It's Time to Accept Alien Isolation 2's New Protagonist Is Actually the Protagonist

Alien Isolation 2 stars a new character named Blake — not Amanda Ripley — and after hearing Creative Assembly confirm it for the third or fourth time this summer, GameSpot writer Miri Teixeira is finally letting go of the theory that Blake is a bait-and-switch setup for Ripley to take over.

The theory went like this: Blake gets killed early, Ripley shows up as the real playable character. It's a fun idea, but principal environment artist Archie Whitehead shut it down plainly at Gamescom. "What I can say is the story focuses on Blake," he told GameSpot. "She's been sent to the colony — if you watch the trailer, you see she's been sent there kind of as penance, like she's made a mistake." That level of narrative investment in Blake's backstory doesn't leave much room for a switcheroo.

Alien Isolation — the 2014 original from Creative Assembly — put players in the boots of Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley, aboard the space station Sevastopol. It became a cult classic for its tense, single-Xenomorph stealth horror. A sequel has been a long time coming, and the decision to move away from Amanda as the lead is a meaningful creative choice. The comparison to Red Dead Redemption 2 is apt: plenty of people assumed Arthur Morgan would be a prologue character before John Marston took over, and that turned out to be mostly wrong — Arthur was the game.

That said, Ripley almost certainly isn't gone entirely. She appeared to narrate the demo shown at Summer Game Fest, and it seems unlikely Creative Assembly brought back her voice actor just for that. Audio logs, narration, or even a physical appearance are all on the table. Alien Isolation 2 is currently targeting a 2027 release.