Alien: Isolation

Alien: Isolation

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Developers
	The Creative Assembly
Publishers
	Sega
Release dates
Windows	October 7, 2014

Alien
Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure	1995
Alien Trilogy	1996
Aliens Online	1998
Aliens versus Predator (series)
Aliens: Colonial Marines	2013
Alien: Isolation	2014
Aliens: Fireteam Elite	2021
Aliens: Dark Descent	2023

Key points

Excellent PC version: Good performance, many graphics and controls settings, Oculus Rift support, editable game XML files

"Novice" and "Nightmare" difficulty modes were added in a free patch.

General information

Official game website

Official forums

Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail
Amazon.com
GamersGate
Humble Store
Steam

All versions require Steam.

DLC and expansion packs

Name	Notes
Crew Expendable	Not included in Season Pass
Last Survivor	Not included in Season Pass
Corporate Lockdown
Trauma
Safe Haven

There is a season pass available, which is supposed to grant access to all future Survivor Mode DLCs.

Essential improvements

Skip intro videos

Instructions

Game data

Template:Game data/rowTemplate:Game data/row

System	Location
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/214490/pfx/

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
Steam Cloud

Video settings

In-game video settings.

Field of view (FOV)

• Slider in menu goes from 47 - 75, with the higher FOV on the left side of the slider.
• Slider is using vertical field of view value. Use calculator for conversion to horizontal value.
• A FOV higher than 55 makes the main character's legs and feet disappear.

Level of Detail (Pop-in Distance) Increase

• Default Level of Detail setting even on Ultra results in excessive object pop-in which can be rectified.

Instructions

SLI Fix

Default SLI compatibility bits do not scale properly in certain areas. Use alternative bits to improve performance at expense of some minor UI & light shaft flicker in places.

Instructions

Audio settings

In-game audio settings.

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
French
German
Italian
Spanish
Czech
Polish
Russian
Brazilian Portuguese
Ukrainian

VR support

3D modes	State	Notes
Nvidia 3D Vision		Use Helix Mod: Alien: Isolation.

Headsets
SteamVR		This game might be playable with the Revive Compatibility Layer (compatibility list).
Oculus VR (LibOVR)		See this reddit post.
Windows Mixed Reality		This game might be playable with the Revive Compatibility Layer.

Devices
Tracked motion controllers
Traditional controller
Keyboard/Mouse

Issues fixed

Game shows "Disk access" error while loading

Run the game as administrator (AI.exe) or give full permissions to your user on game's directory.

Brightness issues

When used a flamethrower or plasma cutter, there is a little percent that a whole screen becomes very bright and blurry. Most likely it's connected with the trainer for the game. To fix this, simply change the antialiasing setting in game options or turn off the trainers.

Other information

Lens Flare

The Lens Flare can be disabled by deleting or renaming the LENS_FLARE*.bin files in the DATA directory of the game.

Menu Customization

• By editing engine_settings.xml it is fairly easy to customize the in-game video options. Some of the fixes and enhancements below make use of that.
• For example, shadow map resolution can be increased significantly and the change can be reflected in the in-game menu as well. This means that settings can be overwritten or even added to existing ones.
• A specific setting line in the xml consists of:

1. <Quality , followed by
2. the name= which is reflected as the setting name you see in-game (i.e. HDAO). Next is
3. the actual value, which can be a int, bool or float. The line content then ends with
4. a precedence= which determines the order of the Quality items. A higher number means the item is more on the right. So precedence=2 will be the next item after precedence=1.

• Example: With this knowledge the FOV slider can be customized to show horizontal FOV values instead of the default vertical ones. Furthermore we can cut off all values that don't show the main character's body anymore:

Instructions

Increased Planar Reflections

• It is possible to greatly increase planar reflections (floor reflections).

Instructions

Increased Shadow Map Resolution

2K Shadow Maps (Vanilla)

4K Shadow Maps with flickering

• In-game settings allow for a maximum shadow map resolution of 2048. It is possible to change the settings and increase the value.

Instructions

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	7	7 (64-bit)
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16 GHz	AMD Phenom II X4 955 – 4 Core, 3.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 – 4 Core, 3.0 GHz
System memory (RAM)	4 GB	8 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	35 GB
Video card (GPU)	AMD Radeon HD 5550 NVIDIA GeForce GT 430 1 GB of VRAM DirectX 11 compatible	AMD Radeon R9 200 Series Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 2 GB of VRAM DirectX 11 compatible