Obsidian confirms demise of Aliens RPG Comments by Oli Welsh

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

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

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?

I think it is a shame too.

I'd like to see a Aliens Strategy game, in a similar vein to Ground Control.

Sad news imo.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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).

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.

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).

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

+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.

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 ;-)

"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.

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

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.

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.

I really thought this had great potential- a different kind of aliens title.

I also doubt we will ever see colonial marines.

It's been a sad waste of a license- I'm sure sega has some part in the fall of it, but mostly I think it was developers who weren't up to the task.

I hope AVP at least will be released and be great.

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.

Yeah let's hope it's nothing like a title that won unanimous critical praise and many awards eh?

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 ;)

But it's recieved widespread critical and commercial sucess.

By every barometer of sucess, the game has been a widespread hit. There's no disputing that. It didn't just sell well, it's gotten praise from all quarters, the gaming public and critics alike. Hence why I mentioned critical praise as well as commercial sucess.

I'm all for having your own opinion, I can respect it and I have often disliked things that many others have loved, but you have to recognise because you don't like something, doesn't mean it's not good, just means it simply wasn't suited to your tastes. There's a difference.

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.

@ ChtonicEcho Maybe, but Mark of the betrayer was awesome sauce. (and Khelgan was hilarious)

LOL at you preferring NWN 1 over NWN 2. NWN 2 has mucho more RPG in it than 1. But all is pointless when compared to BG: 2, fallout 2, planescape, Arcanum etc

*anotehr edit*

''I'm all for having your own opinion, I can respect it and I have often disliked things that many others have loved, but you have to recognise because you don't like something, doesn't mean it's not good, just means it simply wasn't suited to your tastes. There's a difference.''

Way to go Fapula, you again say something and in the following sentence disprove your own statement. Obviously when you call something good and say someone else's opinion of something is wrong you aren't respecting opinions? In fact, I'll go so far as there is nothing to objectively say about games but sales figures, the rest is all debatable/personal. I've said this before and I'll say it again, please think more before you write.

Wow, you are a fucking idiot.

I said it simply wasn't to his taste, not that his taste sucked.

Learn to read, will you moron?

Yeah yeah, you got owned (again). Don't worry, it's nice weather outside;)

Yeah I got owned by you not being able to read. Nice logic.