Over the previous decade, Don’t Nod has explored the soul-sucking worlds of Seventeenth-century America, post-WWI London, dystopian Paris, and a highschool within the Pacific Northwest. However for its subsequent trick, the prolific studio goes someplace no human has gone earlier than: the ninth planet of our photo voltaic system.
Aphelion is a third-person science-fiction sport set within the 2060s. Earth, on this model of the longer term, has began to change into uninhabitable. The European Area Company sends astronauts to the sides of the photo voltaic system to discover its ninth planet — an ice-covered celestial physique known as Persephone, just lately found by astronomers. What, you thought I used to be speaking about Pluto? Return to 2006!
The comparisons to Christopher Nolan’s 2014 movie Interstellar — itself an anxious examination of Earth’s decline — invite themselves. Ice planet. A setting within the 2060s (effectively, if you happen to consider the movie’s followers). Area businesses with hopes, goals, and budgets. However after just lately taking part in Aphelion for a number of hours, I additionally picked up on some apparent parallels to a different totemic piece of sci-fi canon: Alien.
Aphelion follows two folks on the Persephone mission: Ariane and Thomas, each of whom are high astronauts with the ESA. (Don’t Nod collaborated with the company on creating the sport.) Aphelion will span 11 chapters, however the early construct of the sport I performed coated simply the primary and fourth, each lasting about an hour.
The primary chapter cold-opens with Ariane, strapped to the pilot’s chair of no matter spaceship carried her throughout the photo voltaic system, with Thomas nowhere in sight. Their spaceship has crashed on Persephone. Ariane goals to flee the ship as all the things round her violently explodes, spontaneously combusts, and in any other case falls to items. It’s a rudimentary, if cinematic, section that nonetheless struck me with one minor innovation.
In most third-person motion video games, you press A to leap to the subsequent handhold, and the character you’re controlling robotically grabs it. Aphelion introduces a twist to the rule: Sure, you press A to leap to the subsequent handhold, however then you need to press A once more to seize it. Whereas the climbing routes aren’t almost as advanced as these in Don’t Nod’s meditative 2023 platformer Jusant (which was developed by a distinct staff inside the studio), that minor innovation makes even fundamental pathways really feel thrilling.
The fourth chapter picks up a while later. Ariane remains to be alone, suggesting she has not made contact with Thomas. She’s visibly rattled, too, suggesting much more death-defying occasions occurred within the chapters I used to be not aware of. Ariane follows a route that results in a crevasse within the aspect of a frozen cliff. And that’s the place Aphelion will get fascinating.
You’ll by no means consider this, however inside that cave lives a monster: a serpentine mass of ink-black tentacles that strikes via the air as simply as an eel swims via water. It chitters like a large beetle and twitches with the devilishly inhuman spasms of these aliens from Fringe of Tomorrow. After an preliminary encounter, it turns into clear that this creature can’t see; it tracks Ariane through sound, that means each time it’s close by, Aphelion turns into a stealth sport.
To navigate across the creature, you need to enter stealth mode; by urgent Y, Ariane crouches and strikes at a noticeably slower tempo. Sprinting, leaping, or, most dangerously for me personally, falling mid-climb are all actions that can alert the creature to your presence. Getting aurally noticed seems to end in prompt, inescapable demise, a minimum of once you’re taking part in with my degree of impatience. (Everytime you die, Aphelion bluntly describes how you fail: “An alien life kind killed Ariane.” “A deadly plunge killed Ariane.”)
Based on Don’t Nod, the creature, referred to in menus because the Nemesis, is the one enemy in Aphelion (in addition to your self, if you happen to depend all of the missed jumps and failed cliff climbs). It hunts you. And if it finds you, it kills you. In my session, I didn’t discern any method to hurt it, not to mention remove it. It’s paying homage to Alien: Isolation, the 2014 survival horror sport from Inventive Meeting about an aggressive ink-black monster who can’t be killed and who hunts you all through an area station in a futuristic setting when you ponder the futility of existence.
There’s a clear urge for food for the combination of genres Aphelion seems to supply, as horror enjoys its surge in recognition and science-fiction approaches a wave of ascendancy. It’s why the vacuum left by Mass Impact cannot solely assist one other Mass Impact but in addition an totally new franchise from its unique creators. It’s why The Expanse followers rally so onerous they get greater than only a sequence renewal but in addition a splashy online game tie-in. It’s why Alien: Isolation itself is coming again. Whether or not Aphelion has the sauce or not will finally come down as to whether its elementary gameplay can assist its intriguing story. However on vibes alone, the potential is there.
Aphelion will likely be launched in spring 2026 for PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, and Xbox Sequence X, and will likely be a part of the Xbox Sport Move library at launch.
