It's easy enough to fit a game like this into a single play session because of its short length, but it's also hard to just simply want to keep everything to that extent given how bleak everything in INSIDE shows itself to be. Yet it's also that simplicity of the game's mechanics that ultimately make it all the more worthwhile.

The puzzles are simple, but as you figure everything out - what makes INSIDE work can only be best summed up by the fact that there's no clear idea what comes afterwards. It's the fact that there's no clear idea how this universe works that makes one want to continue on with the game, and the bleakness just makes you wonder where it'll all end up.

If this was just a side story from Telltale to tide us over before the next main season, it probably would've fine. Sadly, this just feels like a weird frankenstein creation thanks to the bizarre insertion of Clementine. Reducing her to a side character was just a huge mistake and when all is said & done, this season just kinda feels unneeded. The characters are pretty one note and the time you spend with Clementine just feels really off. She has nothing to do here and the way Telltale handles the season 2 endings is absolutely shocking. They had the opportunity to push their narrative design to the absolute limit but they just more interested in telling a story that just doesn't need to be told. As a side story, it's fine at most and as a season 3, it's extremely underwhelming and a strong example of how soulless Telltale became in the midst of their success.

I played through this game around the time of its release, and I had the same complaint as everyone else: it’s just too long and drawn out. Later parts should have been cut, and the plot should have ended at one of the earlier opportunities instead. However, replaying it years later, I found that I didn’t feel the same fatigue, even though none of the content was new to me. For most games, the opposite happens, where a second playthrough leads to boredom with repeated sections, but Alien: Isolation’s problem is more a function of its narrative structure than its gameplay. As alluded to earlier, the plot has multiple moments where it seems to be wrapping up with one big plan to capture the alien, but it fails and the chase begins again. It’s common for events like these to happen in movies, so it makes sense for a game based on a film franchise to replicate the same techniques, but these story beats feel completely different to the audience of a movie versus a game. In the original Alien, each failure taught the crew about the xenomorph’s abilities, and their ignorance of what they were up against reflected that of the viewers. It wasn’t frustrating to see their struggles, but fascinating and tense, and this is the difference that separates it from Isolation. Being personally involved in the story, and having to power through the exhausting fear and tension for many more hours, means that any failure feels personal, like you were denied the release you were fighting for. To make matters worse, the subsequent drop in tension is marked by the filler objectives which games inspired by System Shock always seem to have, running around collecting parts and repairing subsystems rather than making real narrative progress. That’s why the replay ended up feeling so much better, I didn’t feel like victory was constantly being snatched away from me so I could go fix elevators, I knew how events would turn out and I could enjoy them as a spectator. I could appreciate the quieter moments for the time they gave to enjoy all the details, and not feel the impulse to rush so I could get the alien for real this time. It makes me wonder if the poor pacing was caused by this same effect on behalf of the developers, who consciously laid out the plot to function like a movie, but cognizance of that tempo blinded them to the audience psychology unique to games. In turn, Alien: Isolation is unique in how I could recommend people to play it once, as long as that time is their second playthrough. That makes no sense, but trust me, us Alien fans are used to that feeling of confusion, enjoyment, and tinge of disappointment.