That’s a big no-no, admits Gearbox’s Brian Burleson. The cat got let out the bag. It’s now 2013 bound but the team is ”nearing Alpha, and we’ve already starting polishing”.
Just because you’ll be blasting Aliens all the time doesn’t mean there’ll be a lack of variety. See, those xenomorphs are sneaky devils. Gearbox wants you paranoid of hidey holes.
The studio, developer of Borderlands, is being careful and respectful of the Aliens universe. They’ve had some pretty long discussions with Ridley Scott the creator of the iconic film franchise. Gearbox has been lucky enough to get hold of Scott’s original concepts, which explain how the Aliens came to be. It’s let them experiment a little.
”We’re not doing anything too crazy, the Crusher’s the most unique of any of them, but at the same time from a gameplay perspective he might not be the most interesting one,” said senior producer Brian Burleson in our interview. He was referring to one of the new types of xenomorphs introduced with Colonial Marines.
”When you just see their behaviour in the films it’s a lot different when you actually play the game. When you look at the Lurker we showed in the demo, that’s kind of the alien from Alien, it’s a lot more of a stalker – it’ll sneak around, hide in corners and jump out at you.”
”The Soldiers are the kind you see in Aliens, there’s a lot more of them and they’re a bit different in the Hive hierarchy, on their own they’re not as effective as they would be in packs. So there are differences even within the single xenotype of Alien. You’ll see more soon,” teased Burleson.
We’ll feel the heat of playing the lamb among lions, and those acid dripping xenos ”might even make it a little darker by cutting the lights!” In fact the environments we’ll be exploring are literal death traps for us humans as the Aliens can come from practically anywhere. We all know the future involves a lot of vents and grills strewn about the place.
”The best thing about this is that the Aliens aren’t a one-trick pony, because the environments make such a huge difference to how they play. When you’re running through this room you’re not going to see much, and how many places can the xenos come from? The windows, the flooring, every corner you turn has some hidey-hole one could pop out from.”
”You get these dark places in the game where you do feel scared because there’s so many points of possibility! Every environment’s different, you always have to be on your feet, and that gives the concept a lot of legs. You can really make some interesting combat encounters,” he explained.
This is not Aliens vs. Predator; that was a different beast.
”Well they were three games in one, and that’s kind of difficult to do. In a gameplay sense the differences are quite pronounced. As mentioned we’ve got a lot farther with our environments and how we use them with the xenos, we play up the sense that xenos can be very lethal depending on what place they’re in.”
”In AVP they’re just generally lethal but it’s easy to figure out their tricks, they’ll always come at you in the same way.”
Check out our full interview with Brian Burleson as we discuss Aliens: Colonial Marines, which releases on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC February 12th, 2013. Better start taking some motion tracker lessons.
”Hell yeah, if you don’t use the Tracker properly you’ll probably get killed. The tools are exceptionally important, and the Marines that are with you are just as important. If you hear something moving around you definitely need to pull out your Motion Tracker, cause it could be running through the ceiling or the ground, or even the grate behind you.”
”It’s a great tool to have, and everyone who makes an Aliens game has to focus on getting it right.