As many currently are, I’ve been reading Perfect Organism, the long awaited, play-along format exposè on the creation of Alien Isolation, written by gaming journalist Andy Kelly.
Even as, shall we say a more than casual fan, it was instantly clear to me way back on release night in 2014 that this was the polar opposite of recent Alien games unconcerned with the restraint of quality horror and downright neglectful of both the series and its die hard fanbase. (Nobody's forgotten, Randy Pitchfork.) This was an amorous, sprawling, authentic realization of the world implied by 1979's Alien. Yet 10 years on and many replays later, the R&D depths plumbed by Creative Assembly, Isolation's auteurs, to immerse players in their sequel remains staggering, as Andy's book comprehensively illuminates.
I discovered one noteworthy example in the origins of the Working Joes, intentionally rudimentary, albeit humanoid maintenance robots inhabiting Sevastopol station. Obviously Isolation would require some auxiliary hazard to the titular antagonist and the Joes were an ingenious solution, correctly swerving from a paint-by-numbers resurrection of the Russian spy trope. These automatons are transparently non human, implying that Ash's secret in Alien wasn't an isolated instance of deception. Ads from Seegson Synthetics, the procurers of Working Joes, broadcast throughout the space station as if continually reassuring fleshier inhabitants “Know who you're talking to” and “You always know a Working Joe”. How comforting.
At best, their presence is unnerving.
Joes are dread inducing crash test dummy-like mannequins who speak a raspy, unnaturally low baritone.
Yellow diodes glow from behind rubbery dermal eyes unless you've been a disobedient human, in which case they menacingly glow red.
Mindless corporate tag lines emanate from somewhere behind a motionless mouth, unless you've been disobedient and warrant a more targeted utterance: “What are you doing here?”, “You're starting to test my patience” or “I'm going to catch you.”
Joes are stationed around Sevastopol moving at turtle-like pace, if at all…unless you've been disobedient and they'll come at you with purpose until evaded or engaged with one's marginally wieldy weapons.
Creative Assembly's need for alternative antagonists birthed a character type now indelible to the series, folded into several games, comics and books. A footnote in Graham J. Langridge's Alien: The Blueprints for Nostromo's cathedral-like cargo states “expendable low-level Seegson cybernetic units are pre-installed…if any minor maintenance issues should arise.” The Joes are considered hard canon to the point I half expected one to turn up in Alien: Romulus.
Per Andy Kelly, the Working Joes look was lifted from an interesting source. If anyone remembers CPR classes, you'll likely have experienced a visual association when encountering these characters. Resusce Anne was the name of widely produced CPR training dummies. Fitting, as the game's synthetic fiends' execution of choice is strangulation.
But what wasn't in Andy's book was was even further reaching and more unsettling.
Of course Perfect Organism refers to the xenomorph and not CPR dummies, so it's appropriate the author left this factoid aside.
It's nonetheless fascinating.
And appropriately morbid.
The Unknown Woman of Seine
Rewind to 1890, Paris.
An unidentified young woman's body is found adrift in the river Siene.
As the story goes, how she died was something of a mystery, as rigor mortis froze a bafflingly serene expression on her face. The attending pathologist cast a death mask of the beautiful young woman.
This is where the story blooms into more than a mere curious case.
Death masks were of course reproduced for veneration and remembrance, but in bygone times also served for post burial identification in appropriate cases. Reproductions of this particularly beautiful mask yielded nothing identifying, and the longer she remained a mystery the more freely tales of the visage's true origins circulated. A mask factory owner's daughter…the tragic end of a sex worker…a deceased fashion model…the cast of a striking young woman's beauty granted to a sculptor visiting a morgue…
It became vogue in the Bohemian ‘movement’ in Paris to display a casting of the mask.
Ladies of the time, who even began to emulate her visage, considered her an icon.
Over the decades she inspired literature and poetry.
But history remains taciturn, even as technology and mores have progressed, infrequently shedding a sliver of light on the woman, mostly only by reflecting upon the case the time in which she existed. Only a contemporary analyzation of the original mold has provided the shadow of a clue, in that it supports the claim of being a genuine death cast. Given the facial expression, it is unclear, even suspect, if the mold was cast from the face of a drowning victim, though modern science and what we know about the brain chemistry of our final moments don't entirely gainsay it.
Fast forward to the 1950's.
CPR training is all the rage.
Apparently.
Per CPReducatorsinc.com , “the creators of the first aid mannequin Resusci Anne, chose the Seine woman’s death mask as the face of the CPR doll. As the mannequin was used for millions of CPR courses throughout history, “L’Inconnue de la Sine” has been dubbed “the most kissed face” of all time.”
And it's still used to this day. Imagine that as your legacy. And THEN to live on in a fictional future where you're a mass produced lemon of a product that strangles people to death in the outer rim.
Was Creative Assembly fully aware of this depth of the Working Joes' origins?
In my humble opinion doubtful, as they had more and bigger fish to fry here, but it does as a seriously intriguing fold to these characters' mythos.