Hyped as an interactive sequel to James Cameron’s 1986 classic, Aliens: Colonial Marines was a disappointment in 2013. We look back at how its plot could have changed the Alien franchise…
In 2011, it all looked so promising. As narrated by Gearbox Software studio boss Randy Pitchford, a demo of Aliens: Colonial Marines, unveiled at that year’s E3, hinted at the kind of game fans of the Alien franchise had been eagerly awaiting for years. It was a first-person shooter made by a respected studio – Gearbox had just had a hit with Borderlands – and was billed as a direct sequel to James Cameron’s 1986 film, Aliens. It even had a couple of familiar actors returning to provide their voices.
The demo gave a tantalising glimpse of what looked like a thoroughly engrossing narrative blaster. It took the player back to LV-426, the setting of Alien and Aliens, and as one of several Colonial Marines, had them explore the shattered remains of Hadley’s Hope, the outpost rocked by an exploding atmospheric processor at the end of Aliens. Unsurprisingly, the outpost is still absolutely lousy with screeching Xenomorphs, and much of the game involves keeping the critters at bay with the same iconic firearms wielded in Cameron’s hit.
When the game emerged in 2013, however, it quickly became clear that something had gone drastically awry; Colonial Marines had suffered a major visual downgrade from the demo shown off two years earlier, the game was littered with bugs – including Xenomorphs clipping through walls or simply running around in circles – and entire sections appeared to be unfinished.
We won’t rake over the whole sorry development story here, but it’s safe to say that Colonial Marines wound up as a debacle: despite all the excitement surrounding the game (and a reported $40m budget), Gearbox decided to outsource much of the game’s production, and it appears that while considerable effort was put into making the sounds and visuals film-accurate, much of the level design and gameplay was pulled together within a matter of months.
As a result, the finished game was bewilderingly lop-sided. It featured design work from the legendary Syd Mead, meaning its locations had the look and feel of those in Aliens. The weapons – pulse rifles, shotguns and so forth – had the weight and punchy feel you’d expect. But then out came those Xenomorphs, jazz hands-a-waving, which soon became the subject of a legion memes. With that, the game’s fate was sealed – sales were low, and Gearbox Software found itself slapped with a class action lawsuit for false advertising.
Had Aliens: Colonial Marines lived up to expectations, then the Alien franchise as a whole might look somewhat different over a decade later. Again, the game was at the time hyped as franchise canon by 20th Century Fox (this was long before its purchase by Disney), which meant that anything after Colonial Marines might have had to at least pay some attention to the characters and events it sets up.
One of the game’s major events is the reappearance of the Sulaco – the Weyland Yutani vessel which ferried around the first wave of Colonial Marines in 1986, and last seen orbiting the planet Fiorina ‘Fury’ 161 in Alien 3. According to the Aliens: Colonial Marines timeline, the Sulaco is back orbiting LV-426, having been recovered and put back into commission by Weyland Yutani.
In the years since the events of Aliens, the corporation has evidently been busy: both the Sulaco and the surface of LV-426 are now research centres, of sorts. Mercenaries are breeding and studying Xenomorphs on the Sulaco, while down on the planetoid, the Juggernaut ship seen in the previous movies is surrounded by floodlights and scientific equipment. (Poking around the latter, and discovering the remains of the iconic Space Jockey, is one of the game’s few truly atmospheric moments, and a hint of what a better version of the same game might have looked like.)
About three quarters of the way through the campaign, Aliens: Colonial Marines throws in a twist that its creators kept surprisingly well-hidden in the run-up to the game’s release. On a mission which takes place in the aforementioned Juggernaut, you and your dwindling detachment of Marines rescue a hooded prisoner from Weyland Yutani’s clutches. Whipping off their head covering, the prisoner is revealed to be none other than Corporal Dwayne Hicks (voiced by a returning, rueful-sounding Michael Biehn).
It’s here that Colonial Marines plays fast and loose with the events of Alien 3. The film saw Hicks, Ripley, Bishop and Newt blasted from the Sulaco in an escape vessel; in the crash landing, both Hicks and Newt were killed. According to Colonial Marines, Hicks never left the Sulaco, and was later captured by Weyland Yutani – which begs the question: whose body was that, face pulverised beyond recognition, in Alien 3? It’s not like there was anyone else left aboard the ship who could’ve taken Hicks’ place. It’s one of several plot developments the game hurriedly hand waves away: “That’s a longer story,” Hicks says dismissively when asked this very question.
Lapses in logic aside, Aliens: Colonial Marines’ story ended with an intriguing possible future ahead of it. The surviving Marine characters, along with another Bishop android (Lance Henriksen) and Hicks, retrieve some sensitive corporate information from the memory banks of Michael Weyland, also revealed to be an android. The game ends with the suggestion that a sequel would involve the group using the data they’ve retrieved to finally bring down Weyland Yutani once and for all, perhaps with Hicks himself leading the charge.
Instead, the critical and commercial disappointment of Aliens: Colonial Marines meant that everyone involved soon stopped describing the game as a canonical sequel to Aliens. If there was ever a plan to make a sequel to Colonial Marines itself, continuing the saga of Hicks, this too was quietly dropped.
Certainly, Biehn didn’t seem too sentimental about his work on the game. Talking in 2013, he said, “It seemed kind of passionless. I think in movies, television, and the gaming world, you get some people that are really, really passionate, and some people that are just going through the paces. They think that because they have a brand name they’re going to get a hit game or hit movie out of it. That certainly was the situation on [Aliens: Colonial Marines].”
Ouch.
Colonial Marines therefore joins a growing pile of Alien media rendered non-canon or quietly ignored by other storytellers. The Alien V Predator movies exist as a kind of curious appendage, for example, sitting as they do between the mainline Alien films and Ridley Scott’s prequels. Speaking of prequels, it’s now looking likely that Noah Hawley’s upcoming Alien TV series will ignore those, too, instead re-imagining the xenomorph as a result of evolution rather than the tinkering of Michael Fassbender’s renegade android, David.
One game whose canonical status remains tantalisingly unclear is Creative Assembly’s superb, profoundly stressful 2014 survival horror, Alien: Isolation. Unlike Colonial Marines, it was well-received by critics and made with genuine passion for its subject, though its sales were sadly too muted to prompt its publisher, Sega, to commission a sequel. Telling the story of Amanda Ripley – daughter of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen – it takes place between Alien and Aliens, and contains much of the gorgeous retro-futurism last seen in those films.
Intriguingly, Fede Alvarez’s upcoming Alien: Romulus movie, out this August, also takes place between Alien and Aliens. It’ll star Cailee Spaeny, leading a young cast in another encounter with a terrifying xenomorph, and there’s rumours that the plot will involve a bunch of thieves breaking into an abandoned Weyland Yutani ship and finding more than they bargained for.
One of the only official images we currently have from Alien: Romulus is a set photo posted to Instagram by Alvarez. In it, we can see a facehugger, a typical sci-fi corridor, and what is unmistakably one of the save consoles from Alien: Isolation. Is it a clue that the film will lean on the events of that game in some way? Might Spaeny even be playing Amanda Ripley?
Even if the save console is merely a nod to Alien: Isolation, it’s a sign of how much affection there is for that particular game. In an alternate universe – one where Aliens: Colonial Marines wasn’t, you know, a bit rubbish – maybe it would’ve been that game getting referenced. And maybe Hicks would still be out there, appearing in Colonial Marines sequels and still fighting xenomorphs and Weyland Yutani’s corporate tendrils.
