Alien RPG - It's Curtains for You...

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SasqWatch
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The Guildmaster posts that the Alien RPG is no longer being worked on, and that the offical forum is coming down shortly.
Hi guys, The Guildmaster here. Rumors have circled around a bit regarding the fate of the Aliens role playing game that Obsidian and SEGA had been working on. 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. We’re going to keep this forum up for another week for archival purposes and to allow you guys to finish up any open threads, and then we will shut it down since it is no longer a product that is in development.

All of us here at Obsidian would like to thank you for your interest and support during its development, and we encourage you to check out the recent news about Alpha Protocol, which is coming to the PC, Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3 very soon!

Thanks,
-TG
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More information.
 
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This is not news I want to hear about Obsidian, I still have a lot of good will left with that development shop. They have probably sunk 4 years of effort into Aliens and perhaps without anything to show for it.

I suppose they got the Fallout: New Vegas game going forward after Alpha Protocol but it worries me when development houses start canceling games especially ones with a strong intellectual property. Hopefully they are financially healthy as I'd hate for them to be on the ropes and either close after AP is released or be acquired by EA or Microsoft and lose even more autonomy.

Anyway, I'll very likely pick up Alpha Protocol even though I have not been following it with any interest just because its Obsidian doing it.
 
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Such a shame. JE Sawyer must feel cursed. I still hope we see some leaked screens or other details just to see what gameplay they had in mind.

I'm Obsidian is miles from financially independent but AP and Fallout: New Vegas is a pretty good roster for a small dev and I still wouldn't rule out more Neverwinter of some sort.
 
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http://rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=33947&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=25

Obsidian programmer Anthony Davis explained Aliens' gameplay details
The game was most certainly NOT a grind fest. Experience was awarded for completing objectives and stealth was greatly encouraged.

Basic gameplay was your party was composed of 3 to 4 members. Party members could be from 1 of 4 different professions, marine, agent, engineer, and ugh...I forget the 4th at the moment .

In addition to stealth, party members could place traps for Aliens, such as turrets, mines, door bombs, and more. Doors could also be welded or cut to slow down Alien movement and create bottlenecks.

There was research, crafting, base defense and much more in the game and working.
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and he hinted on an unannounced project based on their in-house engine.
I was only on the project for about 5 months and then moved to SoZ, so I can't speak with 100% certainty on any of the managerial reasons.

Sega is, and I gain nothing by saying this, a GREAT publisher to work with. They work hard from their end and are really supportive. Still, economic times are hitting everyone hard, and Sega took a rather large loss this year, somewhere like 260+ million. My guess is they needed to cut corners and focus on projects that were near to completion, like AvP and Alpha Protocol..

Alien still had something like 20 months left.

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.

Do we regret losing Aliens? Absolutely. It was a great project and Sega is awesome. But who know, the game industry is funny and I've seen crazy things in my 5 years. I mean who would have guessed we would get a chance at Fallout again?
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dowon said:
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.
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Click to expand...

This is good news at least. If they can leverage the engine and toolset in another project it warms my heart and bodes well for the secret project. I'm assuming they are using the modified Gamebryo engine for Fallout so its not going to be this engine unfortunately.
 
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Well, that's good news. Mask of the Betrayer was one of the better RPGs to come out in recent years.

Sad to see the Alien thing blow, I was kind-a hoping they (SEGA mostly) had put it on like hiatus or something, so that work can resume on it when they have the cash ...
 
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There's a short list of people working on the 'secret rpg' over at GameBanshee via the codex. A new IP on a new engine would be nice.
 
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Can only hope this isn't a permanent retirement, if Sega can get a few successes, then surely a popular franchised game in the RPG sphere, 50% complete won't look so risky.
 
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Yeah, but it's also aging, some of the team members were made redundant and the others moved onto other projects. Alpha Procotol isn't out for several months, so it's a ways down the track before Sega can judge the success of that project. A revival seems unlikely to me.
 
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Sounds very over I'm afraid.

"After weeks of promising that information would be forthcoming, Sega was quick to confirm the project's demise. "At this point, Sega has no plans to move forward with the Aliens RPG," a rep told GameSpot. "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. We plan to continue working with the Aliens franchise and ask fans to be patient and stay tuned for more information about what Sega has coming out for the Aliens series of games, starting with the upcoming Alien vs. Predator game.""
 
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