Alien: Rogue Incursion puts the punk back in Alien

I’m trudging through a dark hallway when my motion tracker lights up. A green blip appears, and I sweat for a moment before I realize that’s just my android companion following me. Then a second blip appears behind him. I panic, wildly moving my flashlight through the dark corridors to figure out what’s trailing me. By the time I see the sinister head of a Xenomorph dashing toward me, it’s too late; I already have a tail poked through my chest.

That’s the thrill that developer Survios is hoping to cook up with Alien: Rogue Incursion. The upcoming VR shooter puts players in the role of Colonel Zula Hendricks and sends them into an abandoned ship with a gun and a prayer. During my first hands-on demo with it, I’d truly immerse myself in that horrifying sci-fi universe in a way I haven’t felt since Alien: Isolation. But replicating the look and feel of Alien is only half the battle. As the Survios team told me during an interview after my demo, the most important key to a successful Alien game is, well, the alien.

“There comes a moment where a lot of people understand what true despair is, where you realize that you’re on an infected drop of water inside of a universe that wants you to be gone forever,” writer Alex White tells Digital Trends. “The Xenomorph is the teeth and claws of mother nature. It represents a natural phenomenon the way a tsunami might. People always talk about it like it’s a character. You are the character; it is the crushing vice that will destroy you.”

Keeping Alien punk

Alien: Rogue Incursion is a VR first-person shooter set after the first Alien film. It stars Zula Hendricks, a name that should be familiar to fans of the series’ comics, and her android companion Davis 01. My demo would drop me into Zula’s second mission, which would have me sneaking through an abandoned ship, upgrading my key card authorization, and facing off against hordes of Xenomorphs that were often hiding in plain sight.

It’s a much different experience from Alien: Isolation, a title that’s wildly considered a gold standard for Alien games. While there’s a survival horror tinge to it, it’s more of an action game starring a well-equipped soldier than a stealth game where your best weapon is a locker with enough hiding space. As I crawled through vents and interacted with computer terminals, I held a motion tracker in one hand to sense any nearby monsters. When one did pop out, I’d either have to grab my rifle from behind my back and fire away or grab my pistol from my hip when I was short on ammo.

Just because I have plenty of ammo on my belt doesn’t mean that it’s not tense, though. I’m still very much a vulnerable person being hunted by creatures that thrive in the shadows. It’s that much more hair-raising in VR, even with some defenses. But for Alex White, whose writing credits include a few Alien novels, Isolation was still a guiding light even for a more action-driven Alien game. The shared DNA between the two projects comes down to its fully lived in world and personal storytelling that gives the franchise so much staying power.

“What I took away from Alien: Isolation is that a strong personal connection to the character makes the franchise run,” White says. “We wanted to make sure that Zula Hendricks and Davis 01 have a thriving personal relationship, but also that the world in which they inhabit … even though it’s a haunted house, the ghosts are still there. And what I mean is that all the people who lived there are fully realized characters inside of this world. No, you’re probably not going to meet a lot of them face to face — that’s because their faces are mostly hugged — but that fully realized interplay is what we cared about bringing to life.”

During our conversation, it’s abundantly clear that Survios isn’t simply trying to make a big, dumb shooter that gives players an excuse to gun down Xenomorphs. Instead, it’s really trying to understand how the franchise uses horror to reflect the times in which it is made. While my 45-minute mission only teases out the story through computer logs, White makes it clear that Rogue Incursion has a clear political aim.

“One of the things you have to know with Alien is that it’s a punk setting,” White says. “There is an element of rebellion in the way it’s written. There’s an element of displeasure with the modern world. Whenever people say, ‘What’s it like to write Alien?’ I’m like, you live there, man! Do you have health insurance? You know what Alien is! You’ve met Weyland-Utani; have you shopped at Wal-Mart!?”

“The fact is that the grief and pain and frustration you see inside of Alien is always going to be evergreen. From the way that Romulus works in how corporations disrupt the relationship between caregivers and care receivers, to the way my novels explore how they mess with your body image. This game has a lot of interesting places to explore around self-sacrifice and grief. Every soldier knows that they may be lost in battle, but the question is: Is that what they actually want? Because it’s probably not. You have a character who is unshakable, who has always prepared herself for this moment as every warrior might. And when she meets these moments, the question is: How much of herself is OK to sacrifice?”

Respect the Xenomorph

There’s a lot to praise about Rogue Incursion so far, a game clearly made by a seasoned VR studio. Despite the fact that I have a lot of tools on my body, I easily get my sea legs as I pull health stims off one arm or juggle holding my rifle in one hand and my motion tracker in the other. It’s a tactile game, right down to my reload motion as I tip my rifle to drop out a clip, stuff a new one in, and rack it by pulling a lever on the side. Other moments have me physically touching my tablet to scroll around my map and shoving chunky hard drives into computers.

What stands out most, naturally, is my foes. In my very first encounter with a Xenomorph, I learned that they aren’t threats to be taken lightly. If they chase me down, they will gut me like a fish. They can climb on ceilings, track sound, and even deploy some tactics to let their friends jump me from behind (they can “clever girl” players, as White puts it). For Creative Director TQ Jefferson, getting these exact behaviors down was paramount.

“One of our first pillars was ‘respect the Xenomorph,’” Jefferson tells Digital Trends. “We didn’t want Xenomorphs to be an easy enemy that gets killed fast. It’s not a horde shooter. So we wanted the numbers of the Xenomorphs in Aliens; that there’s a lot of them and you’re fighting a hive. But we also borrowed specific parts of the DNA from the big chap, the first Alien. If you recall in that film, that Xenomorph is everywhere, it’s nowhere, it’s cunning, it’s invincible. That sort of tenacity, that diabolical design, is what we grafted onto the Aliens Xeno, which are more numerous but easier to kill.”

The more I start to understand that these aren’t mindless AI zombies, the more my playstyle changes. At one point, Davis 01 and I find ourselves in a bay of computers. We need to upgrade my access card to get into the ship’s mess haul. Unfortunately, a fried hard drive means I need to search for a replacement if I want to move on. As I explore the desks, I find a simple coffee mug. I prepared to do what anyone playing a VR game would do in that situation: I instinctively picked it up and planned to throw it. As I winded my arm back, I suddenly caught myself:“Oh, no, that would make a noise, wouldn’t it?”

The developers in the room burst out laughing. “That’s the smartest thing anyone’s done today,” someone said.

“You can draw them out and they’ll go into investigative mode where they check out sounds, but they’re not mall cops,” Jefferson says. “They’re not simple AI that are like, ‘Hm, I guess there’s nothing’ and go back to wherever they were. Our Xenomorphs will bend perched somewhere because they’re like, ‘I know something’s here.’ They’ll just perch and wait, and see if you make another move. How do you defeat a motion tracker? Don’t move.”

“You will not survive unless you learn how to shoot out your clip well, draw your revolver, and retreat,” White adds. “If you don’t learn to reload as fast as you possibly can between encounters, if you don’t learn to take care of yourself and watch those corners and stay frosty, you’re not gonna make it! When a Xenomorph gets their hands on you, you should be dead! One of the first things I remember talking about is, let’s make sure they’re deadly as hell.”

I get the full hang of it all by the mission’s ending, where Davis 01 and I find ourselves trapped in a room as Xenomorphs pour in. If I want to survive the shootout, I need to display my mastery up to that point. I start firing out my rifle clip, keeping track of how many shots it takes to blast open an alien’s head. By then I’ve learned that my foes will often showboat a bit before attacking to intimidate me, just like a wild animal. I watch for that moment and take my shot so as not to waste ammo as they crawl around the ceiling. When I run out of shots, I fling it to the side and grab my revolver from my hip.

It’s a thrilling last stand with a potentially grim ending. Survios wants players to understand that death is a real threat here and that you’re not just an action hero who can gun your way out of any situation. The Xenomorphs are a real threat, but they aren’t the only forces working against me. White reminds me that there are bigger obstacles at play, from radiation to the oppressive power structures that are the real villains of the Alien universe.

“Struggling to prove your worth in the eyes of large corporations is both a fool’s errand and the story of our careers,” White says, a one-liner that hits so hard that we both leave our conversation at that.

Alien: Rogue Incursion launches on December 19 for Meta Quest 3, PlayStation VR2, and PC VR.