Alien Isolation 2 teaser video shows the horror game heading planetside, but those panic-inducing save stations are following it

On planets, everyone can hear you beep beep beep

It's been well over a year since the announcement of Alien: Isolation 2, or whatever Creative Assembly and Sega end up calling the sequel to 2014's xenomorph horror romp. There's been no further word about the game, and the protracted quiet may have given you a false sense of security. "False Sense Of Security", by happy coincidence, is the title of a spooky new video just uploaded to the Alien: Isolation Youtube channel.

True, there are no Aliens in the footage, and they don't explicitly label it "Alien: Isolation 2" or similar. It could be wholly unrelated! In much the same way that a rogue dot on your motion tracker is probably just a cat trapped in a locker. Go on, then. Open your locker.

The video consists of a suspenseful zoom on a malfunctioning double door of some kind, which abruptly grinds apart to reveal rain pouring through some kind of ruptured habitat wall or courtyard. In the middle of the view stands one of Alien: Isolation's in-world manual savepoints, which returning Isolationeers may consider more dreadful than any chestburster.

For the uninitiated, to save in Alien: Isolation you have to slide an ID card into the terminal and hold still for a few seconds while the cheery faux-80s technology chews through your data. You have to do this with your back turned to a world that contains an Alien, though you're free to glance left or right in abject panic. The Alien can hear the terminal beeping, if it's close enough.

The teaser trailer suggests two things about Alien: Isolation's sequel. Firstly, this is still a game about stealth, alternately aided and hindered by ponderous gadgets. And secondly, the game is set planetside, which actually worries me a bit, inasmuch as it's a step toward Aliens and therefore, possibly in the direction of gunfights. You have no direct means of killing the Alien in Alien Isolation. Instead, you have to hide from it, while reckoning with creature AI that 'learns' – that is, unlocks new behaviours – from your tactics.

It's a little jarring to revisit the game's 'evolving behaviour' pitch in the age of sycophantic AI-generated NPCs. Please do not jump aboard that particular bandwagon, Creative Assembly – I can live with a few colonial marine segments, but I don't want to play an Alien game in which I have the ability to cajole the Alien into believing that it's pregnant. Although I think Giger might have been keen on that idea, actually.

The framing of the teaser suggests that it's been broken off from a longer video. Perhaps we'll get a full trailer in the weeks ahead? While we wait, here is another snippet of intelligence, handed to me just now by Rock Paper Shotgun's suspiciously phlegmatic and unblinking science officer: according to a job posting, the new Alien game will run on Unreal Engine 5.