"In our game sound is critical, because when you're hiding in the dark, what you can hear might just be the key to your survival," says Creative Assembly creative lead Al Hope about the team's upcoming Alien: Isolation. It's a good summation of what CA is gunning for with game, which thankfully strips away all the player power and scifi action of Aliens-branded games like Colonial Marines and replaces it with the abject horror of trying to outsmart a terrifying unknown enemy that isn't just hunting you, but is clever enough to outsmart you in (hopefully) wildly unpredictable ways.
In a recently-released developer diary, the team briefly runs through a few of the nuts and bolts of Alien's sound design, an often-overlooked (or at least less discussed) aspect of horror games. It's fascinating and heartening stuff: Creative Assembly apparently had access to the original sound recording's from Ridley Scott's original 1979 film and have created a sound engine that dynamically adapts to make the aural experience more tense depending on what the alien or the player is doing (and hopefully in more than just a binary).
If you're a fan of either Alien, sound or horror design, this is well-worth the watch. Alien: Isolation is out in October.
[Via Youtube]
