After 83 hours of playing Alien Isolation...

[Dayve]

I just discovered that you can smash those cameras that follow you all over the game. You know when you walk past a camera and it follows you, making that annoying "zeeeeeeeeeeeee" noise? You can smash them. Just hit them with the wrench and they fizzle out and die. I assume shooting them with any weapon will do the same thing.

I'm not sure why you'd do this because as far as I know they don't actually do anything other than stare at you and make a noise, and also smashing them will make noise and alert any enemies nearby.

[Mazryonh]

Maybe they're a reference to GlaDOS from Portal, which was an AI that kept you in view of its cameras at nearly all times? APOLLO could be monitoring you in the same way. It would be nice if there was a DLC involving the cameras.

Destroying the cameras doesn't do Amanda any good, does it? It's not like APOLLO will use them to discern her location and send Synthetics there, right?

[Dayve]

Originally posted by Mazryonh:

Destroying the cameras doesn't do Amanda any good, does it? It's not like APOLLO will use them to discern her location and send Synthetics there, right?

Exactly. Not only will it make noise and alert enemies, it doesn't actually do anything. But they can be destroyed.

I do recall reading that the ship's AI system uses CCTV to report your location to Working Joes, so maybe that was part of the game at some point but CA decided it was a little too unfair or something.

[Max Headshot]

I think the relevant to gameplay cameras can not be destroyed, for example the camera on seegson second level in front of the elevator which leads up. They must be deactivated by using rewire boxes. And the ambiente cameras can be shot for sure.

[Naomi]

Originally posted by MattFiler:

I think they must have originally been intended to be an extra level of surveillance that the Synthetics were using. In the comic it also mentions Ransome (or perhaps another character) was monitoring the camera feeds if I remember correctly, so maybe it was part of an unused story element.

Not only can you shoot/melee the cameras but I think you can also sometimes disable them through the rewire boxes.

wait theres a comic? can you link me to were i can get it

[slimak]

cameras are just obstacles alond the way that, if alarmed, will attract synthetics nearby, by firing the alarm but that's really it I guess. smashing them will cause obvious noise, and rewiring fuse boxes to disable them is the only silent way to deal with them, usually its easy to disable them silently so why waste ammo on them or smash them anyway?

[Dayve]

Originally posted by slimakPL:

cameras are just obstacles alond the way that, if alarmed, will attract synthetics nearby, by firing the alarm but that's really it I guess. smashing them will cause obvious noise, and rewiring fuse boxes to disable them is the only silent way to deal with them, usually its easy to disable them silently so why waste ammo on them or smash them anyway?

I'm talking about the cameras that don't do anything, not the ones that project a kind of laser-fence which turns red if it sees you and sets off an alarm.

The ones that are basically everywhere and just follow you around.

[Naomi]

Originally posted by MattFiler:

Originally posted by angrykluge:

wait theres a comic? can you link me to were i can get it

http://www.alienisolation.com/news/2014/12/17/download-the-complete-alien-isolation-comic

thanks man

[BROOD-SkorpioN]

I'd say the cameras (and them being destroyable) are tied to the numerous influences this game takes from System Shock 2 (which, in turn, was influcenced by the movie Alien). In the game, the cameras allowed the evil AI governing the Von Braun space ship to detect the player and summon enemies to his general area, so naturally destroying/disabling them was a high priority.

My guess would be that the developers had originally planned to give APOLLO the ability to send synthetics after the player if he got spotted by any one of the cameras, and that idea got scrapped for whatever reason, probaby due to difficulty considerations. Instead, it was limited to only a handful of cameras in key areas.

[Dayve]

Originally posted by BROOD-SkorpioN:

I'd say the cameras (and them being destroyable) are tied to the numerous influences this game takes from System Shock 2 (which, in turn, was influcenced by the movie Alien). In the game, the cameras allowed the evil AI governing the Von Braun space ship to detect the player and summon enemies to his general area, so naturally destroying/disabling them was a high priority.

My guess would be that the developers had originally planned to give APOLLO the ability to send synthetics after the player if he got spotted by any one of the cameras, and that idea got scrapped for whatever reason, probaby due to difficulty considerations. Instead, it was limited to only a handful of cameras in key areas.

Yeah but they left behind a ton of those cameras that don't do anything other than watch you and follow your movement. It adds to the immersion of the game, but I wonder is anybody watching them?

Kuhlman is obviously watching you as you go to find Morley's keycard because he gives you directions, so he must be using them, but besides that I don't think they do anything at all. I definitely remember seeing something during the development of the game about CCTV cameras being able to direct Working Joes to your position.

I can see why they took that out if that was the original idea. It would make the game incredibly frustrating (or more frustrating than it already is) to constantly have to hide from Working Joes every time a camera sees you, or hit them with your wrench which would summon the alien.

[Dayve]

Originally posted by MattFiler:

Originally posted by Dayve:

Yeah but they left behind a ton of those cameras that don't do anything other than watch you and follow your movement. It adds to the immersion of the game, but I wonder is anybody watching them?

Kuhlman is obviously watching you as you go to find Morley's keycard because he gives you directions, so he must be using them, but besides that I don't think they do anything at all. I definitely remember seeing something during the development of the game about CCTV cameras being able to direct Working Joes to your position.

I can see why they took that out if that was the original idea. It would make the game incredibly frustrating (or more frustrating than it already is) to constantly have to hide from Working Joes every time a camera sees you, or hit them with your wrench which would summon the alien.

In one of Mike Tanaka's audio logs he says that Ransome had been hacking into private messages and camera feeds for the last two years. I think perhaps Ransome was going to be in the main campaign, he even has a model in-game in one of the DLCs which I would imagine means he was going to be used more than he was, not to mention you can find multiple audio logs from Ransome in-game.

Yeah maybe. The fact that there's so many of them and can be destroyed or turned off and on via re-wire boxes must mean they had some function originally. I'd love to know for sure what it was!

[Dayve]

Originally posted by MattFiler:

Originally posted by Dayve:

Yeah maybe. The fact that there's so many of them and can be destroyed or turned off and on via re-wire boxes must mean they had some function originally. I'd love to know for sure what it was!

Might be worth tweeting @wannaneeda on Twitter (creative lead for Isolation) to see if he'd offer up any information. Other than that maybe try @Batsphinx who was one of the game's writers. Let me know if you hear anything, would be very interesting to know! Might also be worth checking the original story parts I found of the game to see if there are any references in there.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=575748089

I don't use Twitter or any social media. I don't want my eyes and brain to get cancer.

[-|Nur|-]

Noticed that a long time ago in Safe Haven where there's that annoying camera near the looters.

[Dycerius]

I believe there is a lore inside the game that explains the camera feed. I just don't remember what it is. There are several as far as I know from hacking to why its still on etc. Anyone gone through all the terminal, voice and lore inside the game?

[Dayve]

That text file of the script is very interesting to read. I'm about 1/4 of the way through.

It seems a ship left Sevastopol before Ripley arrives, a ship named The Solace, and it was packed full of civilians from Sevastopol. Sounds like an alien was on board and murdered everybody.

If CA ever made a sequel, a prequel to Alien Isolation would make an awesome game, maybe playing as Marlow and trying to do stuff after the first alien is born out of Foster. I'd like to see all those people get to The Solace and escape (even if they ended up with an alien on board with them).

[Dayve]

Originally posted by MattFiler:

Originally posted by Dayve:

That text file of the script is very interesting to read. I'm about 1/4 of the way through.

It seems a ship left Sevastopol before Ripley arrives, a ship named The Solace, and it was packed full of civilians from Sevastopol. Sounds like an alien was on board and murdered everybody.

If CA ever made a sequel, a prequel to Alien Isolation would make an awesome game, maybe playing as Marlow and trying to do stuff after the first alien is born out of Foster. I'd like to see all those people get to The Solace and escape (even if they ended up with an alien on board with them).

Absolutely. The stuff in that old script setting up the game seems like gold, I don't know why it was never used - it would have added some interesting elements to the opening sequence. I kinda liked the Halo-like opening too with an orientation from Verlaine and the option to invert camera controls.

I think a spin-off where you play as Marlow would be quite cool, however they kinda eliminated the chances of that happening by including mission 9 in Isolation I guess.

If not Marlow then perhaps Lingard or Ransome - someone who was there right at the start and saw everything right from the beginning, from the first alien being born out of Foster, through Sevastopol going to hell.

Ransome would be particularly interesting. He saw the whole thing unfold, did all kinds of shenanigans during the early stages of the meltdown (trying to capture the alien, meddling with on-station systems and so forth) and, best of all, his end would be him getting on The Solace with the others, only to find they were even more doomed on The Solace than they were on Sevastopol.