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Cancelled RPG ‘Aliens: Crucible’ Was Meant to be a Horror ‘Mass Effect’
Those who remember the cancelled 2009 PlayStation 3/Xbox 360/PC Obsidian project called Aliens: Crucible are probably still wondering what happened that caused the plug to be pulled. In an interview with VG24/7 at Reboot Develop, writer Chris Avellone attempts to elaborate on Sega’s thinking, and what could have been.
“Aliens: Crucible was really sad to see cancelled, but I don’t blame Sega for it,” says Avellone. “It would be like…basically Mass Effect but more terrifying. We wanted to make it.” However, despite Obsidian’s enthusiasm for the project, Avellone suspected that Sega, due to publisher/management relations, “had gotten to a point where they were just tired of dealing with [Obsidian].”
An interesting point was that the RPG would have ties to Prometheus, where players flew to an alien planet where they’d find one of the ships left behind by the Engineers, as well as a valley of creation and weapon testing facilities.
“But as you’re entering the atmosphere, [you realize] that this planet is incredibly unstable, so your entire crew gets blasted all over the planet,” Avellone explained. “[T]he weird thing is that when Prometheus came out, I saw some of the similarities, [and thought] ‘oh, we had a character like that’. But the entire world was more violent and there were a lot more aliens running around. It was more a question of survival, and ‘how do we recover all the supplies, and desperately try to make a base?’ It was fun to set up.”
Obviously, the big factor in any game involving the Alien franchise is fear, which is what Obsidian wanted to focus on. “The biggest challenge we had was how to keep the fear going even in conversations. You can make conversations stressful and frightening. How do you do it so that an alien could be attacking you at any moment? You can’t take shelter in a conversation with two talking heads while you try to figure out what to do.”
Sadly, all we have left of this game is the early prototype footage. Sega eventually did give us the superb Alien: Isolation, but as always, it’s that “What if?” question…
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war, but it was a cheerful illustrator from England who helped to define the terrifying war-torn imagery that inspired what we now know as Grimdark (a hybrid genre combining horror with sci-fi/fantasy).
Unfortunately for fans of Warhammer 40,000, Trench Crusade and countless other sources of Grimdark thrills, veteran artist John Blanche passed away this week after struggling with health issues for the past few years.
While the artist retired back in 2023, he leaves us with an enormous legacy of iconic artwork that continues to inspire gamers and storytellers around the world to this very day.
The news is especially gloomy as it was only last year that Daniel Lowman and Napoleon Dynamite himself Jon Heder released The Grim & the Dark: The Search for John Blanche, a documentary following Heder’s exploration of the Grimdark genre culminating in a heartwarming encounter with Blanche in his own home.
Below is one of my favorite pieces by Blanche, his highly influential depiction of Warhammer 40k’s God-Emperor of Mankind on his Golden Throne.
We send our deepest condolences to John Blanche’s family, friends, and fans.
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