The stakes are strange, as they always are in prequels, because we know from the films that Amanda Ripley died of cancer in 2178. Isolation takes place between Alien and Aliens, and it explores what happened after Ellen Ripley went missing. The game is currently free through the Epic Games Store, and this is a great excuse to jump back in and see what makes the game tick. One of the rare exceptions is Alien: Isolation, a 2014 survival-horror game improbably starring Ellen Ripley’s daughter, Amanda Ripley.
Cameron’s approach is much more suited to video games, for the obvious reasons, and it tends to be what we get from games set in this world.
Cameron made an allegory about the Vietnam War, with a crew of soldiers decked out in the latest gear getting their asses handed to them by a low-tech enemy with a mastery of the environment.
The Ridley Scott-directed Alien was a haunted house in space, while the sequel, James Cameron’s Aliens, was a war film. Most games ignore what made Alien such a stunning horror film: stillness and dread.
