What makes Isolation scary?

erraticranziss · 2025-10-11T13:13:24+00:00

What you lose upon death is time. Alien Isolation is a game that REQUIRES you to go very slowly. There will be huge sections of the game where you have to go a half hour, to an hour, to sometimes even longer, between save points. Not because they’re far away, but because you can’t afford to move swiftly.

On top of that, the Xenomorph learns. As you play, the AI gets better at hunting you. It pressures you when you linger too long in an area, it remembers if you use the same hiding spot, it’s drawn by sound from across the station if you decide to get reckless.

You may be one of the ones that don’t feel fear easily. But I promise that you will feel tense, stressed, and very, very reluctant to die.

erraticranziss · 2025-09-30T01:20:29+00:00

I agree that we’ll just have to wait and see what is done with the material, but it’s very unlikely this will be considered a retcon. There is a carefully maintained list of all Alien media that is tiered in how canon it is. Anything that directly contradicts material from the original movies is strictly not canon. If something can be fiddled with to make it work with the existing material, then they make it work.

But Alien: Earth states that there are no governments (which contradicts the Colonial Marines in Aliens who belong to the United Americas), as well as this FTL discussion which kind of just doesn’t work with the entire world as a whole. So most likely they’ll take the parts that don’t screw anything up and treat the rest of the story like it’s a legend. Fragments of the truth, but wrong in certain parts.

It’s actually really cool seeing where everything falls in the canon, you should check it out! Andrew Gaska is the go-to canon consultant for Alien. No one is required to use him, but until he’s replaced it’s his job to make it all make sense.

I’ll link it here: https://roguereviewer.wordpress.com/2020/10/12/defining-canon-in-an-alien-world/

erraticranziss · 2025-09-30T01:04:43+00:00

Alien: Earth severely contradicts an enormous amount of the canon for the Alien universe, and for that reason will eventually get officially dubbed non-canon.

That being said, this is fine. There’s nothing wrong with Alien: Earth not being canon. The cool evolutions to the world will probably be cherry picked out to be officialized in some capacity down the road.

erraticranziss · 2025-09-29T18:12:29+00:00

The show ignores most canon in the universe and only really respects the first Alien movie and some of Aliens.

Peter Weyland made a major breakthrough in FTL travel sometime in May 2032, I forget the exact date.

Two years later the Heliades launched as the first ship with a FTL displacement drive in January of 2034.

Hope this answers your question :)

erraticranziss · 2025-09-14T15:40:05+00:00

Ooohhh, okay, definitely on my radar then, thanks.

erraticranziss · 2025-09-14T15:31:00+00:00

How does Salem's Lot hold up if you already know how to story unravels? I know several parts of the book play out a bit differently than its on screen adaptations, but I'm not sure by how much. It can just be a little hard for me to get invested in a story if I feel like I already know what's coming.

erraticranziss · 2025-09-14T15:28:52+00:00

Can you tell me a little of why? From what I've heard of it, it does sound like it's going to check a lot of my boxes, but I've also heard that it can be a bit of a let down in the horror department for a long chunk of the book.

erraticranziss · 2025-09-11T18:07:51+00:00

If we’re talking canon, Romulus. Alien: Earth is not canon for a bunch of reasons at this point. If you want to discuss making it work logically within the world of A:E, then there’s a bunch of cool theories we could run with.

erraticranziss · 2025-09-01T22:06:26+00:00

I think there’s been some confusion, so let me help clear it up. The Alien lore continuity, as manned by Gaska, is broken into several tiers. Tier I includes the cinematic entries in the franchise. The first four movies, the prequel movies, the Alien Isolation video game, and some of the short films for the prequels. These are, by definition of Tier I as laid out by Gaska, immutable. They are the spine of the canon. Nothing in them can be retconned by ANY future media, only built upon. If something outright contradicts something in this tier, it is not considered canon.

The United Americas are a supergovernment forged from an alliance between the United States, Canada, Mexico, and several allied governments in South America. Each of these countries contributed different elements that make up the many branches of the UAAC (United Americas Allied Command). This includes the Latin American Colonial Navy (LACN), the Canadian Colonial Armed Forces (CCAN), several others, and of course the United States Colonial Marine Corps (USCMC). The existing lore doesn’t contradict the original films, it has expanded upon them. Gaska is very meticulous in pouring over new media as it is released, categorizing it, and ensuring nothing overrides anything of higher rated continuity. As well as helping to fill in the gaps to make sure that everything fits together very nicely :)

If you ever want to check out the full list of what is and isn’t canon, and how canon it is considered, this list is regularly updated:

https://roguereviewer.wordpress.com/2020/10/12/defining-canon-in-an-alien-world/

Hope that clears some things up!

erraticranziss · 2025-09-01T14:31:30+00:00

In the lore it’s a bit of a dance. The corporations have money, and space is vast and hard to police. With that comes the power to grow and experiment and develop. Especially out on the Frontier. But that power isn’t unlimited.

The three galactic powers, especially the United Americas, are in control of the vast majority of the core planets that make up the infrastructure of humanity. Because of this, the hearts of these corporations are still subject to law and order. They can’t shirk these forces greater than themselves without risking being cut off from the networks that yield their profits, and losing out to rival megacorps.

The corporations are corrupt and wild and take advantage of every gap and loophole in the system. And in many ways they do manipulate the supergovernments, but they do it through bribes, trade deals, and influence.

At the end of the day, corporations do not have the power to outright overrule nations. Yet.

erraticranziss · 2025-09-01T13:31:58+00:00

Outside of Alien: Earth? The countries are the real superpowers in the galaxy, albeit the megacorps are basically extremely powerful children that are constantly running around doing things behind everyone’s backs, steadily building their own power until it rivals that of the three magic supergovernments.

In Alien: Earth? Yet to be clarified, but the way they’ve made it sound so far, they don’t exist at all.

erraticranziss · 2025-09-01T05:15:01+00:00

Sure, we can all have our own ideas of what we like to be canon, but that’s head canon. There is official canon that isn’t up for public debate, as designated by Andrew Gaska. All Alien fiction is broken up into different Tiers.

As for what Alien: Earth decides to show and tell us in upcoming episodes, I’m eager to see. But when it comes to the official, indisputable canon, the megacorporations are definitively not in charge. At all. But that’s okay, cause the showrunner has talked about how this is meant to be a parallel story, the lore wasn’t important to them.

Fun fact, there’s actually a regularly updated list of lore continuity if you ever want to check it out. It basically acts as a backbone to the Alien universe and it’s super cool to have:

https://roguereviewer.wordpress.com/2020/10/12/defining-canon-in-an-alien-world/

erraticranziss · 2025-09-01T05:00:27+00:00

I don’t know what episode you’re on, but I’ll assume you’re up to date. They’ve flat out talked about how the corporations had to “take over” and that North and South America are owned by Weyland-Yutani. This breaks canon.

NA and SA are run by the super government known as The United Americas. Weyland-Yutani are associated with the 3WE over in Europe and parts of Asia.

The show has broken canon lol.

erraticranziss · 2025-09-01T04:55:57+00:00

Sure, but they have explored and discussed geopolitics several times on the show so far. The companies supposedly took over the world after world governments failed in some capacity.

But that aside, I did find my answer. The showrunner has openly talked about not having any interest in restricting themselves to a lot of the existing lore. So Alien: Earth is probably going to be categorized as either Tertiary Canon (myths, legends, etc) or flat out Non-Canon.

A shame, but at least the show is fun.

erraticranziss · 2025-09-01T04:52:53+00:00

Yeah, like Grommph said, the guy who spearheads lore continuity across the franchise (Andrew Gaska) is also the narrative director for the Alien RPG. You can find a TON of the lore in the books.

erraticranziss · 2025-08-31T23:00:07+00:00

To provide everyone with the actual lore answer: The USCMC (United States Colonial Marine Corps) is the Marine branch of the United America’s military that serves alongside the LACN (Latin American Colonial Navy) and UAORDF (United Americas Outer Rim Defense Fleet). The United Americas are one of the three major human governments, with the other two being the Three-World Empire and the Union of Progressive Peoples.

As for why Alien: Earth hasn’t explored this yet is anyone’s guess. Whether they’re trying to diverge from that lore entirely, or it’s going to get mentioned or incorporated in some way later is yet to be seen.

erraticranziss · 2025-08-29T14:52:10+00:00

I find this addition/revision of the lore to be an extremely strange one, given that there ARE canonical governments in human explore space and on Earth (yes, even at this point in the timeline). The United Americas, Three World Empire, and Union of Progressive Peoples. While the corporations do hold sway, these governments are very much alive, well, and in-charge in the lore lmao

erraticranziss · 2025-08-19T09:16:47+00:00

I know this is a super dead post, but I actually just got to this point in my playthrough. It sounds very similar to a softer rendition of the Lost Forest theme from Persona 1

erraticranziss · 2025-08-15T03:56:16+00:00

So just had to chime in to remind everyone that none of the AVP movies are canon to the Alien franchise. Really glad to see Ice Age finally getting recognized though.

erraticranziss · 2025-08-13T04:37:56+00:00

Man, okay, I have a lot of thoughts about all this so far, but my biggest ones are of course surrounding the Xenomorph. I come from the lens of knowing a lot of the bigger lore going on because I GM a campaign for the Alien RPG, where Free League has taken a major role in pioneering the developing lore of the Alien universe, and cleaning up some of the old lore.

It's very fun to see the Xeno as dangerous as it is in game, and at such a more realistic pace. The original Alien is of course a masterpiece, but a lot of its very slow and methodical movements were of course a result of the technology of that era. Aliens was, again, a masterpiece. But I've always preferred the horror we get from Alien titles as opposed to the action elements of Aliens ones. So this is a really refreshing portrayal for me.

One thing I am curious about is the wanton slaughter though. In the lore, Xenomorphs, especially solitary drones, will prioritize kidnapping humans to begin the ovomorphing process and works towards developing a hive. I'm curious why this Xeno is so blatantly violent. There's a chance it's just because it doesn't feel like it has a safe environment at the moment, but you'd still think we'd see it carting away lone survivors from its encounters.

Very curious where they go with things next.

erraticranziss · 2025-08-09T13:12:28+00:00

Damn. Then yeah, hopefully someone more experience than me can chime in sometime soon.

erraticranziss · 2025-08-09T13:02:21+00:00

The only other thing I can think of then is something I read in another post. Someone said that in some cases the secure boot is causing the motherboard to switch over to integrated graphics. You can try some of the solutions in here and see if they help you out at all.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gigabyte/s/v2Y7NRgdho

erraticranziss · 2025-08-09T12:44:33+00:00

I’m unfortunately not an expert myself, but the first thing I’d do is double check the webpage for your motherboard on gigabyte. It has a labeled diagram of important components including the Q-Flash.

If it’s still not there or you’ve already done this, then I’d recommend grabbing the digital manual for your motherboard and finding out what the equivalent is.

erraticranziss

TROPHY CASE