that this new story would still be “closely connected” with the first Alien: Isolation.

“Coming out of the tin-can-in-space experience into a new world, onto our planet’s surface, and really opening the canvas and telling a new story – which is still really closely connected to the first game,” he said. “Having this new outpost, Kurosaki Station, that we could bring to life, which would have those claustrophobic interiors where the player feels trapped – and is super familiar to anyone who’s played the first game – but now also allows us to have these hostile exteriors that you’re going to be hunted in.”

Alien: Isolation was highly praised for its effective use of audio, and Hope has noted that this aspect remains one that the studio is highly focused on. He described audio design as being a great shortcut to make players feel tension and fright. This, along with the concept of an “information war” – essentially the difference between what the player knows and what their enemy might know – will play a key role in making Alien: Isolation 2 a frightening experience.

“Audio is half the experience,” explained Hope. “It’s such a massive component of any horror experience, but for us, it’s enormous. It’s kind of our shortcut to helping steer how you’re feeling and thinking; a shortcut to your brain. One of the other ways we think about the Isolation experience is like an information war – what do I know versus what the enemy knows? And then you have all these modifiers that play with that to either enhance it or take it away. And weather is this great disruptor for all those bits of information. We’ve got so many ways we can have weather influence the experience. It really kind of gives us a really definitive way of expanding the core Isolation experience.”

Alien: Isolation 2 will be a first-person horror game. Taking place a few months after the events of the first Alien: Isolation, the title will also feature a brand-new protagonist in the form of Weyland-Yutani employee Blake. While not too many other details about Alien: Isolation 2 have been revealed yet, the game’s reveal trailer did confirm that there will once again be a Xenomorph that players will have to hide from and sneak around.

Alien: Isolation 2 is being developed for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2.

Beyond this, there was plenty of new gameplay, showcasing the Orcs and the Imperial Guard. Massive battles were promised, and Creative Assembly delivers, but even closer to the ground, the details are immaculate. It’s especially satisfying to see explosions ring out and limbs go flying everywhere.

As incredible as the battles look, the team is working hard to ensure varied environments with its planet-making system. Even if you happen upon an ice planet, various factors can significantly alter its makeup. For example, Arid conditions will ensure more craters while Temperate conditions will result in ice and rocks around settlements.

The sheer variety is pretty impressive, especially when considering architecture and verticality during combat. Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC, and while a release date remains unknown, a closed beta is coming. You can sign up here to note your interest, though once again, when it will go live remains to be announced. Stay tuned for updates in the meantime.

It’s an unsettling walk through a dark forest, with a voice on your comms setting the stakes by telling your character that you’ve only got one chance to fix whatever has gone wrong in the time since the first game came out so long ago.

There aren’t too many details in this short look at the game, but we can confirm that there’s a Xenomorph on the loose, in case you were getting lulled into a false sense of security. We can also confirm that it cuts quite the sinister figure, hunting you from the shadows before it leaps in for the kill. It looks as menacing as you would expect it to be, and taking it on is definitely not for the weak of heart.

In case you’ve forgotten, considering just how long it’s been since the first game released, this one’s set in the same universe as the films, ẃith the first game being successful enough to fuel a long chain of rumors and speculation about this one’s existence.

We can’t wait to hear more about this one from Creative Assembly, and the trailer below should easily demonstrate why that’s the case.

However, your commander is quite miffed at his counterpart among the Orks, who have swarmed all over Minerva’s Armageddon subsystem with reckless impunity. It’s time to teach them a lesson in the art of war that they’re not likely to forget. The Imperum of Man is all set to enact a swift and brutal counterattack, and we think Minerva is going to be the start of a very long and bloody campaign.

If you’re wondering what we’re on about, this one marks Creative Assembly’s first foray into the Warhammer universe, and is shaping up to be quite an intriguing offering in the strategy genre. The broadcast/trailer for the game ends with the ominous reminder that there is no peace among the stars, a sign of many battles to come.

A release window would have been a welcome addition to the trailer below, but it seems that it may be closer than expected. At 0:37, the words, “Next Transmission Update Scheduled — 17 Cycles.” If each Cycle is one day, that means an update at the PC Gaming Show, set for June 7th.

With this being the first Total War title to launch on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5, a launch date announcement seems all but a given. Stay tuned for more updates until then.

A key aspect of the game described by the duo is the sheer sense of scale. The planet showcased, for example, will have one of four biomes that have been confirmed for the game so far—arid, temperate, ice, and waste. Each planet will also have its own type of civilization, from sparsely populated frontier planets to fully civilized hive worlds. Players will take on battles from region to region on the continents of these planets, and each star system will have a “handful” of planets. Without going into specifics, McDowell noted that “It’s going to be dozens and dozens of planets in a system.”

“It gives a really cool opportunity for you to encounter more desolate wasteland places,” explained Petry. “You can imagine when you end up fighting on the perimeters of these hives, you’re going to have these wasteland battles effectively that are pretty much empty. Like some bits punctuating things, but largely it’s pretty desolate out there, bar a few points of interest. And then of course, when you work your way towards and into an actual hive, you’re going to be fighting these much more dense, much more choke point-oriented battles.”

We also get a look at a battle map from the Hive World, dubbed the Upper Hive Plateau. “There’s going to be a really, really wide variety of spaces that you can fight in this game,” Petry said. “You’re going to be able to fight in much more dense environments and much more sparse ones.”

Throwing another wrench into the in-game worlds will be the fact that players will get to leave their marks on the battlefield. This means structures and geographical features can be affected. For example, forests offering cover to enemy soldiers can be destroyed.

“One thing that we found with this universe is that everything is on such an incredible scale,” said Petry. “That even these intense spaces, when you get down into actually looking at them, are absolutely huge. There are these massive areas that you can conduct combat within, so even when you’re dealing with these intense spaces, often, actually, the spaces you can work through are still pretty sizable.”

“You can fit a sizable army in a lot of these spaces. And then in many of those spaces where things do get tight, there are opportunities to remove buildings, make it a little bit bigger if that’s your playstyle. If you’ve got an army that really values line of sight, then that can really, really help you there because, ‘I don’t want those. Get rid of them.’”

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is being developed for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. It doesn’t yet have a release date, however.

They also provided new details on the sci-fi survival horror, namely that it’s developed on Unreal Engine 5 (its predecessor used the studio’s own engine). Then there’s the Game Design Director listing, with one of the day-to-day responsibilities stated to be defining and delivering “a long-term roadmap” and “scoping an ambitious multi-year release plan for the project.”

It seemingly indicates that Creative Assembly is planning to ramp up development, which is a good sign. However, the “multi-year” part potentially means it could be a while before we see it released. Which wouldn’t be the biggest surprise – the project entered “early development” last year, and we’ve yet to see any gameplay, much less learn its official title.

Good things come to those who wait, of course. With the amount of time it’s taken for a sequel to Alien: Isolation to even get greenlit, one can only hope that it’s worth it. Stay tuned for more details, and in the meantime, check out our review of the original, where we praised its recreation of the setting, the Xenomorph’s AI, and much more.

Titled “False Sense of Security,” it opens with the camera slowly zooming in on a door in the dark, which subsequently opens into a rainy night. A phone with “Emergency” on it is beeping before cutting to black. Before the first transition, however, it’s worth noting that the building complex seemed torn up.

Perhaps the result of something cutting loose and causing havoc? Mayhaps a Xenomorph or three? While it doesn’t have an official name, release date, platforms, gameplay, etc, Creative Assembly clearly has a vision for the sequel. All that remains is to see where it goes.

If you haven’t played the original, Alien: Isolation launched in 2014 for consoles and PC to fairly strong praise. Set 15 years after the first film, it starred Amanda Ripley, who ventures aboard the Sevastopol to search for her mother, Ellen. Naturally, things take a turn for the worse, as she must evade a seemingly invincible Xenomorph to survive.

If you’ve played any of the Dawn of War titles, this will look very familiar. Space Marines battling against Orks with tanks colliding against Stompas, and it’s not long before the Imperium of Man brings orbital lasers into the fray. Several worlds are showcased with war raging throughout the system, and suffice it to say that diplomacy might not be much of an option.

A brief look at pre-alpha in-engine gameplay highlighted the various battles taking place on a massive scale alongside the various Chapters players can control. It’s also worth noting that two more factions – Aeldari and Astra Militarum – are also included.

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 doesn’t have a release date, but it’s coming to PC, Xbox Series X/S and PS5.

In a Twitter post looking back on the first game and how it was a “dream project brought to life by a brilliant team,” creative director Al Hope said the studio has “heard your distress calls loud and clear.” The sequel is currently in early development with more details to be revealed when the team is ready.

Alien: Isolation launched in October 2014 for PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC. Set 15 years after the first film, it follows Amanda Ripley as she ventures to the Sevastopol to search for her mother. Unfortunately, she runs afoul of an intelligent Xenomorph who relentlessly pursues her. Unlike other enemies, it can’t be killed, thus stealth and running away are the only options.

Alien: Isolation receive generally positive reviews at launch and sold over two million copies as of May 2015. Check out our review for more details.

Citing reliable anonymous sources, a DualShockers report claims that as of October last year, Creative Assembly was working on three Total War games. Interestingly enough, one of those games is a Star Wars spinoff. Currently, however, there’s no word on which of the three titles is the furthest along in development, and what Sega and Creative Assembly’s plan is for their release dates.

Meanwhile, this isn’t the only Star Wars game strategy fans have to look forward to. A Star Wars strategy titles is currently also in the works at Bit Reactor and Respawn Entertainment. It has yet to be fully unveiled.

Creative Assembly was one of several Sega studios to be hit with layoffs earlier this year, which was preceded by another round of job cuts following HYENAS’ cancellation last year.