The Alien franchise has had a fairly rocky relationship with the games industry: with flops like Colonial Marines, but also gems such as Alien: Isolation, a successful System Shock-esque take on an Alien horror game. Now, it seems fans of the franchise may have a new game on the horizon.
FoxNext Games recently trademarked the title of Alien: Blackout, with the trademark specifically referring to “game software, computer game and video game software” and similarly related words.
This was tantalising enough to fans, but things started piecing together when famed Metal Gear director and heaven-sent angel Hideo Kojima tweeted photos from his visit to Fox’s studios and in reply, the official Game Awards account tweeted an image containing the message “Worlds Will Change”. PC Gamer highlighted that the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, from the Alien franchise, have a somewhat similar slogan - “Building Better Worlds”.
While they are not a household name, Cold Iron have undoubted experience in the industry.
Now, this seems just cryptic enough to remind me of another viral marketing campaign, for a promising Kojima horror title (cough Silent Hills cough).
The other leg to this news is that FoxNext Games have acquired Cold Iron Studios and, while they are not a household name, Cold Iron have undoubted experience in the industry. On top of the Alien first person shooter they have in the works (perhaps the newly trademarked Blackout?), their developers have experience working on titles of similar tone, such as Metroid Prime and DOOM.
In addition to this, FoxNext explained in a statement that they hope to make games as large a part of their media empire, with Cold Iron Studios being the beginning of assumedly many acquisitions to expand the Alien franchise beyond the half-baked stack of games it was prior to Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation.
In terms of genre and direction, FoxNext have hinted towards a first-person, massively multiplayer game so as to make use of Cold Iron’s experience. With ex-Star Trek Online developers on staff, they know their stuff when creating vast, living sci-fi worlds.
While Isolation is a tough act to follow, it seems that allowing players to live inside the world of Alien is exactly what Fox wants