aliens posts

Aliens Colonial Marines is a game that's basically been gestating for a long time but it's looking like there will be some actual concrete news on this long awaited first person shooter soon-ish. The Sega fan site SegaBits has posted up a quote from the new Game Informer magazine where Alan Pritchard, the VP of sales and marketing at Sega West, states, "Colonial Marines is still on. We've been working closely with Gearbox (Software) behind the scenes, and we'll be able to tell you a lot about that in the next couple of months."

Just a recap: Sega announced plans for an Aliens first person shooter to be developed by Gearbox Software way back in 2006. However in 2008 rumors hit that the game was in danger of cancellation. Later Sega announced that it would publish an Aliens Vs Predator game ahead of Aliens Colonial Marines. The AVP game was in fact released earlier this year to solid sales. Most recently Gearbox head man Randy Pitchford stated in September that the developer and Sega were still committed to Aliens Colonial Marines, stating, "We're not going to let this dream die, it's going to happen."

Actor Lance Henriksen has had a long history with the Aliens and Aliens Vs Predator movie franchise. Today Destructoid reports that the actor will lend both his voice and likeness to the upcoming new Aliens Vs Predator game from publisher Sega. His role, while technically new, is actually somewhat familiar to fans of the franchise.

Besides Sigourney Weaver, Henriksen is the only actor to appear in more than one film in the Aliens series. In Aliens he was the good hearted android Bishop and in Alien 3 he was the android's human but evil creator (known in the credits only as Bishop II). He also crossed over into the first Aliens Vs Predator movie playing the role of Charles Bishop Weyland, the human billionaire and and the co-founder of the Weyland Yutani Corporation, the corrupt company mentioned in most of the Aliens films.

His new role in the Aliens Vs Predator FPS game, developed by Rebellion, is that of Karl Bishop Weyland, the descendant of his character in the first AVP movie. Yes we know; we need charts and graphs to keep up as well. Henriksen is no stranger to voice work in games; he handles the voice of General Shepard in Modern Warfare 2 and is narrating the Holonet timeline videos on the Star Wars: The Old Republic web site.

With the official announcement of Sega's cancellation of the Aliens RPG title, many have wondered about the fate of Aliens: Colonial Marines, the long-in-development first person shooter from developer Gearbox Software. Computer and Video Games got a chance to chat with Gearbox's always open head man Randy Pitchford for an update.

Despite rumors for months that the game has been put on hold, Pitchford stated, "I love Aliens and I love Gearbox Software's Aliens: Colonial Marines. I am extremely committed to the game and I'm very confident in Sega's commitment to the Aliens brand and to our game." However it looks like we will still have to wait a bit more before any more new info on the game comes out.

Yesterday Sega announced plans to fast track a new Aliens Vs Predator game from developer Rebellion for an early 2010 release. At the time Sega said that to accommodate the new game they have "strategically updated the release of the other upcoming Aliens titles." Now rumors have surfaced that may show Sega has some odd definitions of the term "strategically updated".

According to unnamed sources from our sister site Joystiq, Obsidian Entertainment's long-in-development Aliens RPG project has now been canceled with about 20 Obsidian team members laid off as a result. The layoffs have also affected for Obsidian's other Sega published game, the upcoming spy-themed Alpha Protocol. These team reductions could be cause for concern about Obsidian's future existence, according to Joystiq's sources.

The same story claims that Gearbox Software's FPS Aliens: Colonial Marines had its funding cut a while ago. Several months ago Gearbox head Randy Pitchford tried to head off rumors that the game was in fact canceled but this new development may mean the game is still in development trouble. Sega and Gearbox have not yet commented on these rumors while an Obsidian spokesperson would not comment to Joystiq about the reports.

Three time Academy Award nominated actress Sigourney Weaver doesn't seem to have a problem about doing voice roles for games based on her characters. But she clearly doesn't want to do them just for the paycheck either. MTV Multiplayer has some quotes from Weaver about her (non) involvement with the upcoming games based on two of her most famous films; Ghostbusters and Aliens (she one one of her Oscar nods for the latter performance).

Weaver said at one point she was approached to voice her character of Ellen Ripley in an Aliens game (not the ones currently under development and to be published by Sega). However when she saw the actual game proposal she didn't care for it, saying "Well you have Ripley killing aliens but also sick people and other marines! And every other word out of my mouth was a curse word. I'm not a nun or anything, but I said, 'This is not true to the character.'"

And the Ghostbusters game from Atari that has involvement with most of the main cast but not Weaver? She stated, "I don't think they even asked me to be a part of the [new] 'Ghostbusters' one. If they did I don't remember it and maybe I was just busy."

CVG reports that an "Infinity Ward insider" let slip that the studio is working on a Sci-Fi game. No specifics about the game were given, apart from the genre. Since Infinity Ward's portfolio exclusively includes Call of Duty games (the first, the second, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare), the gaming community is buzzing with speculation that this means that the Call of Duty series is going the space marine route after Call of Duty: World at War.

We're skeptical. Why? Because the insider also said that the Sci-Fi game might be unveiled at E3. It would be pretty silly to unveil Call of Duty: Future Warfare only a month after Call of Duty: World at War, even though Infinity Ward isn't helming World at War itself. So maybe Infinity Ward is finally branching out. You knew they had to get sick of Call of Duty sooner or later, right? More likely yet, maybe the barely-sourced quote is just a false rumor.

As unlikely as it is, though, it's still fun to imagine a Call of Duty game in which your squadmates scream: "They're coming out of the walls! They're coming out of the Goddamn walls!"

[Via Joystiq]

The quality of the Alien vs. Predator movies has strayed about as far away from the greatness that started the respective film franchises as humanly possible. But the guys at Gearbox are doing their darnedest to change that by breathing life (or planting facehugger eggs) into the Alien property through their upcoming fragger, Aliens: Colonial Marines. Gearbox's Mike Gallo chatted with Computer and Video Games recently and gave us a chest-bursting amount of information.

A:CM takes place after the events in Alien 3, and picks up right after the marines were all wiped out on LV-426. The game is directly inspired by the films and they've actually hired Syd Mead (the conceptual designer for the films) to work on the game. Players will be able to take control of several different marines and experience the story from several different PoVs. In addition, the games comes with a co-op mode and a four-person campaign mode.

Hopefully this will be be as raucous a game as an express elevator to hell, and not "game over" for this wonderful IP.