Interview: Al Hope Talks Inspiration And Faithful Recreations In Alien: Isolation

Alien: Isolation is just around the corner, releasing on October 7th next week, so you’d best hide and not make a sound as the alien slinks its way past where you cower, unless you want to be skewered by its tail.

Then again you might seek safety in numbers, and I was able to chat to Al Hope, Creative Lead on the game, with a particularly busy expo show floor quite close by. Al had either lost his voice by this point, or was trying to fade into the background noise to avoid detection.

TSA: We’re going to start off with a stupid question: which is your favourite Alien film?

Al Hope: Uhh… let me think.

TSA: I’ve a feeling you’re going to say Alien 3…

Al: Well, it has to be Alien, obviously. That’s the reason we’re making this game. I’ve always been a massive fan of that first film, and just felt that if we could instil the essence of that in a video game form, it’d be like nothing else. And so, that’s what it is… that first film is the inspiration for Alien: Isolation.

TSA: The horror genre hasn’t had much momentum behind it for the last decade, but recently we’ve seen a lot of games pushing in this direction – there’s a lot of games where there’s insta-kill or you don’t have weapons, that kind of thing. I think that’s always interesting to see.

Al: Yeah, when we started this game, survival horror games were going in a direction that we weren’t particularly interested in. Which was fine, it’s okay, but this is what we wanted to do, and so we were really clear from the start with what we wanted to achieve – we wanted to create an Alien game that was about trying to survive against the Alien.

We wanted to give the players a cat and mouse experience, like almost hide and seek. It’s fascinating now, when it’s coming out, that there is a sort of renaissance in survival horror. That’s fantastic. People are always looking for new experiences.

TSA: Things to scare them?

Al: Yeah, and it’s just really interesting – from our experience, it’s just a coincidence, I guess, but that’s what it feels like.

TSA: You must get really sick hearing about it, but there’s always that shadow hanging over from Aliens: Colonial Marines.

PR Guy: Interview’s over, that’s it. [laughs]

TSA: [laughs] But yeah, I regularly see that game still come up in the comments. I think you said before that you had to bide your time, because you weren’t allowed to say anything about Alien. How have you dealt with that feeling?

Al: That was only really because we’ve been working on this game for four years, working in parallel when Colonial Marines was being developed, we were just really focused on taking things a completely different direction within the franchise. When Colonial Marines did come out, we were aware of the commentary, but when you see people saying that they want a scary game with just one Alien, and we’re there making it, we were just like “can we tell them?”

It just seemed really reassuring that there was an audience out there hungry for something which we were making. Knowing, in confidence, that we were doing that, and in the context of not being able to tell anyone anything, it just made announcing the game even more exciting.

TSA: It felt like you were a lot more open, and very quick to get people into the room with their hands on the controller, playing it. That must’ve fed back into it.

Al: That came about because, when we announced, we could’ve got a bunch of press into the studio and showed them a cool movie, and then we could’ve talked about the game we were going to make – and that would’ve been fine – but we were fortunate that the game was at a place where we could play it.

I think we said it at the time: the best first impression of the game is experiencing it and getting hands on for yourself. I think that was great for us as we’d been working in a bubble, where we only knew how we’d played the game, and to see people come in to play the game – and seeing their reaction – was massively reassuring for us. They assured us that we were doing the right thing.

TSA: In terms of the difficulty, what I personally found – and maybe this is just because I’m rubbish at the game – was that I died quite a few times. That’s something which can be quite difficult in survival horror games: if someone does die several times, how can you keep that sense of fear, and the atmosphere?

Al: This all comes back to our approach with the Alien: it isn’t scripted, it is looking for you and listening for you, that really does keep the experience pretty much like a live encounter every time you play – it’s really unpredictable. I think that’s interesting for us, and I can even play it at my home…

TSA: And it’ll still scare the bejeezus out of you?

Al: Yeah! Because I can’t predict what’s going to happen, so I have to play it like anyone else. I have to concentrate and consider every action and figure out how best to survive. It’s amazing – I play the game all day every day, so I should be able to injure it and never die… but it does catch me. It’s a really interesting way of developing a game.

TSA: Yeah. The situations do get more complex as the game goes by, because you have the humans.

Al: Yeah, other survivors.

TSA: Plus the…

Al: Synthetics. Here’s the thing, they’re running under the same core AI as the Alien, so they’re using senses to drive their behaviour, so there’s this amazing and organic immersion in events which take place. Everyone really does have their own story to tell after playing, because we like to try and step back – we create a space and structure.

We’ve got a core storyline that runs through the game, but in between those kind of meets, what happens is really up the system and your choices, and that’s the great thing – everyone has their own journey.

TSA: I guess is kind of plays into what we’re seeing with quite a few games, where there is that emergent gameplay within systems. For example, you’ve got No Man’s Sky, where this small team have just created the systems within which people get to play, and I think that’s an interesting trend that we’re seeing, where not everyone’s going to have the same experience.

Al: Yeah, I think that’s one of the powers and one of the exciting things about our medium, that it can do things that others can’t do. The fact that everyone can have their own story to tell after playing out game is amazing and we should be having our own thoughts rather than trying to ape TV; we can do things in much more interesting ways. If people are taking advantage of that, then that’s great, it’s just furthering the boundaries of what’s possible.

TSA: Speaking of the films though, you have then worked with the original cast, with Sigourney Weaver and all the others. How was that, to get them in to see what you’ve been working on, and take them back into that world?

Al: So yeah, it was incredible. You have these crazy ideas about what you could do, and I suppose this was one that came off!

I think it’s a testament to the great work the guys are doing at the studio, that when we were able to put the game in front of the original actors and say, “Look at what we’re doing,” they could see the kind of attention to detail that we’d put into recreating the world that they had created in the first place.

For Sigourney Weaver to reprise her role as Ellen Ripley was amazing.

TSA: Who asked whom to make that happen? Was it you guys asking Sigourney, or…

Al: Yeah, so we approached the original cast members and asked them if they wanted to be part of the project.

You know, it was incredible showing her the Nostromo in our game, and for her to say, “I’ve walked down that corridor.” That was amazing.

TSA: And obviously, in that case, the whole set for the original film was actually the whole ship.

Al: Yeah, they actually built it.

So, I think the moment at which Sigourney started delivering her lines was really special. I think everyone was kind of transported back to the Nostromo upon hearing her. Working closely with them all was a dream come true and really unforgettable.

Thanks to Al for taking the time to talk to us, and we hope he’s found his voice again!