Alien Isolation Release Date Announced By Sega

Alien Isolation will be launching this October, publisher Sega has confirmed. The company sent out the game's release date through Twitter this morning.

Isolation takes place 15 years after the first Alien movie. Amanda Ripley, daughter of Sigourney Weaver's character from the film series, is trying to find her mother. Her investigation leads her to the space station Sevastopol. The search takes a dark turn, however, when an Alien sneaks aboard the station.

Most Alien games released to this point have been pure action, but Isolation is survival horror. The player won't be mowing down xenomorphs by the dozen with a flamethrower. Instead, the player has to rely on stealth. The weapons that they find can only be used on human and android enemies. The Alien can't be killed so easily.

“Cinematic set-pieces and loads of guns isn’t quite the ‘hiding in the cupboard’ experience I got in the old days of horror gaming,” designer Gary Napper said in a January interview “But that stuff has been embraced by the indie community who are producing these high fidelity games that are tense and atmospheric. It’s not often you get to do that in the triple-A space.”

There's only one Alien in the game and the cat-and-mouse game between the creature and Amanda is the main focus. The Alien hunts you based on sound, smell and sight. Developer The Creative Assembly has talked up the A.I. for the Alien a lot. If the monster's as smart as they say, this could prove to be a very terrifying game.

The other unusual aspect of the game is that it's being handled by the Creative Assembly. The studio's mostly known for its experience with the Total War strategy series. They haven't actually released any horror games before.

Hopefully they can pull it off, though. Alien fans have endured enough crappy games over the years, the most recent example being Colonial Marines. It's about time that they get an Alien game worth the name.