Arriving from the cold depths of space, a whole new life cycle for the universe's most-terrifying xenomorphs begins next March with the publication of Alien #1 from the new shepherds of the franchise, Marvel Comics.
Written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, creator of DC Comics' stunning dark fantasy series The Last God, with art by Salvador Larroca, this new tale will feature "both new and classic characters from Earth and beyond" and is aimed at both "longtime fans and newcomers to the legendary horror/science-fiction saga".
"The new story will feature a Weyland-Yutani mercenary named Gabriel Cruz as he battles a deadly new breed of xenomorph with the survival of his child hanging in the balance."
The recently released Blu-Ray of Justice League Dark: Apokolips War includes an animated extra feature that could be of interest to Aliens fans.
The animated short film DC Showcase: Adam Strange revolves around an incident at a mining colony with more than a passing resemblance to a Weyland-Yutani "shake and bake" enterprise, from the construction of the buildings, and the outfits worn, to the vehicles employed on site.
The plot, too, is very much an Aliens homage, with miners accidentally opening up a previously-unknown nest of insectoid xenomorphs and releasing them on them on the colony.
However, unbeknown to the colonists, instead of Ellen Ripley they have the sometime superhero Adam Strange (voiced by Charlie Weber) in their midst.
Having been whisked away from his adopted homeworld of Rann by the fickle Zeta-Beam, Strange has been stranded on this distant colony.
The loss of his family - and realisation that he may never see them again - has pushed him over the edge and Strange has become the town drunk.
The colonists have no idea who this derelict really is, until he is stirred from his drunken depression by the existential threat of the awakened monsters.
While the flashbacks explaining how Adam got where he is at the start of the story are very "comic book superhero", the majority of the DC Showcase short is pure Aliens.
And who doesn't love a "mysterious drifter saves the day" story?
Space Beastwas Fiorina 161 convict Robert Morse's first-person account of a "xenomorph" killing spree and the subsequent death of Ellen Ripley.
This pamphlet/novella was uploaded and circulated around the Frontier colonies between 2180 and 2183, before being banned by Weyland-Yutani because of the sensitive nature of the material included.
"Despite its crudeness, Mr Morse's account of the events is particularly valuable, as the facility's audio and visual recording capabilities were inconsistent. Evidence at the site confirms much of his story."
In my headcanon, Morse's testimony is the basis for the movie we know as Alien 3. But, of course, there are, at least, two different versions of Alien 3 - the theatrical release and the "special edition" or "assembly cut" - which tells me there are, at least, two different versions of Space Beast.
And all of these are subjective. I'm a big fan of the "unreliable narrator" trope and this is an ideal way to seed it into the backstory of an Alien RPG campaign.
Robert Morse
Morse certainly wasn't present for all the action, what he heard of those moments would have been recounted during a period of incredible distress and chaos, and he had no one to "fact check" with after the event.
I strongly suspect that, as one of the few people ever to survive an encounter with a "xenomorph", while Morse seemed quite rational at the end of the movie, his psyche was probably severely damaged by the incident on Fiorina 161.
So, you could argue that Space Beast/Alien 3 doesn't tell the whole story.
Perhaps some people we are told died, didn't. Perhaps Morse wasn't the only survivor, after all?
And where is Morse? Surely Weyland-Yutani didn't just let him go after he was "debriefed"?
But if he's still incarcerated at The Company's pleasure, how did he manage to write and distribute Space Beast?
Was his account originally handwritten or an oral account of the events, then transcribed by someone else? If that's the case, did this other - unknown - person add or edit anything?
Perhaps, and this is my headcanon really reaching, the much-maligned Alien Resurrection was actually Morse's deranged attempt at writing a sequel to Space Beast? Some form of Ripley fan fiction?
While Cinematic mode lets you relive the intense drama och thrill of an Alien movie, Campaign play lets you go deeper, exploring the darkness of space over the course of a long campaign, spanning dozens of sessions. There is a lot more to do in the Alien universe than fighting xenomorphs!
The map is based on the work of Scott Middlebrook, with additional work by our main setting writer and Alien franchise consultant Andrew E. C. Gaska, and graphic design by our Art Director Christian Granath.
The star map is divided into broad sections such as the Core Systems, the Outer Veil and the Frontier.
It also indicates which areas are under the general control of the main factions of human civilization, such as the United Americas and the Three World Empire, and includes many stars, planets and colonies from the Alien films as well as from video games, books and comics.
The locations and factions on the map are further described in the Governments & Corporations and Systems & Planets chapters in the core game book, both written by Drew Gaska.
TOOLS FOR CAMPAIGN PLAY
Beyond the pure setting texts describing the world of 2183 AD, the Alien RPG core rulebook will also contain a powerful array of tools for the Gamemaster to use in Campaign play.
These tools include extensive random tables to quickly create systems, planets, missions and encounters with a few dice rolls, turning the Alien RPG into an open-world, sandbox game.
Campaign play and the tools for it are built around three distinct campaign concepts, determined by the types of characters you will be playing in your campaign. The three concepts are described below.
SPACE TRUCKERS
While not as lucrative a field as it was some fifty years ago, hauling refineries and cargo between Earth and the colonies is still big business.
The advent of newer and faster FTL drives has significantly shortened the travel time between worlds, ensuring that starship crews don’t have to spend nearly as much time in stasis.
Most companies compensate their crews not only for their work but for time lost in hypersleep as well.
While most space truckers work for one corporation or another, there are also independent trader captains, smugglers, salvage crews, and privateers.
Space is big, and legally or off the books, people and things always need to get from one side of it to the other.
COLONIAL MARINES
The United States Colonial Marine Corps represents the finest fighting force ever assembled.
Technologically advanced and sporting all the latest in military hardware — a large amount of which is designed by Weyland-Yutani — the Colonial Marines are able to operate independently in nearly any environment.
Combat teams are cross-trained and can be deployed at a moment’s notice to nearly any world without extensive briefing.
Military occupations include vehicle operators and pilots, combat technicians, heavy weapons specialists, medics, engineers, and career officers.
Naval occupations are found in the USCM support service of warship and starfighter teams of the United Americas Outer Rim Defense Fleet, and there are special military R&D programs across the spectrum that require volunteers.
On the Frontier, there is always something that needs defending and some planet that needs pacifying.
FRONTIER COLONISTS
To most, becoming a colonist means you accept a hard life with little reward other than the satisfaction of a job well done.
A colonist’s hands are always dirty and their feet are always tired. Living on the edge of civilization can have its benefits, however.
Depending on your profession, the chance to strike it big could be right around the corner.
Frontier Colonists are scouts and homesteaders, farmers and scientists, miners and doctors.
Colonial Marshals keep the peace and Frontier journalists keep the colonies in the know.
Colonists are the lifeblood of humanity.
Stay tuned – and tell all of your friends to also sign up to this newsletter at Alien-RPG.com!
Right, let's get this out the way to start with: Prometheus is a good film, but not great.
There are plot holes (some of which, I guess, can be handwaved as 'the mysteries of an inhuman intelligence and its alien motivations'), there's at least one moment of giggle-stifling silliness (a key character dies under a 'rolling' spaceship like a cartoon mouse under the wheel of a car) and some very Lost-centric weird character reactions.
This latter I'm blaming totally on the unsubtle footprint of co-scriptwriter Damon Lindelof - who, of course, wrote a lot of Lost.
There are some leftfield plot twists along the way, at least one is very obviously foreshadowed, but no-one seems at all phased by these revelations and, much like on the old TV show, no-one talks about the twists and what they mean to the crew of the ship.
For instance, no-one ever addresses the fact that one of their number, the android David (Michael Fassbender), can recognise and operate the alien technology when the crew first encounters it. This is more than just knowing the creature's language given that their "interfaces" appear to be just runes carved into rock.
However, Prometheus does raise some interesting questions about the creation of life and the relationship between "creator" and "created", father and off-spring - the need for children to replace their parents etc, although I'm not convinced it deals with them in any kind of profound way.
At its heart this is a solid sci-fi flick, and under the guidance of Alien and Blade Runner's Ridley Scott it looks incredible, making no bones about being set in the same universe as the Alien franchise - from the importance of the Weyland corporation to the horseshoe spaceship found by the crew of the Nostromo back in the original Alien, along with its "space jockey" pilot.
Scientists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) have discovered a series of pictograms on Earth that suggest that we were visited by aliens millennia ago. They hypothesise that these "engineers", as they call them, created life on Earth (although that's quite a leap from a few cave paintings of giants pointing at the stars) and see the pictograms as an invitation to come and meet our makers.
An expedition, funded by the Weyland corporation, represented by the frosty Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) and her android assistant David, takes the science team to a distant planet where a landing strip and a large, pyramidal building is found.
Exploring the "pyramid", the team come across a number of stone vials, the body of a dead "engineer" and a large stone head, and it becomes clear that what they have found is not the source of human life but something far more terrifying.
Thankfully, for those not following along, ship's captain Janek (Idris Elba) gives a very heavy-handed info-dump monologue at one stage summarising the backstory... which is convenient.
Let's be clear, although set in the same universe, this is not an "Alien" film. It has a very different vibe to it, but it is impossible to divorce Prometheus from that well-loved franchise (especially the first two movies).
There are clear nods though, like meeting the crew of the Prometheus around the ship's mess table and David the android - a spectacular performance from Fassbender - does become increasingly creepy as the plot progresses.
Outside of Fassbender and Theron though the acting is nothing really to write home about, largely because the character's aren't that well developed. Try as she might Rapace can never turn Shaw into another Ellen Ripley, and a large problem I had with the film was that none of the central characters were strong enough to gain my empathy.
I was impressed by the visuals, but I really couldn't care two hoots for the characters - which runs totally contrary to the emotions generated by the protagonists of both Alien and Aliens. For all the running, screaming, explosions and CGI creatures, Prometheus feels quite hollow and, like David, soulless.
That said, the very final scene is pure fanservice for those who've come to the movie out of their love for the established Alien mythos and is almost worth the price of a ticket alone for the questions it raises...
A lot of reviews I've read state that you shouldn't go into this film with your expectations too high, and not to expect it to be of the quality of Alien, but Ridley Scott has had over 30 years to hone his cinematic craft since then.
He would be the first to tell you how brilliant he was and so, while the film's main flaws lie in with its script, Scott cannot be wholly excused and must share some of the blame for not delivering a more substantial story.
Prometheus is a triumph of spectacle over substance. With some expansion and development of the plot and characters, it could have been a classic, but nevertheless it's an enjoyable, exciting adventure that certainly paves the way - as Ridley did back in 1979 - for a whole new mythology.
For years fans were crying out for a match-up between the Aliens and the Predators, but they were less than impressed with the 2004 addition to the mythos of both these creatures: Aliens Vs Predator.
At least that had Lance Henriksen in it as Charles Bishop Weyland (the 'inspiration' for the Bishop android in Aliens) to tenuously tie it in to the earlier films.
Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem picks up right from the end of the first continuity-befuddling AvP film, with the birth of the 'PredAlien' (a hybrid Alien born out of the chest of a Predator).
It attacks the Predators on the ship and forces a crash-landing back on Earth, near the small, isolated Colorado town of Gunnerson, releasing not only the PredAlien, but hordes of little face-huggers, in the wilds.
This is a town of bland, non-entities (the only slightly famous face I spotted was Reiko Aylesworth aka Michelle Dessler from 24) meaning that anyone could die at anytime (including children and pregnant women), as none have the protection of star quality.
We are quickly introduced to an array of stereotypes - from the returning soldier who has lost her 'special bond' with her daughter, to the disenfranchised local sheriff and the recently released convict returning to his home, and delinquent brother, to make a new life - before the action rapidly escalates.
You can't fault the directors Colin and Greg Strause for the speed with which they make the carnage snowball, as the alien horde grows exponentially and the humans quickly discover that there is nothing they can do to avoid becoming monster chow.
The Predators have dispatched one of their own to Earth, presumably to clean up the mess they've helped create, and he starts butchering humans and Aliens alike in his zeal.
Before you can say "but what's the story?" the film has spiralled into a plotless gorefest of Aliens munching on humans, humans running around screaming and the Predator killing anyone he can lay his hands on.
Much of the action takes place at night, and with the town's power out, so it's often difficult to even get a sense of what's going on, but ultimately it's difficult to grow tired to watching two of cinema's greatest killing machines doing what they do best.
There are some half-decent moments - such as the ambush of the national guard, which is a low-budget re-enactment of the marine massacre early in Aliens 2 - but don't expect to remember many, or any, of the performances about 10 minutes after you've stopped watching.
In the end, it is left to the US Army's radical "evac" plan, and a cameo by Françoise Yip as Ms. Yutani, to claw the franchise back into some vague semblance of the continuity established in the first three Alien movies.
Gone are the gritty, outer space environments, the 'lived in' space ships and alien planets, replaced by everyday, contemporary Earth; reducing the Aliens to just more monsters that go bump in the night.
In theory, it's actually not a bad idea - to remind us all just how bad ass Aliens and Predators are - but it could have done with a bit more story to back it up. For lengthy sequences, this movie ranks on a par with watching someone else play a particularly violent video game.
Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem is really one for die-hard Alien/Predator completionist fans only or if you're just looking for some moving wallpaper while you do something else; don't go into this expecting anything new or inspirational and you won't be disappointed.
