With the recent news that Alien Isolation has sold over one million copies, Sega can start to put the disappointments of Aliens: Colonial Marines and past Alien themed games behind them secure in the knowledge that they not only have a hit game for the franchise, but have shown that there is still a strong audience for the series if it is done well.
Now comes the difficult part, the so called Sophomore Jinx that has doomed so many athletes and musicians who were not able to repeat their initial success and struggled to follow up.
Now I know this was not the first Alien game for Sega and as such the term “sophomore” is not the most accurate description but it does help underscore the issue.
Sega now has viable proof that if an Alien game is done well that not only can it make fans happy, but it can also make money for the company. The issue is where do they go from here once they have exhausted all possible DLC offerings for Alien Isolation?
It would be naïve to think that Sega does not have ideas for future games or perhaps even some in progress at this point, but if reports are true, the only thing that saved Alien Isolation was the fact that it was so deep in development that the company opted to complete their investment rather than cut and run after Colonial Marines.
It would be a safe thing to do an Alien Isolation 2 or some type of Survival Horror game for the franchise as that does seem to be the genre that is best suited for it but that comes with the risk of trying to capture lightning in a bottle twice.
Creative Assembly have said that they have “Daily Discussions” about the plot for a potential sequel so it is a good bet that based on their success they will be given another outing in the Alien Universe.
One has to wonder if we have seen the last of shooters in the series for a while as this was the genre that was most often used. I would love to see what could be done with a mix of RPG and Shooter ala Planetside 2, Evolve, and Titanfall in terms of characters forming a massive squad and having to cleanse the Alien infestation on several planets. Imagine being able to start as a lowly grunt and work your way up the ranks, fighting battles with everything from ship and vehicle mounted weapons, to the up close and personal types.
Sure there would be logistical issues to sort out but I think having to pacify and maintain locales and advance your character would be good and if the RPG element was done correctly players would have a connection to other characters and have reason to keep them alive.
I also think that a game from the perspective of The Engineers might be interesting as a dual campaign where players play as Engineer or Alien could be fun as long as the backstory was developed properly.
Alien has given fans a very rich cinematic universe and sadly like Star Wars, Marvel, and other universes, that have not resulted well in many video games in which they are portrayed.
Alien VS Predator, Alien Vs Predator 2, and Alien Isolation have to date been the best examples in the series so let us hope that better things are ahead for the series and that Alien Isolation was not the exception.
