Speculation and rumor mongering is unavoidable when something like this happens. It turns out that 20th Century Fox, the hilariously dated movie studio and stewards of the Alien franchise, has filed a trademark for something called Alien: Isolation, and Kotaku has now stepped forward with information regarding this project that they’d been sitting on. According to the report, the game, which is a first person shooter, has been handed over to Creative Assembly, which is a bizarre choice considering their specialty is real time strategy games such as their critically acclaimed Total War series. Adding even more fuel to the “That’s Weird” fire is the rumor that the game is going to be based on Ripley’s daughter, who only had a brief appearance as a photograph special extended edition of Aliens. There are also rumors that this game will go back to the series roots, featuring only one locale, a space station, only one alien, and a lot of hiding and sneaking around.
Considering how badly Gearbox neglected Aliens: Colonial Marines (though this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the neglect happened because they were busy making sure Borderlands 2 was amazing), it’s quite bold of Sega to still be trying to save the franchise. It seems like such an easy franchise to build a compelling game from, and yet Colonial Marines has shown how badly off track things can go, while a Alien RPG was cancelled before it even really made any progress. Now, if these rumors are true, Sega and Creative Assembly are doing even more ret-conning by bring Ripley’s biological daughter into the mix, and ret-cons have a bad habit of feeling forced and angering the original fanbase with whatever changes they make. It’s probably best to keep an open mind about this, but looking at historical precedent, Alien: Isolation is fighting an uphill battle.
