Josh Sawyer, a game designer with Fallout: New Vegas developer Obsidian, has shared details on a cancelled Aliens RPG that was in the works in the late 2000s.
Speaking on Twitter, Sawyer was replying to a tweet asking game studios about their “one that got away,” to which he name-dropped Aliens: Crucible, which was originally announced in 2006 by SEGA.
I got to work on an Aliens RPG for Sega from 2006-2009. 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.
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, in my opinion) shelved Aliens in favour of Alpha Protocol.
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).
Aliens: Crucible was in production for PS3, PC, and Xbox 360, and was set to “build upon the distinctive look and feel of the original films while utilising next-generation technology to create an entirely different and unique Alien experience.”
[Source – VGC]