What is the canon difficulty for this game?

[Sea Prince Gillywix]

The game recommends the difficulty of hard yes. Here is the thing I was thinking though. Amanda in lore would not respawn. She would have to successfully get through the events of the game in one try. Now I don't know about you, but that seems damm near impossible. Amanda would have to have some seriously good survival skills and experience dealing with situations like this in the past. But as far I am aware just is a simple engineer. On my first playthrough I did this on hard and died hundreds of times before getting to the end.

Then there is the balls she must have to do some of these things? Going into a nest filled with these deadly alien things alone? Most people would have just completely avoided that area like the plague. Another thing is that in the game it seems like this is her first time meeting these alien creatures. When we encounter them its clear she doesn't what they are meaning that without dying to them many times, she is going to have a hard time surviving to their unpredictable behaviors. Perhaps it should be cannon that Amanda doesn't survive the events of this game.

[Devsman]

Canon difficulty is a concept you're better off not thinking about.

It's true that a dev or two has gone on record saying something to that effect, but literally anytime a dev goes on record, he makes something up on the spot without thinking, or perhaps worse, performs massive backpedaling.

Gameplay balance is never canon.

[Dayve]

Originally posted by Sea Prince Gillywix:

The game recommends the difficulty of hard yes. Here is the thing I was thinking though. Amanda in lore would not respawn. She would have to successfully get through the events of the game in one try. Now I don't know about you, but that seems damm near impossible. Amanda would have to have some seriously good survival skills and experience dealing with situations like this in the past. But as far I am aware just is a simple engineer. On my first playthrough I did this on hard and died hundreds of times before getting to the end.

Then there is the balls she must have to do some of these things? Going into a nest filled with these deadly alien things alone? Most people would have just completely avoided that area like the plague. Another thing is that in the game it seems like this is her first time meeting these alien creatures. When we encounter them its clear she doesn't what they are meaning that without dying to them many times, she is going to have a hard time surviving to their unpredictable behaviors. Perhaps it should be cannon that Amanda doesn't survive the events of this game.

Well, this game was made with ONLY the first movie in mind. In that movie we see the alien very rarely. Even when it is fully grown and actively hunting, its nature appears to be to hide as much as possible, not to stomp around on the ground.

So the "canon difficulty" would probably be medium or easy, as the alien spends most of its time in the vents on those difficulties, which is how it behaved in the movie.

[ArielNugie]

Depends on your perspective actually. I did play this game on hard several times with my headphone on and my knowledge in my awareness when playing CSGO (such as, determining the alien location through sound cues of my surrounding, etc)

Also I did better use of any traps at my disposal (Like putting explosives or firebomb around the door on the ground to alert me if the alien enter the room, so If I hear any explosives, I'd know immediately that I scared it off or using a noise maker to distract it), and the alien most of the times couldn't find me or just ran back to the vent if it exploded any of my traps. I did play it cautiously and that's probably the reason why I rarely died on hard.

It was quite fun playing on hard that way.

[Sea Prince Gillywix]

Originally posted by ArielNugie:

Depends on your perspective actually. I did play this game on hard several times with my headphone on and my knowledge in my awareness when playing CSGO (such as, determining the alien location through sound cues of my surrounding, etc)

Also I did better use of any traps at my disposal (Like putting explosives or firebomb around the door on the ground to alert me if the alien enter the room, so If I hear any explosives, I'd know immediately that I scared it off or using a noise maker to distract it), and the alien most of the times couldn't find me or just ran back to the vent if it exploded any of my traps. I did play it cautiously and that's probably the reason why I rarely died on hard.

It was quite fun playing on hard that way.

I think mostly from me finding hard to believe someone could get through this game within dying on the first try unless they are playing on very easy mode. But the way the devs present, it it seems to me like one of the harder difficulties may be canon. That does sound like a fun way to play fyi. I am gonna try that on my next playthrough. I my first and last playthrough I barely ever used traps since I constantly worried I may need them later.

[NinthElement]

I think canonically Ripley is meant to be a legendary survivor, whether it's Ellen or Amanda. So she would manage to make it through on Hard mode, even if it seems unfeasible to the rest of us who have lesser survival instincts.

Also in my mind the difficulties below hard aren't canon because the damage you take is unrealistically low, and also the alien is more likely to not see you in situations where you would realistically expect him to.

[Sea Prince Gillywix]

Originally posted by NinthElement:

I think canonically Ripley is meant to be a legendary survivor, whether it's Ellen or Amanda. So she would manage to make it through on Hard mode, even if it seems unfeasible to the rest of us who have lesser survival instincts.

Also in my mind the difficulties below hard aren't canon because the damage you take is unrealistically low, and also the alien is more likely to not see you in situations where you would realistically expect him to.

Interesting. This would make much sense then. Also. I was also informed that the alien and facehuggers are both nerfed in this game compared the movies. I haven't seen the movies mind you, but I plan on watching them soon. I was told though that facehuggers make nearly no sound till attacking and are much faster then seen in game. I was also told that the alien doesn't walk around so loudly and is much stealthier, plus has great sense of smell. So for all we know the true difficulty may be something harder then nightmare mode.

[Dayve]

Originally posted by NinthElement:

I think canonically Ripley is meant to be a legendary survivor, whether it's Ellen or Amanda. So she would manage to make it through on Hard mode, even if it seems unfeasible to the rest of us who have lesser survival instincts.

Also in my mind the difficulties below hard aren't canon because the damage you take is unrealistically low, and also the alien is more likely to not see you in situations where you would realistically expect him to.

Then canonically the difficulty would be a mixture of hard and medium (or nightmare and medium).

The alien wouldn't show up particularly frequently, but when it did it would have the hunting instincts that it has on hard/nightmare.

[Delfino]

Easy is the best difficulty. This game really plays great until first death. After that it's less immersive. If you keep dying a lot, there is no immersion at all. Hard can be played as a challenge but only for the sake of fooling the AI. It doesn't really give any fun apart from that.

[Dayve]

Originally posted by Delfino:

Easy is the best difficulty. This game really plays great until first death. After that it's less immersive. If you keep dying a lot, there is no immersion at all. Hard can be played as a challenge but only for the sake of fooling the AI. It doesn't really give any fun apart from that.

That has been my thinking also ever since my first playthrough. The game stops being scary and loses so much immersion when you keep dying over and over. That's why I always play with unpredictable AI mod (which makes the alien much more elusive) + nightmare difficulty.

I've completed the game once on hard and twice on nightmare without any mods - I can do an unmodded nightmare run without dying, it's not difficult, but having the alien be on you 100% of the time, it just stops being tense/scary and becomes frustrating eventually.

[Jetzon]

I'd think nightmare because of how the superstructure of the station would cause the tracker constant interference