Homesick for the unheimlich: Back to the uncanny future in Alien: Isolation

Abstract

In 2014 Sega released Creative Assembly's Alien: Isolation, a video game sequel to the 1979 film Alien. As an attempt to create both an authentic homage to the Alien franchise and a credible successor to Ridley Scott's original film, Alien: Isolation was received as both a work of remediated nostalgia and as a deeply uncanny survival horror. This article discusses Alien: Isolation framed by theories of the uncanny (the unhomely) and of nostalgia (the homely), with the aim of revealing how the production design of the game reconciled these seemingly contradictory but nonetheless overlapping aesthetic qualities. By drawing on examples from Alien: Isolation's visual and level design, this article discusses how the integration of nostalgic and uncanny qualities could be of value to horror and sci-fi game design, in particular to the development of sequels within existing franchises, and to remediations, remakes and reboots. KeywordsNostalgia, uncanny, survival horror, science fiction, production design, level design 3 Creative Assembly's sci-fi survival horror, Alien: Isolation (2014), is predicated on the virtual reconstruction of a familiar yet unsettling cinematic world. In other words, it is a video game that is devoted to the dual aesthetics of nostalgia and the uncanny. Within Game Studies this presents us with a particularly interesting case study, as both nostalgia and the uncanny are important concepts to the analysis of video games. The former is of increasing relevance to the study of retro games, remakes, games history, games culture, and the collection, curation and preservation of games (e.g. Garda 2013;Heineman 2014;Sloan 2015;Suominen 2007;Swalwell 2007;Taylor and Whalen 2008). The latter has been applied broadly to studies of horror in games, in particular to the study of survival horror as a subgenre (Kirkland 2009b; Reed 2015; Tinwell et al. 2009), to games that feature uncanny representations such as doubles, ghosts and the undead (Hoeger and Huber 2007; Spittle 2011), and to examples of overt simulation and glitches that create unexpected, uncanny experiences (Brown and Marklund 2015; Holmes 2010).

“Game Over, Man. Game Over”: Looking at the Alien in Film and Videogames

“…In Colonial Marines, the critique of technology is recouped within the family-like structure of the marine unit itself. It is also subordinate to the affective camaraderie players like to imagine they have with the game industry itself: the promise of a sequel with more pulse rifles, more smart guns, more defeatable aliens and more nostalgic design (Sloan 2016). The largely male marine fraternity is freed from the failure of Aliens not just by the ego-centric design noted by Weise and Jenkins but also by the para-social consumerist ethos that such design fosters at scale.…”

“…However, just as many of the themes of Alien are somewhat muted when filtered through the tonal shift of the second film ("This time, it's war" the sequel's marketing material assured us), so too have videogames drawn a very selective set of inspirations from the Alien series. Mainstream videogames are bedazzled by the colonial marines and their impressive military hardware, yet remain relatively disinterested in the gender politics or critiques of technological corporate culture that film theorists have long noted as being so prevalent to the films (Bundtzen 1987;Creed 1986;Doherty 2015;Greven 2011;Kavanaugh 1980;Sloan 2016). …”

Gaming and the Arts of Storytelling

“…However, just as many of the themes of Alien are somewhat muted when filtered through the tonal shift of the second film ("This time, it's war" the sequel's marketing material assured us), so too have videogames drawn a very selective set of inspirations from the Alien series. Mainstream videogames are bedazzled by the colonial marines and their impressive military hardware, yet remain relatively disinterested in the gender politics or critiques of technological corporate culture that film theorists have long noted as being so prevalent to the films (Bundtzen 1987;Creed 1986;Doherty 2015;Greven 2011;Kavanaugh 1980;Sloan 2016).…”