It might be wise to start preparing yourself, once again, for the harsh realities of hiding in a locker and fearing for your life. 20th Century Fox seems to be plotting some sort of new adventure for Amanda Ripley, the protagonist of 2014’s pretty-ruddy-scary Alien: Isolation video game.
Gamers with good memories will recall that the Alien: Isolation video game featured Amanda Ripley – the daughter of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley – venturing into space in search of answers, only to find herself in the midst of Facehuggers and Xenomorphs aplenty. Ultimately, Amanda just about managed to survive the events of the game, and she even found a final message from her mother along the way.
Flash forward to the modern day, and Fox has taken to Twitter to do some tantalising teasing, posting a brace of short videos on the official Alien account. The first tweet (let’s call it Exhibit A) asks “Who is Amanda Ripley?” in nice big capital letters, as well as intercutting some shaky footage of an ‘A. Ripley’ name tag on what looks to be a video game character…
A few hours later came Exhibit B, this tweet below, which features the following text: “When the crew of the Nostromo vanished, they left behind a secret… in 2019, it will be uncovered.” There are shots from the original Alien movie at the start of the clip, and another glimpse at that digital-looking ‘A. Ripley’ name tag at the end.
Interestingly, each video ends with the words “coming soon” and both tweets have captions that include the hashtag #ReadPlayWatch. This seems to hint that Fox is cooking up a multimedia smorgasbord that ties Amanda Ripley and the Nostromo together somehow, which includes some form of gameplay experience as well as video content and the written word.
Only time will tell whether the ‘Play’ element of this mysterious three-headed project is a direct sequel to Alien: Isolation, but a new playable experience featuring the character of Amanda Ripley is still something to be excited about. And Fox’s tweets certainly want fans to be thinking along those lines, we’d wager.
It’s also worth noting that Fox filed a trademark for something called ‘Alien Blackout’ late last year. It’ll be interesting to see where, if anywhere, that title slots into these multifaceted plans.
We’ll keep our eyes peeled for more cryptic tweets and live in hope of a formal announcement. Either way, we’ll keep you informed on all things Alien.