Obsidian confirms demise of Aliens RPG

By Oli Welsh Published 29 June, 2009

Rumours finally laid to rest.

Obsidian has confirmed that the Aliens role-playing game it was developing for SEGA has been canned.

In a post on its forums, an Obsidian staffer said, "Unfortunately, it is true that we are no longer working on the game, and we wanted to finally announce that officially to everyone who has been following its development... it is no longer a product that is in development."

SEGA subsequently confirmed the news, spotted by Giant Bomb, with a statement. "At this point, SEGA has no plans to move forward with the Aliens RPG. The Aliens franchise offers us so much content to choose from that we feel it important to take a step back and carefully consider the type of game we want to release," the publisher said.

Rumours that the Aliens RPG had been cancelled and staff laid off surfaced earlier in February over at Kotaku, but even recently, SEGA staff were insisting the project was going ahead.

SEGA has two other Aliens projects in development: a new Aliens vs. Predator from Rebellion, due in early 2010, and Gearbox's Aliens: Colonial Marines. Both are first-person shooters due to arrive on PS3, PC and Xbox 360, as the Aliens RPG had been.

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About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (28) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • ChthonicEcho #1 3 years ago

    I am sure whoever will miss this potential title has never played Neverwinter Nights 2: Tales of Mediocrity.

  • lucky_jim #2 3 years ago

    Am I the only person who thinks this is a shame, then?

  • AphoticCosmos #3 3 years ago

    Obsidian got dealt a harsh blow by their publisher in KotOR II's development by being told to rush the game. Now it looks like it's happened again. Will EA hurry up and buy their studio, then add it to the new BioWare Mythic RPG team, please?

  • hoof #4 3 years ago

    I think it is a shame too.

  • muscleblade #5 3 years ago

    Sad news imo.

  • mkreku #6 3 years ago

    I was really looking forward to this. Lead designer, J. E. Sawyer, seemed excited about this project and the tech sounded like it was heading in the right direction. Oh well.

    Alpha Protocol (from the same developer) is coming out soon at least!

  • UncleLou #7 3 years ago

    Damn shame. Obsidian are probably the best writers. I want more games from them, not less. :-(

    I am sure whoever will miss this potential title has never played Neverwinter Nights 2: Tales of Mediocrity.

    Your profile says you gave both NWN 2 and MotB an 8/10. Hm.

  • Triggerhappytel #8 3 years ago

    This is a bit shit that Sega aren't trying to support any Aliens games outside of FPSs. I'm not entirely sure if an Aliens RPG would have worked very well, but at least it would have been thematically and stylistically more interesting than the awfully generic-looking Alpha Protocol.

    Shame. I wish some publishers would put a bit more faith in Obsidian and give them a bit more creativity, because I think as a studio they could be almost as good as BioWare.

  • Sub-kamikaze #9 3 years ago

    Does anyone remember the PC CD-ROM Aliens game? It was a strange hybrid of a game, not quite a point and cllick adventure and not quite an RPG. It was also fundamentally broken and the puzzles made next to no logical sense.

    Still loved it to pieces.
    Edited by 1 at 29/06/09 @ 09:49

  • schnide #10 3 years ago

    I was never quite sure how this was going to work.. but that doesn't mean I didn't want it to. Cest la vie!

  • marilena #11 3 years ago

    I was really looking forward to this game, but I guess that most people couldn't care less, which is why SEGA went for a simpler proposition (shooters).
    Edited by 1 at 29/06/09 @ 10:05

  • ChthonicEcho #12 3 years ago

    Your profile says you gave both NWN 2 and MotB an 8/10. Hm.

    At the time, I was trying to justify my choice to buy those two games by forcing myself to think they were actually good. Eventually, I failed. Obsidian raped D&D in those two games, and stated on the forums numerous times that they have a 'quantity over quality' mentality. That just fucked me off beyond belief. Instead of improving what was good in NWN1, they either replaced a certain element with a rubbish version of it, or removed it altogether. That is inane.

  • UncleLou #13 3 years ago

    Well, I don't agree with that at all. I thought NWN1's singleplayer was complete rubbish, and NWN2, and even more so MotB, showed that Obsidian are the true heir to the throne of the Bioware RPGs of old.

    Don't know about "raping D&D", I am not interested in the rules per se (or the tabletop game).

  • kencleary #14 3 years ago

    In complete agreement with UncleLou. While NWN2 was somewhat bland it was lightyears ahead of NWN1 and MoTB was one of the most enjoyable RPGs in years. I think Obsidian could have done a great job with this and i think SEGA have killed the most promising of the trio of Alien games in production!

  • DrRobotnik #15 3 years ago

    Was looking forward to this. Shame.

    Not sure why it is Obsidian get such a bad rep. Sure, they aren't BioWare, but I enjoyed KOTOR2, and I'm pretty sure they'd have made a decent RPG out of this license.

  • Evolution #16 3 years ago

    Agree with Lou and Ken here, didn't like NWN at all and although NWN 2 was better I wouldn't call myself a fan. MotB was brilliant however and reminded me of Planescape: Torment in some ways.

  • Triggerhappytel #17 3 years ago

    Nope, the Gearbox Aliens FPS is still in development but has dropped into next year now. I believe they are working to finish Borderlands first (which could be great), and intend to finish Colonial Marines in Q1 next year. My guess is it'll slip to next Summer though.

  • ChthonicEcho #18 3 years ago

    Don't know about "raping D&D", I am not interested in the rules per se (or the tabletop game).

    I am, the nerd that I am. We're going to have to agree to disagree. Different strokes for different folks.

  • Jockie #19 3 years ago

    It seems somewhat odd to me to have 3 Alien games releasing, two of which sound rather similar (Colonial marines & AvP) and which doesn't (RPG), then cancel the title which gives your product range more variety in favour of the two shooters, but oh well. Kinda figured this was done when Fallout Vegas got announced.

  • Orange #20 3 years ago

    +1 to Ken and Lou.

    Big shame this, I love Obsidian's work and seems from the last couple of titles that they've finally started to get a grip on the technical side, which was their weakness.

    Hopefully Alpha Protocol is a big success, would give them more clout then.

  • bodypopper #21 3 years ago

    An RPG never struck me as a good idea anyway.
    I suspect Colonial Marines will be pushed further back to make way for AvP. And if the latter doesn't do well then Colonial Marines will be scrapped.

    Yes, I'm feeling optimistic today ;-)

  • UncleLou #22 3 years ago

    "I am, the nerd that I am. We're going to have to agree to disagree. Different strokes for different folks. "

    Fair enough - out of interest though, did it mostly annoy you that NWN2 bent any D&D rules (something I wouldn't even notice)? Because in terms of actual gameplay, I found NWN1 really lacking - not the least because one of the defining elements of D&D games was missing - tactical battles with a party - which is something NWN2 and MotB had in spades.
    Edited by 1 at 29/06/09 @ 14:11

  • metalangel #23 3 years ago

    So NWN2 isn't just all user mods where the premise is "you are a scantily clad Drow female with big norks. Sex ensues"?

  • ExplodingClown #24 3 years ago

    Shame. Just as Fallout 3 showed you could have a hit with non-fantasy, non-Japanese RPGs, this gets canned. Ah well, I suppose it's back to the sodding Elves/Orcs, bishie boys/purple-haired girls treadmill. Balls.

  • ChthonicEcho #25 3 years ago

    Fair enough - out of interest though, did it mostly annoy you that NWN2 bent any D&D rules (something I wouldn't even notice)?

    I was more annoyed by the shoddy interface, horrendous optimization and Obsidian's incredibly poor choice when it came to adding new content in following expansion packs. For example, Mask of the Betrayer is about consuming souls; in PnP, there's a prestige class Soul Eater, which happens to be one of the fun classes, with such abilities as temporarily taking the form and abilities of your victim whose soul you've consumed. Nope, let's add a thoroughly raped version of the Stormlord. That's right, a druid of a poison deity can now sling electricity! As if the game didn't already have enough 'gain resistance to x, deal x type of damage' prestige classes.

    It's like going to the film based on a book. If you've read the book it's based on, you'll be annoyed by any inconsistencies present in the film unless other elements of the story or setting make up for it.

  • Silvervein #26 3 years ago

    While initially not quite fond of obsidian after playing kotor2, I changed my mind after playing neverwinter nights 2. I positively loved the story there (not really caring about ruleset as long as it's not being put on its head).
    I have my doubts about making aliens into roleplaying game though, but it might be because I'm decidedly not a fan of horror movies and their tie ins...So the news of cancellation of this project don't really upset me that much.
    Who knows, maybe they will have more time to work on something else?

    PS.
    Fallout 3, in my opinion, is not a roleplaying game. It's a poor mans shooter getting off on cheap slow motion gore with the only goal: to collect trash and gear. And the quality of story 'writing' there is below nefarious. Not to mention voice acting. They should get some sort of award for setting new standards in bad voice acting.
    Which of course, is only what I think about that game personally. I mention it because obsidian is working on a tie in. Fallout vegas. Initially I hoped for the best, but when I heard they were forced to use fallout 3 engine and gameplay...eh. Still, maybe at least the writing will not be a mess there.

  • Silvervein #27 3 years ago

    McDonalds did too. Yet I didn't hear anything about special classes for professional cooks dealing with intricacies of making their menu. Number of sold units doesn't automatically translate into quality ;)

  • Silvervein #28 3 years ago

    Oh, I fully agree with you.
    If I was the only one, I'd fully put it down to my taste. That's not the case though. But I'll let it drop. At the very end, it's only about comparing tastes of people, and when it comes to that, there's nothing that can be called universally good. Except two things, that's water and air.