Alien: Isolation's 20-hour runtime grew that long by accident, according to a dev who says that the Xenomorph's increasing intelligence drove the horror game's playtime up.
In an interview on the FRVR podcast, writer Dion Lay explained that "in a perfect world," they'd "shrink [Alien: Isolation] down a bit, get down its core." At an average playtime of 18-20 hours, the acclaimed horror title is notably longer than many of its genre brethren, but that wasn't the intention at the beginning of development.
When development started, Lay explained that the Xenomorph was a much less intelligent threat. By the end of the creation process, however, it had become far smarter, able to react to the players' preferred strategies. That made for a harder game, which took players longer to beat.
"The Alien really evolved as we were making it. By the time it was perfect, it was like 'oh, wow, everything takes a lot longer!" Lay claims that "at the time, it didn't seem that long," and that "it would have been hard to [cut down the runtime]" during development, "but there was some stuff where we were like: 'Yeah, we can't take that out now, that would kind of upend everything."
In spite of the fact that getting to the end of the journey takes a relatively long time, Lay says they "really like the actual ending" and its explosive set piece, but that any criticisms that stem from the amount of time it takes to get there remain "fair." Whether the team behind the Alien: Isolation sequel announced last year will be able to better adapt to the Xenomorph's intelligence remains to be seen, but with the likes of Silent Hill f and Cronos: The New Dawn coming in significantly shorter, it'll be interesting to see how long the follow-up ends up being.
With its predecessor high on our list of the best horror games of all time, Alien: Isolation's sequel has some big shoes to fill.
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