Alien Isolation’s Sequel Is a Perfect Chance to Finish One Unresolved Story

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home November 14, 2024 20 Views 7 Min Read
Alien Isolation's Sequel Is a Perfect Chance to Finish One Unresolved Story



Between Alien: Romulus’ smashing success at the box office and the recent announcement that fan favorite horror game Alien: Isolation will be getting its long-awaited sequel, it’s safe to say 2024 has been an excellent year for Alien fans. For many, the future of the Alien franchise hasn’t been this bright since the release of James Cameron’s Aliens back in 1986.




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However, it’s been ten long years since Alien: Isolation shook up horror gaming. A lot has changed in both gaming, but also the Alien franchise itself. Since the original game came out, the franchise has received two additional films, dozens of new comics, and even new owners after 20th Century Fox merged with the Walt Disney Company. With all this change, the possibilities for a sequel seem endless, but the Creative Assembly has a rare and exciting opportunity to answer some questions fans have had since 2017.

Alien Isolation REmastered

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Alien: Isolation 2 Should Finish The Story Started in Prometheus


An Isolation Sequel Can Complete Ridley Scott’s Story

Through 2010’s, the Alien franchise was being spearheaded by Ridley Scott’s Prometheus trilogy, for lack of a better name. The 2012 film and its 2017 sequel, Alien: Covenant, explored the origins of the xenomorph species, the earlier days of the Weyland company (before the Yutani merger) and, most importantly, some very heavy themes about the nature of humanity, the meaning of life, and the responsibilities creators have to their creations.

The prequels’ breakout character was undoubtedly David, an early synthetic model played masterfully by Michael Fassbender. David is a villainous artificial person, with his own agenda and an ax to grind against humanity, who he perceives as being horrible to their creations, namely himself. The prequel duology ends abruptly with the revelation that David is the mad scientist behind the xenomorph species, and that he would be continuing his research on an unknown number of innocent colonists. But since Alien: Covenant underperformed, this planned trilogy was cut short and David’s narrative has been left unfinished.


That’s where Creative Assembly and its Alien: Isolation sequel come in. Alien: Isolation takes place around 20 years after the original 1979 film, and around 40 years after the events of Alien: Covenant. As such, there’s a prime opportunity here for the games to finish the story Ridley Scott started and give closure to David’s arc. While 40 years seems like a long time, David is a synthetic to whom time is relatively meaningless. If he wasn’t destroyed, he could very well be (and likely is) still experimenting away with the mysterious black goo introduced in Prometheus.

Alien: Isolation 2 Can Give David’s Story the Closure Fans Have Been Waiting For

Amanda’s story after the events of Alien: Isolation can go in any direction. Yes, there was technically a niche mobile game sequel to the original game called Alien: Blackout, but that’s likely to be rendered non-canon with the release of a proper AAA sequel. Amanda Ripley learning about or even interacting with David would be one of the most interesting things a sequel could deliver.


Obviously, the spotlight should always be on the titular creatures themselves, but David could serve as a wonderfully twisted secondary antagonist. His ruthless cunning and malicious intellect could serve him well as a secondary antagonist to the iconic creatures. He could even be the mastermind of the whole game, with designs for Amanda that relate back to her mother’s encounter with the creature on the Nostromo.

But the most value David can bring to the story of Alien: Isolation 2 isn’t strictly tied to anything he could do in the story; it’s about the meta around the franchise itself. The prequels were divisive among series die-hards, but the android David was a fan-favorite character, due largely to Fassbender’s excellent performance and the cerebral themes the character introduced to the series. The fact that his story ends with one great big question mark has got to be something of a sore spot. Creative Assembly has a chance to give this iconic character his due and close out his story in a satisfying way. Maybe the devs can even collaborate with Ridley Scott to get a sense for where the character was planned to end up, showing respect for the filmmaker and his still-incomplete vision.


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