Gaming

Alien Isolation sequel officially teased but key detail is causing skepticism

Alien: Isolation 2 Has Been Confirmed
Cover Media - Gaming / VideoElephant

One of the scariest video games of all time in Alien Isolation is finally getting a sequel but gamers online have spotted a key detail that's led to some skepticism.

Alien Isolation is a first-person survival horror game where players have to navigate primarily through a space station while being hunted down by a Xenomorph. All players have to avoid the fearsome foe is a motion tracker with little means of defence if they are spotted.

A sequel has previously been confirmed to be in development and we've finally got a first look at it on social media.

A short teaser trailer appeared to show the sequel will take place, at least in part, outside of a space station this time. All it shows is a flickering red light that turns green before a door opens, with a cut to a booth that says 'emergency' on it.

The teaser itself has gone down incredibly well with more than 5.5m views on X / Twitter alone at the time of writing.

However gamers have uncovered a key detail in a job listing that's causing concern.

Creative Assembly, the developer behind Alien Isolation, is hiring for a Senior Development Manager and part of the listing said: "This is an excellent opportunity for a talented Senior Development Manager to join the sequel to Alien Isolation being built in Unreal Engine 5 (UE5)."

The studio has its own engine, called Cathode, but it appears the sequel to Alien Isolation will move away from this and use Unreal Engine 5 instead.

This was spotted and posted in the Gaming Subreddit and it's causing skepticism among some.

from gaming

One said: "Nice, so every time an alien is nearby, the game will helpfully stutter to let us know it's around us. What a great engine!"

A second commented: "As a UE Dev... I am both happy and worried. Almost no one knows how to properly handle shader caching and texture streaming in Unreal. They just turn on all the options and then pray TSR, DLSS or some other thing will fix it. None of those will fix studder in a game. And a game like Alien Isolation NEEDS to be butter smooth... ESPECIALLY when things appear all of the sudden.

"We will have to wait and see. But I pray to all that is holy they ask Epic for help on optimisation and to teach their team to use it properly."

"No God no please!" a third exclaimed.

A fourth added: "They had the perfect engine to work with and decided to go with UE5? It's crazy what kind of magic the first game pulled off. The game even ran extremely well on Switch 1."

And a fifth agreed: "God I'm so tired of devs abandoning visual identity and all adopting this same f****** engine. You can always tell it's UE5 just by looking at it. It's boring."

Elsewhere from Indy100:

How to join the Indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the Indy100 rankings.

The Conversation (0)