Question about storyline?

[l3eers]

In reference to the Alien 1 movie storyline, im confused as to how A. Ripley's mother went missing 15 years ago, yet the ship has surviving humans? And axel says he's been 'holding out for a few weeks'? I might be having memory blank here and I missed a part if the plot... but how does this make any sense? Was A. Ripley on the ship 15 years later or a few weeks later? Which Alien movie does this game actually take place after?

[Meme Rights Activist]

The game has little to do with the events of the movies.
Ellen Ripley goes missing after Alien 1.
Fifteen years later, Amanda gets the opportunity to learn what happened to her by retrieving her flight recorder.
Ellen didn't fly to Sevastopol. No one accidentally took a xeno with them when they retrieved her flight recorder.
They got her flight recorder THEN someone brought an alien on board from a DIFFERENT planet.
I believe Amanda's only getting there a few weeks after the infestation.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this made sense without contradicting the movies themselves.

[Canadian Ninja]

The game doesn't do anything to break movie canon. The Nostromo found the alien facehugger on LV-426 and spaced the alien shortly afterwards. Ellen was the last survivor and drifted in space for 57 years. But in the meantime, the crew of the Aneisadora discovered the same distress signal on the planet that the Nostromo found, along with the Nostromo flight recorder, and the crewmember from their ship that was attacked was brought to Sevastapol, starting the infestation shortly afterwards. A few days to a few weeks later, Amanda Ripley along with other members of W-Y arrive at the station, starting the game. This takes place 15ish years after the Nostromo was destroyed.

[Dayve]

Originally posted by l3eers:

In reference to the Alien 1 movie storyline, im confused as to how A. Ripley's mother went missing 15 years ago, yet the ship has surviving humans? And axel says he's been 'holding out for a few weeks'? I might be having memory blank here and I missed a part if the plot... but how does this make any sense? Was A. Ripley on the ship 15 years later or a few weeks later? Which Alien movie does this game actually take place after?

Quick timeline:

- Ellen Ripley (Amanda Ripley's mother) is on a commercial ship, Nostromo. Long story short, an alien gets on the ship, kills everyone except Ripley who sets self-destruct on the ship and ejects in an escape pod.

- 15-ish years later (when Ellen Ripley's whereabouts are still unknown as she's still in cryosleep in her escape pod) Marlow and his crew find the flight recorder from the Nostromo. They inspect the data, use it to find the alien planet hoping for valuable salvage, land on the planet, same damn thing happens to them. Alien on their ship, on Marlow's wife's face. They take her to the nearest station for medical help - Sevastopol.

- A day or two later, the alien implanted in Marlow's wife hatches whilst they're on Sevastopol. An alien is now on Sevastopol. A corrupt Seegson executive, named Ransome, contacts Weyland-Yutani and informs them of the alien, hoping they will give him a big payout and a high position in their company. Weyland-Yutani buy Sevastopol immediately, cut all communications and upload new AI to their Working Joe androids - programming them to protect the alien at all costs and exterminate any humans that try to harm the alien. Weyland-Yutani obviously plan to get the alien and dispose of any survivors so it can be kept secret.

- For the next 10-ish days, an alien wreaks havoc on Sevastopol. The crew of the station - a few hundred people - are taken or killed one by one. Law and order completely breaks down, people form groups, groups fight one another for resources, they can't call for help because Weyland-Yutani have cut off their communications, they try to kill the alien with bombs, basically Sevastopol is just rampant paranoia and confusion as the alien wreaks havoc on it.

- Amanda Ripley (who you play as in Isolation) arrives on Sevastopol around 10 days after the alien hatches on the station. Although Amanda, Taylor and Samuels are employees of Weyland-Yutani they aren't high level enough to know about the alien or Weylan-Yutani's purchase of the station, so they too are expendable.

- It is another 35-ish years after the events of this game that Ellen Ripley (Amanda's mother) is found during the events of Aliens (1986 movie).

- Isolation takes place 15 years after Alien and around 35 years before Aliens.

[Vzzdak]

So that explosion when you first EVA onto Sevastopol, where you lose Taylor and Samuels, that was due to a bomb intended to kill the xenomorph?

Is there a record somewhere that alludes to this detail?

[Dayve]

Originally posted by Vzzdak:

So that explosion when you first EVA onto Sevastopol, where you lose Taylor and Samuels, that was due to a bomb intended to kill the xenomorph?

Is there a record somewhere that alludes to this detail?

Yeah, I think it's one of the traps Waits and his remaining marshals set for the alien. Shortly after you enter Sevastopol, in the room with all the bodybags on the floor (where Axel puts a gun to your head) there's a recorder and the guy is talking about setting things up and getting the hell out of there.

[Vzzdak]

When I have a chance, I need to just sit down and have a reflective playthough, listening to those recordings, and reading the logs.

[Dayve]

Originally posted by Vzzdak:

When I have a chance, I need to just sit down and have a reflective playthough, listening to those recordings, and reading the logs.

I can definitely recommend it. Maybe use the unpredictable AI mod to give yourself some breathing room on the terminals where the alien is hunting you.

I love games that tell an extra story through terminals/notes/whatever. My Prey (2017) playthrough took about 75% longer because I wanted to explore 100% of that space station and read every single terminal (and there were a lot of them, lol).