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Crew of the Torrens
Ripley
Amanda Ripley
"No welcome committee?"
Played By: Kezia Burrows (likeness), Andrea Deck (voice), Elizabeth Inglis (photo)
Dubbed By: Maryana Spivak (Russian)
The bad-ass daughter of the bad-ass herself, Ellen Ripley, and the main protagonist. Amanda became a mechanical engineer and began taking jobs in the same sector of space her mother disappeared in. She is approached by Samuels, a representative from Weyland-Yutani, who claims that the flight recorder from her mother's ship, the Nostromo, has been recovered and is being stored at Sevastopol, a space station orbiting the gas giant KG348.
- Action Survivor: What starts off as a simple mission to retrieve the Nostromo's flight recorder takes a turn for the worse for Amanda when she becomes separated from her fellow crew members and is forced to use her wits to survive and evade dangerous threats. She progresses into Action Girl territory once she gets some better weapons, allowing her to fearlessly confront Working Joes, armed survivors, and even the Alien itself. Later on, she has to deal with Facehuggers and yet more xenomorphs.
- Adaptational Badass:
- In the films, she is only known to the audience as an innocent 11-year-old girl and an elderly 66-year-old woman who dies of natural causes. Here she's a capable and resourceful action hero to easily rival (or even outstrip) her mother — her trauma is far more sustained.
- In the novelization, she outright kills a Xenomorph with the flamethrower, something which is impossible in the games.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: The novelization repeatedly refers to her as blonde.
- Adaptation Expansion: In the novelization of the game, we learn considerably more about Amanda's life prior to her arrival on Sevastopol, and it's... not pleasant. Her mother, for all her many virtues, had terrible instincts about men: her father, Alex, was a wastrel who disappeared from her life while Amanda was still a toddler. Her stepfather, Paul Carter, was an alcoholic who spent most of his life passed out drunk. Such was Amanda's luck that he became her sole parent once her mother disappeared. Despite having prodigious mechanical skills, she couldn't afford to attend a trade school and was forced to take menial jobs far below her aptitude level. Throughout her life, she was continuously swindled, conned, betrayed, and lied to by pretty much everyone she trusted. As such, she developed a deeply misanthropic outlook.
- Ascended Extra: Initially appeared as a Posthumous Character in Aliens, where it is established that she died at the age of 66 and never got to see her mother as an adult. Isolation (and subsequent works in the Expanded Universe) not only give her greater prominence, but tie in a storyarc of her searching for her mother and running into contact with xenomorphs.
- Badass Normal: Survives several close encounters with the Alien and can melee humans and androids alike. To note, the first time she sees the Xenomorph, she has a massive freak-out. By the time she marches through a hive by herself in order to overload the reactor cores, fighting other Xenos and Facehuggers along the way, she does so without comment or major reaction.note
- Deadpan Snarker: Has a tendency towards this when her life isn't in mortal peril.
- Determinator: She survives multiple encounters with the Xenomorph, gets out of the Gemini Labs sector after Waits decouples it with the Xenomorph still on board with her, walks through an entire hive underneath the reactor core, gets captured and escapes from the wall she's been cocooned to and manages to get back on board the Torrens while the station's systems are failing around her.
- Disappeared Dad: Amanda's father is never mentioned in the game. In the novelization, her genetic father walked out on the family when she was a toddler, and whenever her mother was absent she was raised by her step-father, who quickly devolved into an alcoholic. She had to drop out of school to support both of them at sixteen.
- The Engineer: Civil sector, but still qualifies. Her ability to perform certain types of repairs and use specialist equipment is often why the main cast end up entrusting her with so many tasks.
- Enraged by Idiocy: In the novelization she detests people who try to use technology they don't understand, nearly to Berserk Button levels; at one point she's tempted to help some survivors who don't seem like they'd be instantly hostile, only to decide they're too stupid and move on. This is exacerbated by the fact that most things on Sevastopol have been accidentally broken by people who don't know how to use it correctly (or deliberately broken to hamper the Joes/other survivors/the Alien) and she has to repair it to proceed. But the novel gives the strong impression that "fix this because some idiot broke it" is a thing she's had to do so many times she's stopped counting.
- Failure Hero: Almost everything the player does is for naught. Getting a trauma kit for Taylor only delays her death by a few hours. Jettisoning the alien only forces APOLLO's hand in killing the rest of the survivors. Those civilians you told to get to safety at the Marshall Bureau just get killed by the androids. Blowing up the alien hive only results in them spreading across the station and building a nest elsewhere. Stopping Marlow from blowing up the station only pushes back its destruction by a couple hours. By the end of the game, Ripley's only accomplishment is finally finding out what happened to her mother and surviving.
- Final Girl: Amanda outlives every single character, becoming the Sole Survivor. Her mother would be proud.
- Friendless Background: The novelization contains many flashbacks to Ripley's life before Sevastapol, including a statement that she never really had friends growing up, though she does seem to have friendly acquaintances, and strikes up a close relationship with a Marine named Zula before the game, who she joins up with in the comics set afterwards.
- Foil: To her own mother, Ellen Ripley. Both are incredibly capable and determined women who manage to outsmart and outmaneuver the Alien where others cannot. And while they can be fairly blunt with others, they're both compassionate with strong moral centres. But when Ellen prefers to take charge and mediate conflicts, Amanda is a quiet Gadgeteer Genius and Wrench Wench who generally prefers technology to people and is more likely to follow orders than give them out.
- Foregone Conclusion: Amanda's survival is guaranteed as her mother was informed by Carter Burke (who has no reason at that point to lie) that she died in 2178 at the age of 66 in the Special Edition of Aliens.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Amanda definitely qualifies. She devises medkits, Molotov cocktails, and electronic noisemakers from random components and scrap that she finds around the station. She even manages to repair a motion tracker using pieces from a children's toy — anything to stay one step ahead of anyone trying to kill her.
- Heroic BSoD: Seems close to a breakdown at several points of the game. Always pushes through anyway and even manages to help push Ricardo through one of his own.
- It Gets Easier: In the novelization, Amanda doesn't really seek to kill humans herself, but is initially horrified to see dead people and has to steel herself to loot them. She's particularly struck by the corpse of someone she helped to kill. As she goes on she reflects that she's disturbed by how much less carnage disturbs her and she still pauses to tell a corpse "Rest in peace." There comes a point where she gets someone killed by a Working Joe, takes some food off his still-warm body, quips "Thanks for the food" before eating it, and drops the wrapper back on his body.
- Like Mother, Like Daughter: Amanda goes through many of the same things that her mother did in the original movie, and in the end, ends up being a Sole Survivor as well. Ripley would be proud of her offspring!
- MacGyvering: She could give the original MacGyver a run for his money — she can improvise a sizable array of deadly weaponry using what passes for household supplies on Sevastopol. She can also rig the station's systems to do things not originally anticipated by their designers.
- Master of Unlocking: Most of the doors aboard Sevastopol Station are either deactivated or sealed, but Ripley can locate and utilize various pieces of equipment to open them. A few doors have been locked by a clamp that can only be removed by a wrench. Most doors can be opened by pulling their manual override levers, though access to said levers may require cutting open a door panel with a welding tool. Occasionally, Ripley may run into doors that are electronically sealed and can only be opened by keycard, passcode, or a hacking tool.
- Mission Control: Mostly is on the receiving end of this, but she also talks Ricardo and Taylor through some stressful events, having a cooler head and more technological knowledge than they do.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: Amanda in Nightmare mode. Everything is instant death. Guns kill instantly and Working Joes kill too fast for you to button-mash an escape. It gets a bit ridiculous when a Working Joe kicking you if you hide under a table is considered fatal, as is the xenomorph knocking you down if it charges past you.
- Parental Abandonment: Amanda gets this after her mother (who promised to be home for her birthday) disappears after shipping out on the Nostromo, leading the former to believe she was abandoned as a child. The plot is motivated by her employer, Weyland-Yutani, alerting her to the fact that the flight recorder from the Nostromo was discovered and brought to Sevastopol.
- Post-Dramatic Stress Disorder: Is quite susceptible to this — understandably so, given all the bad things that happen to her. It nearly gets her killed in the finale, though.
- Saved by Canon: As mentioned under Foregone Conclusion, Amanda is guaranteed to survive the events of this game and will continue to live until the age of 66 as mentioned in the Special Edition of Aliens.
- Sole Survivor: The only one to survive the events aboard Sevastopol station. Much like her mother, she is the only member of her ship's crew to survive and kill a xenomorph.
- Strong Family Resemblance: She bears a strong likeness to her mother, except with straight hair instead of curly. Like her mother, she also ends up being the Sole Survivor of the game.
- Technical Pacifist: There's an achievement called "Mercy or Prudence?" for beating the game without killing a single human. On harder difficulties, it's actually in your best interest to go for it. That said, the only qualifier is that you don't personally kill any humans. The game doesn't fault you if humans die in other ways, such as you tossing a noisemaker at their feet and letting the xenomorph do the rest, or releasing a trapped Working Joe to cause some havoc. You will have to terminate a number of Working Joe synthetics, though.
- Took a Level in Badass: As necessary to survive; she starts out as a capable engineer, and ends up becoming a hardened survivor.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: In the game, Ripley may kill humans, but in the novelization she has no desire to kill anyone who hasn't wronged her personally, and hates to even play a role in the death of someone who wants her dead. She has absolutely no hesitation about 'killing' Working Joes. Then again, she also doesn't feel any antipathy towards Samuels for being an android.
- Wrench Wench: She is well-versed in all sorts of machines and tools. This is absolutely essential to her survival on Sevastopol, as the station has fallen into extreme disrepair.
Samuels
Christopher Samuels
"We get to shut the book, Ripley."
Played By: Anthony Howell
Samuels is in the employ of Weyland-Yutani. After the USCSS Nostromo's destruction in 2122, he offers Amanda a spot aboard the Torrens on a retrieval mission on Sevastopol as he thinks it might help Amanda in finding her mother's whereabouts. He's also a synthetic.
- Always a Bigger Fish: He's the bigger fish to The Working Joes. Joes can effortlessly kill any humans they come across, but Samuels himself rips apart dozens on his way to the APOLLO Core with his bare hands.
- Androids Are People, Too: Amanda considers him this moments before his death. Ricardo also thought he was a pretty great guy for an android.
- Artificial Human: Is a synthetic that works for Weyland-Yutani. This is only mentioned in passing, though, as it is assumed Amanda already knows.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Infallibly polite, even when dealing with an obstructive Working Joe.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: He beats a hostile Working Joe to death, with his bare hands, in mere seconds. It's also implied that the dead Joes strewn throughout Seegson Synthetics — including the ones torn in half and/or with their heads missing — had succumbed to his wrath as well. Keep in mind that regular Working Joes are strong enough to kill a normal human easily with their bare fists.
- Dissonant Serenity: He is not The Stoic, he emotes just fine, particularly an unfailingly polite concern for his fellow employees, occasionally tinged with a worried urgency if the situation warrants it. But he also never expresses anger or obvious fear (the closest he gets to this is his irritation at Waits during their first meeting), emotions that people around him show fairly freely considering the dire straits they are in, always remaining a level headed voice of reason no matter how bad things get. Justified, as W-Y synthetic people are programmed to try and keep humans around them at ease and on-task.
- Heroic Sacrifice: He sacrifices himself so that Amanda can access APOLLO.
- Mission Control: He acts like it for the first half or so of the game.
- Nice Guy: Samuels is unusually courteous and almost subservient to his fellow crew members, which is one of many cues that there is something not quite normal about him.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: It's heavily implied that he's responsible for the torn-up and beaten Working Joes you can find lying astray throughout the station, especially the ones you find in Seegson before you see him deliver a Curb-Stomp Battle to an unfortunate Joe.
- Organic Technology: Subverted, as usual. Weyland-Yutani synths use artificial materials arranged in a way that closely mimics organic structures.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: "I don't have time for this." (proceeds to beat the absolute crap out of a Working Joe)
- Ridiculously Human Robot: As per the usual for the series. Contrasts very dramatically with Seegson's primitive Working Joes.
- Robotic Reveal: Mentioned in passing. Not a surprise to either the in-game characters or long-time fans of the Alien series, but might come as news to newcomers.
- Superpowered Robot Meter Maid: Is there any reason why an android intended to be a glorified secretary should have the strength to rip other androids in half with his bare hands? W-Y apparently standardizes their models across synthetics made for labor and synthetics made for adminstration.
- Three Laws-Compliant: Implied by dialogue, with his saying that harming humans goes against "primary synthetic programming." His actions bear this out, as he is willing and able to tear his way through a small army of Working Joes, but never harms a human and risks himself to make sure Amanda has a chance to save herself and everyone else.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Played with. He recruits Amanda to the team extracting the Nostromo flight recorder to give her closure. Things go south and things get From Bad to Worse, but it was an inevitable conclusion and his sidegoal of helping Amanda find closure is the only good thing that comes out of it.
- You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: When accessing APOLLO goes wrong, he calls Amanda by her first name, having spent the entire game calling her Ripley.
Taylor
Nina Taylor
"I don't do long-haul very often. Most legal execs don't travel further than the coffee machine."
Played By: Emerald O'Hanrahan
An Executive working for Weyland-Yutani. Along with Samuels and Ripley, she is tasked with retrieving the Nostromo's flight recorder.
- Anti-Villain: Is eventually revealed to be an executive who also attempts to capture the Alien for the company, but she's otherwise not malicious, doesn't screw over Ripley, and is largely ignorant of just how dangerous the Xenomorphs really are. Nevertheless, she does put everyone in danger by releasing Marlow from captivity. Ripley mentions that she's "small fry" and not someone the company cares about, so perhaps that's reciprocated.
- Butt-Monkey: Things do not go well for Taylor. In addition to being terrified of space in general, she's traumatized repeatedly, gravely injured, kidnapped, and ultimately killed.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: As an executive with Weyland-Yutani she certainly has the potential to be this. Ultimately this is only played with. While she does attempt to secure a xenomorph for study, she does not try to betray anyone while doing so. Even then, her attempts are more about gathering information about the alien shipwreck and the creature than trying to persevere them at the expense of anyone's life. And, as soon as she learns what the hell is going on and that Marlow intends to kill innocent people, she works with Ripley to stop the Anesidora from exploding — at the cost of her own life.
- Damsel in Distress: Unlike Ripley, Taylor is taken out of the action early on when she's gravely injured during the journey to Sevastopol, and only recovers much later thanks to the help of Ripley and Samuels. Even then, she's kidnapped by Marlow after releasing him and although she does manage to turn the tables and kill him she's immediately killed during the ship's destruction.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Evil might be pushing it, but Taylor tells Marlow to "leave Ripley out of [it]" because she just wants closure and is stuck in the middle of it all.
- Evil All Along: Turns out to be the corrupt representative that tries to harness the creature for the Company. However, it's not as extreme as most examples in the series, as Taylor isn't purposefully malevolent to Amanda, nor does she continue to prioritize harnessing the Xenomorph once the danger becomes clear.
- Foil: To Burke. Both are corporate executives working for Weyland-Yutani who tag along with a Ripley for their mission with prior knowledge of the Aliens and are under orders to take the creature back alive. Unlike Burke however, Taylor is appalled with the creature and after seeing all the killings around her, she does not betray her Ripley and still does whatever it takes to save the survivors.
- The Load: Contributes very little to the team other than releasing Marlow from his cell, though she does die preventing his plan.
- Nervous Wreck: She's unhappy to have gone on the mission and reluctant to go aboard the station. Since Taylor was given secret orders to obtain the xenomorph and bring it back for study, she has every reason to be nervous. Can't say we blame her.
- Non-Action Guy: As opposed to Amanda, she reacts very poorly to the situation and never really recovers.
Verlaine
Capt. Diane Verlaine
Played By: Jane Perry
The captain and owner of the Torrens in 2137. She agrees to transport Ripley and the other Weyland-Yutani representatives to Sevastopol station.
- The Captain: Of the Torrens.
- Ink-Suit Actor: The character model is a spitting image of Jane Perry.
- Mission Control: She never sets foot on Sevastopol, overseeing what little she can from the comfort of her ship.
- Uncertain Doom: The player never learns of her exact fate. Given that she does not respond to Ripley's calls and the fact that another xenomorph emerges from her area of the ship, she is most likely dead.
Connor
William Connor
Played By:
- Bit Character: He only has a couple of lines and appears at the beginning of the game with Verlaine.
- Flat Character: Though in this case, it's justified due to his extremely small screentime.
- Uncertain Doom: The player never learns of his fate. Like Verlaine, he was in the same part of the ship the alien came from. So he's likely dead.
Sevastopol Residents
Marshal Waits
Marshal Jethro Waits
Played By: William Hope
The head of the Colonial Marshals aboard Sevastopol. He has been attempting to contain the xenomorph aboard the station with limited success.
- All There in the Manual: His first name is only revealed in the novelization.
- Asshole Victim: He gets strangled to death by a Working Joe, though it's still a downplayed example when one considers his Jerkass Has a Point method.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Pragmatic he may be, but Sinclair looting and shooting civilians for supplies clearly disgusts him. He sends him a message directly stating that once he kills the Alien, he's going to be next if it hasn't gotten him by then.
- When the Androids go berserk and start killing everyone, Waits goes down fighting them to save the people left, expressing anger and horror at the Androids as they do so. Say what you will about him, but he still wanteds to protect people, even if he was not really nice about it.
- Foil: To Ellen Ripley. While Ellen would agree with obliterating the Xenomorph, no matter the cost, she would do whatever it takes — including marching into the nest, guns and flamethrowers blazing if necessary — to save as many people as she could. Waits, however, is willing to leave people to die and doesn't interact with the creature directly.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Becomes increasingly obsessed with eliminating the Xenomorph threat aboard the station, to the point that everything and everyone becomes expendable.
- I Did What I Had to Do: His justification for launching the Gemini Lab section with Ripley still inside in order to kill the Alien.
- Ink-Suit Actor: Closely resembles his voice actor.
- Jerkass: He is directly responsible for many of the problems that plague Sevastopol once the alien starts its rampage across the station, most notably by keeping the local populace in the dark while infuriating many of them with his draconian security measures, leading to the tangled mess that Ripley gets involved in later. The traps he designed to catch the alien do little more than hinder Ripley's progress or threaten her life, and when they meet for the first time he even calls her out on thwarting his plans and demands she fix the problems he created. And he's completely unrepentant about sacrificing her to take out the alien, giving no more apology than I Did What I Had to Do. He's even a jerk to his coworkers.
- Jerkass Has a Point: As callous as his decision to detach the Gemini Lab module and leave Ripley stranded with the Xenomorph was, it did succeed in getting the Alien off the station... unfortunately for him, that wasn't the only Xenomorph aboard the station.
- Meaningful Echo: "Whatever it takes."
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Waits's obsession with eliminating the Alien led him to impose extreme security measures, all the while denying the existence of a Xenomorph aboard the station. His actions made the station's residents paranoid and mistrustful of authority, which ultimately led to a complete breakdown of civil order on Sevastopol. Had he been a little more open about what was going on with his fellow Marshals and station workers, they could have been better prepared to actually handle the crisis.
- Reaches its peak when he finally kills the Alien. Doing so turns all the Working Joes hostile and they end up killing most of the survivors, including Waits himself.
- The Sheriff: Of Sevastapol Station.
- Sole Survivor: After the first few abductions by the Alien, Waits led a posse of Marshals to hunt down the creature. He was the only one to survive.
- Token Evil Teammate: Is easily the biggest jerk out of all of your allies.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He's the one who allowed the crewmembers of the Anesidora to come onboard Sevastapol — including the one who had been implanted with an alien — because they had the Nostromo's flight recorder and he wanted a cut of the profits.
Ricardo
Ricardo Garcia
Played By: Syrus Lowe
One of the few remaining Colonial Marshals left aboard Sevastopol station and Waits's second in command.
- All There in the Manual: His surname is only revealed in the novelization.
- Black Guy Dies First: Inverted. Ricardo is actually the last character to die (barring Verlaine and Connor's ambiguous fates).
- Chest Burster: Subverted. A Facehugger manages to get him during the final stretch of the game, but the station is destroyed with him on it, dying before this happened.
- Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: How he ultimately bites it.
- Heroic BSoD: After Waits and the survivors in the Marshals' Bureau are murdered by the Working Joes.
- Honor Before Reason: Allows Ripley to escape the lockdown in the station's server hub. Unfortunately, this ruins the first attempt to trap the Alien.
- Mission Control: Waits often delegates radio coordination with Ripley to him, and he continues to do so after the rest of the security section is killed by Working Joes.
- Nice Guy: He seems to be the only person on the station who isn't willing to sacrifice people in order to kill the Alien.
- The Nicknamer: Tends to call Amanda "Rip."
- Number Two: Functions as this for Waits.
- Sole Survivor: He is the only person to survive the Working Joe massacre at the Marshals' Bureau after Ripley returns to the station, though Taylor and Marlow manage to escape beforehand. Sadly, he doesn't last too much longer.
- Token Minority: The only non-white character in the main story.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: Guides Ripley via earpiece.
Axel
Axel Fielding
Played By: George Anton
A shellshocked survivor and the first person Ripley encounters aboard the Sevastopol. He agrees to aid Ripley in exchange for passage off the station.
- All There in the Manual: His surname is only in the novelization.
- Asshole Victim: Sorta. He is one of the few people willing to listen to reason. The reason he threatened Amanda was because he had been running away from people even crazier than himself for a week by that point. Late in the game, you encounter an audio log from him. He claims that, sure, he has a gun, but at least he doesn't start firing at the drop of a hat like everyone else does.
- *Click* Hello: Greets Amanda with a revolver pointed to the back of her head.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The Xenomorph pierces his chest with its tail when it kills him.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Given that most of the station's survivors attack strangers on sight, avoiding contact with other people or killing them in self-defense are not unreasonable methods for survival. Moreover, it is all too likely that Ripley will resort to the same methods herself later on. As he points out, trying to survive at any cost is important.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He is introduced holding a gun at Amanda's back, and seems like he's going to be a horrible person. Interactions with him, and some logs found later, show that he overall was a pretty decent guy just trying to survive however he could. He comforts Ripley after he kills someone with Ripley's help, and is concerned with her well-being.
- Properly Paranoid: He might not exactly "shoot first and ask questions later", but he is certainly willing to point a gun first, then ask the questions. Given how Trigger-Happy many other survivors are, this is prudent of him.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: The first person to be an ally to Ripley (at least not killing her on sight), yet the first victim of the Alien.
- Worf Effect: He had to be at least a bit of a badass to survive on his own as long as he has, but is brought down swiftly once the Xenomorph enters the picture.
- The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): Axel manages to survive on his own for a week after everything has gone to hell on the station. In exchange for way out, he guides Ripley to the station's transmission centre while schooling her on the basics of survival along the way. He becomes the first victim of the Alien in Ripley's presence.
Ransome
B. Ransome
Played By: Ben Cura
The head of operations aboard Sevastopol.
- Ambiguous Situation: Although Ransome was in communication with Weyland-Yutani, it's never clarified if he was the one to explicitly tell them about the alien being aboard the station to begin with. If he was, then the communication lockdown and android hostility are his fault.
- Big Bad Wannabe: In the main plot, he appears to be controlling operations on Sevastopol through a combination of in-universe Executive Meddling and backroom deals. It becomes clear later on that he has little authority on the station, as W-Y cuts him out of the process completely by using APOLLO to lockdown the station and limit his access.
- "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: He uses compromising information about other characters such as Waits and Linguard to compel them into following his choice of action, even against their better judgement. He never does so explicitly though, only hinting through messages just enough to let them know that he knows about them while maintaining Plausible Deniability.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Albeit a low ranking and surprisingly hands-on one.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Don't let the fact that he is a white-collar office worker from Aliens fool you, Ransome is surprisingly skilled at fighting the Facehuggers and Working Joes.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- It’s extremely subtle, but some of the lines from his Villainous Breakdown (see below) have shades of this. Besides screwing him over, he’s repulsed that W-Y is leaving the entire station to die and has no plans to rescue them.
- Listening to all the tapes makes something clear about Ransome: although he’ll blackmail, threaten and coerce his peers, he doesn’t outright immediately throw them under the bus. He always offers them a path forward and promises to remember those that helped him on whatever scheme he’s running at the time.
- Hero of Another Story: "Hero" might be pushing it, but we do get to see him revisiting locations Amanda went to, slightly after she leaves, such as finding Kuhlman's body still in the Medical Wing where Amanda saw him die.
- Meaningful Name: His name is Ransome, and he uses blackmail to coerce underlings.
- Pet the Dog: In the second mission of his DLC, Scorched Earth, he has the option to save a civilian from the alien.
- Promoted to Playable: In the Corporate Lockdown DLC.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: He managed to take out a Working Joe that ambushed him in his quarters (bear in mind Working Joes are strong enough to easily murder humans with their bare hands), and in the DLC his special ability as a player character is that he has access to a large amount of weaponry.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Plans to escape the station on Ripley's ship and use the evidence he acquired to blackmail Weyland-Yutani.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: All of his objectives in the DLC are ultimately for nothing since the station — likely with him aboard — burns up in the atmosphere.
- Smug Snake: Through learning about him from audio logs and messages to and from him, it's obvious that he thinks of himself as a big shot who is able to control anyone through blackmail, but he quickly undergoes a Villainous Breakdown when he finds out Weyland-Yutani cut him out of the picture effortlessly and left him to die.
- Villainous Breakdown: The player can find an audio log in the main game that has Ransome recording an audio log once he realizes that the Company has screwed him (and the remaining population of Sevastopol) over (via locking down the station via APOLLO). His message consists of barely-restrained rage and disgust at W-Y, complete with a Cluster F-Bomb.
- Villainous Friendship: It’s subtle, and definitely up to interpretation, but he may be this with Spedding. Ransome’s email correspondence with him are more direct, less condescending and somewhat friendly with him (Read: Ransome doesn’t try to blackmail him like he does with Linguard, Holly, Waits and pretty much everyone else.).
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The last time Ransome is seen (in the DLC where he's playable), he overrides security and gets on an elevator. His ultimate fate is unknown, but given that Sevastopol burned up not long after, it doesn't look good for him.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: As indicated above, he thinks he’s an important figure who is calling the shots, but doesn't realize he's far lower on the totem pole than he'd like.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: After figuring out what is going on on the station, Ransome is surprisingly quick to figure out a way to erase potentially harmful evidence, get enough evidence to blackmail Weyland-Yutani, and figure out a way to escape. All while fighting Working Joes, facehuggers, and the Xenomorph.
Doctor Lingard
K. Lingard
Played By: Lachele Carl
The head medical officer aboard the Sevastopol.
- Apocalyptic Log: Leaves one in the medical facility detailing how the Alien ended up aboard Sevastopol.
- Good Counterpart: To Doctor Kuhlman.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Clearly blames herself for the Alien's rampage aboard the station, as she attempted to study the creature instead of immediately destroying it after it was born. Her primary goal during the Trauma DLC is destroying all the research she did on the Alien before anyone else gets hold of it.
- Promoted to Playable: In the Trauma DLC
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Is much more benevolent than Waits, Ransome or Dr. Kuhlman. Too bad she is one of the first characters to die.
Doctor Kuhlman
Kuhlman
Played By:
One of the doctors aboard the Sevastopol and a survivor of the initial chaos. Asks Ripley for help getting supplies when she arrives in the medical wing.
- Adaptational Villainy: The novel makes him an even bigger jerk, actively using Ripley as bait to lure the Alien away so he can make his escape. The original version was at least willing to treat Taylor's injuries after Ripley gets the supplies for him, though the Alien kills him before he can.
- Asshole Victim: Kuhlman was a dick, so it's hard to mourn his death at the claws of the Alien.
- Dr. Jerk: Downplayed. Kuhlman isn't outright a terrible person, but his Small Name, Big Ego and Functional Addict flaws make him far less helpful than he could have been. For example, he pities the psychologically troubled who have difficulty coping with living in space, but also feels that the doctor in charge of their treatment coddles them too much.
- Functional Addict: Implied by one of the computer logs which suggests he has been removing supplies from the dispensary for his own use. Given that he sends Amanda there to get some drugs for him, the current situation may be shifting him more toward Addled.
- Mission Control: For Amanda during the mission to Medical.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Considers his posting to Sevastopol a waste of his talents. Logs from other characters who work with him suggest his high opinion of himself is not widely shared.
Crew of the Anesidora
Marlow
Henry Marlow
Played By: Sean Gilder
"You heard what your mother did. She understood. If she was here, she'd be helping me."
The captain of the Anesidora, the ship that found the Nostromo's flight recorder. When Ripley meets him, he is locked in a cell in the Colonial Marshals' office for an unknown crime. But he seems to know a lot about what's happening on Sevastopol...
- The Atoner: A very dark twist on the trope. Marlow holds himself responsible for the death of his wife by the Alien, and the subsequent killings on Sevastopol, and resolves to ensure that no one will ever come in contact with the thing ever again.
- Death Seeker: He's consumed by guilt and grief and intends to commit suicide to correct the mistakes he made.
- Dissonant Serenity: He's disturbingly calm in that cell, despite all that has happened.We later learn that he has decided to destroy the xenomorph threat at any cost and has already resigned himself to death.
- Heroic Suicide: His plan to destroy Sevastopol involves detonating his ship's reactor with him on board.
- Hidden Depths: Marlow suspects the facehugger must have done something, even if all seems well with Foster, so places his wife in hyper-sleep to stall whatever it may have been done. He also quickly grasps the magnitude of the threat posed by the xenomorph. He knows it will threaten humanity itself if Weyland-Yutani are allowed to take the Aliens off the station, so decides to take extreme measures to prevent that from happening.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Marlow decides that the consequences of the alien creatures being brought back to earth would be catastrophic. To that end he wants to ensure no-one (i.e. Weyland-Yutani) tries to take them from the station. So he decides, much like Ellen Ripley, that nuking the place to oblivion is The Only Way To Be Sure. Though Amanda's mother would have taken issue with killing possible survivors, Marlow's still correct in thinking it's not far from what she would do, given that she threw one out of an airlock and blew up a ship herself — though there was no-one else but her and a cat remaining on board at the time (and both escaped).
- Love Makes You Dumb: Downplayed. We learn Marlow's very smart and capable, but he understandably loves his wife too much to apply cold logic and not try to help her when she's been attacked by the creature, even if he has no idea what that is, fully aware he is violating quarantine in doing so no matter how quickly he takes her to the medical ward. He later blames himself not only the death of his wife but all those who have died due to the xenomorph being brought on board.
- Misaimed Fandom: An In-Universe example. After Amanda reads the message left by her mother to her, Marlow tries to invoke a "Not So Different" Remark as to why he is doing what he is doing, hoping that Amanda having heard what her mother did will convince her to side with him. However, he misses the fact that Ripley's actions came about after she and her crew tried to stop it by working together, not sacrificing each other. This lack of understanding both mother and daughter leads to her death when Taylor and Amanda try to stop him.
- Motive Rant: He explains to Amanda that he has to destroy Sevastopol in order to successfully destroy the alien creature. He also tries to assure Amanda that her mother would have understood that destroying Sevastopol was the only way to ensure no one else would encounter and suffer the same fate as though who died over the course of the game, even at the cost of the remaining humans.
- "Not So Different" Remark: After listening to several of the personal recordings from the Nostromo, he comes to believe that Amanda's mother, Ellen Ripley, would likely have aided him in destroying Sevastopol. No matter the cost. And, apart from murdering the innocent, he's right — Ripley would nuke the place to dust, having learned that obliterating the goddamn things is the way to deal with them.
- Red Herring: When we first encounter Marlow, he's been locked up by Marshal Waits for his role in bringing the alien aboard. Both Waits and Amanda distrust him, believing that he's withholding the remote docking codes to his nearby orbiting ship out of self-interest. He has no intention of using his ship to save himself. Quite the opposite, in fact.
- Taking You with Me: He has every intention of destroying his ship in order take out Sevastopol's xenomorph infestation. Even if that means dying in the process.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Marlow knowingly breaks all quarantine procedures so that his wife can have a medical examination. They would not have allowed her on the station if he given any details of her attack. In fact the only reason his crew was on the planet LV-426 and scavenging the Derelict in the first place, was the desperate need for a big score to keep them all in a job.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Marlow was willing to overload the Anesidora's reactor in order to destroy Sevastopol, killing the remaining survivors and himself in the process, just to ensure the Aliens wouldn't escape and possibly make it to Earth. To be honest, can't say we blame him!
Foster
Catherine Foster
Played By: Melanie Gutteridge
Crewmember aboard the Anesidora, and Marlow's wife. She was part of the exploration team that discovered the derelict ship on LV-426. Foster was facehugged and impregnated. They fled the planet and in search of help came across Sevastopol, which ultimately lead to the outbreak.
- Chest Burster: How she dies. Foster's body and the blood trail from her corpse can be found in the medical section of the station.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: To the horror of her husband, crew-mates and the medical staff attending, a xenomorph bursts from her chest.
- Curiosity Killed the Cast: Moves close to the opening alien egg while caution would have been the more prudent response.
- Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: She was facehugged and impregnated, leading to the alien bursting from her chest and the outbreak on Sevastopol.
- Patient Zero: The single xenomorph that she unwittingly brought aboard the Sevastopol led directly to all the chaos and devastation Amanda Ripley has to now try to survive.
- Posthumous Character: She's long dead by the time the Torrens arrives, being the first to die.
- The Smurfette Principle: The only female crewmember onboard the Anesidora.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Foster is the one who brought the alien to Sevastopol, though she can hardly be blamed considering she was attacked and forcibly impregnated with it after all. She would also have no idea of the consequences.
Meeks
Alan Meeks
"How did I get here? What the hell is this place?"
One of the crewmen aboard the Anesidora. Meeks was strongly against breaching quarantine rules to bring Foster to Sevastopol, confronting Marlow directly, but his protests were angrily rebuked.
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Inverted. He looks about a decade older in the comic (not to mention that he inexplicably sports a goatee, which doesn't particularly suit him)
- All There in the Manual: His fate aboard the station is the focus of one of the stories in the comic book tie-in; his forename, Alan, comes up in the novelization.
- Despair Event Horizon: He is devastated by Foster's death and the consequences of that tragedy only make it worse.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Grief-stricken by the demise of his fellow crew mate, Foster, he gets very drunk and begins telling others of the horrors he's seen. Heyst has to drag him away after noticing the look of fear in the eyes of those listening.
- Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: Ultimately he suffers the same fate as Foster. He's last seen as the victim of a facehugger.
- Good Is Not Soft: Meeks clearly cares for Foster but does not believe in risking others by hiding her condition from the Sevastopol. This fuels his heated argument with Marlow, though sadly his concerns were unheeded.
- Only Sane Man: He is pretty adamant they should not be bringing Foster to a station, especially when they have no idea if she has a condition that could spread or any real notion of what the alien facehugger even did to her for that matter. When you consider that he does care for Foster, to the point her death hits him very hard, he's also setting aside his personal feelings.
- Talk to the Fist: How his argument with Marlow over breaking quarantine for his wife ends. Marlow punches Meeks in the nose and stops the conversation right there and then.
Heyst
Crispin Heyst
"Maybe the doctors will give her the all-clear and things can get to normal. But if they sniff it out when we get on board, I don't want any part of it. Marlow doesn't pay nearly enough for that kind of noise."
One of the crewmen aboard the Anesidora. Heyst attempts to distance himself from his boss Marlow after Foster's death, believing that he did not sign up the trouble they've just landed in.
- All There in the Manual: His forename is only in the novelization, as his ultimate fate: he shot himself in the face attempting to gun down a facehugger.
- The Big Guy: Implied. Given a choice between being hoisted by Meeks or Heyst, Marlow chooses Heyst, though Meeks can do it.
- Bystander Syndrome: Heyst considers the possible fallout from bringing Foster on board Marlow's problem and his alone. Once things start to go to hell, he's more interested in not being implicated than offering any information or aid.
- Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: In the early stages of the game development, Heyst was to share the same fate as Meeks and Foster. Players would find his chestbursted body on Sevastopol.
- Not What I Signed on For: Even before things go south, Heyst makes it clear he wants no part of the shitstorm Marlow and Foster may cause on Sevastopol if they are caught breaking quarantine. He isn't paid enough to get involved in that sort of trouble. Once it's clear things are much worse than feared, he makes good on his promise try and distance himself and urges Meeks to do the same.
- Not Your Problem: He tries to encourage Meeks to lay low and keep their connection to the Anesidora secret. When Meeks is distraught after Foster's grim fate, Heyst is the one dragging him from bars when he's drunkenly confessing too much and then stating they need to give those people a wide berth in future.
Adversaries
The Alien
The Alien
Played By: N/A
"You don't beat this thing, Ripley. You can't. All you can do is refuse to engage. [...] Because the moment it makes contact, it's won." — Marlow
The titular star of the game, the xenomorph hatched from a space scavenger who stumbled across LV426 and the alien ship by following its broadcast signal. It escaped from containment and has been stalking Sevastopol for over a week before Ripley arrives, its murderous rampage and the paranoia of its presence reducing Sevastopol to its current state.
- Adaptational Badass: The Alien shrugs off shotgun blasts and pipe bombs, far above most xenomorph durability.
- Alien Blood: Shooting the Alien may cause droplets of greenish-yellow acid blood to spurt from the wound. Of course, since shooting the creature usually leads to it chasing Amanda, it's easy to miss the tiny amounts of blood. Thankfully it's not acidic.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: How it kills Axel when it first appears. And one of the methods it can use to kill Ripley.
- Big Bad: Everything bad is caused by this thing, and everything that happens in the story is at least partly because of its very existence. The conflict is driven by it even after it's defeated about halfway through.
- Big Brother Instinct: Xenomorphs being Hermaphroditic, it's more like Big Sibling Instinct. Regardless, killing a facehugger will almost guarantee summoning an adult to your area.
- Conservation of Ninjutsu: In just about every other piece of Alien media, a single Xenomorph, while threatening, is no match for a Colonial Marine. In Isolation, a single Xenomorph is just about the deadliest thing in the entire game, and is most likely the thing that will kill you the most. Of course, the marines are a whole lot better armed than you are. If you had a pulse rifle, it'd be a different story.
- Continuity Nod: Has quite a couple of them to previous Xenomorphs in the franchise:
- A Xenomorph personally targeting Ripley out of an actual anger towards them, such as in Aliens, when the Queen goes full Mama Bear, and the Dragon in Alien³, after Ripley angers it enough to ignore the Queen inside her, and in the Aliens vs Predator game series, Specimen Six specifically spares Doctor Groves out of personal anger towards him.
- The Xenomorph showing anger about Ripley managing to outwit and escape it so many times alludes to humanity and the Predators, who would usually fight humans hand to hand out of pride if a human managed to best a Predator during a normal hunt.
- A single Xenomorph that is able to survive almost anything and it takes literally being thrown into space, directly refers both to the original Alien in the 1979 film, and the Alien Queen in Aliens.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Midway into the game, the Alien is trapped inside a module which is then separated from the station, but the game is far from over. Then, as Amanda finds out, there's more than one Alien.
- The Dreaded: Just about every single character you run into fears it, and it's not hard to see why.
- *Drool* Hello: A big clue as to a xenomorph’s presence is drool dripping from a vent. Its introduction includes it drooling on Axel before stabbing him with its tail. In the climax, drool drips onto Ripley’s helmet before it drags her to a new nest.
- Establishing Character Moment: In what can be called a frightening Continuity Nod to the first movie, the Alien makes its appearance by drooling on Axel's coat, then impaling the poor bastard with its tail.
- Game-Over Man: Whenever it kills you. At least one of the death animations doesn't even show it; after you get impaled from behind, you see its spindly hand closing over the top of your face.
- Greater-Scope Villain: While Amanda doesn't meet her,
Word of God confirms there is an Alien Queen on board the station. - Immune to Bullets: No man-portable kinetic-energy impact weapon aboard the station will harm this thing. At best, a well-aimed shotgun blast will stun it for a second, possibly allowing Amanda time to bring out her flamethrower. At worst, such weapons will just alert the Alien to her presence.
- Implacable Man: Absolutely nothing will kill it. Pistol shots? Nope. Shotgun rounds? A perfect headshot will stun it for a second, but won't do any lasting damage. Fire from a flamethrower or molotov? Well, it can disorient the Alien and drive it off, yeah, but it won't hurt it, and it's still only a temporary asset, since it can still bulldoze through you even with the fire in its face. A pipebomb? It'll just come back mad.
- Invincible Boogeymen: It's immune to all weapons, trying to tackle it up close is suicide, and the only items that are of any use against it are flamethrowers and Molotovs — and that's only because it's afraid of fire. More often than not, the safest option is to hide in/under/behind a solid object or get away from it in as quiet a manner as possible.
- It Can Think: The xenomorph is actually programmed to be kind of clever beyond simply picking up on your hiding habits.
- If you use your flamethrower on it enough, it'll eventually start to hesitate if it sees you with the flamethrower pointed at it. It will also start to become bolder (because you're pissing it off) and need more sustained bursts of flame to get it to run away (and it'll start showing up more often). It is also shown to have a personal dislike of Amanda since she escaped it so many times.
- An alarming variation on this behavior is when the Alien figures out the flamethrower's effective range, at which point it will sometimes retreat when blasted... only to hover right outside that range, watching you and just waiting for you to turn your back or lower your weapon for that split second it needs to make a Deadly Lunge.
- Another even more disturbing variation, more prominent on the higher difficulties, can occur when the Alien can become familiar enough with your methods to lure you into a trap. For example, if you excessively use noise makers, it will not only start ignoring them, it will pick up on the ruse and search where the maker was thrown from. If it senses you're hiding in a room but can't find you, it will go into the air duct and jump back down after you've exited your hiding space. Most disturbingly, if you use explosives too many times, it will be less likely to attack you in an open space and will go for you in an enclosed corridor where using them will kill you via splash damage.
- Lightning Bruiser: The xenomorph is blisteringly fast, highly lethal, and Immune to Bullets. Only fire seems to hurt it, but even that won't kill it. Combine this with its intelligence and sheer persistence and you have a monster that quickly becomes The Dreaded to both Amanda and the player. To quote one of the pause screen tips:"Don't try to outrun the Alien. You won't make it."
- Nested Mouths: It's a xenomorph, people. Would we recognize it any other way? And yes, it will use it to kill Ripley if it catches her.
- No-Sell: It's immune to all projectile weapons, and fire is only going to work so many times due to the scarcity of flamethrower fuel and the cost of making a molotov.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Specifically averted, according to the game developers. Outside of two specific instances (which were necessitated by its appearance in cutscenes), it cannot do this. Artificial Brilliance, indeed. There are times when it might seem like this trope is in effect, though, but it's justified: there's a hive and more then one Alien, and it's likely you're encountering more than one Alien in some parts.
- Ominous Walk: While its film counterparts were quite capable of walking slowly, it was usually out of convenience, or because their victims were close enough that speed was not necessary. This xenomorph, by stark contrast, chooses to walk during the vast majority of encounters. That is, unless it sees you or anyone else.
- One-Hit Kill: If this thing grabs you, it's a curtain call for Ripley. The only case when it touching the player isn't this trope is when it's been startled by fire and Amanda is between it and the nearest vent, and even then the body check it gives the player deals considerable damage.
- One-Man Army: Need to clear a room of humans? Just simply call the Alien in using a distraction and watch it rip the group apart with ease.
- Only a Flesh Wound: Shooting the alien does injure it... technically. Apparently its innards are even tougher than its exoskeleton, because despite piercing the exoskeleton, bullets do nothing to stop it.
- Outside-Context Villain: Sevastapol is a civilian installation with a limited armed force onboard. Couple this with the station essentially being a skeleton crew, and the people living on it lack the firearms, manpower, and training needed to take down even just a single Xenomorph. Let alone a few dozen.
- Phlegmings: Inherited from the source as a product of the Alien. Becomes important when Axel notices something dripping on his arm right before being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice and dragged into an air vent. This becomes a clue to the player: when you see drool dripping down from a ceiling vent, heads up...
- Pride: It is heavily implied that the Alien hounds Amanda constantly because it's upset that Amanda has managed to escape it for so long.
- Reentry Scare: Ultimately destroyed along with Sevastopol when it plunges into the gas giant KG-348.
- The Reveal: There's more than one xenomorph on the station, and it's unlikely that you've been fighting the same one throughout your adventure.
- Sadist: When it has you cornered, with no visible way of running away, it doesn't seem to feel any need to hurry for the kill. It takes its time with a slow, lovely Ominous Walk to indulge it. When you consider that it's possible that the xenomorph is angered by Amanda constantly eluding its hunts, this seems more likely.
- Skull for a Head: Downplayed, but present. Much like the costume for the original film, the outer layer of the alien's head is just slightly translucent, and the outline of a human-like skull can be seen inside of it up close and in good lighting (though if you are close enough to see that in-game, You Are Already Dead.)
- Stompy Mooks: The loud stomps are a helpful indicator of their presence.
- Summon Bigger Fish: Since most survivors in this game are willing to kill you for merely existing in their presence, sections with a bunch of them can be rather dicey, particularly if you want the achievement for not personally killing humans. Tossing a noisemaker near them, however, gives them one big, nasty, invincible problem to worry about. Better hide yourself, though.
- Super-Persistent Predator: Understatement of the century. This thing has a nasty habit of going to areas where you need to head to in order to advance your objectives. For gameplay reasons, the Alien is governed by two AIs: its own and a Director, which feeds it info about the player such as their location, and also "leashing" its roaming space so that it's never too far from Ripley.note It almost stretches into It's Personal territory given its love to go straight for you rather than other targets. Plus there's virtually nowhere you can go that it can't; but the reverse is not true -- the alien gets to use all kinds of inaccessible vent areas that let it constantly outmaneuver you. If all this wasn't enough, the alien can and will kill you during hacking minigames, while you go through your inventory, while you save your game, and even during cutscenes (though that last one is believed to be a glitch).
- Super-Senses: The game itself mentions that it's got better senses than humans or Joes, something you can find out yourself if you're not careful.
- Vertical Kidnapping: If you see a vent with drool leaking from it, walk underneath at your peril. Depending on your timing, it's entirely possible to get grabbed before the drool even appears.
- Weak to Fire: Its only weakness is fire-based weapons like the flamethrower and Molotovs.
- You Can Run, but You Can't Hide: Inverted. Go ahead. Try running from it — see how long it takes to catch you. Whenever it's around, your only way to survive is to hope it doesn't notice you.
APOLLO and Working Joes
APOLLO and Working Joes
Played By:
With Seegson, there's someone behind you...helping you...every step of the way.
APOLLO is the Artificial Intelligence that maintains and runs Sevastopol by way of its small army of Working Joes, primitive synthetics manufactured by Seegson.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Working Joes have such primitive artificial intelligence, continuing to mindlessly perform their duties, even as Sevastopol burns around them (sometimes literally), and occasionally reacting with deadly force to the presence of humans. In Chapter 11, they start going on a homicidal rampage and APOLLO can't be made to call them off. The corporation has reprogrammed them to not only avoid harming the xenomorph so it can be captured and studied, but to actively protect it, including by killing humans. However, this also works in your favor; Working Joes walk slow enough that you can outpace them at a crawl, they won't chase Ripley very far, and have rather poor senses due to their primitive brains. The latter two are downplayed on higher difficulties, though.
- Always a Bigger Fish: Their collective Establishing Character Moment shows one of them effortlessly killing a human enemy with its bare hands. Later in the game, Samuels kills another Joe the exact same way.
- Artificial Human: The Working Joes are synthetics, robots made in the human image, although not very successful. The 'unsuccessful' nature of their appearance is actually intentional; they're a budget line compared to more realistic synthetics, with a selling point being that they are clearly not human, as more realistic ones can make people uneasy.
- Ax-Crazy: The Joes are essentially artificial psychopaths, as they appear to have no programming relating to empathy (or even emotion). Once they start malfunctioning or receiving malevolent directives, they murder defenceless people with no qualms at all. One of the creepiest aspects of their personality is how "white eyed" Joes will happily parrot phrases and talk to you...but if you walk into a restricted area a few paces away, the same android would think nothing of caving your skull in.
- Badass Boast: One of their Responses to being ignited is "Only wild animals fear fire."
- Captain Obvious: One of their possible responses to Ripley struggling to get free from their grapple is "
You're becoming hysterical." - Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: They serve as a sort of Foil to Ash from the original Alien. Ash was intelligent, charming, self-driven, and realistic enough to pass as a real human, and he managed to wreak major havoc on the crew of the Nostromo despite acting alone and having zero backup. By contrast, the Joes are primitive synthetics who are eerily artificial in appearance and speech, they work as a group, and they're a Hive Mind with no individual identity who all take their orders from APOLLO.
- Cranial Processing Unit: The best, if not only, way to kill a Working Joe with the revolver, shotgun or boltgun is to shoot it in the head.
- Creepy Monotone: The voice of the Joes both invokes and subverts this. Their voice never changes intonation or volume, appearing emotionless, but also has a deep and slightly rough quality to it that is strangely sinister.
- Dissonant Serenity: Working Joes will politely greet mutilated corpses, quietly ask the xenomorph "What are you?" and emotionlessly beat people to death before flatly stating "Good day," to the body.
- Dying Vocal Change: Killing one in melee usually results in them spouting their last words in a steadily-lower tone of voice as they break down, further distorted by all the white fluid they cough up.
- Elite Mooks: The cleansuit-wearing "industrial" Working Joes can take about twice as much damage as their normal counterparts and are unaffected by EMP mines and stun batons. On top of that, your first meeting with them is shortly after Amanda has to lose her guns. They get easier to handle once the Bolt Gun is available.
- Expy: They seem to draw inspiration from the protocol droids in System Shock 2, being robotic enemies who spout polite greetings before moving in for the kill. Thankfully, they're not Made of Explodium.
- False Reassurance: Working Joes spout these constantly, even as they're actively strangling and pummelling you.
- Feel No Pain: They're robots, so they don't react even when being bludgeoned, shocked, or set on fire.
- Glowing Mechanical Eyes: Have light-emitting diodes in their eyes. These glow white in neutral condition, glowing red when hostile, and not glowing at all when disabled.
- Implacable Man: They are a downplayed version of this trope. They never run, approaching their targets at a calm walk while spouting False Reassurance, and strangle, chop, or bash any unauthorized human when they get within arm's reach. They can be destroyed but can absorb a large amount of punishment without being deterred, requiring multiple shots or blows to the Cranial Processing Unit before stopping. Even being set on fire will not slow them.
- Incendiary Exponent: Working Joes are resistant to fire attacks, so they'll continue to fight on even as they burn. They're engineered to resist extremely high temperatures, so it makes sense.
- Kill All Humans: After Amanda and Waits successfully ejects a xenomorph from the station, APOLLO determines that the humans now pose too great a threat to the remaining xenomorphs to be allowed to remain alive and it adjusts the Working Joes' behavior accordingly.
- Kung Fu-Proof Mook:
- Working Joes may not move very quickly, but their reflexes are surprisingly fast, and any attempt to melee a functional one will result in the blow being blocked and Amanda being killed. If the player can somehow stun or disrupt them though...
- The Hazmat Working Joes are immune to the EMP and stun baton, which would take out their unprotected brethren.
- Made of Iron: Probably literally, too. Joes are incredibly durable enemies, even if you're targeting their heads. Fortunately, they're vulnerable to EMP attacks (most of the time).
- Master Computer: APOLLO is the Zeerust-styled central mainframe for Sevastopol, monitoring its systems and serving as a control hub dispatching its small army's worth of Working Joes.
- No-Sell: Working Joes can block melee attacks; you need to either hit them with an EMP attack first or make hit and run stealth assaults if you want to melee them to death. The latter scores you the My Turn achievement. In certain late levels, there are Working Joes wearing protective environmental suits which allow them to No-Sell EMP attacks as well. These need to be blown up, or shot to pieces.
- Not-So-Harmless Villain: APOLLO has been acting erratically for a while, and the Working Joes it directs are no exception. It never worked particularly well to begin with, and has gotten dangerously worse since the incident started. However, most everyone dismisses the glitching out as a problem to solve later, as frankly the creature running amok is a much more serious threat. That is, up until the humans manage to eject a xenomorph from the station and APOLLO goes completely berserk. Turns out much of the erratic behavior was just trying to subtly keep humans from harming "the specimen", and once it becomes clear that the humans aboard are a mortal threat to the remaining xenomorphs it escalates to Kill All Humans levels.
- Ominous Walk: Their default and seemingly only way of moving. Outrunning a Working Joe is incredibly easy, as long as you don't get cornered.
- Personal Space Invader: Working Joes that get their hands on Amanda will attempt to strangle her, if she cannot struggle free from their grasp quickly enough. The xenomorph itself will often grab Amanda out of the Joe, knock her to the floor with a Deadly Lunge before it moves in for the kill. Not to mention the facehuggers.
- Playing Possum: You may occasionally find seemingly dead Working Joes on the floor, only to turn your back and have them grab your leg so they can drag you in for the kill. Mercifully, they will only do this if you're both close enough and not watching them. You also can't search them, which is a dead giveaway. You can also identify them from a distance by seeing that their eyes are still glowing.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning:
- A Working Joe with Eye Lights Out is completely inactive, one with white eye lights is active but currently benign, and those with red eyes kill on sight.
- In a particularly insidious move on the developers' part, hostile Joes might appear to have white eyes if they walk through a well-lit area, only for them to become visibly red if they walk into darkness.
- Robotic Psychopath: The Working Joes aren't malfunctioning. They just aren't programmed to be Three Laws-Compliant in the first place, and prioritize protecting the Xenomorph, not avoiding human harm, as per APOLLO's orders.
- Uncanny Valley: In-universe: "It's not a bug, it's a feature!" The Working Joes' selling point for their crash test dummy appearance is "many humans find dealing with human-real androids to be disturbing. With the Working Joes, you always know exactly what you're dealing with!" In practice, the opposite is true, making the Joes a much more effectively disturbing antagonist. Word of God is that the company manufacturing the Working Joes is behind Weyland-Yutani technologically, so they make up for it by manufacturing cruder synthetics at low-cost for the mass market, and the "working as intended" line about their less-than-perfect appearance is marketing spin.
- Unnecessarily Creepy Robot: The androids of Weyland-Yutani, as seen starting with Alien, are extremely humanlike, except when cut and bleeding milky white fluid. The Working Joe androids of Seegson, on the other hand side, start in the Uncanny Valley and are programmed to dig it into an Uncanny Mariana Trench with their waxy appearance and bad AI that can barely deviate from its standard functions (but will still merrily try to strangle you while asking you to remain calm). It's fully acknowledged in-universe: the Seegson marketing department tries to spin their faults as features, claiming no one would want an android that you can't tell from a human. Considering that, for quite some time, the Working Joe was the face of the Alien: Isolation Nightmare Fuel page rather than the titular creature, it may come as little surprise that Seegson is in the process of going belly-up.
