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We’ve learned more details about the canned SEGA Aliens RPG courtesy of Josh Sawyer, studio design director at Obsidian who apparently was working on the project between 2006 – 2009.
These details make a long-gone heartache come back with greater intensity, like seeing a long-forgotten ex thriving as they go about their weekly food shop. An Aliens RPG would have been lush, especially when you consider the pedigree of the team behind it.
“Obsidian didn’t have directors at that time, just leads who were all considered peers. It resulted in a lot of dysfunction when the leads didn’t agree on how to do something,” writes Sawyer in a Twitter thread. “Progress on the game was very slow, especially when it came to creating workable game levels. We had another game in development with SEGA at the time, Alpha Protocol, and SEGA (understandably, IMO) shelved Aliens in favor of AP.”
Sawyer continues: “There were a lot of cool ideas in the works, but you don’t ship ideas! The biggest lesson I learned from the experience is that if you don’t have playable levels, you don’t have much of a game (there are some exceptions, of course).”
He concludes by taking solace in Aliens: Fireteam Elite, which he claims shared the RPG’s focus on a small team, third person, deployables and support actions. However, little else was similar according to Sawyer. An interestng tidbit of info on a long-dead game, although quite a bummer.
As anyone who has played a game from Obsidian knows, they make some pretty rad stuff. While everyone loves the Aliens and the action of the 1986 film, the characters and the performance of excellent actors is what keeps it timeless in my eyes. So if you wanted a studio who could name that aspect, you can’t do much better than Obsidian. These days, that is. It sounds from Sawyers’ words a tad disorganised back in the day.
Did this bum you out? I’m a tad sad after that. However, it’s not all bad news. SEGA is doing pretty good having announced their intention to aquire Angry Birds developer Rovio, and the Aliens IP continues to get love with Aliens: Dark Descent coming out later this year. Obsidian is doing pretty swell too, having released Pentiment recently which is brilliant.