And most people it seems hated Mr X since he was irritating
I distinctly remember playing as Claire and being stuck in the fancy office saferoom for a solid 5 minutes because Mr. X would not fuck off and I had no other exit, and the was blocking the stairwell I need to use to progress.
And yes, he's incredibly irritating because he ruins the creepy, quiet atmosphere and gets in the way of exploration.
His footsteps were a pretty good idea, I'll give them that, they really ramp up the tension, I just wish he wouldn't be such a persistent presence in the police station.
Alyssa (not confimed but I think it's quite obvious it's her) but I will say at least with her she's got mechanics to her and it's not simply run away
I think there's going to be multiple stalkers. The 12-minute gameplay video shows Leon
killing (?) Alyssa and then a section where he's fighting something similar to the
giant sludge baby from RE8.
Mr. X in RE2R was this quintessentially
Actually, he's not. He reacts to the sounds you make (running and fighting/shooting). There's a video of someone following Mr. X around for a solid 2 minutes without him noticing:
I think the issue mostly stems from the fact that Alien: Isolation is predominantly a stealth game, fighting is your last recourse in nearly every situation, while in RE2R you can't really sneak, there's no mechanics for it, so every time you're forced to fight an enemy Mr. X is on your ass.
but I think Leon is getting injected into gameplay far sooner than Chris which was just the finale.
IIRC, I think there's screenshots or footage of Leon fighting zombies on some road with his axe, and we know he arrives to the hospital right before shit hits the fan, as the nurse that he talks to was behaving normally until she sees the zombie.
My guess is that we get the Grace prologue, her going to Racoon City, the murder scene and abduction, we then switch to Leon's prologue to keep audiences guessing what happened to her, then we're back with Grace's chapter 1, where she tries to evade Alyssa.
Leon's gameplay seems to be far more polished and involved than Grace's janky-looking sneaking and backstabbing mechanics, so my guess is that either Leon takes up more of the playtime, or they're about equal.