10 Years Later, Alien: Isolation Still Benefits From One Vital Design Decision

Even a decade after its release, Alien: Isolation remains a standout experience.

It's a monumental example of adaptation in video games, thanks to the fact that developer Creative Assembly was packed with fans of Ridley Scott's 1979 film, Alien, and an incredibly tight, detailed focus on the fidelity of the movie's setting. It also set a bar in horror game design, with the alien operating on a set of reactive artificial intelligence rules that made it terrifyingly unpredictable and unstoppably lethal.

It also stands apart from other games based on the Alien franchise, which tend to ignore Scott's original film in favor of iterations on Aliens, James Cameron's sequel, which moves away from straight horror to feature more action--and a bunch of well-outfitted, smack-talking Marines. Creative Assembly instead pitched an Alien game, not an Aliens game, one that would focus on making the creature feel like an unstoppable, unknowable predator instead of a horde of animals players would mow down with pulse rifles.