UPDATE: Both pieces of DLC will be available for everyone after launch. While you still get them free with the pre-order, you will have the option of obtaining them later, possibly for a price.
Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, and Yaphet Kotto will all be reprising their original roles from Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece Alien as part of DLC for the upcoming Alien: Isolation game. This will be the first time that Sigourney Weaver will play Ripley since 1997’s Alien Resurrection. Ian Holm, who played the android Ash, is the only one not returning, though his character will feature in the DLC. Many of the other characters were never featured in the Alien series again, making this their first reprisal in 35 years.
It was absolutely critical to have those characters reprising their roles for this to work
The first DLC, which comes with every pre-order of the game as part of the Alien: Isolation Nostromo Edition, is titled Crew Expendable and begins moments after the death Brett at the hands of the Alien creature. Players will be able to choose between Ripley, Dallas, and Parker as they try to lure the Alien out of the Nostromo’s Airlock. Depending on your character choice, you will be given different starting items and have a different perspective on the events of the mission.
The second DLC is titled Last Survivor and can only be obtained by pre-ordering at Gamestop in the US, and select retailers overseas. This mission plays out the famous moments of Ripley activating the ship’s self-destruct and making her way to the escape pod. While fans of the series might have memorized this scene, it can play out differently than in the film.
Speaking with IGN, Alien: Isolation’s game director explained that both missions are began as “What If” scenarios.“What if we could get the original cast back together? What if we could put them back on the Nostromo to face the creature? It just started from there.”
This “What If” structure allowed them to formulate the missions so that they didn’t follow the film 100%. “There’s no point in us trying to match beat-for-beat what occurs in the film. The film is much better at doing that than a game. We came with the approach these guys had a plan to try and take on the alien, to flush it out of an airlock. What else could have happened?”
Simply having the Nostromo to explore will be enough for most fans, but developer The Creative Assembly wanted some structure to the events that the player experienced. And those events will continue Alien: Isolation’s theme of dynamic play. The Alien is still unscripted, and reacting to everything the player does, leading to an ever changing landscape. “You’re still confronting the alien, which is dynamic and reactive,” says Hope. “It’s not scripted, which I think fits perfectly into these characters try and confront it and surprise it. Every time you play it’s different.”
Alien: Isolation comes out on October 7th for PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC, so keep an eye on AotF for more news.
