Authenticity is king for Gearbox's Aliens, and while we've all seen the familiar stuff - power loaders, pulse rifles, motion sensors, and all that - there's a lot more to it.
What do you do when − inevitably − you need things that weren't in the original movies? How do you add to these iconic worlds without seeming derivative... or worse, just rubbish?
"When we were in concept development, we reached out to Syd Mead," says Randy Pitchford, Gearbox CEO. Mead was concept artist on James Cameron's Aliens movie.
"He designed the Colonial Marines' spacecraft, the Sulaco," says Pitchford, "Plus the Hadley's Hope colony and so many other things from the Aliens film. He had a lot of content that was never used in the film, since they only built sets out of a few of the rooms."
The game follows the movie timeline, and is set after Alien 3. You explore locations from the second film (now weathered with age and infested with Xenomorphs).
What's more, writers Bradley Thompson and David Weddle, late of the superbly dark and intelligent Battlestar Galactica remake, are scripting, so expect a quality tale - perhaps even a better one than Hollywood's Alien Resurrection...
It certainly feels convincingly sinister, especially with Gearbox's new lighting engine bathing the game in the blues, reds and blacks of the films.
As a shooter it plays a little standard, at least in what we've seen so far, opting for the solo-player thrill-ride approach, rather than offering the free-form co-op experience many were hoping for.
But as a homage to the films, Colonial Marines could be just the thing you've been searching the void for.
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Comments
5 comments so far...
DoomGuy84 on 4 Dec '11 said:
It will be a conundrum about whether to get this for 360 or wait for the (hopefully) motion sensor on the controller wii u version!
Love Tendrils on 5 Dec '11 said:
Yeah, I don't really care how much they "respect the legacy" when the demo they've shown us, assuming there's not another one I don't know about, had a marine get pounced by a xenomorph, before throwing the xenomorph off him and shooting it point blank in the head. No, that's not how xenomorphs work, Gearbox.
deanoz2 on 5 Dec '11 said:
Im assuming it is there for 'artistic liberties' reasons to enhance the gameplay only and not insult the fans.
sirthorns on 18 Jan '12 said:
free form CO-OP would have been awesome .. maybe even a sandbox on a island infested and you have to clean to repopulate with humans .. or like skyrim and fallout tipe sandbox , with a few settelments here and there .. for you to get supplies .. l would love a dark game like this , with a bit more freedom and not as much scripted content . replay just went out the window , $89 au for 8 hours if that . skyrim fallout3 NV 200hrs+ and mods agogo and replay you'v got the base game and then theres all the mods . Much better for 89 bucks if you ask me . Scripted games are not werth the money l spend on them . even with MP .
Axman41 on 27 Jan '12 said:
Can't but agree if a xeno can pin a predator and a predator can pick up a man by the throat without flinching then some marine is gonna be xeno chow. and further more the pulse rifle holds more like 100 rounds there were no face huggers left in stasis tubes at the end of the movie and aliens like "the crusher" would not exist because an alien's goal (when a queen is around) is not to kill but capture.