I never bothered to comment on the concept art because I didn't want to interrupt the roshambo-rage, which is an entertaining sight to behold. Oh, and the "stealth" discussion, that was good too.
The Xenomorph's aesthetics to me, stems from the fact that, "it is not an animal". Remember how in the Aliens(1986), the marines all went; -how the f*ck can they do this sarge!!! They're just f*ckin animals!!! Well, they can do all sorts of crap that doesn't make sense because they themselves don't make sense to us. Whatever they are, they are NOT animals. See, we humans are animals in the truest sense of the word. We are imperfect, multi-cellular organisms spawned by an ecosystem that engineered those very imperfections to preserve the precious dna with poor critters like us encapsulating them through countless generations that lived and died like flies. We are weak, we have to die, we have to spawn new ones, we have to carry the limitations of a bipedal primate archetype in this ecosystem that shaped us and binds us to its rules. We are animals, biological organisms, imperfect slaves to a perfect ecosystem.
The Xenomorph is the perfect organism. It doesn't have anything that holds it at bay, it's a perfect machine with a very specific purpose. It is not an animal because it is exempt from a lot of the things that makes us animals. They're like the almost inanimate viruses in some aspects, all their mindless drive is to exterminate and procreate through the destruction of their host species. These things are very likely to be quite short lived for their usual size because of their crazy metabolism, and they get all the sustenance they need in a brief violent lifetime of annihilating everything they encounter. "Life" is a bit too simple and
mechanical process for them, quite like the viruses. They are rape incarnate with acid blood and hardened silicate exoskeleton. Biomechanoids don't play on a level field with the ones poorly spawned by their planetary biosphere. They are all IMBA and never got nerfed by any evolutionary process to fit in an ecosystem.
The "dog-alien" from Alien 3 showed us they are not always bound to spawn offspring of the same type in their likeness. We always have the same babies that always comes out the same as their mothers from their wombs but theirs come out from the insides of other things as they rip through them in their likeness so they can kill their raped mothers species better next time with a familiar, but deadly twisted version of the creature that gave them birth. The Cheetas were "built" to hunt gazelles. Cheetas are like gazelles in many ways; fast, sleek, quadrupedal and beautiful. The FAST Cheetas are the deadly versions of gazelles with the fangs and the teeth which makes them the perfect killers of their also agile prey. A twisted version of your architecture will always be your ideal killer. -How the fuck can they do this sarge? Weren't they friggin' animals??? They can do all sorts of smart shit savage animals can't because they absorbed your human DNA along with your human "smarts" so you can't outsmart them and they can rape your innards more effectively.
This is truly a crazy ass motherfucking design Dan O'Bannon, Giger came up with. They're like hunter-killer missiles able to lock into any target and destroy it. No ecosystem CAN harbor such a design in the first place because it wouldn't even be able to do so unless it had MHD monsters inhabiting it as a predator and even then we all know exit is the only option.
You really can't blame the Weyland-Yutani for wanting to utilize this biomechanical creation into the most "useful" super-weapon the galaxy has ever seen. It would change the nature of interstellar warfare forever. Instant biomechanical armies with the ability to multiply their ranks through the destruction of their foes. It would remove the impossible need for carrying legions of soldiers and robots numerous enough to lay siege to an entire enemy establishment on their homeworld which could never be enough to subjugate them in their own turf. Fighting an impossible war in vain with absolutely no chance for reinforcements stuck in an entire hostile star system against an established enemy you have to conquer without destroying their planet. Even with something like FTL, the W-Y can't churn out giant army carrier ships like space taxis because they are bound to cost shitloads of money and energy. They sure wouldn't want to destroy a precious habitable/mineable/exploitable planet by launching nukes or nudging asteroids. Biological weapons, nano-viruses launched from orbit could probably be cured/avoided by the enemy with a comparable technology. The one thing that remains, the one thing you just can't resist is an instant army of self-replicating biomechanical planet-killer vermin that will be introduced to the destinated planet with even one carrier ship that would rape every single major inhabitant on the surface and die out after nobody remains, leaving no intelligent resistance with a planet mostly left intact.
While the human-born Xenomorph would be the best choice to hunt down humans, the W-Y could have been looking for ways to come up with over-kill creations like the morph from a giant herbivore that could devastate heavily armored formations or the runners for more specialized reconnaissance purposes. The whole facility could have been built on a habitable planet with an Earth-like biosphere containing alien animal life without any sentient beings comparable to us, and the whole "facehugger leak" from the devastated facility could have been unintentionally spread to the local fauna. That planet could have been terraformed to contain the very biosphere of Earth itself so that giant herbivore host could be a now extinct ground sloth. They could have been raising the animals from their stored dna in lab conditions in a more generic facility in orbit/ on an uninhabitable planet too... I dunno what they went for really.
There really is nothing wrong with the Aliens capability to absorb the host species dna-like structure but this wouldn't have been the "Aliens RPG" I would have come up with if I had the chance. I would have kept things a lot more simple in the spirit of the movies in a more confined environment like a claustrophobic spaceship or a research facility in orbit where shit went dead wrong and exit is the only option, which you'll have no chance to do so after a certain point where you'll realize HOLY SHIT WE'RE STUCK HERE WITH MULTIHEADED/MOUTHED RAPE MONSTERS. In space no one can hear you scream -Rape!!! etc. A lot of the regular enemies and the intelligent intrigue would come from the Weyland-Yutani people also stuck there with you, and the human-born Xenomorphs existence would be thinly spread into the story where it matters to maximize their impact when they'd actually show up. Their tell-tale presence would influence a larger portion of the atmosphere than the parts where you would actually encounter them in person(!).
The Obsidian people seems to be denying the existence of any excessive alien-grinding but the existence of the smaller "runner-aliens" or dog-aliens from A3 and the bigger Xenobehemoths lead people to guess otherwise. Lesser critters and greater critters screams grindan' in a typical ARPG setting to a lot of people and the Aliens reduced to the role of "critters" would have been a major element of nerdrage with a lot of people. Complex character/environment interaction in a psychological horror atmosphere would have been a muuuuch better way to go with this IP, still containing more than enough action in the spirit of Aliens(1986).
I liked the dog-alien from Alien 3, I don't really care much about the design itself, it's p. tyte. It's the greater picture where this whole "variety" of Aliens suggests that bothered me. Here's to hope they'd release a complete design doc. like Van Buren if this thing is an absolute deader for sure. The truth is out there.
-olololololol.
This was also the only goddamn mainstream crpg I've been waiting for.
kingcomrade said:
The concept artwork on the first page looked really cool. All that stuff about Giger spinning in his grave or whatever was pretty silly. multiple building select ruin progaming!
Hey Kacey, have ya read the "Xenology" book? If you did, remember how the Magos Biologis Darvus was freaked out by the basic physiological similarity shared between many of the Xenos with the children of the Imperium? Despite their many differences, all are upright, bipedal humanoids that could suggest a progenitor race that seeded them all in their likeness (Old Ones). The Space Jockeys, preds and the humies all share a similar physiology in the movies too, with the Jockeys possibly being the architects of all life in the galaxy, and the developers of all its advanced technology; with the alien eggs intended as bioengineered weapons to fight other races such as the Predators? ZOMG GW RIPPED OFF BLIZZARD
AND ALIENZ!!1!!1
Also the predators are like the space niggers with all the marks of a primitive hunter culture who did not develop their technology on their own, but instead inherited or stole it from the Jockeys. It's like they stole their FTL bicycles and the jockeys made alienz to put an end to this multikult that is declining the western civilization. The fossilized dude in that ship could have been one gigantic Lyric Suite.
/\ This blew my mind.