Gearbox Clarifies Aliens: Colonial Marines Chronology, Has Movie Callbacks

Brian Burleson, the senior producer at Gearbox working on Aliens: Colonial Marines, says that his team worked closely with Syd Mead, the man who designed the Aliens movies, and film studio Fox in order to ensure the authenticity of the video game experience.

The developer tells VG247 that, “Chronologically we come after Aliens and Alien 3 about 17 weeks after Aliens. But in the universe the films are history at this point, so there’s a lot of neat things to recognize and nod to. When you go through those environments, those things happened.”

The fact that the atmosphere processor has been blown up and that a fight took place in the operations area is clear to the player and the team was very careful to create new areas which felt organically connected with those seen in the Alien movies.

Burleson adds, “Going into those spaces again was really easy to do in collaboration with FOX as we respected it so much, but a lot of times they deferred like, ‘Oh, Syd Mead designed the concept for the Sulaco. That’s official because he did it.’ That makes sense.”

The decay of the facility is also clear and creates a sense of urgency that the movies also instilled.

Gearbox is also littering the game area with a number of collectibles, ranging from dog tags from killed Marines to the shotgun that Hicks used, which will also connect the video game and the movie that came before it.

The new Aliens game has both single-player and multiplayer modes and wants to recreate the claustrophobic atmosphere of the movies while making aliens a fearsome foe once again, both quick on the move and deadly when they attack from the shadows.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is set to arrive on the PC and on home consoles on February 12, 2013.