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Aliens RPG Cancelled
Giant Bomb notes that Obsidian Entertainment has officially stopped work on the Aliens RPG they had been working on. In a post on their forums, an Obsidian employee confirmed rumors that development was no longer underway, and Sega later indicated that they were looking do so something else with the IP. "The Aliens franchise offers us so much content to choose from that we feel it important to take a step back and carefully consider the type of game we want to release." Aliens: Colonial Marines appears to still be in development, though it won't be out this year.
Yes, I have to agree with this. I do hope Colonial Marines doesn't follow in the path of this, though.
The Aliens franchise hasn't been treated anything like as well as it deserves to be in recent years, in gaming terms. I mean, what have we had? A crap AvP RTS on the Playstation 2 and Xbox, a rubbish AvP shooter on the PSP, a few cellphone games and a decent-ish arcade machine. When you consider that the Aliens franchise has had such a huge impact on gaming culture (as the inspiration behind the look and feel of games like Doom), this looks a bit sad.
I think the whole AvP thing has been a bit of a depressing sideline. Personally, I find the Predator about as scary and cool as the average episode of Dora the Explorer. I remember when I was about 12 or so, my parents used to control what I watched at home pretty carefully. However, I had a friend whose parents were far more lax, so when I went over there, I often saw stuff I'd never be allowed to see at home. I remember watching Predator over there (it must have been newly out on VHS at the time) and not being bothered in the slightest. A few weeks later, I remember seeing Alien there. I didn't sleep for a month after that. Whichever way you look at it, the Alien is just a better baddie.
AvP2 for PC was 1/3rd of a very decent game. That 1/3rd was the Marine campaign, which was scary as hell. The less said about the "hunt for the breakable vent" and "stupid jump puzzles" flow of the Aliens and Predator campaigns, the better. Of course, the game hasn't aged fantastically well; the engine wasn't considered great at the time and looks and feels very nasty indeed now.
The technology to make a genuinely scary-as-hell Aliens fps has been around for a few years; basically since Doom 3 appeared. All it needs is some reasonably believable squad AI, a writer with a sense of pacing (ie. somebody who understands that having periodic lulls in the action is way scarier than pure run and gun) and a plot that DOESN'T revolve around some mad scientist experimenting on the aliens. It's disappointing that nobody has yet risen to the challenge. The release date for Colonial Marines keeps slipping - here's hoping it doesn't do a Duke Nukem Forever on us.