Anthony Davis said:
What you call "developers feel compelled to be original, albeit in completely unoriginal ways" is not even remotely accurate in this case.
and then
Anthony Davis said:
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.
Funnily enough, I don't remember such new wild designs from either AVP games to give "the players something new". The games just kept throwing aliens at you, and guess what: mainstream reception was very high and they sold very good.
This leads me to think that you have adapted so good to unoriginal way of thinking, you don't even realize you're being unoriginal. You have this whole angle of "gotta shock/surprise the player!" mindset. Compare that to total screen time of the alien in Alien, the best movie in the series: it is pretty insignificant. Yet, it's still a brilliant movie even after you've seen it several times and the initial shock of finally facing the alien washes off. Now, Aliens was pretty much the opposite of that and introduced a lot of new things, but apart from the queen, nothing really served to "shock/surprise the audience with new & cool stuff!", plus they didn't rape the basic alien design beyond recognition, which is about, quoting myself:
a cold killing machine that's an amalgam of sexuality and rape in its biomachine-like anatomy and aesthetics.
If people bought into this with 4 mainstream titles in cinema and 2 mainstream games, they will buy into it with more games. Somehow, I think that if either movie in the series suddenly started to show bizarro aliens, it would be pretty much disconnected from the rest of the series, and would hardly make a profit, if at all.
Tell me I'm wrong on either of all those points and explain, instead of sighing.
Anthony Davis said:
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.
Indulge us. I had some faith in an Aliens RPG because the setting is full of intriguing elements. Corporate interest conflicts, humanitarian questions, basic survival with limited supplies, camping among survivors ie. civil unrest, conflict between civilians and military/security force in a situation going to hell millions of miles away from anywhere that's somewhere in the universe etc. An Aliens RPG may have had a lot more interesting situations for a good RPG than most other settings.
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.
How so? It's a
motion tracker. Did the "cloaking" alien move super slow and smooth, with a startling patience to do so? Or too fast for motion trackers to pick with their tracking intervals, and perhaps intelligent to notice that that beeping sound emanating from those weak flesh creatures has something to do with signaling his location?
Fourth, these two new creatures were used sparingly.
Ie. boss fights? Because if you have new creature types, and they are used sparingly, in video gaming jargon, it almost always means boss fight.
Again - not that any of this matters.
It does to us, players, and those of us who sound bitter may not be giving it out, but speaking for myself at the least, I appreciate any bit of information you give here.
Fat Dragon said:
I'd be very happy if they just keep their Alien RPG designs and ideas, and make their own original sci-fi/horror RPG with them one day. The thought being stuck in giant ship or station sealing up doors and setting traps for god-knows-what in a desperate attempt to stay alive sounds great. Makes me think of a System Shock 2 with squad control.
Actually, it
sounds better than System Shock 2 on certain aspects on paper.
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.
At least something good seems to have come out of this. Here's hoping that whatever this secret project is, it's the kind that leaves better initial impressions than AP.
