Game News More Aliens RPG: A gameplay video appears!

[Stabwound]

Yeah, this just looks like a Mass Effect ripoff. Nothing of value was lost.

 

[PorkaMorka]

You could make a good RPG set in the Aliens universe, as long as it was a squad based tactics RPG with combat mechanics that were either classic turn based, simultaneous turn based or real time with pause + detailed order planning. I'd take a page out of Odium's book and put in resource management as a key element.

But the only advantage of the Aliens license would be sales. Otherwise, it would mostly be a limitation, since you'd be stuck with a limited number of monsters to fight and a lot of restrictions on what you could put into the game. You could work around this by putting in a fair amount of battles against other humans though.

I stopped watching that video when the player character ran up and started "tanking" the big alien while shooting her.

 

[Darth Roxor]

The part where the marine stands there toe-to-toe with a xeno just getting whittled down is particularly egregious...

I stopped watching that video when the player character ran up and started "tanking" the big alien while shooting her.

ffs niggers, it may look bad, but in that scene the player had an obvious IDDQD mode in. His health was getting immediately back to 100% each time he took a hit.

 

[janjetina]

A popamole shooter that looks even worse than Alpha Protocol. They should have flushed twice after taking that dump. Now the tiny pieces are backing up and my nostrils are offended by the stench.

 

[Crispy]

ffs niggers, it may look bad, but in that scene the player had an obvious IDDQD mode in. His health was getting immediately back to 100% each time he took a hit.

I hadn't noticed that, it looked to me like it was slowly going down.

If you're right, though, do you really believe the gameplay illustrated in this game would have come anything close to representing how fragile the marines were compared to the xenos? Sure, it was an RPG, so the guys have got to stand some chance of surviving an encounter, but here's where the beauty of TB combat comes in.

 

[Trash]

Sounds and looks like it had awesome potential. Depressing, especially when you compare this to the abortion they apparantly preferred.

 

[mindx2]

Green triangles, red Xs, and "press A to cancel"... smells like console-trash to me...

 

[Indranys]

And the moral of the story is:
Be careful of what you wish for.

And don't pitch games to publisher with shitty combat and over consolized UI as features, because fortunately publishers have pride and self-esteem too.
AND that goddamn alien voices!

 

[J_C]

LOL at you bashing the game, after seeing ONE alpha gameplay video. You bunch of morons! You wouldn't have liked it, wouldn't have played it. I would give it a try. But who am I talking, I LOVED ALPHA PROTOCOL THIS MUCH!!!

 

[tuluse]

publishers have pride and self-esteem too.

 

[Tel Prydain]

Fucken really?! "Looks like console shit". “Popamole.” "Should have been TB". WTF Codex. Are you goddamn high?
What the fuck did you THINK this was going to be? The next big TRUE rpg? No? Then why the hell are you shitting bricks when it turns out that it would have been exactly what we THOUGHT it was going to be?

Obsidian are not good at systems or engines – that’s a goddamn given at this point. Anyone who thought that Obsidian might be using this to make something turn-based had their heads up their ass.
Obsidian ARE good at occasionally sneaking real RPGing into existing shithouse frameworks.
FONV was shit combat, in a shit engine with shit character building- and it still managed to be a slightly-less-shit-than-normal game. Expecting anything more than that makes you the fucking retards, not them.

At this point I'm actually glad it'll never see the light of day. If it wasn't going to be done in TB, or at least in RTwP, and if it wasn't going to be isometric, but rather in that ridiculous... like, what, one-quarter OTS view???... then forget it. It would've been very disappointing.

What the fuck are you smoking that you even considered briefly that it might NOT be a pop-a-mole, bullshit shooter? What, you thought Sega was looking at Mass Effect, the only other AAA sci-fi RPG, and said, “Fuck, look at all the goddamn money that turd's making – let’s NOT copy that shit.”

 

[some guy]

Looks all right to me. Basic FPS functionally, a bunch of stats, some team NPC's and some basic squad commands. All with an Alien settings. Enough to get me interested.

 

[The Bishop]

It would be stupid to criticize this thing from a technical standpoint.
Having said that, it appears to have a very forgiving gameplay, which means no scare, and no fidelity to the original material...

Actually criticizing technical side is pretty much the only meaningful thing you can do with this video, because there's not much else. The game looks like it's on "let's put stuff together and see if our tools work" kind of stage. Nothing about actual gameplay is finalized in such an early build, everything is placeholder, and most stuff isn't even implemented.

 

[Outlander]

Why has the acid blood been nerfed so badly? The little amount they spill melts through how many inches of steel?

That was a face-hugger, not an adult. In Aliens, droplets of their blood can't even go through a human's leg, even though it still stopped the character from using it. In Resurrection, it takes all the blood of an adult to melt though steel.

Resurrection is shit so who cares what goes on in that turd. In Alien, a squirt of blood from a face hugger eats through a few levels of the Nostromo.

 

[Roguey]

SMOKE 'EM IF YOU GOT 'EM
HOLY SHIT

Heh, I remember when that first video was leaked and Annie was all "That's early footage! It totally looked so much better when it was canceled!" Now here we are with a video from December 2008, two years into development, a mere couple of months away from cancellation, and it looks like garbage. Absurdian employees are so absurd they don't even know how absurd they really are. I'm glad this shit shooter with dialogue was canceled so Josh was free to work on New Vegas, a much better shit shooter with dialogue.

Obsidian are not good at systems or engines – that’s a goddamn given at this point.

No it isn't. Onyx is a fine engine, Sawyer's system improvements to F:NV were great, DS3's were good for what they were given the time/budget they had.

 

[Crispy]

Retarded rant

Eh, Obsidian's made a few of my favorite RPG's in the past, but what the fuck do I know?

GUESS I SHOULDA FIGURED, HUH?

 

[Sannom]

Resurrection is shit so who cares what goes on in that turd. In Alien, a squirt of blood from a face hugger eats through a few levels of the Nostromo.

Yeah, a face-hugger, not an adult. Aliens was the first to show us if the adults' blood is corrosive. As it turns out, it is corrosive, just not to the point of melting steel. It can eat through flesh, but apparently a few drops can't eat through bone.

 

[Tel Prydain]

No it isn't. Onyx is a fine engine, Sawyer's system improvements to F:NV were great, DS3's were good for what they were given the time/budget they had.

I’ll give you Onyx, but you’re missing the point I was making. The core of my little rant is that Obsidian take other people’s goofy shit and make something playable out of that goofy shit. Therefore the presence of goofy shit in this (Alpha!) trailer is par-for-the-course and means exactly nothing.

I fucking love FONV and the improvements to the gamebro engine were pretty great ‘for what they were’, but it still had the same crappy core and that caused no end of problems (lack of NPCs, splitting Vegas, etc).
Josh Sawyer must have sold his goddamn soul to some pretty fucken dark demon to achieve what they did with that game. But it’s good despite of Beths goofy engine/combat/etc, not because of it.
Ditto AP – any good found in the game is there despite the Sega mandated bullshit.

And that’s what any rational person would have been looking for in the Aliens RPG – Obsidian would still be getting the same retardo input for Aliens as they were getting for Alpha Protocol, so goofy crap like suggesting it should be TB, RTwP or isometric is just showing a massive disconnect with reality.

Eh, Obsidian's made a few of my favorite RPG's in the past, but what the fuck do I know?
GUESS I SHOULDA FIGURED, HUH?

Rock on, brother. I can only assume that a world where someone can believe that Sega might actually be funding a AAA isometric, turn-based Aliens RPG is a world full of optimism, joy and probably shit-loads of weed.

 

[DeepOcean]

I don't believe the gameplay would be much different in the final version of the game. It was a good thing for Obsidian that SEGA cancelled this game, the problem is that the Alien franchise don't mix well with the modern popamole tradition. The thing that is exciting on Aliens is the suspense and fear that depends on the threat offered by the aliens, judging by this video, that suspense and fear would evaporate as soon as waves and waves of easily killed aliens attack. The modern popamole tradition demands predictable, easy to kill enemies and the consoles can't have more than 4 aliens at same time on the screen so no chance of being attacked by a swarm of aliens. To genenerate a good amount of suspense would be necessary to make the game really hard, the player should scavenge for scarce resources and be chased by something that they can't win in the end, this would cause frustration on the average console gamer, Obsidian would inevitably be forced to compromise and the end result would be a weak experience.

 

[M0RBUS]

Has combat = sucks.

 

[Infinitron]

It was a good thing for Obsidian that SEGA cancelled this game

Except for the people who got fired, amirite?

 

[PorkaMorka]

Fucken really?! "Looks like console shit". “Popamole.” "Should have been TB". WTF Codex. Are you goddamn high?
What the fuck did you THINK this was going to be? The next big TRUE rpg? No? Then why the hell are you shitting bricks when it turns out that it would have been exactly what we THOUGHT it was going to be?

Obsidian are not good at systems or engines – that’s a goddamn given at this point. Anyone who thought that Obsidian might be using this to make something turn-based had their heads up their ass.

I just double checked the thread and nobody said that they thought that the game was going to be turn based.

 

[DeepOcean]

It was a good thing for Obsidian that SEGA cancelled this game

Except for the people who got fired, amirite?

Obsidian already have a reputation for making buggy games ( no more buggy than other companies on my opinion), being a developer without massive publisher marketing support that can turn shit into gold on the minds of the retarded, if the game was released and turn out to be mediocre good for what it is (I really believe it would be really hard for Obsidian to convince SEGA to release a non-popamole game) I can see gaming journos using the opportunity to show how much integrity they have: "Another mediocre, buggy game released by Obsidian, REMEMBER ALPHA PROTOCOL GUYZ".

Obsidian didn't had options here: to make a popamole game ( and completely miss the suspense and fear from aliens) or make a harder game and cause frustration on console gamers. It is as I said the aliens franchise don't mix well with popamole tradition. Even with all the shit Gearbox is getting from Aliens: CM, they have Boringlands that garantee they continue to make money, if it was Obsidian being in their place... . The project was doomed from the start, SEGA wanted the Call of Duty audience and not some survival RPG game that is why they cancelled the project when they realized that Mass Effect gameplay wasn't working and decided to invest all the money on Alien:CM.

 

[Dexter]

I just double checked the thread and nobody said that they thought that the game was going to be turn based.

At this point I believe you could post a video of Quake III: Arena or Tribes 2 and you'd get half a dozen people arguing how it would play better if it was turn-based.

Nothing says "horror" like all the aliens standing there patiently waiting their turn till the player is ready to do something.

That said, this looks like shit though, pretty much as expected and SEGA made the right choice for what they had to work with.

 

[PorkaMorka]

I just double checked the thread and nobody said that they thought that the game was going to be turn based.

At this point I believe you could post a video of Quake III: Arena or Tribes 2 and you'd get half a dozen people arguing how it would play better if it was turn-based.

Nothing says "horror" like all the aliens standing there patiently waiting their turn till the player is ready to do something.

Aliens isn't a horror movie, Aliens is an action movie about a squad of soldiers. Alien was the horror movie.

RPGs with a party or companions aren't usually very scary, although in theory it could be fun to keep introducing companions and then killing them off over and over.