Michael Biehn Says Aliens: Colonial Marines Seemed “Kind Of Passionless”

Colonial Marines

As most of us know by now, this is a game you want to stay away from. Whether it was the many reviews that scared us away from it, or your poor friend who bought it on launch day and regrets it ever since.

It has been said by IGN and GameInformer that if you remove the Aliens from the game, then there is no reason for this thing to exist. Without the movie tie-in it seems this is just a plain horrible creation which only appeals now to die hards of the series. The game that was shipped out to stores and players received some of the worst scores in recent gaming history.

Origins

A game with the same title was originally developed by Check Six Games, and slated for release on the Playstation 2 in 2001. This version of the game was cancelled before release.

In December of 2006, Sega announced that they had bought the electronic rights to Aliens from 20th Century Fox. Shortly after the announcement, Gearbox Software stated that they would be working on an entirely new game in the franchise. It was not until 2008 that the game was revealed to be Aliens: Colonial Marines.

There was a whistle blower at Gearbox who alerted Sega that the company was shifting people and resources away from the project and using them for Borderlands 2 while accepting milestone checks as if the game was being developed by a full team. This led to the title being cancelled once again, restarted later, and eventually shipped. If you are interested in more of the scandal you can check out this www.destructoid.com article.

Actor’s Comments

Michael Biehn is an actor who also does voice work for video games. He appeared in the 1986 film Aliens, so has some amount of say-so when it comes to the franchise. He recently returned to the series with Colonial Marines and had some harsh words about it. He states that the game “seemed kind of passionless” and that his work on it “wasn’t fun at all”.

Michael continues his work in the field, and voiced Sergeant Rex “Power” Colt in Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. During his work on Blood Dragon he noticed a complete reversal of tone from the developers. He has nothing but praise for the creative director of the project, Dean Evans.

“Dean is such an interesting and creative presence. He has such energy and such passion. One of the things that I really, really enjoy working still in this business is finding people that have that kind of passion. He was talking to me about the game and the fact that it was an ’80s throwback, and there would be a lot of lines that were Arnold Schwarzenegger-like, that were [Sylvester] Stallone-like, Bruce Willis, myself. Those kind of lines, that kind of vibe, and the fact that it was going to be a throwback to the ’80s was something that I thought was interesting. But really it was his passion, man. You just can’t say no to him.”