Amanda Ripley from Alien: Isolation
(Note: This analysis of the narrative of Creative Assembly’s ambitious game does not feature any spoilers until the final few paragraphs. I note in the piece at which point these spoilers begin, so those who have yet to play the game and don’t want to have the story ruined can still follow along until then. Bear in mind that I do speak obliquely about events in both Alien and Aliens, but then if you haven’t seen those films already then you should unplug your internet until you’ve done so.)
There is a moment, towards the finale of Ridley Scott’s Alien, as Ripley is making a last-ditch effort to escape the impending destruction of her ship, that she rounds a corner to find the titular creature blocking her only means of reaching the lifeboat. Frantic, Ripley abandons her plan, returns to the command deck and attempts to override the auto-destruct sequence. A moment too late, Ripley realizes in a furious panic that she must risk the corridor or die. The moment is one of utter terror and dread, complemented by the dazzling mise-en-scene of the spaceship in its turbulent death throes. Now imagine if Ripley had gone back to the lifeboat to discover its door sealed, and imagine also that she improvises a new plan, one that takes her down an elevator shaft, which leads to a new section of the ship, in which a maintenance android patrols the grounds, and she must run around turning off switches and logging into terminals to override doors, before getting into a spacesuit and walking along the outside of the hull to manually force her way into the lifeboat, which is carrying an alien that she then has to defeat. The scenario would be absurd, overdone, and would exchange the viewer’s panic and terror for tedium and frustration. Nonetheless, this contrived scenario roughly approximates the exercise in excessive paces that Alien: Isolation puts the player through.
digital didascalia 