My little group was led down a flight of stairs into a neon-blue-lit hallway, then through a door into a nearly pitch-black room with absolutely no decorations. The walls were black, the chairs were black, and the TVs were black. It was the demo area for Alien Isolation 2.
It was an interestingly intentional choice, considering most of these preview spaces are adorned with flashy decorations and their walls are plastered with bright art. I appreciated how Spartan the space was, which led into a straight, to-the-point demo for Alien Isolation 2 — one that left me quite hopeful that the sequel would meet, or even exceed, the heights of the original. 
While the demo was rather short, at roughly 30 minutes, it was essentially split into two parts. I presumably played through the opening of the game, where the main character, Blake, a member of Weyland-Yutani management, arrives on planet LV-921 in search of a secret lab. As you’d expect, things quickly go wrong, and a ship crash lands on the planet in the middle of a deadly storm. Little do Blake and her crew know that by investigating the storm, they’d unleash an even greater threat.
You’ll probably see a lot of preview talk about the second half of the demo, where the Xenomorph appears, and the tension ratchets up. Sega even had cameras recording everyone so they could send our reactions to us later. The Xenomorph does feel more terrifying than ever, blisteringly smart and disturbingly fast.
Trapped aboard a crashed ship, you must evade the Xenomorph and escape. I thought I was smart, crawling in a duct that went underneath the ground, but the Xenomorphy was quick to open a grate and join me in the enclosed space, simultaneously handing me a death sentence. The ship’s enclosed spaces feel alarmingly claustrophobic, and the Xenomorph’s stomping steps reverberate in your head like a drumbeat. There are multiple pathways to get out, but you genuinely have to be careful about how much noise you make, as the alien won’t hesitate to pounce on any disturbance.
The horror sequence feels incredibly tense, but what fascinated me most about the Alien Isolation 2 demo was the opening that precedes it; tonally, it makes the sequel feel immediately different.
The entirety of the first Alien Isolation was set aboard Sevastapost Station, aesthetically very much in line with the very first Alien film. This helped ramp up the sense of claustrophobia and tension. But Alien Isolation 2 starts you out on the wide open surface of a planet.
After the ship crashlands, Blake spends ten minutes creeping through a decrepit forest, winding along paths across the planet’s surface, getting battered by a monsoon of rain, thunder, and lightning. It’s an utterly incredible tone-setter, and the open space gives the game an integrally different feel from its predecessor. Even when you climb into the bowels of the ship, you know the surface and freedom lie at the top of the ladder.
While in this demo, you don’t interact with the Xenomorph on the surface at all, the idea of what’s possible in this new setting is tantalizing. Even just imagining the alien stalking you through the dark, windswept forest is enough to get under my skin. But it also opens Alien Isolation 2 to a completely different pacing and narrative style — juxtaposing the idea of freedom with being hunted. Having that brief exploration period made the transition to the ship feel even more jarring and oppressive.
Ostensibly, Alien Isolation 2 is “more of the same,” and you’ll likely see a lot of people say that. But there’s the potential for something even more here, a winning setup that could evolve into a more ambitious and well-rounded horror experience. There are also some fascinating things you could do with Alien’s themes of corporate greed and the perils of playing god when given a whole planet to work with.
It’s obviously too early to say how much Alien Isolation 2 will use the juxtapositions it sets up and how much it will deviate from the original. But the brief demo has me buzzing with excitement at the sheer possibilities.
