Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to side Quest. This is our weekly
Speaker 1: video game show here at Geekverse. I'm your host, Still Muss,
Speaker 1: and I have with me the Sevastopol Taylor Field. How
Speaker 1: are you doing, my friend, I'm doing.
Speaker 2: Good, happy to be here, very excited for this topic
Speaker 2: of discussion.
Speaker 1: M hmm too. This episode, you could say, is in
Speaker 1: collaboration with the Alien retrospective that we've been doing, because
Speaker 1: today we are talking all about Alien Isolation, the twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen survival horror game from Creative Assembly, and this be
Speaker 1: it should be fun. I think it's kind of a
Speaker 1: long time coming. This is a game that I've definitely
Speaker 1: had in my radar for years and years but never
Speaker 1: played it. And I know this is a game that
Speaker 1: you are a fan of, so it should be a
Speaker 1: fun discussion. And that's really all we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: I think I'll just keep it short here with the
Speaker 1: plugs and just say that, as I mentioned, like, Alien
Speaker 1: Romulus is coming out, and so we have gone through
Speaker 1: doune retrospectives of every Alien movie that exists, including the
Speaker 1: two AVP movies, and this is kind of the I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't think this is the last thing
Speaker 1: I'm releasing on the main feeds. Everything's out on Patreon
Speaker 1: right now. But this is at least the last thing
Speaker 1: that me and you are recording prior to Romulus coming
Speaker 1: out in a couple weeks here, So it's kind of
Speaker 1: a nice cap on the end of this thing. So
Speaker 1: it should be a good time. So let's just get
Speaker 1: right into it. So, as I said, this game came
Speaker 1: out in twenty fourteen. Creative Assembly is the developer who
Speaker 1: is kind of most known for all the Total War
Speaker 1: games that exist and all the millions spinoffs and DLCs.
Speaker 1: So it's you know, right up Kirkland's Alley in that way.
Speaker 1: But they're an interesting studio, Like they just have so
Speaker 1: many games. If you go on their Wikipedia page, it's
Speaker 1: insane how many things they've worked on over the years.
Speaker 1: I also see that they worked on Halo Wars two.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they did the first one.
Speaker 3: I don't think they did the first one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so interesting there. They've done some sports games and
Speaker 1: also I found this interesting that in nineteen ninety for
Speaker 1: the MS daw it's really really old. Back in the day,
Speaker 1: they worked on a game called Infestation, which I've never
Speaker 1: heard anyone talk about. But if you go and look
Speaker 1: into that game, it's just described as, you know, a
Speaker 1: science fiction scenario type thing based on alien and aliens
Speaker 1: and that kind of some of the I don't know,
Speaker 1: I guess the stuff from those movies. So it's interesting
Speaker 1: that way back in the nineties, this studio and they're
Speaker 1: first starting out, probably just a handful of people at
Speaker 1: the studio at that time, made a game that's kind
Speaker 1: of inspired by alien and then what is that twenty
Speaker 1: four years later they get the opportunity to make an
Speaker 1: actual alien game that is, you know, Kenon and in
Speaker 1: the Universe and all that. So it's pretty interesting about that.
Speaker 1: It's hard to find any information on this game because
Speaker 1: there's other games called Infestation and they've totally consumed them.
Speaker 1: In the search engine optimization. I can see a couple
Speaker 1: images here, but it's really hard to find any info.
Speaker 1: Even the Wikipedia page for that doesn't even list Creative
Speaker 1: Assembly as a developer, But then on Creative Assemblies Wikipedia
Speaker 1: shows that they made this game. So it's very strange
Speaker 1: and I don't know much about that one, but otherwise, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really just all these hundreds of total war games
Speaker 1: that they've made, so I bring that up just to
Speaker 1: say that it's interesting that they made this game in general.
Speaker 1: Obviously it seems like there was some interest there from
Speaker 1: the developers. Even Halo Wars is kind of an interesting,
Speaker 1: Oh look at that, kind of some comparisons there in
Speaker 1: terms of the sci fi and the aliens that exist
Speaker 1: in that game, the Covenant. But they've never really made,
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, a game similar to
Speaker 1: this prior in their history, and since then, they haven't
Speaker 1: really made anything quite like it since, just back onto
Speaker 1: the Total War and Halo Wars stuff. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of a weird pocket that exists for the studio, but
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Nonetheless. Tell me about your history with this game.
Speaker 1: Did you play it when it came out in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: were you a late bloomer, did you come to it later?
Speaker 1: What's your history with it?
Speaker 2: Oh, I was their day one when this game came out.
Speaker 2: I remember I didn't move to town here yet, so
Speaker 2: I remember just getting it, playing the daylights out of it,
Speaker 2: loving it. It was just such a good time, and
Speaker 2: I can't believe it's actually been a decade now that
Speaker 2: I think about it now.
Speaker 3: When I moved here, started working at target.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure this is one of the reasons me
Speaker 2: and Kirkland's friendship started, because because we'd be in electronics
Speaker 2: and we'd be talking about.
Speaker 3: Oh, what was the other one called? No, it was
Speaker 3: the oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: Dying Light the zombie parkour game, So that was the
Speaker 2: one we talk about all the time.
Speaker 3: An Alien Isolation was.
Speaker 2: The other we would just be chatting about all all
Speaker 2: morning and it was just such a such a great
Speaker 2: just ah, it's a great thing to discuss.
Speaker 3: And yeah, the game does not disappoint.
Speaker 2: It's something that I find that I'll go back every
Speaker 2: few I wouldn't say months, but every year I'll indulge
Speaker 2: in this game just to put myself in the stressful situation.
Speaker 2: It's just it. It holds up so well for me,
Speaker 2: and it's just such a it to me. It's a
Speaker 2: no brainer like this just it's such a great setting
Speaker 2: and a great kind of ode to the original, and
Speaker 2: just a great kind of concept to just put Alien
Speaker 2: and just this kind of like stealth sneaking around kind
Speaker 2: of gameplay mechanic.
Speaker 3: And just pile it all together.
Speaker 2: So to have this and I'll just say it, to
Speaker 2: not have a sequel to me, it's a shame.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, it's interesting that you say that because
Speaker 1: just looking into development of this game and some other
Speaker 1: things like apparently one of the earlier prototypes of this
Speaker 1: game was as a third person game as well. But
Speaker 1: I think, as you mentioned, like this is I feel
Speaker 1: like the perfect formula for a game like this, So
Speaker 1: I think it's good what they ended up going with
Speaker 1: first person in the end, and I'm sure even the
Speaker 1: third person gameplay would have been quite similar and all
Speaker 1: that to what they ended up doing here. When you
Speaker 1: say that you kind of revisit it, I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: means you, like you'll just jump in for a mission
Speaker 1: or too, just revisit parts of it, or are you
Speaker 1: replaying the whole game because it is that was I
Speaker 1: think maybe the biggest surprise for me when I actually
Speaker 1: played through this is that this game is a lot
Speaker 1: longer than I would expect.
Speaker 2: I think I should be missions or something, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's I think it's a eighteen nineteen missions how long
Speaker 2: to beat?
Speaker 1: Puts it around like eighteen to twenty hours. I ended
Speaker 1: up beating it quicker than that, But I also did
Speaker 1: after first couple hours play like drop it down like
Speaker 1: the easiest difficulty, So I'm sure I was cruising through
Speaker 1: it quicker than maybe the average playtime in that way.
Speaker 1: But yeah, for like a survival horror game, and also
Speaker 1: when that's like a very cinematic experience that's trying to
Speaker 1: make you feel like an alien movie. I think it
Speaker 1: is a very long game. So yeah, when you're revisiting it,
Speaker 1: are you doing have you ever played through the full
Speaker 1: game again or are you more just kind of revisiting
Speaker 1: sections something.
Speaker 2: I haven't played through the full game again, but there's
Speaker 2: just there's certain sections and I mostly just I like
Speaker 2: to replay the Crew Expendable DLC.
Speaker 3: That's just I just like it.
Speaker 1: It's just is that the Ripley one.
Speaker 2: Is that the Ripley one? Yeah, where you're on the
Speaker 2: Ellen Ripley one, the Ellen Ripley one. Yeah, I just
Speaker 2: really like it. It's just it's such a fun, fun thing.
Speaker 2: But there's there's certain things that I like to experience
Speaker 2: from the actual the game. There's certain missions I like
Speaker 2: to do, like I mean, just being able to do
Speaker 2: the we'll talk more about it, but that there like ship, like,
Speaker 2: oh my.
Speaker 1: Great, It's just it's fun. Yeah, So as you meant
Speaker 1: like you you're kind of playing this game every every
Speaker 1: once in a while, and I think for this episode,
Speaker 1: you haven't played through the whole game again, being played
Speaker 1: through like sections of it again. Did you have any
Speaker 1: new or different takes, especially since we've been going through
Speaker 1: the Onlien movies when you played through it this time,
Speaker 1: any anything kind of different come up that you weren't expecting.
Speaker 2: The main thing, I mean different, No, not necessarily. It
Speaker 2: just kind of sticks like more questions.
Speaker 3: In my mind.
Speaker 2: And when you go through the movies, you get answers
Speaker 2: to certain things and you get no answers to other things.
Speaker 2: But the main thing that I just wonder with the story.
Speaker 2: And I appreciate that this takes place between the first
Speaker 2: two movies, and I appreciate that this character essentially is
Speaker 2: just manifested out of a extended deleted scene from the
Speaker 2: second Alien movie. Right. It's crazy to think about when
Speaker 2: you tie it all together, but I really just.
Speaker 3: Wonder where all the eggs came from.
Speaker 2: And I've looked into people talking about it, and it
Speaker 2: just comes down to like, well, there must be a
Speaker 2: queen somewhere, but we never see it because the station
Speaker 2: gets blown up or whatever. Even then we know that Okay,
Speaker 2: well the one person got infected with an embryo and
Speaker 2: then was brought back and yeah that was the end
Speaker 2: of it. But then where did all the eggs come from?
Speaker 2: So that's just and we know there's multiple hives. Yeah,
Speaker 2: yeaha It's just that's the only thing that always kind
Speaker 2: of like leaves me curious every time I go through
Speaker 2: those missions trying to figure it out.
Speaker 3: But it's just one of those things.
Speaker 2: As for anything that really stands out and is different,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's maybe just ways that I'm evading the alien,
Speaker 2: ways that I think it's fun to kind of deal
Speaker 2: with humans, whether it's like I'm running and I fire
Speaker 2: off shots and obviously the alien's going to hear you,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, like I'm in a locker
Speaker 2: and I know that two humans are like stalking like
Speaker 2: mooning around with their guns, and then you wait like
Speaker 2: forty seconds to a minute, and then you just hear
Speaker 2: the alien charge out and the alien kills them, and
Speaker 2: then Saunders obviously like, okay, you know.
Speaker 3: That the alien me are on a team. Now we're
Speaker 3: working together.
Speaker 1: The only game that lets you team up with the
Speaker 1: with the ami that's funny. Yeah, I have a different
Speaker 1: backstory history with this one. I can't remember when the
Speaker 1: first time I kind of experienced or saw this game was,
Speaker 1: but this is one of Briggs's favorite games, and so
Speaker 1: I've just watched Briggs play it many times through certain sequences,
Speaker 1: and I think the biggest thing that started in my
Speaker 1: memory was just a lot of events in this game,
Speaker 1: and then I remember just how scary the Xenomorph can be,
Speaker 1: and those are kind of my two preconceptions going in.
Speaker 1: But it is a game that I feel weirdly doesn't
Speaker 1: get talked about a lot, even though I feel like
Speaker 1: it is a very well made, very like high budget,
Speaker 1: polished experience. So it was fun to go through it,
Speaker 1: and I, yeah, finally went through and play through the
Speaker 1: whole thing. I did not have time to play through
Speaker 1: the the Nostromo DLC things, so you'll have to tell
Speaker 1: me more about that. I saw that, I saw that
Speaker 1: it's pretty short, but I just didn't have time unfortunately.
Speaker 1: So I'll bring it up on side quest when I
Speaker 1: because I did buy it recently on this Team Summer sale,
Speaker 1: but I'll bring that up when I have played it
Speaker 1: in the future. But yeah, playing through it, and it
Speaker 1: was it was a weird experience for me, Taylor. I
Speaker 1: can't remember the last time I've been both so hot
Speaker 1: and so cold on a game at the same time.
Speaker 1: There are things I absolutely love about this game and
Speaker 1: I think are so impressive, and then there's so many
Speaker 1: things that I drive me freaking crazy as well, So
Speaker 1: I'm excited to get into all of it. But I
Speaker 1: think for me, like the prose, like the biggest of
Speaker 1: the pros would just be the aesthetics of this game.
Speaker 1: This game is so beautiful. The lighting is unreal, the
Speaker 1: sound effects and sound design and music are all just perfect.
Speaker 1: Like the commitment to the source material without it being
Speaker 1: just derivative of the things that it's based on is
Speaker 1: so so great. Like I can't think of the last
Speaker 1: time I've played a license game like this that feels
Speaker 1: like it has so much of its own identity while
Speaker 1: still being based within the world of something that is
Speaker 1: pre existing. It's just really impressive in that way. And
Speaker 1: then like the Xenomorph, I think is such a big
Speaker 1: success in this game, and even looking into it even
Speaker 1: more than my just one play through, because I feel
Speaker 1: like there's so much going on that you'll never know
Speaker 1: everything that the x Anymorper is capable of and all
Speaker 1: the things that's doing in one playthrough, But I watched
Speaker 1: some some videos and just reading up on what all
Speaker 1: the AI tech that is input into that thing is
Speaker 1: so interesting as well. So I'm excited to break down
Speaker 1: some of that and I think there, yes, some of
Speaker 1: these sequences in this game are truly fantastic, and I
Speaker 1: just I just love all the tech in here. There's
Speaker 1: so much little, so many little details that are so
Speaker 1: very impressive. I think as far as the story goes,
Speaker 1: like this story is like as good as any alien movie.
Speaker 1: For the most part, it's it's not really it's more
Speaker 1: about the vibes and the place and the setting than
Speaker 1: it is like the actual plot that's going on in
Speaker 1: these movies. Maybe with the exception of Prometheus, which is
Speaker 1: doing a lot more in terms of the story, and
Speaker 1: maybe you could say Covenant, but execution is not quite
Speaker 1: as good there so, but I think it kind of
Speaker 1: gets the job done. And it's interesting what you're saying there.
Speaker 1: How it's kind of based off a character that is
Speaker 1: mentioned in Yeah, a scene that doesn't even end up
Speaker 1: in the theatrical release, and they kind of take that
Speaker 1: and go in a whole bunch of different directions with it.
Speaker 1: But I think where my issues coming with this game
Speaker 1: are in a few ways. One, as I mentioned, is
Speaker 1: way too long, and I think for the way this
Speaker 1: game is designed, and like the kind of mastery of
Speaker 1: those systems that I think you would get the more
Speaker 1: you play it, and how interesting that Xenomorph is, I
Speaker 1: feel like this game would do a lot better if
Speaker 1: it was a lot shorter, and this would be a
Speaker 1: game that I'd want to replay and kind of master it.
Speaker 1: But after playing one play through, I'm like so burnt
Speaker 1: out on the gameplay of it that I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that again because there are a lot of
Speaker 1: sequences that are really dull. Whenever you have a space
Speaker 1: suit on in this game and you move so freaking
Speaker 1: slow and you're not doing anything, and then just other
Speaker 1: sequences where I like the backtracking element of it. I
Speaker 1: like kind of going through the space station again and
Speaker 1: kind of feeling interconnected, but yeah, some of these sequences
Speaker 1: are just really slow paced. And then you know, the
Speaker 1: save system is visually cool, and I think I like
Speaker 1: some elements of it, but I think because it isn't
Speaker 1: a free say system, and some of these sequences, like
Speaker 1: you're just hiding a lot for sometimes like twenty minutes
Speaker 1: or something, and if you just die, then you just
Speaker 1: have to go back because there is auto saving this game,
Speaker 1: but I found it never really auto saved when I
Speaker 1: needed it too, when I felt like I went through
Speaker 1: a long story sequence. I feel like it doesn't auto
Speaker 1: save in some of those sequences, which is really surprising
Speaker 1: to me. I feel like a lot of the mechanics
Speaker 1: in here are kind of half baked, Like there's really
Speaker 1: cool ideas, there are inklings, there's strings to pull on,
Speaker 1: but then when you do pull on them, they kind
Speaker 1: of unravel. And then I think, you know, one thing
Speaker 1: that is both a great commitment to its source material
Speaker 1: in terms of how strong the xenomorph is, but also
Speaker 1: how strong the face Huggers are translates to really bad
Speaker 1: gameplay at times where the face Huggers of these tiny
Speaker 1: little bastards that are really hard to hit, really hard
Speaker 1: to shoot, but then they instaicuted you even on the
Speaker 1: easiest difficulties, Like, yes, it makes sense that they would
Speaker 1: do that, but at some points you have to decide
Speaker 1: what's better for a video game versus what's better for
Speaker 1: a movie, and I feel like this game kind of
Speaker 1: gets lost in that a lot in terms of not
Speaker 1: like it. It's not really committing to full on being
Speaker 1: just like an interactive movie and not committing to being
Speaker 1: more of like a lot of times, the game feels
Speaker 1: a kind of like an immersive sim type game in
Speaker 1: terms of like a like it feels like a dishonored
Speaker 1: or a prey in terms of how much freedom you
Speaker 1: have with all the mechanics given to you. But then
Speaker 1: it gets stuck between those two things, between the story
Speaker 1: and the immersive sim element of it that I feel
Speaker 1: like it kind of gets lost in the shuffle at
Speaker 1: times too so. But but I think truly one of
Speaker 1: the biggest compliments I can say is that I am
Speaker 1: just so fascinated by this game. I think it's such
Speaker 1: a wonder that it exists, and like it just feels
Speaker 1: like one of the most expensive games ever. It's ten
Speaker 1: years old, but it still looks like a modern Triple
Speaker 1: A game, with the exception of maybe like some face
Speaker 1: some mo cap on like faces, or like a couple
Speaker 1: character movements, but otherwise, like the game still looks top notch,
Speaker 1: and after it was done I just went and consumed
Speaker 1: a bunch of YouTube videos seeing like people's different thoughts
Speaker 1: on are learning more about the mechanics that I missed,
Speaker 1: because it is just such a fascinating game. So I'm
Speaker 1: really glad it exists. I'm glad that I finally have
Speaker 1: played it because it's been on that it's been a big,
Speaker 1: big on the backlog there for a long time. So
Speaker 1: I'm glad I finally did it. But just because of
Speaker 1: how long it is, I don't know how much it's
Speaker 1: one I would revisit other than going to check out
Speaker 1: that Nostromo DLC that you mentioned. I think that's like
Speaker 1: maybe a nice bite because that's like less than an
Speaker 1: hour long, right.
Speaker 3: It's super super short.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's it's not like the whole events of
Speaker 1: Alien one. It's just no, it's because that would be
Speaker 1: crazy if they made the whole events of Alien one
Speaker 1: like the random BLC. Yeah, it's just like the ending sequence.
Speaker 2: Right, that's exactly, and you're dropped in some people have died,
Speaker 2: and uh, yeah, you just gotta you gotta arm, get
Speaker 2: the bombs armed whatnot and get to the escape patch.
Speaker 2: And it's I find it very difficult because the Nostromo
Speaker 2: is very narrow, and the alien just gets in.
Speaker 3: The freaking way so easily, and it's so hard to.
Speaker 2: Get around him and out maneuver him, which is again
Speaker 2: one of the problems that I would say I have
Speaker 2: with the base game is the alien can be really annoying,
Speaker 2: and I can appreciate how you're very limited and how
Speaker 2: different things that you craft can and basically work to
Speaker 2: get rid of it. And the flame once you get
Speaker 2: the flamethrower, the flame throw is like a big game changer, yes,
Speaker 2: because everything before that, it's like, your gun's not gonna
Speaker 2: do much. I mean, the stun baton just used it
Speaker 2: on yourself. I'm pulling my hair out with the alien
Speaker 2: comes up with that thing.
Speaker 1: So one thing that I didn't I mean, I didn't
Speaker 1: experience it, but I also didn't feel like I was
Speaker 1: pushing it to the limits is that it's just there's
Speaker 1: no possible way to kill a xenomore from this game, right,
Speaker 1: Like all you can do is scare them off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can kill like face huggers, of course, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting choice. Let's let's yeah, get right into it.
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna break over the spoiler gates here.
Speaker 1: We're not gonna hold back on anything. You know, this
Speaker 1: game's ten years ault, so we haven't played it yet.
Speaker 1: I think we'd both recommend to go play it if
Speaker 1: you're a fan of Alien. And apparently the switch port
Speaker 1: is really good for this game. I've I think I
Speaker 1: read that somewhere. So that's pretty sweet because normally a
Speaker 1: game that looks as good as this, I would not
Speaker 1: expect that to be the case. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I played on PC, and I'm always worried when I'm
Speaker 1: playing a game on PC, is it gonna run very well?
Speaker 1: But this game ran perfectly. I mean, it's ten years old,
Speaker 1: but it's still. Like I said, it looks so good,
Speaker 1: so I expected it to run worse than it did.
Speaker 1: How about we talk about the xenomore first year, talk
Speaker 1: more about these mechanics. I had a funny. I'm glad
Speaker 1: you brought up the flamethrower there. I had a kind
Speaker 1: of funny. I had like a bit of the RPG problem.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're playing an RPG and you're you're,
Speaker 1: you know, getting all these health potions in your inventory,
Speaker 1: but then you never want to use them because you
Speaker 1: want to like save them for when you like most
Speaker 1: truly need them, and then by the end of the game,
Speaker 1: you like just have hundreds of health potions because you
Speaker 1: never ended up using any of them. I kind of
Speaker 1: had a lot of that experience playing through this game,
Speaker 1: where I'm like, Okay, I can only have three noise
Speaker 1: makers in my pocket at any given time. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: save them from when I need them. And then I
Speaker 1: found by the time the game was over, I barely
Speaker 1: used a lot of that kind of extra a lot
Speaker 1: of extra equipment that I had. But the flamethrower is
Speaker 1: one that I was really using a lot in the
Speaker 1: end of the game. And the reason I wasn't using
Speaker 1: it earlier when I first got it is the first
Speaker 1: time I used it, I wasn't planning on using it.
Speaker 1: But the alien he heard me, saw me whatever it was,
Speaker 1: so he was running after me. So I whipped out
Speaker 1: the flamethrower and just blasted them, and I guess I
Speaker 1: either was too far away when I was shooting, or
Speaker 1: I didn't, you know, put enough fire into him, but
Speaker 1: he just came up to me and killed me, and
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, I guess the flamethrower is not
Speaker 1: you should be used on the Zemo war for maybe
Speaker 1: I didn't didn't do it right or something, so I
Speaker 1: kind of scared me off of using him, like that's
Speaker 1: not very useful tool, I guess, So I didn't use
Speaker 1: it for like three or four hours. But then in
Speaker 1: the end of the game, I was using it a
Speaker 1: ton because I finally used it correctly and realized that, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're still really close to him, it won't work.
Speaker 1: He because he got to get a good amount of
Speaker 1: fuel blasted into him there. But yeah, that was like
Speaker 1: a very good jet get out of jail free car
Speaker 1: to just blast them with some flames, send him into
Speaker 1: the events there as he backs away, and then he'll
Speaker 1: usually come back pretty quick. But at least it gives
Speaker 1: you buys you a little bit of time. But one
Speaker 1: thing that I found interesting that I didn't really experience,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's more if you'd be playing the game
Speaker 1: on nightmare difficulty, is just how much the alien will
Speaker 1: adapt to the things you're doing. And one thing I
Speaker 1: saw is that apparently the X anymore does straight up
Speaker 1: get like evolves to fight to be like fire repellent. Essentially,
Speaker 1: if you use the flamethrower too much, it'll get to
Speaker 1: a point where he can just resist the flames of it.
Speaker 1: Like they'll I guess in theory if it's not always
Speaker 1: the same zeno more, but it's like different ones that
Speaker 1: are growing and evolving over time as the course of
Speaker 1: your on this ship. Yeah, they can like get to
Speaker 1: the point where they're just fully heat resistance. You can't
Speaker 1: really do any damage with the flamethrow if you're overusing that,
Speaker 1: which is such a cool idea. I think it's really
Speaker 1: smart and interesting, and.
Speaker 2: I think people just can kind of become maybe overly
Speaker 2: reliant on it, and it's you don't want when you
Speaker 2: introduce a flamethrower. Yes, it's a game changer at the start,
Speaker 2: but you don't want people to be reliant on it.
Speaker 2: You don't want it to ruin everything moving forward because
Speaker 2: you want to keep that danger factor and that stress
Speaker 2: factor with dealing with the zeno. But I would agree
Speaker 2: with you, there's a lot of things that I found
Speaker 2: that I just really don't end up using. My best
Speaker 2: tool I have is hiding on a locker, and I
Speaker 2: utilize that more than anything else. Obviously, you got health
Speaker 2: packs and stuff you can use too, But I mean
Speaker 2: you're not doing that. You're not using health when you're
Speaker 2: dealing with this the zeno. When the zeno finds you,
Speaker 2: you're dead, So you're really only dealing it when you're
Speaker 2: dealing with the ad the synthetics which are a pain
Speaker 2: in the butt, and humans with guns.
Speaker 3: Switch.
Speaker 1: Is there a way to close the locker quietly? Because
Speaker 1: I feel like, no matter why, I hate that door,
Speaker 1: even when you're getting out, smash it open.
Speaker 3: Jesus. Yeah, that bothers me.
Speaker 2: So much because every time I get in there, I
Speaker 2: just feel like, oh, I've been had. I like he's
Speaker 2: gonna know where I am. But no, it's when you're
Speaker 2: running then that gives it away. But no, slamming a
Speaker 2: locker door, the alien does not hear anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was another thing that I saw too that
Speaker 1: apparently if the alien and a point sees you enter
Speaker 1: a locker from that point on, they will really like
Speaker 1: open locker doors and like hunt for you in there.
Speaker 1: So if you're using like I guess that's the point
Speaker 1: no matter what it is, but it's equipment, whether it's
Speaker 1: a hiding spot some other tool. If you just use
Speaker 1: the same thing over and over again, they'll really start
Speaker 1: to kind of work around it. And so I don't know,
Speaker 1: how has that happened to you where an alien's gone
Speaker 1: up and opened a locker that you have have been
Speaker 1: hiding in, or have you been pretty stealthy with it,
Speaker 1: or they're not quite sure if you ever ever entered
Speaker 1: that locker in the first place.
Speaker 2: No, I've I've been found many a time in a locker,
Speaker 2: and it drives me nuts because, at least from my experience,
Speaker 2: and maybe I was just misreading it, but when I'm
Speaker 2: in the locker, you can hold your breath, and I
Speaker 2: swear it doubles down like, oh, you can hold left
Speaker 2: trigger or you can hold a click in the left stick,
Speaker 2: because the alien will get up close and put its
Speaker 2: head like right up against the grade of the locker,
Speaker 2: and it's like, okay, it'll prompt you hold your breath,
Speaker 2: and so you do that, and then your character starts
Speaker 2: to flash out like they're bleeding out because he can't
Speaker 2: hold your breath forever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but if you let go too.
Speaker 2: Soon, the alien like instant rips the door off and
Speaker 2: just like grabs you. You know, nice, have you been
Speaker 2: have you not been caught not from a locker, but
Speaker 2: I didn't use a lot.
Speaker 1: I was more of an under the desk kind of guy.
Speaker 3: Oh it treaks me out. I feel like, how does
Speaker 3: he not see?
Speaker 1: I know there was a couple of times where where
Speaker 1: he looked at me and then just looked away. I
Speaker 1: did get caught a couple times under under a desk
Speaker 1: or something. But yeah, even just like because when you're
Speaker 1: out there not in a locker, and you see when
Speaker 1: they walk by you and then just that long slithery
Speaker 1: tail is kind of it's almost like smacking into you
Speaker 1: or something, right, it gets pretty terrifying. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't use a ton of lockers, probably because it was
Speaker 1: just so loud that I felt like if I was
Speaker 1: trying to run away from him, I did not want
Speaker 1: to go on a locker because he would definitely hear me,
Speaker 1: and so instead I'd prefer to go for a under
Speaker 1: a counter, and I just felt like it give me
Speaker 1: a bit more maneuverability that way too, rather than kind
Speaker 1: of committing to in or out of a locker. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever got caught inside a locker, thankfully,
Speaker 1: But yeah, apparently other things too, like throwing like a
Speaker 1: noise maker machine will work, but then eventually, if you
Speaker 1: use too many of them, the xenomorpha will kind of
Speaker 1: start to like triangulate your location and determine like, Okay,
Speaker 1: where was this thing thrown from? I'm gonna go in
Speaker 1: that room, or just sometimes sometimes they just really hunt
Speaker 1: your room for like two or three or five minutes
Speaker 1: at a time before they leave. And then sometimes they'll
Speaker 1: do like a fake out where they go to the door,
Speaker 1: leave and then like come right back.
Speaker 2: In and they fast walk back into the room and
Speaker 2: be like yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And I found too, like the xenomorph can sometimes just
Speaker 1: be like this huge lumbering presence, like making so much
Speaker 1: noise walking around. But then sometimes they're just so freaking
Speaker 1: quiet that you really have no idea unless you're using
Speaker 1: your motion tracker. But even then, if they're like standing
Speaker 1: still for a bit, they might not pop up on
Speaker 1: the on the motion tracker, so it can be pretty
Speaker 1: difficult to determine them.
Speaker 2: Have you been caught because you say you use mostly
Speaker 2: tables vents above your head, walk in and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, just it pops down and you're like, instad dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I had that happen early on and I couldn't
Speaker 1: tell if it was like a scripted sequence or not.
Speaker 1: It felt like it was kind of because I feel
Speaker 1: like the game there was like a hallway in front
Speaker 1: of me that had the event above it and like
Speaker 1: the jew striping down right, and then there was like
Speaker 1: the door just to the right that had like a
Speaker 1: working Joe in it, and so I think I could
Speaker 1: it seemed like a script because sometimes there are scripted
Speaker 1: scenarios where an alien is supposed to pop out at
Speaker 1: a given time, usually I think earlier on, but then
Speaker 1: there are other times where it is like not random,
Speaker 1: but it's just being fed that kind of you know,
Speaker 1: information of what it knows from you in the past
Speaker 1: to try and hunt you. And so it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to tell by the end of the game, like
Speaker 1: what was a scripted scenario other than like if it
Speaker 1: popped a cut scene of course. But yeah, I definitely
Speaker 1: had that sequence where I saw the juice and I
Speaker 1: think I even saw him go in there. I'll probably
Speaker 1: be safe here, but no, he got me a big ten.
Speaker 1: I think even the first time I saw him, I
Speaker 1: was like running for one of the tram station doors
Speaker 1: and I couldn't I couldn't see him, but I could
Speaker 1: hear him chase him behind me, and that I mean,
Speaker 1: it's terrifying for sure, because in that moment when he's
Speaker 1: behind me, my characters looks down and like the claw
Speaker 1: or the tails like through my chest right in front
Speaker 1: of me.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: The scare factor of the alien was ten out of ten,
Speaker 1: and I think the only time it really dropped below
Speaker 1: that were some of these situations were early on in
Speaker 1: the game. I was playing on forget what the difficulty
Speaker 1: was called, but it's the one that's like, this is
Speaker 1: the intended experience intended difficulty. So I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: well I'll start on that one. And then I just
Speaker 1: found with the lack of checkpoints and some of how
Speaker 1: smart this alien, it was just getting a bit frustrating
Speaker 1: because I also found too, like if I'm in a
Speaker 1: sequence and let's say it's a long sequence where I'm
Speaker 1: hiding for minutes at a time, sometimes under one desk
Speaker 1: for like five minutes, waiting for this guy to move
Speaker 1: slowly back and forth. Eventually, Okay, I'm gonna creep around
Speaker 1: the corner. I think I have a bit of space
Speaker 1: if I'm doing that, and I've been alive for like
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five minutes trying to get through this one
Speaker 1: sequence to just like hit some dial on the other
Speaker 1: side of this area and then I die. To me,
Speaker 1: like it takes all of the tension out of that
Speaker 1: whole sequence when I have to do it again, And
Speaker 1: so I feel like that's like the perfect It's almost
Speaker 1: like surfing or something like. That's like the perfect balance
Speaker 1: that a horror game needs is like to keep your
Speaker 1: rate on the edge of the whole time, but for
Speaker 1: the bad guy to never actually kill you, but to
Speaker 1: always just feel like you're about to die. And I
Speaker 1: just feel like sometimes this game is a bit too
Speaker 1: hard for me, and that's where I dropped it down
Speaker 1: on the difficulty scale, and that's where it was a
Speaker 1: bit more. It was still very intense, but it was
Speaker 1: just way less annoying having to redo sequences, I guess,
Speaker 1: because yeah, sometimes just with how slow you're crawling, and
Speaker 1: it feels like the only way to get through a
Speaker 1: scenario is to like slowly crawl under a desk, wait
Speaker 1: for five minutes for them to walk away, go under
Speaker 1: another desk, wait another five minutes. It's like that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Becomes annoying when you don't have a quick
Speaker 1: save button and you just have to rely on the
Speaker 1: save machines. I don't know, have you. Have you kind
Speaker 1: of found that in your time as all at all?
Speaker 1: Or am I kind of no?
Speaker 2: I've I've found that a few times, and I completely agree.
Speaker 2: I think that when you're yeah, when you're trying to
Speaker 2: get from point A to point B and then get
Speaker 2: back like, it's so aggravating when there's no proper pattern
Speaker 2: like other games and bosses have, and so all you're
Speaker 2: really doing is if you try to get to your destination,
Speaker 2: you die, and you do it again, Well, the scenario
Speaker 2: is completely different, and you could spend it, maybe not
Speaker 2: as long, maybe longer, And that's what really is annoying,
Speaker 2: I would say. And I can appreciate the fact that
Speaker 2: if you go back into when you're trying to do
Speaker 2: it again, the situation has completely changed, it's not the
Speaker 2: same as before, and that stress factor comes back. But
Speaker 2: I don't like the idea that it is just yeah,
Speaker 2: twenty five minutes goes by and then your last save
Speaker 2: is at one of those consoles, which I think it's
Speaker 2: a very clever way of implementing like a save feature.
Speaker 2: I think it could be a little more refined, but
Speaker 2: just the concept just going up to this key card
Speaker 2: thing and like punching out and that's your save.
Speaker 3: I just like how that that is. I love that.
Speaker 1: I love that idea because it's contextualized within the world,
Speaker 1: which I always like when things like that are happening.
Speaker 1: When One thing I love in general about this game
Speaker 1: is like there's very little UI. Like obviously you can
Speaker 1: pull up like your equipment thing, or you can pull
Speaker 1: up your map and your menu, but other than that's
Speaker 1: like it's just your health bar at the bottom, Like
Speaker 1: that's pretty much it. So I like that it's pre minimalist.
Speaker 1: I actually tried to go and turn that off even
Speaker 1: because I just wanted to, like just it's such a
Speaker 1: beautiful game. I just want an empty screen, like I
Speaker 1: do that usually when I'm playing like Dishonored or other
Speaker 1: immersive games like this. Apparently Nightmare Difficulty does remove all
Speaker 1: of that UI stuff completely. So it's weird that there
Speaker 1: isn't an option to just manually turn off the health
Speaker 1: bar visual because like you don't really need it, like
Speaker 1: usually you're dead or alive, Like it doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: you have half health there or not. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: agree with you. I think the save machines are really
Speaker 1: great visually. I love that they have like a five
Speaker 1: second delay for all the times that I wish this
Speaker 1: game was quicker or you know, taking less time out
Speaker 1: of the day just to do a basic thing. I
Speaker 1: love that that takes like three to five seconds wait
Speaker 1: for that low's lights to click down before it officially saves,
Speaker 1: because that's feeling of tension is often there, and it
Speaker 1: means that you can't just like we're up to a
Speaker 1: save station quickly cheese it. If an alien's in the room,
Speaker 1: you like, if he'll kill you in that amount of time.
Speaker 1: And I love that has the little warning there too,
Speaker 1: of like hostiles nearby. I was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I don't even care most of the time, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna go for it anyway, even if I've made a
Speaker 1: bad save point here. It never bit me in the boat, thankfully.
Speaker 1: But I could see a scenario where you saved at
Speaker 1: the wrong time where whenever time you would load back in,
Speaker 1: there would be a guy like right behind you or
Speaker 1: something like that. But I got pretty lucky in that way.
Speaker 2: There's a few situations where it would be reloading back in,
Speaker 2: and I just get so far straighted, like okay, well
Speaker 2: you know what, I know where the alien is in
Speaker 2: the situation, so I'm just not gonna run, but I'm
Speaker 2: gonna just walk straight to where I gotta go and
Speaker 2: just kind of like unfortunately, I guess not fortunately unfortunately
Speaker 2: because I'm not indulging in how the game is supposed
Speaker 2: to be played because I'm getting frustrated. But I still
Speaker 2: got to enjoy it the first time until I died,
Speaker 2: and the second time until I die, and so now
Speaker 2: it's just like, Okay, I'm just gonna like cut and
Speaker 2: run or cutting fast walk to where I got to go.
Speaker 3: And it sucks that the.
Speaker 2: Game kind of can push you to that point. I
Speaker 2: shouldn't have to. It should be able to be.
Speaker 3: Replayable and still enjoyable.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One thing I didn't realize really until like very
Speaker 1: late in to play through, and then when I was
Speaker 1: watching some YouTube videos that confirmed it is that in
Speaker 1: most games like this, if you want to be completely
Speaker 1: silent as you move, you gotta crawl or crouch whatever.
Speaker 1: But in this game, like walking is completely quiet. As
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, it doesn't make any more
Speaker 1: noise then croaching. It's just if you're sprinting or you know,
Speaker 1: throwing equipment, shooting bullets. Obviously those things all make sound,
Speaker 1: but like sprinting is the obvious thing, but like, truly
Speaker 1: that can be the difference sometimes is just walking from
Speaker 1: one like hiding area to a next rather than just
Speaker 1: relying on that crouch. That was something that took me
Speaker 1: a while to realize because I'm just so conditioned by
Speaker 1: like every other horror survival horror game like this, like
Speaker 1: the crouch is the only reliable way to be like
Speaker 1: one hundred percent quiet. So that was something I had
Speaker 1: to learn too, and I'm sure that would have helped
Speaker 1: me a lot in some of those sequences when I
Speaker 1: was really like really tight on timing. But it's because
Speaker 1: I was literally for the first five or six hours
Speaker 1: of this game, I was probably crouched ninety percent of
Speaker 1: that because I was so terrified. Even like before that
Speaker 1: the xenomorph was introduced, I was still just so terrified
Speaker 1: knowing that it's out there somewhere.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's moments where you think you're clear and
Speaker 2: you will be crouching and you're going out into the hallway.
Speaker 2: And this is something that bothers me because if that
Speaker 2: alien is super far away doesn't see you, but you
Speaker 2: see him, and then I think, okay, well now I
Speaker 2: got to crouch back.
Speaker 3: You can't even walk.
Speaker 2: I mean, if that alien decides to do his little
Speaker 2: fast walk spur thing, he's got you, And that really
Speaker 2: bothers me because you could be in a hallway where
Speaker 2: there's no accessible hiding spot nearby and you just got
Speaker 2: to crouch because you hope he doesn't hear you, but.
Speaker 3: He does his fast walk.
Speaker 2: He hasn't seen you, but he does his fast walk
Speaker 2: down the hallway and then he just happens to see you,
Speaker 2: and then you're dead. Like it's it's tricky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've yeah, I don't know. I found the if
Speaker 1: I was ever caught by the alien, like visually spotted,
Speaker 1: and I didn't flamethrower him, I was dead. That was
Speaker 1: the only possible way. I never I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: if I even ever ran to a elevator when he
Speaker 1: was after me and was able to hit the button.
Speaker 1: Other than like, I think there's like a scripted sequence
Speaker 1: or two that have a situation like that. I find so, yeah,
Speaker 1: but like otherwise if I if I was spotted, I
Speaker 1: was dead for sure. So I don't know. I never
Speaker 1: got to a seque where I was able to run
Speaker 1: away into a room, like maybe I made a sound
Speaker 1: and he started to coming from with you, but like
Speaker 1: he never actually spotted me. But I found like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if I was visually spotted, I was, I was. Is
Speaker 1: that what you're saying though, Like the like walking you're
Speaker 1: more visible than crouching. I guess would that be maybe
Speaker 1: a difference between those.
Speaker 2: Two then well, not even being spotted, because like you're
Speaker 2: moving down the corridor and all of a sudden you
Speaker 2: just see him down down the ways down the corridor,
Speaker 2: you see you poke around the corner and he's down there,
Speaker 2: but he doesn't see you.
Speaker 3: So you do a U turn.
Speaker 2: You're going back, and you're crouching or you're walking, you're
Speaker 2: not making sound. Is the main thing is you're trying
Speaker 2: to get to a hiding spot because you got to
Speaker 2: go down this corridor and he's blocking it. Yes, but
Speaker 2: he does his fast walk and just walks up to you,
Speaker 2: but he doesn't know you're there. He's just doing his
Speaker 2: random fast walk thing. But then he sees you and
Speaker 2: then you try to run, but he's gonna get you.
Speaker 3: So there's there's that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that'll happen. Let's talk about a little more
Speaker 1: of the because you're talking about the save stations there,
Speaker 1: which are cool. I think in general, like the tech
Speaker 1: in this game, I love it visually because you know,
Speaker 1: it's very much set in that all the alien tech
Speaker 1: in general is like very bulky tech, very old school,
Speaker 1: really like you know, what the seventies thought the future
Speaker 1: would look like. But I feel like this game, you know,
Speaker 1: since there's so many tools, more tools that you're using,
Speaker 1: I feel like the like visual style of it is
Speaker 1: like really really interesting. I love the motion tracker, which
Speaker 1: you know I had in my hands so much of
Speaker 1: this game, you know, because that's like all all the
Speaker 1: only way you can truly know what's around the next corner.
Speaker 1: But even just like the computers, the terminals, like scrolling
Speaker 1: through them, the different buttons, I really enjoyed that stuff.
Speaker 1: It was like very tactile, uh, the like the torch
Speaker 1: that you're using, the different the like wrench that you're
Speaker 1: using to crack those like locks off the door. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then even just down to like all the all
Speaker 1: the equipment that you're using. Just like the visual design
Speaker 1: of it. I thought all that stuff was like absolutely
Speaker 1: perfect and so cool and both like it really cool
Speaker 1: in compact but also like bulky and clunky at the
Speaker 1: same time. It has that like there's the perfect needle
Speaker 1: on that mm hmm.
Speaker 2: I think that they've been able to really examine the
Speaker 2: the tech that existed in the A I guess Alien
Speaker 2: One and Alien specifically, while obviously the other films are
Speaker 2: around at this point. I'm glad that they didn't really
Speaker 2: focus on all that other stuff. They just kept it
Speaker 2: pretty pretty simple, and there's just something settling, I guess
Speaker 2: about seeing this advanced technology. But it's it's like a
Speaker 2: few decades old at the same time and how it appears,
Speaker 2: and I can really it's comforting. I like looking at
Speaker 2: it and utilizing that tech. It's it's nice and I
Speaker 2: can just appreciate the attention to detail, because Yeah, when
Speaker 2: you're walking into certain rooms, like you got the what
Speaker 2: was it the room where you're talking to mother an alien,
Speaker 2: they got the same thing here, Like that room is
Speaker 2: super cool. Yeah, using every one of like the sevastopool
Speaker 2: U link stations is always cool. Going through the different messages.
Speaker 2: There's just so many neat little things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought it was even a great touch that
Speaker 1: the computers the terminals on Sevastopol are slightly different, at
Speaker 1: least visually from like what is the name what is
Speaker 1: the name of that dear elect ship that you go
Speaker 1: on to with Marlowe and Taylor the other tailor alien
Speaker 1: isolation Taylor, I forget the name of it. It's like
Speaker 1: the I probably wrote it down somewhere in my notes here,
Speaker 1: but you have to go to that dear elect ship,
Speaker 1: and the terminals on there have like different loading screens
Speaker 1: because they're a different brand of computer, right, or a
Speaker 1: different operating software because they're not from that they're not
Speaker 1: part of Sevastopol, the Sevastilink thing. So I thought it
Speaker 1: was just like that attention to detail too. I probably
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't have caught if they had just used the
Speaker 1: same terminals, but the fact that they did something different
Speaker 1: did stand out to me. It was a good, like
Speaker 1: little detail there that they decided to do something like that.
Speaker 1: I don't think too like the the hacker that you have.
Speaker 1: You're doing all sorts of hacking in this game, and
Speaker 1: I like that there's like five or six different hacking
Speaker 1: micro game minigames that you're doing just to like mix
Speaker 1: it up, and all of them are pretty simple. I
Speaker 1: like that not a single one of them is tutorialized,
Speaker 1: and so the first time you see any particular one,
Speaker 1: it's like, what am I supposed to do here? But
Speaker 1: then you eventually just kind of figured it out intuitively.
Speaker 1: I thought that was really well designed, and I like
Speaker 1: that there's just just enough variety there for it to work,
Speaker 1: even though this game is quite long and you're seeing
Speaker 1: a lot of these things. But it was the the.
Speaker 2: Hacking one where you have the uh you have to
Speaker 2: pick where you put the corner around the square of
Speaker 2: the screen, and then you got to pick the three
Speaker 2: symbols when there's enemies nearby. It is the most stressful
Speaker 2: freaking thing ye too.
Speaker 3: Oh gosh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is definitely a game where some I feel like,
Speaker 1: even in BioShock, if you're hacking, maybe it would like
Speaker 1: pause the world around you, you know, while you're like
Speaker 1: in that minigame, but not here. Everything is still happening
Speaker 1: in real time, even when you're like crafting and stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like one of the tooltips that will pop up
Speaker 1: is if you don't do some crafting, go find a
Speaker 1: quiet corner to do it there too. I like, I
Speaker 1: like the crafting in this game is very simple. It's
Speaker 1: really just like, you know, there's like seven or eight
Speaker 1: materials that you're collecting through through the UH space station,
Speaker 1: and you just got to kind of them into place.
Speaker 1: But one thing I really liked about it is that
Speaker 1: you know, once you're you have to fill in like
Speaker 1: maybe five five pieces hit craft. But even if you
Speaker 1: let's say you have the maximum amount, you can still
Speaker 1: fill in all those things. You can like preload them
Speaker 1: in and that way, it's like it almost gives you
Speaker 1: like bonus inventory space so that when you have used
Speaker 1: your other ones, you can rebuild that next one with
Speaker 1: like the materials that you've already preloaded in there. I
Speaker 1: thought it was a pretty cool idea. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: I liked I liked the crafting. That's not really minigame,
Speaker 1: but I like that system. I think it worked well.
Speaker 1: Even if once again I was not using a lot
Speaker 1: of things that I was crafting, I pretty much always
Speaker 1: had I don't know if I ever threw a ma
Speaker 1: Ali tall cocktail in this game. I always just had
Speaker 1: the maximum mount in my inventory, I was using the
Speaker 1: the EMP blast to slow down if I was ever,
Speaker 1: you know, too many working joes around me here. That
Speaker 1: was kind of my my go to technique. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think I threw a noisemaker either,
Speaker 1: to be honest, So I definitely cheaped out on some
Speaker 1: of those resources, but that was cool. I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, Taylor, but I think maybe the scariest thing
Speaker 1: for me in this game was fucking doors and vents
Speaker 1: auto opening and just that sound effect that plays whenever
Speaker 1: you get like somewhat near a door and it begins
Speaker 1: to auto open. It would just jump scared me so
Speaker 1: many times because it's crouching, being super slow, there's no sounds,
Speaker 1: no music going on, and then just like a huge
Speaker 1: blast noise as the door is opening in front of me,
Speaker 1: because you never know, like maybe there's an alien on
Speaker 1: the other side of that. Did I get close enough
Speaker 1: to open it? Or is there a guy or working
Speaker 1: Joe and alien whatever it is, coming in through that
Speaker 1: door on the other side.
Speaker 3: M hmm, yeah, I know that.
Speaker 2: I think the events are very, very freaky, and I
Speaker 2: love how too. It's just like then strummles vents from
Speaker 2: the movie, just how it's like s opens up and yeah,
Speaker 2: those are tricky.
Speaker 3: And the fact that they blended into the walls. You
Speaker 3: can just walk by them, don't even know that they're there.
Speaker 2: And half the time with some vents, I just overlook
Speaker 2: them where the alien can come through. I've spent so
Speaker 2: much time in this one room doing something, and I
Speaker 2: can see my track are the the you can hear
Speaker 2: the alien bump around the vents, but he's what's.
Speaker 1: On the track, or they're still visible even if they're
Speaker 1: not actually physically in the space, but in like the imaginary.
Speaker 2: Events, yes, exactly, And they may not even be a
Speaker 2: part of this this mission. They may not even appear,
Speaker 2: but they're just they're always just lurking around. So I
Speaker 2: thought that was just the case here, and I was
Speaker 2: just doing what I was doing and gonna get to
Speaker 2: the next area where these these synthetics were. And so
Speaker 2: I leave my room and then go into the other room.
Speaker 2: And while I'm in the other room, you just hear
Speaker 2: that or that like thud and then that like that
Speaker 2: that hissing, and I turn around like holy shit, Like
Speaker 2: I didn't know that he could come into that room
Speaker 2: for the ceiling so you hide and whatnot. So I
Speaker 2: can appreciate all the different spots that they've they've placed vents,
Speaker 2: access points and stuff.
Speaker 1: Can can the aliens go through the because they have
Speaker 1: their like vertical events in the roof and you can't
Speaker 1: go in those vents. But can they go through like
Speaker 1: those circular door vents that you crawl around in.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've I've like, if you.
Speaker 1: Go into one, do they chase you? Like what? I
Speaker 1: never actually had that scenario pop up. I thought they
Speaker 1: could go through those ones, and I'm pretty sure I played,
Speaker 1: but I might have made that up.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure I've encountered one in there before and
Speaker 2: I had to flame them out of my way.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, interesting, Yeah, I never never quite encountered that.
Speaker 2: There's certain ones that I don't think they can go in. Obviously,
Speaker 2: it's for like story reasons. You know, you're you're not
Speaker 2: gonna encounter one in a certain area if you're going
Speaker 2: to a ladder and then you're in tight little like
Speaker 2: ventilation system and up another ladder through the floor or whatnot.
Speaker 2: But I think those ones with the yeah, the specifically
Speaker 2: the circular ones that open up, I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 2: you can get in there, right.
Speaker 1: Cool. Okay, let's take our first break here. We're gonna
Speaker 1: go into those circular events. We'll be right back after
Speaker 1: this break. Okay, we are back. Do you want to
Speaker 1: talk more game plan out? Do you want to jump
Speaker 1: into story? Do you want to talk Where do you
Speaker 1: want to go next?
Speaker 3: I'd love to get into some story.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's do it. So this game, I guess, takes
Speaker 1: place in between would it be between alien and Aliens
Speaker 1: or between Aliens and three? It would be between those
Speaker 1: two one and two? Yeah, yeah, And so the story here.
Speaker 1: You play as Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Ellen Ripley.
Speaker 1: You are an engineer on a ship that is going
Speaker 1: to retrieve a they call it a black box, which
Speaker 1: has some information from the Nostromo about pretty much just
Speaker 1: what happened, and that's where you're going and that that
Speaker 1: black box is there at Sevastopol. You get invited along
Speaker 1: to go to Sevastopol, and then as you're going there,
Speaker 1: you realize that shit has gone down at Sevastole. This
Speaker 1: place is not in good shape, and that's what leads
Speaker 1: into the whole setting of the game. So, yeah, what
Speaker 1: do you think about I guess playing as this character
Speaker 1: kind of that being the choice the setup for the story,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, what do you think about the
Speaker 1: location in general of Sevastopol being the kind of setting here.
Speaker 3: I love it, I really really do.
Speaker 2: I love how big the space and I love how
Speaker 2: no words it's huge, no war is really safe, and
Speaker 2: it just feels like a it's a space city essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, any space station that needs a tram system to
Speaker 1: get around, you know, is pretty freaking huge.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And even though it is so huge, the fact
Speaker 2: that it gets in the name, you feel isolated, you
Speaker 2: feel confined, And I really like that it takes some
Speaker 2: of the best parts of Alien and just throws it
Speaker 2: in here. And I think that's again why I'm looking
Speaker 2: forward to Romulus, because Romulus feels like it's got this
Speaker 2: kind of similar situation where yeah, you're this person's going
Speaker 2: to the space station and it's not good on the
Speaker 2: space station. And to pull Amenda Ripley as a character,
Speaker 2: I think that's great. It's something that is new. People
Speaker 2: are unfamiliar with this character, but the character has major
Speaker 2: ties to our former character that everyone loves and has
Speaker 2: followed along.
Speaker 3: So that's great.
Speaker 2: Keeps the fans and the community kind of attached and
Speaker 2: have some stake in it, so I can appreciate that.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I just love how she's called upon just
Speaker 2: to go and like get some information from her mom
Speaker 2: and then the Stromo. I think that's awesome because no
Speaker 2: one knows what happened to this ship in the fifty seven.
Speaker 3: Years, I think it is.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of time to play with and I'm
Speaker 2: just I'm glad that they did, and I think it's
Speaker 2: cool that they took advantage of going to Like that
Speaker 2: was a big surprise. When I was playing the game.
Speaker 2: I did not think that was gonna happen. I thought,
Speaker 2: we're just getting an alien on a ship and we're
Speaker 2: just gonna be trying to evade and survive and that's
Speaker 2: all it's gonna be. But that that definitely was a
Speaker 2: big surprise. Yeah, yeah, it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know who it would be, like
Speaker 1: on the rights holder side of it, who like own
Speaker 1: the IP for this, whose decision would be to say, here,
Speaker 1: we're gonna give like because I guess this game is canon,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's really been established by you know,
Speaker 1: like the studios, like.
Speaker 3: You could canon it.
Speaker 1: I mean there's there's there's Yeah, there's nothing that would
Speaker 1: make me feel like it's not can It's not like
Speaker 1: any of these like all of the character here are
Speaker 1: new for this, and there's obviously mentions of Whale and
Speaker 1: New Tani, as there always is in these things. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like to me, it totally feels like a cannon experience
Speaker 1: and just going through here too, Like when they were
Speaker 1: making this game, they were given just huge hard drives
Speaker 1: fuld of terabytes of information that had like original concept
Speaker 1: art and footage, information about everything like creation of like
Speaker 1: all those other movies. So they had so much to
Speaker 1: work with there. And so but I wonder going into
Speaker 1: this if it was like the studio pitching like here's
Speaker 1: the setting we want to go time era, or if
Speaker 1: it was like the rights holder of like here's where
Speaker 1: you should maybe go with it. Here's like a good
Speaker 1: good spot to be and the kind of way like
Speaker 1: Star Wars has like that period where they're just like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll just put all our shows and movies in that
Speaker 1: kind of dark period between these movies. Right. So I
Speaker 1: think it's an interesting choice, but I think it's cool
Speaker 1: to play as Amanda Ripley in here. I guess it's
Speaker 1: maybe jump into the end a little bit, but it's
Speaker 1: it's a little weird the way it's it's left off,
Speaker 1: and maybe we'll save that for later in terms of
Speaker 1: like what could have been for a squel or what
Speaker 1: could be. It's never never too late, you know, like
Speaker 1: they've gone on to make other things.
Speaker 2: But I can really appreciate that they got Sigourney we
Speaker 2: were to come back actually in voice.
Speaker 3: Her lines couldn't.
Speaker 1: Tell if it was actually her, honestly, Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2: She she did the DLC stuff and then yeah her
Speaker 2: the whole voice message like to Amanda.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was just that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, I think Savestipol's a really fun location.
Speaker 1: It's something different too, Like we've we've had various ground locations,
Speaker 1: We've had a lot of space ships, but to have
Speaker 1: like just a massive space station like this is kind
Speaker 1: of a new, unique thing. And I think it makes
Speaker 1: sense for a video game where you're gonna be spending
Speaker 1: a lot more time here and you kind of need
Speaker 1: larger areas to go through, and I think it is
Speaker 1: it is cool that you are doing a lot of
Speaker 1: backtracking through areas over and over again, so it feels
Speaker 1: like you're kind of know, you're seeing locations at different
Speaker 1: points in time, especially at the end, you're going through
Speaker 1: some areas that you were at near the start of
Speaker 1: the game and just seeing them kind of like burning down,
Speaker 1: like just deteriorating as the events of the game have
Speaker 1: been going on. Is pretty cool. But I think maybe
Speaker 1: the most interesting part for me about the space station
Speaker 1: is that it's like a differ and company that created
Speaker 1: and owned this ship, because we're so used to like
Speaker 1: a lot of our stuff being oh yeah, this is
Speaker 1: like a Whalen Utani piece, or it's you know, a
Speaker 1: sponsored project being sent out by Whaling Utani, so it's
Speaker 1: always geared with that tech or the Whaling new Tani androids.
Speaker 1: So I think it's especially cool that this ship is
Speaker 1: owned by siegsin is that company, and so that's where
Speaker 1: you get like it explains why their tech can look
Speaker 1: different than some of the stuff in the movies, while
Speaker 1: still of course being inspired and having that same era
Speaker 1: generally speaking, but in terms of like the user interface
Speaker 1: or the existence of the working Joe's and being such
Speaker 1: a different type of Android than we're used to where
Speaker 1: in the movies it's always like we're trying to make
Speaker 1: these things as lifelike as possible, and then maybe even
Speaker 1: like by Covenant, like okay, we made them to life,
Speaker 1: Like let's go back and make them unlifelike again, as
Speaker 1: like take away some of that free will, you know,
Speaker 1: that's a big part of that movie. And how that's
Speaker 1: always like a thing in the movies is like ooh
Speaker 1: that ca It's like a huge reveal when someone you
Speaker 1: find out that they're an android for the first time,
Speaker 1: but in here it's like obvious because they just look freaky.
Speaker 1: They look like they're not intentionally trying to hide that
Speaker 1: they are humans. They all look you know, the same
Speaker 1: as well. They have kind of the creepy eyes that
Speaker 1: blare through in the dark dark rooms that you're going through,
Speaker 1: and they're just a lot more of like they feel
Speaker 1: like a rumba, you know, like a really complex room,
Speaker 1: like they're just going around doing basic tasks. They have
Speaker 1: their pre program lines that don't sound very human, like
Speaker 1: they sound like they're generated by a computer and all that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, just across the board seeing like the different
Speaker 1: tech and like a company that is competitor Whaling New Tawny,
Speaker 1: but it's clearly not nearly as successful because obviously that's
Speaker 1: like the biggest megacorp ever, right, And so to have
Speaker 1: like a ship that's kind of breaking down in certain
Speaker 1: ways or is not quite as tight and buttoned up
Speaker 1: and polished as a Whaling U Tawny one is a
Speaker 1: really cool direction to go, and I think they completely
Speaker 1: nailed it in that regard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I always get a kick when Amanda finds out
Speaker 2: that whaling Town actually bought the station, like I think
Speaker 2: the day before she gets there. Yeah, ah, which this
Speaker 2: is the cracks me up. I think that was when
Speaker 2: she was actually speaking not to mother, but the similar
Speaker 2: equivalent scene and she's seeing like the protocol and the
Speaker 2: same thing with Alan Or it's like, oh yeah, everything
Speaker 2: comes second, protect the Zeno, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Everything else is it's pretty by the book's alien stuff.
Speaker 1: It's really the same story that we've seen many times
Speaker 1: over because of that element of it.
Speaker 2: M hm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, I think that that was a
Speaker 1: cool twist as well. That Yeah, as you mentioned, like
Speaker 1: the current state of the ship is that it was
Speaker 1: being decommissioned. It was gonna be torn apart, and that's
Speaker 1: where like it kind of explains why there's a lot
Speaker 1: of doors and things that aren't really operational when you're
Speaker 1: playing the game already, and like there's certain sections you
Speaker 1: can't go into. But it makes sense because like, Okay,
Speaker 1: those areas have already been kind of checked off the list,
Speaker 1: so to speak. They've been closed down, they're done, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of just the ship the shuttle kind of
Speaker 1: slowly being shut down piece by piece, and that's kind
Speaker 1: of the state you're in, even if whaling Towny just
Speaker 1: purchased it, but they don't really care about maintaining it
Speaker 1: or bringing it back to its former glory. They're just
Speaker 1: there strictly to get that xenomorph goodness. They just want
Speaker 1: to get that that tech down so they can do
Speaker 1: whatever they want to do with it. So I think
Speaker 1: that's a really cool time period too, and that helps
Speaker 1: them make it feel like a more real place, makes
Speaker 1: it feel more immersive because it kind of has this
Speaker 1: history to it between like these two companies owning it too.
Speaker 1: It's kind of an interesting angle to go for because
Speaker 1: I can't really recall other companies that you see there's
Speaker 1: always like they just refer to it as the company,
Speaker 1: right a lot in the Alien franchise. Yes, so it's
Speaker 1: cool to just, yeah, see what a competitor's like. And yeah,
Speaker 1: what you would you think about the working Joe's You
Speaker 1: had an interesting comment about them earlier, so I'm curious
Speaker 1: what you think about them, just kind of relative to
Speaker 1: the androids were used to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I'm glad that they make them look
Speaker 2: the way they are. I think it's it's fitting because
Speaker 2: it helps you because you again, you you're crafting things.
Speaker 2: You have different weaponry, and you need to know the situation.
Speaker 2: You need to know what you have to use and
Speaker 2: what things. In this case, yes, stumpatons are really handy,
Speaker 2: but yeah, there's just there's certain situations where it's really stressful.
Speaker 2: But I don't find them to be as stressful as aliens.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: These things are much more pattern based, so you can
Speaker 2: definitely map yourself out when you're trying to maneuver around them.
Speaker 3: So I can appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't think I've had a situation yet
Speaker 2: where like I've had the alien and the synthetics kind
Speaker 2: of meat hand in hand.
Speaker 3: Have you?
Speaker 1: I think the alien ignores them? Mm.
Speaker 3: Hmmm.
Speaker 1: I think they well, I guess they kind of ignore
Speaker 1: each other, so to speak, because at that point, especially yeah,
Speaker 1: when the robots kind of go rogue and they're trying
Speaker 1: to hunt you down and just kill I also can't
Speaker 1: think of a time when a robot is directly trying
Speaker 1: to kill another human. I guess there's at one point
Speaker 1: where like, because.
Speaker 2: What's the character's name, because he, like Samuel s. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he beats the shit out of it, right, the.
Speaker 1: Other androids, so he's but that android isn't even trying
Speaker 1: to kill him, I think, so. I don't know if
Speaker 1: the I don't know, if they're just rope I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm guessing their program to kill everyone
Speaker 1: or take anyone out, but specifically your character is on
Speaker 1: that list in terms of being a target for them.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I can't recall a room that has both
Speaker 1: the synthetics and the aliens. They're kind of used in
Speaker 1: different sequences, like the robots early on before they go rogue,
Speaker 1: but then kind of before you introduce to the xenomorph,
Speaker 1: and then the biggest sequence when you're going against them
Speaker 1: is in that sequence when you've jettisoned the one Xenomorph
Speaker 1: off the station, which is kind of a weird sequence
Speaker 1: because like, for that next two hours, even though you
Speaker 1: are fighting robots, I've found like there was almost no
Speaker 1: tension in the game at that point, and I was
Speaker 1: just like, Okay, I know he's gonna come back.
Speaker 3: Oh he thought he's gonna come back.
Speaker 1: Oh. I'm like, I know this game is twenty hours long,
Speaker 1: and I know I'm ten hours and i know there's
Speaker 1: a zero chance that I've just defeated the alien, so
Speaker 1: Corys is gonna come back.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: So that's where I just felt like, Okay, I go
Speaker 1: like two hours now of just like mess around finding
Speaker 1: the girl, but which you know, there was some interesting
Speaker 1: stealth kind of challenges there. I think it was a
Speaker 1: bit different in terms of like, Okay, they can have
Speaker 1: more of a they can have more of a cloud
Speaker 1: video game stealth sequence, Like they have a destination, they
Speaker 1: walk from this machine, they stand there for five seconds,
Speaker 1: they turn around, they walk to that machine, and like
Speaker 1: it has those video game paths, you know, the pathing,
Speaker 1: whereas that xenomorph is much more unpredictable with his movements.
Speaker 1: But I found that sequence to be like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: know what we're doing here. I get it, but like this,
Speaker 1: there's no surprise here. There's obviously no chance that the
Speaker 1: Xenymorph's obviously completely gone. I mean that one is gone
Speaker 1: and doesn't come back. But then you just find out
Speaker 1: there are potentially hundreds more line bowl a lot of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I'm sorry, I was just gonna say a
Speaker 2: few missions, like before you jettison him. I don't know
Speaker 2: if many people catch on to it, but you'll start
Speaker 2: to find bodies that are all been like chest bursters.
Speaker 3: Their chests are all popped, and it's like, well, I
Speaker 3: know there's more than one alien here.
Speaker 2: So that kind of derails it from when you eject
Speaker 2: the one to thinking like, okay, well I did it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But yeah, that's an interesting way that they connect
Speaker 1: this to the original movie. As you mentioned sequence with Marlow.
Speaker 1: Marlow's a guy who came from that. I wish I
Speaker 1: had the name of that other ship. I know, I
Speaker 1: wrote it down somewhere. Oh, the Anissidora. I did write
Speaker 1: it down. That's the other ship that had gone down
Speaker 1: to give me the name of the planet again for
Speaker 1: me fo. Yeah, they went down there because they they
Speaker 1: found the distress signal that was being given off. Marlow
Speaker 1: is the one I believe that turns off the distress signal.
Speaker 1: And as they're going through there, one of the crew
Speaker 1: members of the Nissidora get gets hit by a face hugger,
Speaker 1: and so it's it's, yeah, it's really cool to play
Speaker 1: through that sequence on that planet, and that feels like
Speaker 1: a bit of a retread of like, Okay, we're doing
Speaker 1: a sequence from the first movie, which is funny that
Speaker 1: they did it there in a bit of a different way,
Speaker 1: and then like the DLC is literally just replaying a
Speaker 1: section from that first movie. But I thought that was
Speaker 1: a really really cool sequence other than like, okay, this
Speaker 1: spacesuit whenever you're in this thing, you're so freaking slow
Speaker 1: and it takes a long time, but the atmosphere was
Speaker 1: so strong. They're like really strong gusts of winds you
Speaker 1: can barely see. And then like you'll get to certain
Speaker 1: sequences when it's like sets up like a very interesting
Speaker 1: visual and then you're like going into that into the dungeons,
Speaker 1: so to speak, from the first movie. And so that's
Speaker 1: how the the alien gets brought back to the space station.
Speaker 1: So it's cool that they're kind of following in the
Speaker 1: same footsteps of what is set up from that first movie,
Speaker 1: and maybe that would be like the only explanation of
Speaker 1: how like this alien kind of spread again through this
Speaker 1: space station. So I think that was a really cool
Speaker 1: way to connect it. I think that really worked for me.
Speaker 1: The Anissidora part, the bridge, I guess yeah.
Speaker 3: I everything about that was fantastic.
Speaker 2: I was head over heels and we're going LG four
Speaker 2: twenty six. They're like ship and even just the little
Speaker 2: nods like, oh, it looks like someone was dragged here
Speaker 2: these tracks. Oh, we're not the first ones here. Obviously
Speaker 2: the Nostromo was here.
Speaker 3: But they didn't report.
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, well they wipe the beacon so that
Speaker 2: they can kind of claim it. But then them wiping
Speaker 2: the beacon while no one else is gonna find it,
Speaker 2: and it makes sense they're taking advantage of.
Speaker 3: They're taking advantage.
Speaker 2: Of something that was pre existing in Aliens, where in
Speaker 2: the first Alien movie you have the Nostromo detecting this
Speaker 2: signal and going down there to check it out. But
Speaker 2: in Aliens you have the colonists on the planet. The
Speaker 2: colonists never went to go check out this beacon or
Speaker 2: even go there. They weren't going to that location until
Speaker 2: they were directed there by the company, and that's something
Speaker 2: that's not an adlicient scene that's in the main movie.
Speaker 3: So now it makes sense none of the.
Speaker 2: Colonists knew that it was there because you have this
Speaker 2: crew going in and they deactivated the beacon. So it's
Speaker 2: fun that they've been able to actually build upon that
Speaker 2: pre established lore with this universe.
Speaker 3: I could appreciate that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, once you are going down that repel and
Speaker 2: you just get that like panoramic shot, it's like.
Speaker 3: Holy crap, and it looks so cool.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you see your team just like walking in
Speaker 2: through the eggs and it's just like, oh god, and yeah,
Speaker 2: there's just that classic like id idiot mentality. The egg
Speaker 2: opens up and they're like sticking their heads right in
Speaker 2: there pretty much like jeez.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially when they know that like something bad happened
Speaker 1: here already or something unsure, something serious. Yeah, Marlow. Marlow's
Speaker 1: an interesting character him, along with everyone else, Like no
Speaker 1: one's really in this game a lot other than like
Speaker 1: obviously the character you play as. It's just like you'll
Speaker 1: get introduced to character, like you know, you have your
Speaker 1: team at the start of the game, and then you
Speaker 1: very quickly get displaced from them, and then you'll find
Speaker 1: them again, but then it's like, Okay, I gotta go
Speaker 1: do the next task, so I leave them behind, and
Speaker 1: so you end up spending like, I don't know, less
Speaker 1: than a half an hour with them across the whole game.
Speaker 1: It feels like they don't have a whole lot of
Speaker 1: spoken lines, especially when the girl that you're with, Taylor
Speaker 1: is like knocked out for half the game do is
Speaker 1: You don't really get to interact with her a whole lot.
Speaker 1: But Marlowe, I think it's it's cool. It's fun that
Speaker 1: he is trying his hardest to prevent the spread of
Speaker 1: this thing, and from waylay Newtani getting any of that information.
Speaker 3: He's got the Allen Ripley mentality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I do think that. Like his ending sequence
Speaker 1: where he's like, oh, they already took my wife. I
Speaker 1: don't care. It's like a bit of like, Okay, you're
Speaker 1: just trying to get me to like care for this
Speaker 1: guy a little bit more than he gets knocked out,
Speaker 1: and that's like the end of his story. It doesn't
Speaker 1: really stick to landing, but Honestly, I don't think there's
Speaker 1: really any characters that are very successful in this game
Speaker 1: for me, even like Amanda, like there's not much to her.
Speaker 1: It's nice when she gets the moment where she actually
Speaker 1: gets to hear the message from her mom, but I'm
Speaker 1: not totally in love with that character after playing this game.
Speaker 1: She doesn't really have a ton of voice acting, even
Speaker 1: though she is the protagonist of the game. Like most
Speaker 1: of the time, it's like maybe she's talking on a
Speaker 1: radio with someone, but even then that's like very few
Speaker 1: sections of the game where you're actually patched in with
Speaker 1: someone over the radio, or maybe you are, but they're
Speaker 1: not like actively having conversations. It's more just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: Samuel's where it are? I go, now, oh, there should
Speaker 1: be a red button with like a blue wire. You
Speaker 1: gonna touch that, And it's like very like factual, like
Speaker 1: here's what we're gonna do here. But yeah, what did
Speaker 1: you think about the other characters? You have Samuels and Taylor,
Speaker 1: who are the two that you go on the ship with.
Speaker 1: Samuel's being the android. I forget what Taylor's role is
Speaker 1: a medical person. I don't think maybe she is because
Speaker 1: I remember she gets like injured, and then it's like.
Speaker 3: You gotta go go find the Yeah, you gotta.
Speaker 1: Go find forget what her role was on the on
Speaker 1: the ship, and then you're counting a couple other people.
Speaker 1: But I don't know, there was no really powerful characters
Speaker 1: in here for me.
Speaker 3: No, Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 2: Remember much with with Taylor aside from her her and
Speaker 2: Marlowe and then Taylor like freaking out and trying to
Speaker 2: like stop Marlow's self destruction thing going on, and then
Speaker 2: she just gets struck by lightning bolt and that's the
Speaker 2: game over for her. Uh So they they kind of
Speaker 2: execute them pretty quickly. I can't remember the name of
Speaker 2: the other woman who's she's near the end, she gets killed.
Speaker 1: She's helping you. She's like on the ship and she's
Speaker 1: coordinating with you to open up the bridge whatever it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she getting riled off screen by the Zeno.
Speaker 1: Similar thing happens to Ricardo, who's another guy who you
Speaker 1: kind of encounter when you kind of get like a
Speaker 1: part already together. Halfway through the game, when you've reconnected
Speaker 1: with Samuels and Taylor, she's still knocked out, but you've
Speaker 1: connected with like I think one of the security officers,
Speaker 1: and then there's other martial seas, yeah, the Marshall. There's
Speaker 1: other random NPCs there, and one of them is Ricardo,
Speaker 1: who's like kind of just a random guy. But then
Speaker 1: like later on in the game, everyone's killed except for him,
Speaker 1: or they're gone. Well they are killed, you just don't
Speaker 1: really know specifically. Some of them you do know. And
Speaker 1: then he's on the radio with you a lot, helping
Speaker 1: you through different sequences. And then he also gets killed
Speaker 1: off screen two by a face hugger takes him out
Speaker 1: at some point too, So I don't know. I didn't
Speaker 1: really care who, like any particular person was taken out,
Speaker 1: with the exception of maybe Samuel's. I think he was
Speaker 1: the most interesting. He probably had the most dialogue too.
Speaker 1: I like the idea of what he was doing there too,
Speaker 1: of how he was trying to alter something because obviously
Speaker 1: he's an andro He's trying to go into some machine
Speaker 1: and like alter his something or rather I don't know
Speaker 1: what the science is behind it, so that he could
Speaker 1: communicate with Apollo, who is the core of the ship
Speaker 1: that runs the system, and therefore could kind of deactivate
Speaker 1: the working Joe's from their aggressive state that they're in,
Speaker 1: but then he was when he was in that machine,
Speaker 1: it just did not work at all, and I'm just
Speaker 1: killing him right then and there. So he had a
Speaker 1: very unfortunate death as well. But I think he was
Speaker 1: probably the most I don't know, top dog, I guess,
Speaker 1: most interesting character out of the rest of the crew.
Speaker 2: It's got an alien resurrection vibe sort of when you
Speaker 2: have oh, why can't remember her name? Wenona's character thank you, Yes,
Speaker 2: that's synthetic, and she basically connected to the ship and
Speaker 2: was able to have the ship like change its algorithms,
Speaker 2: like change up like locked doors, trap the guy, and
Speaker 2: then all that kind of stuff, which her case is
Speaker 2: much more successful than than his.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought that was an interesting part. When you
Speaker 1: one of the missions in the game, you're going down
Speaker 1: to the the Apollo Core, which is like the brain
Speaker 1: of the space station, and just compared to like I'm
Speaker 1: sure within like one of those space ships that were
Speaker 1: in and like one of the movies, that core is,
Speaker 1: you know, it's pretty small room to get the job done,
Speaker 1: but here it's like this huge thing and it like
Speaker 1: wobbles around and it's like all these layers of security,
Speaker 1: which makes sense because it's such a huge space station,
Speaker 1: and that's where some of those reveals happen. I believe
Speaker 1: that's when the wailing U tawnis well, there's there's terminals
Speaker 1: that will say like, oh, whaling new Tony bought the ship.
Speaker 1: People are talking about it. But that's when you get
Speaker 1: to you know, punch in your questions whatever. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a cut scene, but still that's when you're finding
Speaker 1: out more and you get some of those plot twists
Speaker 1: kind of happening there too, when you're trying to deactivate
Speaker 1: the work in Joe's which of course you don't end
Speaker 1: up doing there too. So that was a that was
Speaker 1: an interesting sequence as well. Yeah, let's see other story stuff.
Speaker 1: So I guess you mentioned this too, where Yeah, at
Speaker 1: some point on the Nissidora, on that ship, that one
Speaker 1: lady got face hugged, got impregnated, and then she comes
Speaker 1: back to the ship. Presumably that from there is what
Speaker 1: spreads to everyone else on Sevastopol. And as you were
Speaker 1: talking about, eventually you go down to that sequence. I
Speaker 1: think it's right after the Apollo sequence. Actually, good timing
Speaker 1: on that when you go beneath Apollo down that big
Speaker 1: ladder and that's when you see, oh, there is a
Speaker 1: huge encampment of your alien eggs everywhere. The walls are
Speaker 1: all filled out with the nasty goose stuff, and as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, you never actually see the queen, but we
Speaker 1: have to assume there is a queen somewhere on this
Speaker 1: space station. That sequence is really difficult, really freaky as well.
Speaker 1: Every corner, every sound, your motion tracker is near useless
Speaker 1: because it's just given you random pings all over the place.
Speaker 1: There's people like you know, glued into the walls, and
Speaker 1: you can still loot them, which I find a bit dark.
Speaker 1: You could be like, oh, I'll take that revolver amm'
Speaker 1: off this guy's corpse who's stuck to the wall here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sequence is really hard because that's also when you're,
Speaker 1: i think the first time you're encountering multiple xenomorphs at
Speaker 1: the same time. On top of that, there's face huggers
Speaker 1: in there, and you have to do a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: You got to hit a lot of computers, hit a
Speaker 1: lot of switches, so you have tasks on top of
Speaker 1: just trying to evade these things. So I found that
Speaker 1: sequence to be really difficult, but it was also of
Speaker 1: course really cool because it's just something different, and it's
Speaker 1: it's I guess I hadn't really thought about it too
Speaker 1: much because to that point, I assume you're fighting multiple xenomorphs,
Speaker 1: but it could be that it's just one xenomorph on
Speaker 1: the ship. Right.
Speaker 3: Oh totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of tricks to you. I think it's
Speaker 1: a it's a really really good sequence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this when you see all the eggs and you
Speaker 2: have to think, okay, so.
Speaker 3: What is the set up here?
Speaker 2: Now? Some people have hypothesized that maybe they're just pulling
Speaker 2: off remember the deleted scene in the first Alien where
Speaker 2: z you know, takes the body, turns the body into
Speaker 2: an egg, and then the egg right face huger. People
Speaker 2: have thought maybe that's the case, and then other people
Speaker 2: are thinking no.
Speaker 3: I think the majority of people.
Speaker 2: Believe that it was a queen, And there might even
Speaker 2: been some talk about that from the devs where they
Speaker 2: didn't want to include a queen and make it feel
Speaker 2: like there's going to be a boss fight, but the
Speaker 2: notion of there being a queen, it is a queen
Speaker 2: somewhere on the station.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can I can respect they're kind of holding
Speaker 1: back there and not not hitting like every trope or
Speaker 1: everything that's been done before in an alien movie, and
Speaker 1: I guess just like not doing that thing isn't isn't
Speaker 1: a whole lot different. But I don't know. For me,
Speaker 1: it's like totally fine, like just because of how it's established,
Speaker 1: how big this space station is, right if it was
Speaker 1: once again a space ship from one of the movies
Speaker 1: where it's like, I don't know, even the Prometheus ship,
Speaker 1: pretty freaking huge ship, you know, But I would I
Speaker 1: still I don't think i'd believe that if you played
Speaker 1: through a Prometheus game and you were just on this
Speaker 1: one ship the whole time, that you wouldn't bump into
Speaker 1: the queen at some point just because of the size
Speaker 1: of it. But based on how big this thing is,
Speaker 1: I guess you could say too, like you spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time down in that reactor core area, and
Speaker 1: that's presumably where the queen would be, so maybe you
Speaker 1: should should bump into her because you did. I don't
Speaker 1: know you were in that sequence of it, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. I guess I guess I would subscribe to
Speaker 1: the theory that there is a queen somewhere and you
Speaker 1: just don't see her. But that is another good interesting
Speaker 1: theory too. But I guess is there any any other
Speaker 1: alien material that Leada's believed that that's possible, because that is,
Speaker 1: of course, as you mentioned, like a deleted scene from
Speaker 1: the first one.
Speaker 3: Yes, what do you believe true?
Speaker 1: Do you believe that's possible without a queen for these
Speaker 1: things to spread to that you know, vast amount of numbers.
Speaker 3: My last note on the queen. Some people have said that.
Speaker 2: When you are overloading the cores on the hive that
Speaker 2: you can actually hear queen sounds, just audio cues of
Speaker 2: like queen screeches, which a queen does have a very
Speaker 2: significant and like recognizable tone. So it's up to interpretation.
Speaker 2: But now if you're talking about other ways that we
Speaker 2: can get a queen on here, if we're not going
Speaker 2: the pread alien route, the highbred and we're talking just alien.
Speaker 2: In the twenty ten Alien versus Preader game, there was
Speaker 2: a xenomorph that you know, classic just chess burster, regular alien,
Speaker 2: and the queen was eliminated. And so the Hive always
Speaker 2: needs a queen, you know, the Dutchman must have a
Speaker 2: captain kind of thing. So the Ali whilan Utani captures
Speaker 2: the alien because the alien was running around is the
Speaker 2: alien's name was six and then it starts to trip
Speaker 2: out when the queen dies, and it starts to like
Speaker 2: seize up on the ground, and so Wini captures it,
Speaker 2: and then this is the alien entering its next life
Speaker 2: cycle stage to become a new queen.
Speaker 1: And Okay, yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's many bees do as well.
Speaker 1: But I'm just totally made it up. But I feel
Speaker 1: like that's what they would do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think that's the case. If the queen dies,
Speaker 2: then I think the bees follow suit surely after. I
Speaker 2: think that the bean, the bean the queen bee lays
Speaker 2: a specific replacement, and I think sometimes they can even
Speaker 2: like fight each other for dominance too.
Speaker 3: That's a whole other can of worm.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, it's different anatomy on Like it's not
Speaker 1: just like one gets a crown on its head and
Speaker 1: it's declared queen, like it has different capabilities, right, So,
Speaker 1: but that would make sense because considering how quickly these
Speaker 1: things go from like a chessburster to a full grown xenomorph,
Speaker 1: Like they grow quickly, and you know a lot of
Speaker 1: the time, like when they're killing people that we see
Speaker 1: in the movies. It's not like they're eating all that
Speaker 1: people to get like matter in their bodies. They have
Speaker 1: stuff to grow from, like nutrients, Like they're just killing
Speaker 1: people because they want to more so, and they can
Speaker 1: just naturally grow on their own. So it wouldn't surprise
Speaker 1: me if one, if one can go from the face
Speaker 1: hugger size to a xenomorph size, and like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: a few hours, it wouldn't surprise me that in a
Speaker 1: few hours or I don't know, a couple of days,
Speaker 1: even which timeline would work here for the Sebastopol stuff
Speaker 1: to go from like a regular xenomorph size to a
Speaker 1: queen size.
Speaker 2: There's again, there's so many of the books I haven't read,
Speaker 2: and we haven't seen Preatorian aliens any of the live
Speaker 2: action at least to my knowledge, but they've been featured
Speaker 2: in yeah, Alien Versus Predator twenty ten and then Aliens
Speaker 2: Colonial Marines. I think Fireteam Elite as well. So there's
Speaker 2: a type of alien that's existed for a while. They're
Speaker 2: like the royal guards of of the aliens, and so
Speaker 2: I think the kind of thought is that some xenomorphs
Speaker 2: that are born are part of a caste system, so
Speaker 2: they have that DNA pre entered in them for them
Speaker 2: to become like the Queen or evolve into like the next.
Speaker 1: Any moment, they can just flip that switch essentially.
Speaker 3: I guess, so yeah, when when needed. Yeah, mhmm.
Speaker 1: Interesting. Let's see, I'm trying to think about other story
Speaker 1: stuff that happens here, so I guess, go ahead, you
Speaker 1: have something I was just.
Speaker 2: Gonna say, Like, it freaked me out when Amanda got
Speaker 2: like strung up onto like the Zeno wall. I thought like, oh,
Speaker 2: she impregnated, Like, that's not where you want to be.
Speaker 2: You don't want to be unconscious and wake up in
Speaker 2: the wall because.
Speaker 1: It's, yeah, that's surrounded by eggs and creepy noises and stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, jumping kind of towards the end. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: one more thing since we were just talking about like
Speaker 1: the reactor core in that area. I think that is
Speaker 1: visually one of the most fascinating areas in here because
Speaker 1: you go down to the reactor courts, like you have
Speaker 1: to go down and down and down through all these
Speaker 1: different levels and then it's just like this huge empty
Speaker 1: space where it's not outside but it feels like it.
Speaker 1: Obviously you can like breathe down there. So it's obviously
Speaker 1: inside and has it an atmosphere of some sort, but
Speaker 1: it's like these huge electric machines and you yeah, like
Speaker 1: I said, it's so big you can't see the walls
Speaker 1: or anything, and it's just these massive, like electric explosions happening,
Speaker 1: and that's like how it is supposed to function. And
Speaker 1: it's like raining in there, so it has like its
Speaker 1: own atmosphere and that's like somehow the power system for
Speaker 1: the whole ship. I don't understand it, but it's so cool,
Speaker 1: and like that area was just so there's just an
Speaker 1: epicness table a scale that I found really impressive, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was terrifying in its own right. And
Speaker 1: of course you can't like walk through there without just
Speaker 1: having to fight one hundred working Joe's at the same time,
Speaker 1: so that adds to it. But that that area is
Speaker 1: really cool. I like that area.
Speaker 2: Raining inside ships is such a neat thing and it's
Speaker 2: so weird to think about, because they even had that
Speaker 2: in the first Alien movie. Account his name, but he's
Speaker 2: like walk around trying to find the cat and he
Speaker 2: takes his hat off because it's like raining in this
Speaker 2: one part of the ship.
Speaker 3: It's it's interesting, it's weird but cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, jumping more towards the end of it.
Speaker 1: Then obviously you're fighting all sorts of aliens znomorphs. At
Speaker 1: this point, everyone's everyone's dead, I guess is safe to say.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of any human being survives in
Speaker 1: this game that we don't.
Speaker 2: Think so, I mean, the ship alone is destroyed and
Speaker 2: I think everyone with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so your last task is to go fix up
Speaker 1: these satellites, adjust these satellites and whatnot in order to
Speaker 1: build to escape the ship. And you're outside the ship
Speaker 1: and these aliens come after you, you get knocked aboard,
Speaker 1: and then I guess, and then you go back into
Speaker 1: the ship at some point that's when everything is like
Speaker 1: self destructing because you've activated that that function of the ship.
Speaker 1: And then it's about a kind of a race to
Speaker 1: get to the I guess not the escape pod, but
Speaker 1: trying to get to that area where you can escape
Speaker 1: with that lady and the other ship that I can't
Speaker 1: remember the name of at the end of it. There
Speaker 1: and then yeah, like the Vinyl cut scene in this
Speaker 1: game is a kind of cliffhangary thing where x anymore's
Speaker 1: got you dead to rights. You're doing like a QuickTime sequence,
Speaker 1: or you're hitting different buttons left, right, back, you hit
Speaker 1: this thing, you escape out. You have your space ship
Speaker 1: or your space suit still on, so you can breathe
Speaker 1: out in the void. Of course, presumably all the Aliens
Speaker 1: die on the ship as it explodes on the space station.
Speaker 1: And then like the post credit kind of thing, or
Speaker 1: the pre credit whatever you want to call a mid
Speaker 1: credit situation, is like she's opening her eyes very slowly
Speaker 1: and then like a light comes by, presumably a ship
Speaker 1: that's coming to scoop her up. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's a bit of like sequel bait stuff, But what
Speaker 1: do you what do you take cap and considering that
Speaker 1: we don't have a follow up, a sequel to this yet,
Speaker 1: and we don't I guess, I don't know. I'm assuming
Speaker 1: another game doesn't address what happened to Amanda Ripley, So
Speaker 1: what do you do you take this to me? And
Speaker 1: do you think she gets saved by someone at the
Speaker 1: end here or is just she just seen some other
Speaker 1: random light.
Speaker 2: The only thing I can head Canada as is the
Speaker 2: Aliens deleted scene where Burke shows a photo to el
Speaker 2: at Ripley and says, yeah, she died as.
Speaker 3: An old lady.
Speaker 2: YadA, YadA, YadA, right, and that sets last we ever
Speaker 2: heard of this character. I would love to see some
Speaker 2: other game released for this. Maybe there's a comic book,
Speaker 2: Maybe there's actually a novel in regards to this. I
Speaker 2: am not aware of that, but I would love to
Speaker 2: see a follow up. I'm imagining it's a wail Andy
Speaker 2: Taani that's finally arrived. They bought the station and they
Speaker 2: wanted to get there and see what's going on at
Speaker 2: their greedy little fingers on the Zenos. They probably just
Speaker 2: arrived to see their prize get just blown up and
Speaker 2: find this one lone person floating in space. So that's
Speaker 2: kind of what I'm thinking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds about right to me. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: see what else here I have in my notes. One
Speaker 1: thing that I I thought it was a really interesting
Speaker 1: early on, but then it was one of those mechanics that,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, that didn't really seem to go anywhere.
Speaker 1: Is the idea of like other NPCs in this game,
Speaker 1: other human characters. We're just talking about the like story
Speaker 1: relevant ones. And there's actually another guy earlier on. I
Speaker 1: can't remember his name. Just how long this game is
Speaker 1: that Like I kind of forgot about this earlier sequence
Speaker 1: where some guys finds you kind of early on and
Speaker 1: you're working with him for like a mission or two. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then he eventually gets killed. But I totally forget
Speaker 1: the name, but he was in an earlier sequence there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is something that was like a part
Speaker 1: of a tool tip earlier on and then just mentioned
Speaker 1: at some point. Is like you'll encounter NPCs across your
Speaker 1: journey and you just kind of have to you know,
Speaker 1: they have it in a more eloquent wording. I can't
Speaker 1: remember the wording is, but it's essentially like you never
Speaker 1: know if they're gonna be aggressive or if they're gonna
Speaker 1: want to work with you, so you kind of have
Speaker 1: to approach those sequences pretty lightly, you know, like slowly
Speaker 1: approach without a gun or something like that, and maybe
Speaker 1: you can work with them, or maybe they'll just try
Speaker 1: and kill you on site. And so I was like,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting idea. Throughout this game, I'm gonna bump
Speaker 1: into MPCs and I'm gonna have to gauge based on
Speaker 1: listening to those conversations based on like their body Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know their body motions, are they holding a gun.
Speaker 1: I'll probably be more scared of them there and determine like, okay,
Speaker 1: if they're gonna be a friend or foe. But I
Speaker 1: kind of feel like that never really went anywhere. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's like sequences where you're teaming up with your friends
Speaker 1: again and so that makes sense, but whenever you're like,
Speaker 1: you'll meet NPCs that are with those friends, and I
Speaker 1: was a little disappointed that you can never really talk
Speaker 1: to those people, like they'll be in a room, but
Speaker 1: you can't like hit e to talk and have a
Speaker 1: conversation with them or learning anything from them, And so
Speaker 1: it kind of made them like I want to know
Speaker 1: their story. I want to know who they are, why
Speaker 1: they're here, how they survived, if they have any tips
Speaker 1: or tricks for me, that kind of thing. And then
Speaker 1: I kind of just found like every other NPC in
Speaker 1: the game was instantly hostile and there was really nothing
Speaker 1: I could do about that. They're just like gunn to
Speaker 1: be down on site. And there's a couple times where
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, I just hit a save point,
Speaker 1: so I will go see if I can talk to
Speaker 1: these people, and I never could. So maybe I did
Speaker 1: it wrong, maybe I missed something, but that was something
Speaker 1: that was really kind of set up to me early on,
Speaker 1: it was hinted at, and then I kind of feel
Speaker 1: like it didn't go anywhere, And because that, I don't
Speaker 1: feel like I had any really meaningful NPC fights or
Speaker 1: conversations like I I most of those any sequences where
Speaker 1: I could tell they were aggressive, I just snuck past
Speaker 1: them and they either got killed by the Xenomorph in
Speaker 1: that moment or I just never saw them again, and
Speaker 1: I didn't even know who they were. So that was
Speaker 1: something that was a bit disappointing for me here, and
Speaker 1: I think could have helped add too, Like once again,
Speaker 1: this is a space station that's absolutely freaking huge. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of people aboard the ship and it
Speaker 1: is being decommission. I'm sure a lot of people have left,
Speaker 1: but there's also there's still a ton of people remaining
Speaker 1: as we can see you, and there's dead bodies everywhere.
Speaker 1: So that was that was a disappointing part of the
Speaker 1: game for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there have been many a time when I'm not
Speaker 2: really sure I'm trying to gauge the situation. And I'll
Speaker 2: see two like NPCs in this open like area, like okay,
Speaker 2: like this must be a safe spot. And I'll walk
Speaker 2: right up to one and he turns down and he's like,
Speaker 2: oh god, and he pulls his gun and he he'll
Speaker 2: kill me.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh fuck, that's annoying. Yeah, so you're right,
Speaker 3: you gotta gauge it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's uh annoying. I guess one thing we've distinctly mentioned,
Speaker 1: but like the music and sound, I think for me,
Speaker 1: the highlight would definitely be just the The sound effects
Speaker 1: in this game are just outstanding, every little beep, bloop,
Speaker 1: every sound effect that the ship makes, whether it is
Speaker 1: the stuff related to the tech, just like the sound
Speaker 1: of the alien bashing through the vent system is so good.
Speaker 1: The sound of the tram like as you're waiting for
Speaker 1: I love that whenever you hit the button, it's not
Speaker 1: just an instant load screen, Like there are times I
Speaker 1: want this game to be quicker, and it's way too long,
Speaker 1: of course, but I was always happy to wait for
Speaker 1: thirty seconds for the tram to show up because just
Speaker 1: that tension of like what if something shows upright here
Speaker 1: that does happen at one point as like a scripted
Speaker 1: sequence where you hit that button and then you hear
Speaker 1: people from down the hall and so you have to
Speaker 1: hide in a locker or something until they leave. But yeah,
Speaker 1: even just the sound and the vibration of like that
Speaker 1: tram as it's screeching to a halt to land in
Speaker 1: the station, I think is just perfect. And then the music,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. A lot of it are like pulling direct
Speaker 1: themes from that original movie, and so whenever those propped up,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, hell yeah, but anything else too, I
Speaker 1: think just really said the scene perfectly. So in terms
Speaker 1: of like the audit audit audio team here just absolutely
Speaker 1: freaking nailed at ten out of ten on that way.
Speaker 3: Oh, I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's just they do such a good job with
Speaker 2: so much familiarity and so much stuff that it's it's
Speaker 2: its own thing. But it still just pulls all the
Speaker 2: best parts from from that franchise, what was created in
Speaker 2: that first Alien, Like there's certain little beats that are
Speaker 2: in Aliens, and Aliens has its own very unique distinct score,
Speaker 2: especially because it's more of an action heavy film, but
Speaker 2: the first one being just a sci Fi horror. I'm
Speaker 2: glad that this game pulled mostly from just the first
Speaker 2: Alien I think that's where it even Like, again, we
Speaker 2: already talked about it, but just aliens through a queen
Speaker 2: in there, and this game they chose not to, and
Speaker 2: it just it goes to show that, Okay, they really
Speaker 2: just pulled heavily from that first film and that's that's
Speaker 2: their inspiration. And I'm glad because it's it's so unique.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I did mention this in my in
Speaker 1: my brief overallt the beginning, but it's worth mentioning one
Speaker 1: more time. Face huggers, What do you do? Taylor? Like
Speaker 1: you you want them to be in the game, You
Speaker 1: want them to be a gameplay mechanic, but then like,
Speaker 1: how do you not have them be just like a
Speaker 1: one shot kill on you as the player? Because to
Speaker 1: me that was like I just hated the face huggers,
Speaker 1: and I guess I should I should hate them, but
Speaker 1: them always them being a one hit kill with no
Speaker 1: offense or butts and being so small and annoying. I
Speaker 1: just I found I found them to be just more
Speaker 1: of a chore than anything else where. It was just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll do the same situation again. I never
Speaker 1: really found them scary either. I just I just didn't
Speaker 1: like them. But maybe I'm wrong with that. Would you
Speaker 1: would you think of the face huggers.
Speaker 2: HiT's hits, their speed that just kind of pisses me off,
Speaker 2: And yeah, you gotta like, depending on what weapon you're using,
Speaker 2: you gotta be careful and you gotta time it, like
Speaker 2: this stunbaton can bite you in the ass if you
Speaker 2: miss and funde that up. But yeah, you really, uh
Speaker 2: like it just comes down to timing and just dealing
Speaker 2: with it, because yeah, it makes sense for it to
Speaker 2: just be like an instant death kind of thing, because
Speaker 2: that's what happens with these these creatures.
Speaker 3: But I don't know, like.
Speaker 2: Having them there it fits and it's just gonna be
Speaker 2: something that's in alien romulus as well when we look
Speaker 2: at that, like it's a huge part of this this theme,
Speaker 2: the vibe of the films everything, because it's that life
Speaker 2: cycle stage before we get to that xenomorph. So it's
Speaker 2: good that they included them, But yeah, they could just
Speaker 2: be an absolute pain in the ass, And I guess
Speaker 2: I'm happy that they're not like consistently like every single
Speaker 2: mission you have to be worried about them, like jumping
Speaker 2: out of event because we already got to deal with
Speaker 2: the main bad z you know, to begin with.
Speaker 3: But yeah, there's still there's still persistent enough to be
Speaker 3: a pain in the ass.
Speaker 1: I kind of forgot about them for a while, honestly,
Speaker 1: because it's just so much of this game, like once
Speaker 1: again long game. I feel like for the first half
Speaker 1: of it at least, is just one xenomorph you'll never
Speaker 1: encounter too. At the same time, there's never anything else.
Speaker 1: There's like orkin Joes of eventually that are they also
Speaker 1: fight against, and you know the odd MPC. But I
Speaker 1: kind of didn't like think about like, oh yeah, at
Speaker 1: some point they'll be like face huggers in this game,
Speaker 1: and how would they be implemented. I think for me,
Speaker 1: like part of it is that the once they get you,
Speaker 1: like the screen just goes black and then it just
Speaker 1: like instantly ends, and it's like would you like to
Speaker 1: load your save point? Like I feel like the tension
Speaker 1: of it, the scary factor isn't really there either, Like
Speaker 1: maybe a way around it, and maybe you could just
Speaker 1: make this an easy mode thing rather than like on
Speaker 1: Night memory. If you get hit, you're done. But maybe
Speaker 1: it would have been And I'm not often gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: be in favor of like quick time events, but I
Speaker 1: think that could have been a solution here. Or if
Speaker 1: you get caught, maybe you have to like hit five
Speaker 1: buttons in a specific order real quick and if you
Speaker 1: do that just quick enough, you can like rip them
Speaker 1: off and make the timing hard, like make it a
Speaker 1: hard thing to do, but make it so there's maybe
Speaker 1: a bit of something you can do to fight against
Speaker 1: some other than just like you hit your shot or
Speaker 1: you don't. So I don't know what the workaround would
Speaker 1: have been. I just think it's it's kind of weird,
Speaker 1: even on easy mode, that that's just what happens. And
Speaker 1: they didn't really have a workaround of maybe in the
Speaker 1: just like half your health or something like that. But
Speaker 1: maybe that would have been too easy. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I guess we didn't really specifically mention the other weapons.
Speaker 1: We just talked about the flamethrower, the pistol, shotgun, the
Speaker 1: bold gun in particular. Really really like, I think they're
Speaker 1: all solid. They all get the job done. It's not
Speaker 1: really a combat action game. You could probably play it
Speaker 1: like a combat action game, but it's more. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like the guns, they all feel good in terms of
Speaker 1: like first person shooter standards and all that. So those
Speaker 1: are those are good to go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the pistol, I wish the pistol could do.
Speaker 2: A little bit more with the uh.
Speaker 3: The zo.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I never even bothered to shoot this, you know.
Speaker 1: I just felt like, it's not gonna do anything. It's
Speaker 1: not worth my time. I maybe did early on before
Speaker 1: I had the flamethrower, just just to see if I
Speaker 1: was like dead to rights already, But that would have
Speaker 1: been bold of me, just be like, oh, yeah, my
Speaker 1: little pistol's gonna take this guy down. I've only I've
Speaker 1: mentioned at the very start of this retro that i'd
Speaker 1: played like Alien three. I randomly have that game on
Speaker 1: the nes like some really old game, and then this.
Speaker 1: Those are the only Alien games I've played. And okay,
Speaker 1: and the Alien Versus Predator game on the Xbox thirty six.
Speaker 1: You played the demo the hell out of that. I
Speaker 1: talk about that. But you've got to play a lot,
Speaker 1: if not all, of the Alien games that exist. Is
Speaker 1: this the best Alien game for you? Or is or
Speaker 1: one of the other ones kind of take the take
Speaker 1: the lead for you.
Speaker 3: This is for sure. Uh, I'd say top three. This
Speaker 3: is definitely.
Speaker 1: What's in that top three with it.
Speaker 2: The Alien versus preador twenty ten one because the Alien
Speaker 2: mechanics are fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really fun in that game.
Speaker 3: Really really fun.
Speaker 2: There's so many cool things where you down a guy
Speaker 2: and then you can pick like you can do an
Speaker 2: execution on him where like you see a face hugg
Speaker 2: or crawl up all of a sudden like.
Speaker 3: Jump on him.
Speaker 2: That game did so many awesome, awesome things, even with
Speaker 2: the Predator of the Predator had some awesome highlights in
Speaker 2: there too, and you get confirmation that game they talk
Speaker 2: about the xenomorphome world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can just say I love that.
Speaker 2: I know there's a big fan base for its predecessor,
Speaker 2: I think A versus Preader two thousand.
Speaker 3: It's like a classic. It's got online still support on Steam.
Speaker 2: I believe, and that's that's just got a it's got
Speaker 2: like a cult following. I'd say it's been wish listed
Speaker 2: on my Steam for a while and eventually I'll get it.
Speaker 3: It's super super cheap. What else though, you know, not.
Speaker 1: Our team Dark Descent I'm trying to think of other ones,
Speaker 1: Like I.
Speaker 2: Was gonna I was gonna slide Dark Descent in there,
Speaker 2: which I need to go and play some more of now.
Speaker 3: Fire Team Elite is fun, but.
Speaker 2: I think that community died pretty quick, and some of
Speaker 2: the stuff in there was just repetitive and not necessarily
Speaker 2: the most exhilarating experiences.
Speaker 3: But it was still very fun and it was cool.
Speaker 2: They introduced the pathogen, so there's a lot of Alien
Speaker 2: Prometheus Covenant kind of stuff that was incorporated into that game,
Speaker 2: which is very neat for the world building. And then yeah,
Speaker 2: you have Clonal Marines, which is super super hated upon the.
Speaker 3: Bane of Alien games when people.
Speaker 1: Did not want that's like a multiplayer like Shooter one right.
Speaker 3: I had it.
Speaker 2: It has single player campaign and then has the multiplayer
Speaker 2: aspect as well, which you could play as the aliens
Speaker 2: in there and the multiplayer, but it was such a
Speaker 2: step down from what we've had in the past.
Speaker 3: It's like third person.
Speaker 2: It's pretty crappy, but it was an okay campaign and
Speaker 2: I like that it basically wretconned Alien three in Alien
Speaker 2: Resurrection and continued the story. Hicks survives in that game,
Speaker 2: and you have a whole different story unfolding, but Dark
Speaker 2: Descent having the team based mechanics and just again it
Speaker 2: comes down to detail. This one has a lot of
Speaker 2: inspiration from aliens, considering you're basically leading the charge with soldiers,
Speaker 2: but the fact that you can, just like you're I
Speaker 2: think it's called the APC send that and move it
Speaker 2: around to different locations in these little towns. You're moving
Speaker 2: your squad from building building doing different objectives. While you're
Speaker 2: on the ground saving people and civilians, getting them to
Speaker 2: your tank. You're all of a sudden, Oh, there's a
Speaker 2: wave of aliens that are coming here. You set up
Speaker 2: a turret, you gotta hold out while you're doing different objectives.
Speaker 2: It's just there's so many different things that are going
Speaker 2: on game, and I really like it for what they created,
Speaker 2: because I was afraid after Fire Team Elite that we're
Speaker 2: going to get another one similar to that, but no.
Speaker 2: Dark Descent really kind of changed it up. I should say, actually, oh,
Speaker 2: you reminded me.
Speaker 3: Oh, hang on, hang on.
Speaker 1: Take a look. Taylor with the corner of his eye
Speaker 1: caught a glimpse of a game on his uh, his
Speaker 1: game shelf.
Speaker 3: There, I got this back. Oh, what was it?
Speaker 2: Before I lived here in GameStop as e B games,
Speaker 2: I used to check out the used game sections because
Speaker 2: I just love seeing what they had. And they had
Speaker 2: Alien Versus Prey or Extinction and this is an RTS
Speaker 2: game and it is so much freaking fun.
Speaker 1: I didn't know it existed.
Speaker 2: It's not aged well, but you can play as Zeno's queen.
Speaker 1: So you tell me there's more Alien a VP games
Speaker 1: than there is movies because you said there's a two
Speaker 1: thousand one or is that the two thousand that's not
Speaker 1: the two thousand one?
Speaker 3: That even this is not the two thousand and one.
Speaker 3: This one came out.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean this is original Xbox This was two
Speaker 2: thousand and three.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yes, there is more AVP games than there
Speaker 2: are movies.
Speaker 1: So the screenshots not looking the most prime on that one.
Speaker 3: No, this game is.
Speaker 2: It's old and I've wanted so badly for this to
Speaker 2: be a remake. It's only Xbox unless people ported it
Speaker 2: to PC through their own means you're not gonna be
Speaker 2: able to play it anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Dude, that is one to whip out on the twenty
Speaker 1: four hour stream. I guess I don't know if because
Speaker 1: I don't that's back compat and I don't think we'd
Speaker 1: bring an original Xbox, but that is one then I
Speaker 1: would love to check out at some point. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: made by a rebellion or No, the other one is
Speaker 1: maybe not that one, but yeah, sorry the other I
Speaker 1: was just looking.
Speaker 3: On the Age Rebellion did the twenty ten one.
Speaker 1: That's cool because they make the Sniper League games. That's
Speaker 1: a really cool period. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I should
Speaker 1: look more into some of these other ones. That's funny
Speaker 1: to me that there's more games than.
Speaker 3: Movies that I didn't even think about that.
Speaker 1: So sorry, What is the top three? Because I feel
Speaker 1: like we just talked.
Speaker 2: I forgot about this one, but this one would crack
Speaker 2: top five for sure. This probably number This would be
Speaker 2: number four because the fact that it's an RTS game
Speaker 2: and you're just indulging in different different like units that
Speaker 2: you can build. It's it's such a hoot as it
Speaker 2: has a campaign for all three classes too.
Speaker 3: And then multiplayer. But I would go Alien versus Spread
Speaker 3: of twenty ten because I get my Predator in there.
Speaker 3: So that's number one.
Speaker 2: I go Alien Isolation two, and then three would be
Speaker 2: Dark Descent.
Speaker 1: Nice, Okay, cool, I love it. Okay. I guess the
Speaker 1: maybe the last thing here would be the DLC, which
Speaker 1: might be a bit of a shorter conversation here, But
Speaker 1: this game does have a lot of DLC, a lot
Speaker 1: of different DLC packs. Many of them are these kind
Speaker 1: of challenge challenge mode missions or I think you kind
Speaker 1: of have like a timer you have to complete these goals.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's randomization to them. I didn't
Speaker 1: play these. I'm just kind of more mentioning them. I
Speaker 1: think maybe the cool thing to mention here is that
Speaker 1: some of these do include locations that didn't end up
Speaker 1: making it into the final game, So there are some
Speaker 1: unique locations that you'll get from the campaign. I think
Speaker 1: some of it is reused as well, so you might
Speaker 1: not get exclusively new areas. But then there is that
Speaker 1: last I think it's called the Last Survivor DLC, which
Speaker 1: is the one where you go through that sequence from
Speaker 1: the original Alien movie. I don't know what do you
Speaker 1: want to say about that one. Is there anything that
Speaker 1: gameplay wise that differs from the core game, or is
Speaker 1: it kind of just it's cool that they kind of
Speaker 1: picked the sequence from the movie and made it kind
Speaker 1: of a playable video game section.
Speaker 2: I just think it's fun to be able to experience
Speaker 2: it because I think the crew expendable version, which I forgot,
Speaker 2: that you could play as two other characters, not just Ripley.
Speaker 2: You can play as Parker or you could play as Dallas.
Speaker 2: And so that's where I think it was after No, No,
Speaker 2: Parker was the name of the cat.
Speaker 1: What's the.
Speaker 3: Uh jinxy?
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: That's funny. No, I Will Jones Jones, Jones, Jones, Jonesy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Parker was the probably he's one of the
Speaker 2: last three to die, right.
Speaker 1: I remember him now that I'm looking at a picture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's the one who was ready to just
Speaker 2: start boxing this thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Uh but yeah, so and then you get Dallas obviously
Speaker 2: the captain. So there's that, and again it's just it's
Speaker 2: cool to experience that. And then you have the Last
Speaker 2: Survivor where yeah, you have to activate the self distract
Speaker 2: you're playing as Ripley and you basically just got to
Speaker 2: get to the the the ship to escape after that,
Speaker 2: and that one definitely sent me.
Speaker 3: For a loop. That one was really tricky to pull
Speaker 3: off because Neleen just kept getting in the way.
Speaker 2: But again, when you are you're in the you're in
Speaker 2: the set piece, like you've you've watched the movie, you
Speaker 2: know the movie, and to actually be walking around it's
Speaker 2: the same thing from the main game where you're exploring
Speaker 2: the Derek space crafting LB four twenty six, but in
Speaker 2: here your walk around the Nostromo and it just it
Speaker 2: feels different from Sevastopool because this is its own setting,
Speaker 2: which is nice. But I can't imagine how much fun
Speaker 2: the designers had just watching the movie getting to just
Speaker 2: look into the backlog of content, like, Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 2: sketch this out, We're gonna just design this three D
Speaker 2: world based on the original movie.
Speaker 3: That's such a cool concept.
Speaker 1: There's clearly so much yeah, love for this source material
Speaker 1: from the developers here, Like this is definitely a passion
Speaker 1: project and not just like, oh, we got the rights
Speaker 1: to make a game here, let's just like poop something
Speaker 1: out in ten months and see what it's like the
Speaker 1: best we can do, Like, this is clearly a really
Speaker 1: really well made game, even if I have just a
Speaker 1: lot of beefs with the final product of it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this, like, all these deal seeds sound interesting
Speaker 1: and cool, and I mean, I'll probably go through that
Speaker 1: Ripley one. I gotta be specific. I remember that, I
Speaker 1: gotta be specific here, the Ellen Ripley one. I'll probably
Speaker 1: go through that like pri to Romulus here, and so
Speaker 1: I'll I don't know, if I have anything new to
Speaker 1: say on it, I'll bring it up on a side
Speaker 1: quest here. But I think otherwise those do seem like
Speaker 1: maybe you go through the main game one time, you
Speaker 1: kind of see what it's like, and then if you
Speaker 1: want to go through the game again and really test
Speaker 1: those mechanics and your skill set, that's maybe where those
Speaker 1: kind of those challenge maps and things could come in,
Speaker 1: because once again, like this game is so long that
Speaker 1: it's like, I don't know, unless you have just a
Speaker 1: ton of free time, you're probably not gonna just keep
Speaker 1: replaying through this game and mastering it. But that's what
Speaker 1: like a challenge map type thing is kind of perfect
Speaker 1: for where it's like a smaller sequence of the game,
Speaker 1: less time commitment in that way. So I think it's
Speaker 1: cool that those things exist. There's definitely a lot of
Speaker 1: to dig into. So whenever I'm feeling the itch for
Speaker 1: this game again. I'll definitely go and check check some
Speaker 1: of that content out. It's pretty pretty cool that they
Speaker 1: had Like maybe, yeah, they clearly didn't make enough or
Speaker 1: the team didn't have the interest to go ahead and
Speaker 1: make that sequel, but they clearly had enough to do
Speaker 1: a bunch of extra content after it was out and
Speaker 1: just kind of take like, hey, we made all these mechanics,
Speaker 1: what are some other fun things we can do with
Speaker 1: this like engine that we've built to make this this
Speaker 1: crazy cool game. So anything else that hasn't come.
Speaker 3: Up yet, I don't think so we'll cover a lot
Speaker 3: of ground. I'm really happy about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I said, I'm very happy that I finally
Speaker 1: played through this game. I'm glad that you wanted to
Speaker 1: discuss it here with the Alien Retrospective, I think I
Speaker 1: do some of these the other games in this that
Speaker 1: you mentioned, Fire Team Alee or Dark Descent has been
Speaker 1: on my raider since it came out, and even going
Speaker 1: back to play some of these AVP games. I definitely
Speaker 1: want to do that at some point. So I don't
Speaker 1: know if we would just do a random retro or
Speaker 1: maybe another Alien movies coming out, we would choose to
Speaker 1: do another episode for a retrospective or something. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other cool games that exist out there,
Speaker 1: but I think this was the perfect one to pick
Speaker 1: for this circumstance here. Like I said, long long it's
Speaker 1: been on the back log, and I'm glad I can
Speaker 1: finally check it off that box. So I don't I
Speaker 1: think I would give this game like an eight eight
Speaker 1: oh ten, seven seven point five somewhere in that pocket,
Speaker 1: just because, once again, it is such an impressive game
Speaker 1: in terms of just how it's made that even if
Speaker 1: I have a lot of beefs with it, it's more just
Speaker 1: like I don't have too many major cons. It's just
Speaker 1: a bunch of little things and that kind of takes
Speaker 1: it down from that that kind of perfect experience for me.
Speaker 1: But yeah, really really cool game, really fun time. Do
Speaker 1: you want to throw a number on this guy? We
Speaker 1: don't really do that on video game stuff, But I don't.
Speaker 2: Know i'd throw down an eight point five out of ten.
Speaker 2: I'm docking it because, similar to you, there's a little
Speaker 2: bit of fine things around throughout the gameplay that just
Speaker 2: kind of like throw me for a loop. Certain things
Speaker 2: that I didn't like, Like we talked about the saving
Speaker 2: and a couple other things too, But all in all,
Speaker 2: it's a really good game. And if you're a fan
Speaker 2: of the Alien franchise, I could not recommend this enough.
Speaker 2: Like you're just gonna eat it all up, You're gonna
Speaker 2: enjoy it, You're gonna really appreciate the time that's been
Speaker 2: invested into this this game. It is long, as you said,
Speaker 2: and that does detract it a little bit. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just it's it's nice. It's it feels like a
Speaker 2: passion project. And I hope that we get a follow
Speaker 2: up or something else built off of this.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I don't know. Maybe Romulus is huge
Speaker 1: at the box office and Disney wants to just push
Speaker 1: a ton of money into funding all sorts of alien things.
Speaker 1: We've seen that happen before, so I mean, we just
Speaker 1: got Dark Descent last year too, so they're still making
Speaker 1: games like this. I don't know. I don't know if
Speaker 1: this studio would be interested in making another one, because
Speaker 1: I feel like, just in general, this game seemed to
Speaker 1: get pretty mixed reviews. I don't really know what the
Speaker 1: other reviewers issues were with the game. I think I
Speaker 1: saw a length was one thing that generally across the
Speaker 1: per people were kind of beefing with But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I feel like I don't even know. This game sold
Speaker 1: very well. I'm not too sure where it exists in
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things. But anyway, this was a
Speaker 1: very fun discussion, Very good time, Taylor, thanks for joining
Speaker 1: me here. Next week we'll be back for more side quests.
Speaker 1: I don't actually know what we're talking about next week,
Speaker 1: so a bit of a question mark there, but stay tuned.
Speaker 1: Thanks everyone for listening, and we'll see you again next time.
Speaker 1: Bye bye sixth