Aliens: Colonial Marines

^^ Well, why-ever people started to use it, they've been doing so for almost a hundred and fifty years according to That Other Wiki.

Uhhhh. You copied... something that was way too much there, Freeman.

Here, lemme get that fer ya!

edited 9th Feb '12 5:27:01 PM by VutherA

Bumping this. I saw the game at PAX East and it looks pretty cool, even though it's still in prealpha.

The first level that they demoed is set in the Sulaco, after the rescue ship arrives. Ripley, Bishop, Hicks, and Newt are nowhere to be found (their cold sleep capsules appear to have been ejected) and the ship is overrun with aliens. Continuity nods are everywhere, fittingly since this is intended to be the canon sequel to Aliens.

I got a chance to play the multiplayer demo and I sucked ass ... because they made us use Xbox controllers instead of mouse + keyboard. Who in the hell thought that was a good idea? At least give us a choice! Oh, well.

The Easter surprise at PAX was the giveaway of codes to register for a sweepstakes on Gearbox' site, the winner of which will get a chance to name a character in either Aliens: Colonial Marines or Borderlands 2.

ACM looks sweet and I'm definitely interested in getting it.

edited 10th Apr '12 9:12:45 AM by Fighteer

Yes, but does it look better than the last AVP we had? I forget the name, but I was pretty hyped for it, and it was a let down.

I didn't play any of the AVP franchise games, so I am not the one to tell you. In the Gearbox panel, they said that, although they are of course aware of those games and have seen them, they are not specifically taking any of the code or other resources from them; it's all being done from scratch.

I can say that the armor, weapons, and environments all look very authentic. They even found a fan at a previous con (E3, maybe? I forget) who had built himself a fully functional (save for the actual, you know, shooting) replica smartgun and hired him to do motion capture for the game. He was at PAX and I got photos. It is amazing.

Oh, and they also got Ridley Scott and James Cameron to consult on the game. If nothing else, it will be the most authentic Aliens game ever. Whether they pull it off or not is of course the million dollar question.

edited 10th Apr '12 9:27:05 AM by Fighteer

Well, I sure hope they get it right. I'm a sucker for this kind of game.

One of the things they really have to do is get the Aliens themselves right, and from what I've seen, I'm not sure they've done that. The Aliens are individually too weak, and there are too many of them. Aliens worked as a film because it set up a deliberate context where you could have skirmish-scale action scenes with lots of Aliens and have it work. The only time the marines hold their own is when they have a defended position, for instance.

The Alien doesn't work well as a swarm monster, I think. Too many awful comics and other EU material has proven that most creators can't be trusted with using the Alien in action. It works better as a singular, unknowable predator; it's perhaps something like H.P. Lovecraft's response to the traditional folklore vampire.

We never got to see the xenomorphs and marines fighting on even terms. The first time around, the marines had no idea what they were up against, but this is set in a time when they actually know about the xenomorphs and how they operate.

Furthermore, the xenomorphs did act in a swarm in the second movie once they knew the marines were on the defensive and aware of their capabilities. They're hive creatures; why would they care about their own lives when it's so easy for them to reproduce and churn out new warriors by the dozen?

Well, we have to consider one thing: can the local animal/human population supply such a reckless production of Aliens? I mean, sure, in theory they could cover the whole world, but practically, just how much aliens can a hive produce to supply such assaults? I don't know, but considering they have to somehow get the victim and the face hugger together, I'm not sure they can just outright throw away warriors like they're worth nothing.

That goes out the window the moment they get a hold on a sizeable settlement with the guards caught off-guard. Then all bets are off.

I'm just wearing my speculation hat without any exact context of course.

^^ We're also social creatures, yet we care about our own lives. There are seven billion of us; what makes our individual lives important? Off to the kamikaze planes we go.

The whole idea of Aliens being mindless swarm creatures comes from the comics and other EU materials, not the films — and it's certainly out of character for the original Alien, which was always meant to be a singular horror of malign intelligence. As I said above, the Alien's original (and more interesting) form could be compared to a folkloric vampire as reimagined by H.P. Lovecraft.

Alien is one of the greatest horror movies ever, and undoubtedly has one of the best monster designs in film to this day. The creativity and intelligence with which it was pieced together demands more than tired and overused swarm bug tropes that it was never designed for in the first place.

Remember that we're talking horror. An easily defeated adversary is not scary — in fact, having the capacity to defeat a monster reduces the scare factor as well. An excess of action, especially action where victory is easily taken, will reduce the impact of the tension and horror. Swarm bugs are horrible for this because the concept has become so domestic. We all know the Zerg from Starcraft, we all know zombies, most of us know the Reapers from Mass Effect.

Alien media needs to stop repeating established events and use creativity in terms of plot and conflict. One Alien could make an intelligently-written story work on its own. Isn't it kind of insane that there's never been a survival horror Alien game? They're all action, which misses the point entirely.

Right now, Giger's Alien is the most triumphant example of a concept being dumbed down, and that dumbed down version becoming the accepted norm by audiences. And it wasn't Aliens that did it, but all the extra materials that missed the point of context of that film and just wanted to capitalise on its success and influence. Was the Operations Room battle with the Aliens way cool? Sure, but it doesn't need to be repeated in every game, comic and whatever.

The Alien is the mighty and noble penis-headed space ninja vampire of the animal kingdom, and it should be used as such. Gunning down an Alien is old hat, but avoiding one, putting up barriers, misdirecting it — stuff like that would be really intense.

I blame Aliens for the swarm approach the rest of the stuff has done towards the creature.

Alien 3 attempted to bring back the original horror and the gothic elements were quite well done and that's why I think the Assembly cut is far far better than the cliched LOCKNLOAD MARINES Vs Bug swarms that is Aliens. Now Aliens was better than the subsequent entries in the franchise in maintaining some level of horror but it definitely began the decay of the Alien into something that dies in a few shots rather than the ultimate creature.

Judging from the previews and the developers involved I don't see Colonial Marines attempting to be a survival horror game, I'd say it'll just continue the trend of spraying bullets at swarms of Aliens.

edited 11th Apr '12 2:16:29 AM by ShadowScythe

Different situations. The first movie was about a single xenomorph attempting to pick off a bunch of jumpy humans and, obviously, create a colony (judging by the stuff it plasters all over the walls and the fact that it drags off bodies). In the second, they're already established, with a queen and a sustainable hive. Their lives are less important.

It's also been demonstrated that they aren't sentient; they're extremely cunning animals directed by a central will. The reason they go back into pure horror mode in the third movie is because they don't have their hive anymore.

It's apples and oranges. Different situations. They can't get the jump on the marines once they're on the defensive, so they try to overpower them instead.

You're basing this off the idea that there's some central "canon" to the series or that the Aliens have universal observable traits, which are arguments I reject because they're not horror. Horror is not knowing, and to remain horror, a monster has to remain unknowable. Sorry to use a fourth-wall argument, but it needs to be done for the Alien because the creature has decomposed in the wrong hands for decades.

Essentially, I hold very little about the Alien as "fact" — they use other organisms as hosts, have acid for blood, prefer the dark and establish hives. And that's about it, because anything else strays too far into an area where we truly know what we're fighting against, which I don't like. One cool thing in a potential Alien 3 script was the Alien appearing in a cell and appearing trapped. So what did it do? It dislocated all its joints, forced itself through the bars and snapped itself back together.

That is the kind of disturbing ability I imagine Aliens having, and only one of many. 'Cause monsters need to be able to do that kind of thing. They have to be able to defeat common sense and scientific fact, otherwise they're just animals by a different name. Horror cannot Do In The Wizard or it ceases to be horror. That's what a whole lot of Alien media (and, unfortunately, a lot of Alien fans) disregard. The Alien cannot be an individual, nor can it be a swarm creature. It cannot be mindless, but it cannot be sentient. It cannot be physical, but it cannot be aethereal. It must be a paradox in some respect. That's horror, and just as importantly, that's the Lovecraftian horror the creature was spawned from in the first place.

No, I'm basing my argument on my own observations. I think Alien is sci-fi first and horror second.

I like both films, but Aliens was by far my favorite. I don't hold some Platonic ideal of the franchise; I want an entertaining game. The fact is that the Marines have the advantage of range, and if they can hold the Aliens at bay and avoid being flanked, they can win. The Alien is a horrific monster but it's not an unstoppable juggernaut.

Now, it does bug me that they're willing to die in such numbers; while it's true that the life of an individual xenomorph is meaningless from the perspective of individuality, there is an inherent problem with attrition: namely, there can be only as many xenomorphs as there are living hosts to grow them in. If more of them die than they can take living victims, they are in danger of extinction (on the local level, anyway).

edited 11th Apr '12 7:08:28 AM by Fighteer

OTOH, that presumes they are intended to be a self-sustaining species, and not a "kill everything on this planet/at least make a huge nuisance of yourself" bioweapon. . .

Anyway, I disagree with the idea that "too much knowledge destroys horror". It really depends on the writing. Some horror works off of ignorance and confusion. Some horror, however, works specifically off knowledge, and IMO, its the better, more lasting horror.

You can take the sci-fi out of the Alien, but you can't remove the horror.

Nor should it be expected that they would mindlessly rush into gunfire. Think about it this way; at three weeks of age, the Aliens in the film of the same name cut the power. They understood what electricity was, what light was and exploited their knowledge for tactical advantage. Then, understanding also what guns were, they made an approach through the ceiling.

Never do they simply rush a strong position. In Aliens, the prime example of a shoot out with the monsters, they explicitly set up their advance showcasing a level of tactical and strategic knowledge that escapes most human beings — again, at three weeks of age. They should, by all means, be challenging adversaries because of their capacity to manipulate, misdirect and attack at the least expected moment.

That's a hypothesis. Not a bad one, but I prefer the reverse concept: perhaps the Aliens were so naturally powerful that the Jockeys imitated their biological data for their biotechnology? It would just as easily explain why the Jockey ship has visual solidarity with the Alien, but it makes the Jockeys even more mysterious and the Aliens even more threatening.

You can ask any good horror writer you like, and they'll tell you that ignorance and misdirection are the most powerful tools a director, game designer or writer has at their disposal when making horror. And if you look at horror franchises, they tend to start strong and universally begin to suck after a while — Alien being a prominent example.

Why?

There's no more horror left. We become too familiar with the monster and it becomes a part of our domestic imagination. On a wider scale, we've seen this in the last decade with zombies and vampires. Having become so popular and well-known, they've lost their capacity to frighten and amaze us because we know everything there is to know. Whether they shamble or run, hit zombies in the head. Sunlight and stakes destroy vampires. And so on and so forth.

And so the cycle will go on until producers and the like realise that monsters need time to rest. Media paid the price when the Alien became too domestic; in 1979, people were vomiting in cinemas because the film was so horrific — how could that be topped? It couldn't, and the Alien fell into a downward spiral because it kept getting used for sequels (as much as I like Alien 3), comics and games. Sequelitis and transmedia ruined perhaps the most creative, well-designed and horrific movie monster of the 20th century.

There are too many "facts", too much knowledge. We're used to the idea of an Alien, and we knows it lifecycle and form. The way to make the Alien horrific again is to break the rules. We don't need new types of Aliens or anything like that. All we need is for a "normal" (insofar as Aliens can be normal) one to do something that violates established fact in a horrific way.

edited 11th Apr '12 7:35:38 AM by MadassAlex

If you're suggesting that the problem of a direct video game sequel to Aliens is that we already know everything we need to about them and therefore there is no horror aspect to the game... I will concede that it is a risk.

Horror can't entirely be about Jump Scares.

edited 11th Apr '12 8:17:49 AM by Fighteer

For what it's worth, I'll play this game and probably like it as long as it's fun. After all, games exist as a medium for ideally engaging experiences.

What I'm saying is that the Alien franchise is up to its ears in shooting the monsters down, and often misrepresents them at the same time. This kind of gameplay might have better served a different or new IP — and there is certainly no lack of horde shooters about — and a dedicated horror game might be a better choice for an Alien game.

On the other hand, the AVP games did a great job of making the player feel vulnerable, although they were also subject to their own flaws. Only the first game in 1999 had a good endgame for the Marine that kept the horror going, and even inserted horror into the Predator campaign due to the limited resources at one's disposal.

Given, this game might avert that. I think the trick will be to make the Aliens challenging, even as individuals, necessitating an approach that requires a strong use of the environment — sort of like a horror shooter equivalent of Dark Souls (although not so difficult, obviously). If tools like the welding torch and the like are still in the game, and if the motion tracker can still only be used in conjunction with the pistol, then it might succeed on those grounds.

The ideal approach here is to force players to feel vulnerable against some kind of mystery, some unknown factor. If the Aliens can dispatch you quickly if you leave a weakness in your lanes of fire and other defenses, that would be a strong compromise. It would reinforce the notion that there are no half-measures against these things — it's A game all day erry day.

edited 11th Apr '12 8:45:23 AM by MadassAlex

Did you see the preview? I did, and the environments you fight the Aliens in are very confined and there are multiple routes for them to take. If you get an Alien directly in your sights, you can kill it fairly easily, but they're smaller than you are, faster than you are, blend in disturbingly well with the environments, and if you shoot them at close range, you take damage from the acid splash.

There is a part of the first level where you are doing a Hold the Line type of mission with a smartgun, but even then you're relying on the gun's auto targeting because the things are so damn hard to see. And anyway, you're supposed to feel like a badass when you equip it.

When you play as the Aliens in multiplayer, attempting to Zerg Rush the Marines will get you killed. You have to use tactics and stealth, and ambush them from behind and above. Control issues aside, when I played the demo as a Marine against the Gearbox team at PAX, I got murdered a lot more often than I shot anything.

edited 11th Apr '12 8:54:17 AM by Fighteer

That sounds promising, at least. My concerns come from a gameplay video a while back that takes place in the bombed out Operations room from the film — Aliens were going down in too few shots and pretty much Zerg rushing the marines. Given, it ought not to take a huge amount of shots to kill an Alien, but they're much more resilient than a human being and if they die so easily, their strategies and tactics are for nought anyway.

Multiplayer sounds interesting. Hopefully it'll be more balanced than the (at least somewhat fun) balance travesties that were the AVP games. If I can hide in the shadows and use exclusive attack routes as an Alien, then I'll be well pleased.

As a nitpick, the smartgun couldn't detect the Aliens in the film. I know, from a game design perspective, it has to. But they could handwave it at least, like altering the calibration or somesuch on the gun to pick up different signals.

edited 11th Apr '12 9:01:13 AM by MadassAlex

It looked like the smartguns did just fine at tracking the Aliens in that film. Vasquez and Drake had by far the highest body count during their fighting retreat from the reactor complex. The reason the Aliens didn't show up on infrared was because of the high ambient heat in the reactor, but that's irrelevant because they show up on the motion trackers and that's what the smartguns use to target things.

In the multiplayer preview, the Aliens can climb walls and ceilings and have fantastic jumping skills, so they can easily get to places that the Marines cannot, at least without a lot of effort. I didn't see any duct crawling or other super-confined spaces, but that may just have been the level design.

edited 11th Apr '12 9:08:44 AM by Fighteer

Actually, I think the smartguns only use heat signatures. If you look at the motion trackers, they're extremely bulky and the smartguns don't appear to have additions of that type, perhaps unless they use wireless software that interacts with the squad's motion tracker (which is a really cool idea, if I do say so myself). As for ambient heat vs. Aliens not showing up, that's a reasonable claim, although the movie doesn't explicitly point out which one of those is correct. I like to think that the Aliens don't show up, 'cause that's horror.

It also violates thermodynamics. But Word of God and the novelization confirm that the reason the Marines couldn't see the xenomorphs in the reactor was the heat. Thermal imaging was saturated and therefore useless. They had also been forced to disable their primary weapons, meaning they only had flamethrowers to work with initially.

The reactor situation was a balls-out surprise ambush, made worse by Gorman's incompetence and the fact that the Marines completely underestimated their opponents. When they did get a chance to fight in an organized manner, they racked up a much higher body count.

I find this acceptable; the Aliens violate a whole series of physical laws throughout the movies, and I like to think it's because they are "folkloricly arcane" — that is, breaking the rules is natural and inherent to them rather than it being any kind of active magic. Kind of like how H.P. Lovecraft's monsters work, being indifferent to their own power.

It comes down to the idea that the physical laws of the universe as we define them are not as universal as we think, and the Alien represents a species that violates known science. Not only does it handwave all the scientific inconsistencies in the films away, it again makes the Aliens more horrific.

edited 11th Apr '12 9:23:08 AM by MadassAlex