History Headscratchers / AlienIsolation

** It's worth noting that [[spoiler: the egg closest to her is still closed, but it is indeed left ambiguous. In my honest opinion, she's not infected.]]

* Is Amanda near the end [[spoiler: infected? It seems very ambiguous. I'm inclined to say no, since she'll still be attacked by the aliens, but it's not clear.]]

* I understand Waits's pragmatic decision to jettison the Gemini Lab with Ripley still inside it. What I don't get is why he waits until she's ''at the goddamn exit door'' to do it. As soon as the lab comes back online, he knows the creature is in the central hub with her. So why does he delay until she's two feet from salvation?[[labelnote:*]]''Aside from the obvious explanation, that the game designer wanted you to go to one end of the level and then backtrack to the other, that is.''[[/labelnote]] That's just going out of his way to be an asshole. I guess Vasquez's last words were right....

* I understand Waits's pragmatic decision to jettison the Gemini Lab with Ripley still inside it. What I don't get is why he waits until she's ''at the goddamn exit door'' to do it. As soon as the lab comes back online, he knows the creature is in the central hub with her. So why does he delay until she's two feet from salvation?[[labelnote:*]]''Aside from the obvious explanation, that the game designer wanted you to go to one end of the level and then backtrack to the other, that is.''[[/labelnote]] That's just going out of his way to be an asshole.

** The motion tracker in the game has been modified (Amanda explicitly notes such when she finds it,) presumably after the start of the incident, to track larger creatures and ignore smaller ones. Those modifications could have made it slightly glitchy, especially in tight corridors and when tracking too many things.

* Why is the Alien ImmuneToBullets? Wasn't a harpoon gun able to tear clean through it's torso in the first movie?

*** I figured the reveal that there was more than one alien was kind of an immediate {{Author's saving throw}}. People were getting dropped and going missing left an right, and panic quickly erupted. Also, I assumed the Alien's invincibility was to show that Ripley never tried killing it in conventional ways, its highly possible that groups of survivors have killed a few, only for their acid blood to dispose of the evidence, and ten more to he attracted by the commotion.

** The motion tracker in the game has been modified, presumably after the start of the incident, to track larger creatures and ignore smaller ones. Those modifications could have made it slightly glitchy, especially in tight corridors and when tracking too many things.

*** In ''Aliens'', when Vasquez is shooting her pistol at the Xeno in the airvents, you can see the bullets bouncing off it's face, so more than likely they're immune to basic small arms fire. The Pulse Rifle fires explosive tipped rounds after all. Normal lead projectiles just can't punch through.

* The motion sensor was originally built to sense vermin (ie: bugs, rats, etc.), ostensibly to assist exterminators. That's fine, sure, but...why on *Earth* would a device intended to track small creatures that breed quickly and like to inhabit dark cramped areas glitch out when there are too many targets, or when inside tight, metal spaces? It's completely counter to the basic design intent.

*** I figured the reveal that there was more than one alien was kind of an immediate {{Author's saving throw}}. People were getting dropped and going missing left an right, and panic quickly erupted. Also, I assumed the Alien's invincibility was to show that Ripley never tried killing it in conventional ways, its highly possible that groups of survivors have killed a few, only for their acid blood to dispose of the evidence, and ten more to he attracted by the commotion.

*** Yeah, but there's something really odd about this: One creature starts running loose on the station, and everyone's gunning for each other and looting the place? Why not just group together and hunt down the thing so that everything can go back to normal? Even if they were supposed to be opportunists that were taking advantage of the chaos, why not just try hunting down and trapping/killing the Alien so that (for all they knew) they could get a handsome reward from the Marshals or whomever's still in charge of the place for disposing of a dangerous fugitive? that's gotta be worth more than a few half-eaten bags of chips, right?

*** Yeah, but there's something really odd about this: One creature starts running loose on the station, and everyone's gunning for each other and looting the place? Why not just group together and hunt down the thing so that everything can go back to normal? Even if they were supposed to be opportunists that were taking advantage of the chaos, why not just try hunting down and killing the Alien so that (for all they knew) they could get a handsome reward from the Marshals or whomever's still in charge of the place for disposing of a dangerous fugitive? that's gotta be worth more than a few half-eaten bags of chips, right?

*** Yeah, but there's something really odd about this: One creature starts running loose on the station, and everyone's gunning for each other and looting the place? Why not just group together and hunt down the thing so that everything can go back to normal? Even if they were supposed to be opportunists that were taking advantage of the chaos, why not just try hunting down and killing the Alien so that (for all they knew) they could get a handsome payment for disposing of a dangerous fugitive? that's gotta be worth more than a few half-eaten bags of chips, right?

** By this point, it's safe to assume that the inhabitants of the Sevastapol have degenerated into groups of looters and survivalists, fending for themselves and skirmishing with other bands of people over what were once simple amenities like food and water. Even if you were to wave the white flag and scream your lungs out about your harmlessness, they almost certainly wouldn't believe you. Worse still, they probably wouldn't even care, but rather concerned about what goodies you might be carrying...

** By this point, it's safe to assume that the inhabitants of the Sevastapol have degenerated into groups looters and survivalists, fending for themselves and skirmishing with other bands of people over what were once simple amenities like food and water. Even if you were to wave the white flag and scream your lungs out about your harmlessness, they almost certainly wouldn't believe you. Worse still, they probably wouldn't even care, but rather concerned about what goodies you might be carrying...

* The overly trigger-happy human survivors on the station, and their unchallenged habit of performing PoorCommunicationKills. Why can't Ripley just yell "Stop! I'm not your enemy!" or something like that when she's confronted by them? The survivors are paranoid and on-edge, sure, but they're (hopefully) not psychopaths. This is a survival horror game, so you should be able to avoid violent confrontations unless they're absolutely necessary, right?

* The overly trigger-happy human survivors on the station, and their unchallenged habit of performing PoorCommunicationKills. Why can't Ripley just yell "Stop! I'm not your enemy!" or something like that when she's confronted by them? The survivors are paranoid and on-edge, sure, but they're (hopefully) not psychopaths.

** Aliens are also very divergent with the one in ''Alien 3'' having characteristics of a dog. It's possible this one is simply a different kind of strain than his brethren.

** Aliens are also very evolutionary with the one in ''Alien 3'' having characteristics of a dog. It's possible this one is simply a different kind of strain than his brethren.

** PlotArmor, combined with ConservationOfNinjitsu. There's only one Alien in the game [[spoiler:Most of it, anyway]], and if you could only take it out with just a few bullets, then the game wouldn't really have much else to go on. Though an In-Universe explanation might be that the revolvers are very weak and weren't really meant to shoot anything that was built to last. That, and it's hard for Ripley to get a clean shot since she's not an experienced marksman and the Alien moves very fast.

** PlotArmor, combined with ConservationOfNinjitsu. There's only one Alien in the game, and if you could only take it out with just a few bullets, then the game wouldn't really have much else to go on. Though an In-Universe explanation might be that the revolvers are very weak and weren't really meant to shoot anything that was built to last. That, and it's hard for Ripley to get a clean shot since she's not an experienced marksman and the Alien moves very fast.

* Why is the Alien ImmuneToBullets? Wasn't a harpoon gun able to tear clean through it's torso in the first movie?