Like many Alien fans, I’ve spent a fair amount of time wondering how well I would do if I found myself in an Alien situation, stuck on a broken ship in a corner of space in a survival game against terrifyingly resilient creatures. Turns out: maybe not so bad, if Alien: Rogue Incursion is any analogy. I had prepared myself for my playtime with Servios’ upcoming Alien VR game to be overwhelmingly terrifying, with Xenomorphs rushing at me in such a way that I would have trouble with my coordination. And it certainly had moments of classic Alien horror: watching from under the grates as a Xenomorph drags a body across the rafters hits a little differently when it’s seemingly happening directly overhead. But Rogue Incursion was never endlessly hectic. If anything, it moves deliberately slowly in parts to spatially acclimatize and give people like me, who can’t resist touching things lying around, a chance to explore and discover the story of this alien property for myself.
That’s what Alien: Rogue Incursion’s creative director TQ Jefferson was going for when he pitched it, as he explained after my demo. The team wanted to find the franchise’s “white space,” the areas that “haven’t really been touched yet,” where they could go in and create something original. The result is a cinematic experience not obsessed with leveling or unlocking map areas, but a story in which the player himself, through the protagonist, feels the urgency to find a way forward to survive. In Rogue Incursion, which was made at the same time as Alien: Romulus but on a different, compartmentalized circuit, the very tough Marine Colonel with a back problem, Zula Hendricks, must find her boyfriend in a new corner of space. But of course it’s not that simple on a ship infested with nests of Xenomorphs. Rogue Incursion writer Alex White has carefully developed the lore shared, of course, through dialogue between Zula and the Synthetic Davis and ephemera like HR emails that I especially appreciated in the spirit of the first Alien film. After all, it’s half a drama in the workplace.
I spent about 30 minutes completing the second of eight missions in Rogue Incursion, the goal of which was to validate an ID card without being waylaid by Xenomorphs. As someone who doesn’t put on a VR headset all that often, it took at least a second to get my bearings and get used to both the weapons and tools at my disposal and the game’s directional controls, done via joysticks and not the turning my head. But it didn’t take me long to get the hang of it. According to Jefferson and White, Rogue Incursion is specifically introducing all these features at a pace that’s palatable to VR newcomers, who they hope to entice with the sweet, sweet Alien property. During my mission I acquired a high-quality plasma soldering iron to unlock welded doors, which I found particularly satisfying. And the old trusty devices, like my handy motion sensor, medical kit, and especially the crucial pulse rifle, were all in their most logical places, so I didn’t accidentally pull out my map tablet when I had to shoot at a Xenomorph that suddenly started shooting. running towards me. In fact, when something like this happened, I was encouraged to drop everything else to get my gun out, picking it up again as soon as I was safe—a very real, very human response to danger.
I shouldn’t go on any longer without talking about the stars of the show, the Xenomorphs. White said their main behavioral inspiration actually came from the “smart girls” velociraptors in Jurassic Park. So instead of the kind of solo cat-and-mouse game with the Xenomorph in Alien: Isolation, the acid-blooded bastards here are smart enough to stealthily hunt in packs and flank their prey. While it’s certainly unsettling to find yourself in the middle of a Xenomorph circle, it’s also not unbearably difficult to survive. Although the way they came towards me was terrifying, it wasn’t dizzying; I didn’t have to try and spin in a frenzy in every direction to figure out what was going on. And luckily Davis was behind me when a Xenomorph came at me from behind, so I could focus on the enemy in front of me.
Honestly, when I wasn’t wandering the utterly dreary corridors of the spaceship trying to get from one place to another, most of my playtime was spent trying to avoid getting into a struggle. (Make enough noise, though, and you’re essentially begging a swarm of them to come eat you alive.) Rogue Incursion seems to welcome all types of playstyles, from the more cautious like me, which involved peeking around corners to checking for hazards lie in wait or crouch quietly in a booth to wait for a Xenomorph to pass by, or use more aggressive hunting tactics with firearms.
My main point is that Rogue Incursion is hampered by how well you can tolerate living in a tense VR environment for extended periods of time. (For me, I felt insane after taking off my headset, like I hadn’t blinked once in 30 minutes.) Jefferson said the main story takes about eight hours to complete, but they made sure there was plenty of room to rest (and save the game). Those pauses add a dimension of exploration of the environment, beyond the use of huge smeared bloodstains as contextual clues to where I need to go. Rummaging through boxes to find useful items or even putting on a baseball cap from a lost company makes this alien world all the more personal and real – and isn’t that what VR is all about?
