Devs Play Alien: Isolation

Streams
#1

Final Update: Alien: Isolation - BONUS video

Alien: Isolation is a first person survival horror game released by Creative Assembly in 2014. It’s a stand-alone story that serves as a follow-up to the original 1979 movie. You take up the role of Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Ellen Ripley, as you try to survive on a space station with trigger-happy humans, malfunctioned androids and the titular alien.

“Devs Play”? What is this?

We’re ripping off the name from Double Fine’s YT series. But we’re justified in that because one of us (Rust Weaver aka Christiaan) worked on this game as content designer. I’m playing through this game blind, while Christiaan co-commentates, offers insight into the game’s development and answers all sorts of questions.

Audience Participation

This Let’s Play is being recorded while also streaming it, so we take questions about the game live. If you can’t take part live, don’t worry, you can ask your questions here in this thread and we will go through them in future episodes. The only limitation is that if a question is spoilery, you can only ask it after we are passed that point in the game. If there are endgame related questions, we’ll answer those in a separate Q&A video.

How long is this game?

A first playthrough of the game is around 15 hours. Episodes will be uploaded in chunks in 40 minutes, since it’s rather slow-paced and we don’t want to have an episode where there’s little to no progress.

How often will you upload this LP?

Recording sessions are on Wednesdays. We get around 3-4 episodes out of these, so we’ll try and upload that many per week.

Where can I catch the live show?

If you’d like to ask your questions live, we will be recording every Wednesday on my Twitch channel at 9PM Swedish/8PM GMT/3PM EST.

Content Warnings

This game is rated M for mature and the Alien was originally designed by H. R. Giger, so there will be violence, gore and disturbing imagery.

##:glitchcrab: SPOILER POLICY :glitchcrab:

No spoilers for areas we haven’t passed yet, not even in spoiler tags.

EPISODE LIST

Playlist
Part 01
Part 02
Part 03
Part 04
Part 05
Part 06
Part 07
Part 08
Part 09
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13
Part 14
Part 15
Part 16
Part 17
Part 18
Part 19
Part 20
Part 21
Part 22
Part 23
Part 24
Part 25
Part 26
Part 27 - FINALE
Part 28

8 Likes
#2

Queued up questions:

  • @scumm_boy: Do you know what lead to the choice of using a custom engine?
  • @scumm_boy: How many passes does it take to render the scene?
  • The Opponent: How many people played it with a camera peripheral?
  • SIGTERM: Does the alien learn from confrontations with the other humans or is their behavior too simple for any learning to apply?
  • SIGTERM: Please try to cause an alien / working joe meeting.
#3

Please don’t forget to run around a bit every now and then once the game’s namesake is introduced.

#4

I love this idea, but this is dangeriously close to being just a stream dump, which would belong in the Stream subforum. What are you going to do to the videos to make them proper LP videos and not just stream archives?

#5

Well, I know that I saw some old SA LPs recorded on stream as well, so I thought it would be fine. To be honest, even if this was recorded locally, it would probably have the same things content-wise, only without audience questions being asked as we play. I disabled all my usual stream stuff (like notifications, chat, etc) to keep the videos clean and viewer-friendly.

I understand if this is risky territory, so if you don’t feel confident about it, you can close the thread.

EDIT: I guess it’s in the Streams section now. I’ll keep the format of the thread and posts the same as it was initially planned.

#6

I’d honestly call it close enough to fit in the LP subforum, if you bring a dev who worked on it and talk about the game and how it was made, it’s more than a regular stream.

#7

I discussed it with the other mods and we decided this is more appropriate for the streams section. The message Bob sent you explains why in more detail.

But yeah, it’s just a change of venue, please feel free to continue with your original plan!

#8

Part 2 is now available for your viewing pleasure.

4 Likes
#9

Part 3 is now available to watch:

This is as much as we’ve recorded so far. The next recording session will be on Wednesday 9PM Swedish/8PM GMT/3PM EST and will last for around 2 hours, so feel free to drop by!

2 Likes
#10

Enjoying the videos so far! I like the insight into the game’s development from your co-commentator, and I’m looking forward to the next videos. Having played the game myself a couple months back, it’s interesting to watch someone else play through it. The behind-the-scenes stuff adds a whole other layer to it that I really like. Keep it up!

One issue I’ve had, though, is that you haven’t been updating the playlist. I’m keeping track through that, so it would be super helpful if you kept that up to date. Thanks!

#11

Oh, sorry about the playlist. I thought I had queued them up into playlist, but apparently I have to manually do it if I schedule videos.

We finished our second session, so we’ll be uploading it in 3 or 4 parts throughout the next week for YouTube.

3 Likes
#12

Here’s Part 4 of our adventures in android hell:

2 Likes
#13

A question for a future stream: Do you know what lead to the choice of using a custom engine?
And a follow-up: How many passes does it take to render the scene?

1 Like
#14

Part 5 is up:

We have our first very lengthy encounter with the Alien.

2 Likes
#15

Part 6 is now up:

Do we finally escape from the medical ward? Find out in this video!

This is the final VOD from the last session, so if you want to catch-up until the next recording session, now’s the best time.

1 Like
#16

Part 07 is now up:

This is from this week’s play session. The remaining two parts will be uploaded before next week’s stream. We’re probably at one of the most difficult sections of the game in this video, so expect a lot of dying.

1 Like
#17

Oh god, yeah - that part is brutal. One of my criticisms of the game is how the difficulty is so front-loaded, and that has mostly to do with your ability to interact with the alien.

1 Like
#18

Part 08 is now available:

Good news, we’re out of that brutal area and only have a semi-brutal area to finish!

1 Like
#19

Part 09 is now up:

This is the last video from the previous stream session, so you can catch up until the next stream on Wednesday.

#20

Does the alien learn from confrontations with the other humans or is their behavior too simple for any learning to apply?

(Please try to cause an alien / working joe meeting.)

1 Like