Back around the time of Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006), Disney approached the studio about making a Snow White RPG. "There were a lot of mechanics we were designing for Alpha Protocol 2 that could find their way into either another espionage game or another role-playing game." Chris Avelloneīut Aliens: Crucible isn't the only project Obsidian has had canned. "Sometimes it results in lay-offs, which are really painful because it's nothing the developers have done and it's not that the developers were doing a bad job - they're skilled people - but at the same time you can't keep them because you can't afford them, and those are the worst conversations in the world."īut in the case of Aliens: Crucible there was a silver lining: "Sega was paying us to develop our own tech," he explained, "so we're like OK, we walked away with an engine. "Usually publishers will cancel quite suddenly, there's little or no warning, and that causes a lot of problems at this studio in terms of well, now we have to get another project signed. "The consequences are a little bit more severe than that," Avellone corrected me. The game's cancellation was an obvious blow to Obsidian Entertainment, which had its work amount to nothing and had to find another project to work on. Years later, Aliens: Colonial Marines emerged, a fact I'm sure Sega won't want reminding about. Sega said at the time that it need to "take a step back and carefully consider the type of game we want to release".
"There was a lot done with it," Chris Avellone rued, "and man I'm really sorry that I didn't get a chance to do it, but things just didn't work out." "One of our designers mentioned that it was actually a milestone build from like a month or two before the actual vertical slice. "There was a vertical slice of it and I don't know if the video that was released was the actual vertical slice that we had," he said. It may not have been the most up to date video of Aliens: Crucible, either. This content is hosted on an external platform, which will only display it if you accept targeting cookies. But in reality it was a brushed up portion of the game not representative of, but a kind of target for, the whole. "Ī a 13-minute gameplay video of Aliens: Crucible appeared on the internet earlier this year and showed a game that, at a glance, could have been the finished article. "There was a lot of game design being done: obviously the narrative was down, the systems were down for what we wanted to do, all the companions had all the breakdowns for all of their narrative arcs, the concept art followed that. "It was mostly just focused on the vertical slice of gameplay that was solid. "No, I don't believe that was the case," he said. That must have been a comment praising the quality of the game's vertical slice build, because to hear Chris Avellone talk, the game wasn't ready to ship at all. Obsidian boss Feargus Urquhart mentioned a couple of years ago that Aliens: Crucible "looked and felt like it was ready to ship". So it's more of a third-person, two companions with you survival game, but it had a lot of the RPG trappings in terms of you could set up your own stronghold and base and build that up over time, explore more of the environment, figure out how you get all of the resources and stuff to survive."Ĭhris Avellone reckoned it was "shaping up to be pretty strong", but Sega pulled the plug in 2009, three years after it was first announced. "If you're dealing with a ship repair mechanic who may have no combat experience whatsoever, that obviously would serve a vital function in surviving in this predicament. "It was third-person, obviously over-the-shoulder, you create your own avatar in the Aliens universe, you guide a squad of - it's not like a Marine squad, it's a whole mix of different individuals who happen to be in this one location at this one time, which allows for a lot more variety," explained Chris Avellone, Obsidian's creative director, speaking to me at Rezzed 2013. The Aliens: Crucible RPG that Obsidian was building for Sega was a kind of survival game that allowed you to build a base and improve it over time.