Alien: Isolation sequel gets first-look teaser trailer which hints at setting

When Alien: Isolation 2 was first announced back in 2024, there was a post on X (formerly Twitter) to mark the occasion as part of Alien Day celebrations, but now, we have a short teaser trailer that offers us the very first glimpse of the highly anticipated upcoming sequel.

The original game came out in 2014, and stunned (and terrified) us all with its incredible visuals and dastardly smart Xenomorph AI that would sniff you out, or even listen to your whimpers via microphones on the console versions.

Since then, Alien: Isolation has been released on just about every conceivable platform, meaning many have gotten to enjoy it in the years since, with many of us clamouring for a new game.

As for the Alien: Isolation 2 trailer, developers Creative Assembly (the same folks who make the Total War games) posted a video to YouTube titled "False Sense of Security", which sums up that very moment you thought the Xenomorph wasn’t around in the first game.

Though the trailer appears quite opaque at first, we can deduce quite a bit from the short snippet of presumably in-engine footage.

The trailer opens zooming in on a set of blast doors in what appears to be a Weyland-Yutani-style outpost, like that of Hadley’s Hope in James Cameron’s Aliens. The facility is in a state of disrepair, with water leaking from the ceiling. A flashing orange light on the door turns to green, and the blast doors open to reveal the outside.

This is where a few things become apparent. There is shrubbery in the foreground, and trees in the distance that are getting blown in the wind, not to mention the pouring rain.

Last year saw the release of the Disney+ series, Alien: Earth, which, as the name implies, is set on dear ol’ Terra.

Now, trees and plants don’t necessarily indicate that Alien: Isolation 2 could take place on Earth, it could simply take place on a terraformed planet, but it's not entirely out of the question.

Finally, the trailer concludes with a close-up of an emergency telephone, which were used in the original to save the game.

Whilst not pertinent to the setting, the trailer is at 60 FPS, which is noteworthy as Alien: Isolation 2 is using Unreal Engine 5, which the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S can struggle with.

The original was lauded for its optimisation, and Creative Assembly has the original lead engine programmer, Michael Bailey, working on this sequel, according to FRVR, which, in combination with engine improvements from Epic, probably indicates that Alien: Isolation 2 will be a smooth performer. We may even see a Nintendo Switch 2 port, if we’re lucky, as many of the environments of the original were quite constrained.

Creative Assembly were also using Unreal Engine for its cancelled Hyenas game, meaning they have quite a bit of experience with the engine now.

All told, Alien: Isolation 2 will no doubt scare us all silly.

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