The next video game in the world of Aliens will star the daughter of superstar space officer Ellen Ripley, according to a Kotaku source.
The game is called Alien: Isolation, and we hear it will be on both current- and next-gen consoles next year. Isolation is developed by the British studio Creative Assembly (Total War); it's a first-person shooter that uses both stealth and horror elements; and it's inspired by games like Dishonored and Bioshock, according to our source, a person familiar with goings-on at Sega, who spoke under condition of anonymity in the interest of protecting their job.
Perhaps most importantly, our source says that Sega took the critical reception to Aliens: Colonial Marines very seriously, and that the publisher put together a postmortem following the near-unanimously negative reactions to their last Aliens game, which was developed by the studios Gearbox and TimeGate. They want to make sure Isolation is a better game, and according to our source, it's already been delayed at least once—Sega originally planned to announce the game at E3 of 2013.
I first heard about Alien: Isolation this spring, not long after reporting on the disastrous story of Colonial Marines. I couldn't confirm what I'd heard, and I figured that with the game early in development, some of these details would be fluid, so I sat on the info.
But today, news came out that Sega has trademarked the name Alien: Isolation. With the title corroborated, I feel comfortable sharing everything I've heard.
According to our source, the protagonist of Alien: Isolation is Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley, the character that made Sigourney Weaver famous and kicked off the ubiquitous sci-fi franchise over 30 years ago. Amanda, who is mentioned in the special edition of Aliens as having died while Ellen was frozen in space, has not yet been the focus of any books, movies, or games in the Alien extended universe.
You, as Amanda, spend most if not all of the game on a single space station, according to our source. There's only one alien for "most" of the game, our source said; you'll mostly be shooting through "clones and soldiers." Vents, lockers, and melee weapons are a big part of Isolation, our source said, and the game is heavily inspired by the first Alien movie.
Keep in mind much of this information is from six months ago; details may have changed over the course of development, as they sometimes do. However, our source re-confirmed many of these details today.
In 2011, Sega announced that Creative Assembly was working on an Alien game, but details have been sparse. Creative Assembly's most recent game, Total War: Rome II, was quite buggy at launch, but Luke revisited the game last week and gave it a positive review.
Sega declined to comment for this story.
To contact the author of this post, write to jason@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter at @jasonschreier.