Aliens RPG Concept Art and Forum Activity

After they posted some never-before-seen concept art from Obsidian’s Aliens RPG, programmer Anthony Davis stopped by RPG Codex to talk a bit about the cancellation.

The little guy next to the Alien is for scale genius. This was a concept piece.

The Xenomorphs according to canon absorb some dna traits from host creatures. The two in question here were the behemoth, taken from a very large herbivore, and the second was something were calling a stalker, essentially an Alien that can cloak like a chameleon, taken from a chameleon type creature host. There were also Queens, scouts, soldiers, spitters, and more – including black and red variants for those who know the material.

The game was most certainly NOT a grind fest. Experience was awarded for completing objectives and stealth was greatly encouraged.

Basic gameplay was your party was composed of 3 to 4 members. Party members could be from 1 of 4 different professions, marine, agent, engineer, and ugh…I forget the 4th at the moment .

In addition to stealth, party members could place traps for Aliens, such as turrets, mines, door bombs, and more. Doors could also be welded or cut to slow down Alien movement and create bottlenecks.

There was research, crafting, base defense and much more in the game and working.

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I have no idea. I only addressed this because you guys have the screens. Really though, what would be the use? Someone could leak actual gameplay footage from our last milestone – it doesn’t change that the game is still canceled.

I imagine details will continue to leak out as more artists and designers update their linkedins and other websites.

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Sigh. I’m not sure why i really bother with this since the game has been canceled…

What you call “developers feel compelled to be original, albeit in completely unoriginal ways” is not even remotely accurate in this case.

First of all, I only addressed the two pictures. I didn’t talk at all about the story and what was going on at the location for the game.

Second, real life (edit) players who would have played Aliens:RPG more than likely would have known what an Alien is, probably a queen, scout, and even soldier too, while characters in the game would be ignorant of them as a whole, until they meet them, you cannot expect players to selectively ‘forget’ or ignore the Aliens movies and the other video games. If you are making the game we are making where there are moments of horror, you have to give them something new.

Third, the cloaking alien wasn’t so much a visual cloaker, as just an alien that was difficult to pick up on the motion tracker. All of the aliens were hard to spot when they are hidden in the alien creep.

Fourth, these two new creatures were used sparingly.

Again – not that any of this matters.

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I was only on the project for about 5 months and then moved to SoZ, so I can’t speak with 100% certainty on any of the managerial reasons.

Sega is, and I gain nothing by saying this, a GREAT publisher to work with. They work hard from their end and are really supportive. Still, economic times are hitting everyone hard, and Sega took a rather large loss this year, somewhere like 260+ million. My guess is they needed to cut corners and focus on projects that were near to completion, like AvP and Alpha Protocol..

Alien still had something like 20 months left.

As far as our end goes? Sure mistakes were made, the Onyx engine was being built from the ground up and we were integrating a LOT of new technology.

Now with our current secret project, we are using a VERY fast and sweet version of Onyx along with our new UBER toolset and the project is REALLY cooking.

Do we regret losing Aliens? Absolutely. It was a great project and Sega is awesome. But who know, the game industry is funny and I’ve seen crazy things in my 5 years. I mean who would have guessed we would get a chance at Fallout again?