If, like myself, you have been hopelessly sucked into Alien: Earth, Noah Hawley’s new FX series, you might already be feeling that nagging question in the back of your mind: “The season is already halfway over, what am I going to watch to fill the empty, chestburster-shaped hole in my heart once Season 1 is finished?”
I have the solution: You don’t need to watch anything. You need to play Alien: Isolation.
There are a lot of things to love about Alien: Earth, especially the new lore we’re getting about non-Weyland-Yutani megacorps like Prodigy, and the synthetic humanoids they build. The show is set two years before the original 1979 Alien film, and Alien: Isolation takes place between Alien and Aliens, so although the show hasn’t directly referenced the game, they sit quite close together on the Alien timeline. Like Noah Hawley’s show, Alien: Isolation also features plenty of corporate intrigue and lots of crazy synthetics. If you’ve never given the game a chance, now is a great time to give it a try.
In Alien: Isolation, you play as Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Alien protagonist Ellen Ripley. Still traumatized by the disappearance of her mother, Amanda takes on an employment contract with Weyland-Yutani, working in a sector of space that’s close to where her mother and the USCSS Nostromo disappeared. Eventually, she’s approached by a Weyland-Yutani synthetic named Samuels, who informs her that the Nostromo’s flight recorder has been found, and invites her to join a small team that Wey-Yu has put together to retrieve the recorder from Sevastopol Station, an enormous space-mining rig, freeport, and commercial outpost that has definitely seen better days. It was originally constructed by Seegson, a European mega-corp and manufacturer of synthetic humanoid workers called Working Joes.
Naturally, things go to hell before Amanda and the rest of the retrieval crew have even finished boarding the station, but I’ll spare you any spoilers. Alien: Isolation is, without a doubt, a terrifying game. But it’s far more than just Xenomorphs and jumpscares (though it features plenty of both). Alien: Isolation provides a fascinating glimpse into the world of corporations that aren’t nearly as powerful or successful as Alien: Earth‘s Weyland-Yutani and Prodigy.
Unlike Wey-Yu and Prodigy, Seegson isn’t terrifying because it’s a trillion-dollar company that governs Earth. It’s terrifying because it’s a mismanaged, dying corporation that has rotted from the inside due to years of corruption. Its synthetic Working Joes aren’t creepy because they’re advanced and hyperrealistic, they’re creepy because they look and act nothing like actual humans, a far cry from most of the other androids typically featured in the Alien universe, who could all pass for humans at a glance. A malfunctioning Working Joe won’t give you some long-winded villain monologue about its uber-evil motivations, it will simply beat you to death while imploring you to “have a nice day,” and then immediately return to whatever mundane task it was performing before you got in the way. I find that far more unsettling than the well-polished hybrids, cyborgs, and synthetics of Alien: Earth.
Throughout the game, you’ll discover audio logs, news articles, emails, and diary entries that will help you slowly piece together the story of how Seegson (and by extension, Sevastopol Station) fell apart, but Alien: Isolation also features some special treats for fans of the original Alien film: two DLC packs that let you play as characters from the heart-pounding 1979 flick and relive the terror of the Nostromo.
In the Crew Expendable DLC, you can play as Ellen Ripley, Captain Dallas, or chief engineer Parker as they work to try and trap the Xenomorph on board and blow it out of an airlock. In the Last Survivor DLC, you’ll step into Ellen Ripley’s shoes and relive her final moments aboard the Nostromo, as she attempts to flee via an escape pod. The best part? The Nostromo crew in Alien: Isolation is voiced by the same actors who played them in the film (with the exception of John Hurt, who did not reprise his role as Kane for the game). Sigourney Weaver voices Ellen Ripley, Tom Skerritt voices Dallas, Veronica Cartwright voices Lambert, Harry Dean Stanton voices Brett, and Yaphet Kotto voices Parker. As terrifying as these DLCs are, it’s incredibly heartwarming (and a little bit bittersweet) to hear these actors reprise their roles, especially given the fact that Stanton and Kotto are no longer with us.
But just in case you’re still having doubts, I’ve got another reason you should take Alien: Isolation for a spin: A sequel is currently in production at Creative Assembly. FX hasn’t yet confirmed whether Alien: Earth will get a second season or not, but a sequel to Alien: Isolation is very much in the works, and the first game should be more than enough to hold you over until we find out if and when Alien: Earth will return.
