The screenwriter behind Alien: Isolation admits that for many people, its level of horror is simply "too much."

In an interview on the FRVR podcast, former Creative Assembly screenwriter Dionne Lai shared a "well-known" story: A reporter once went to Creative Assembly with the plan to "play the game for 20 minutes and talk about creative ideas", but ended up playing for a full hour - because he was too scared to leave the locker where he was hiding.

"I really like the story. We were actually a little worried at the time, like, 'Is it going to be too scary?' And for a lot of people, it was," Lai said. "I know that if we lowered the level of horror, the game might sell more, but I'm proud that we didn't compromise and ended up with this 'extremely scary' effect."

Lai mentioned in the same podcast that the game, which is about 20 hours long, actually "expected to become longer": During the development process, Alien's AI became better at adapting to the player's strategy, and the game length was also lengthened as a result.