Let's Read the ALIEN RPG

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Well, kinda exactly, it's NOT the best a rich man could put together - it's a bunch of incompetents hired by his daughter who thinks the entire thing is a farce.
Weyland from that TED talk sound like the kinda guy that would leave the most important undertaking of his life to someone else? Anyone else? Maybe David...
 
I still haven’t seen Covenant. It’s yet to wind up on any of the streaming services I have, and I don’t feel like buying it….my days of buying movies are long gone, even digitally.

But I am curious to see things continue from Prometheus. I’m interested in seeing more of David.
 
Weyland from that TED talk sound like the kinda guy that would leave the most important undertaking of his life to someone else? Anyone else? Maybe David...

Weyland is "dead", remember?

But that aside, these people aren't there to help him, Weyland doesn't care about the archeological or scientific aspect of the mission, they are there purely to appease Shaw and Holloway.
 
I still haven’t seen Covenant. It’s yet to wind up on any of the streaming services I have, and I don’t feel like buying it….my days of buying movies are long gone, even digitally.

But I am curious to see things continue from Prometheus. I’m interested in seeing more of David.

I don't like Covenant as much as Prometheus, but I still hold it in much higher esteem than I think the general audience, mainly because I also was mainly interested in David as the primary antagonist/anti-protagonist. If Prometheus is At the Mountains of Madness, Covenant is House of Frankenstein. It plays out much more like a classic Gothic horror from Hammer Films.

Plus, what other film will you ever get the chance to see Fassbender try to seduce Fassbender?
 
A you can tell by this thread, the movie is polarizing, but it's on my top ten films list of the last decade and sitting pretty on my top 100 favourite films ever made. There are three main reasons to see it:

1) the visuals - it's an extraordinarily beautiful film

check out just the opening scene


2) Fassbender - as mentioned by others, his performance is exceptional. Prometheus and Covenent are both far more akin to Bladerunner than Alien, and Scott's fascination with humanity as viewed through the eyes of AI



3) the story - Prometheus has been compared to Lovecraft's masterpiece At the Mountains of Madness, and while I see the analogy as apt, I think that it touches on a much more fundamental concept of science fiction and human nature. It asks the questions "where did we come from?" and "what is our purpose/place in the universe?" and sets out to provide answers, even if those answers aren't the ones we want to hear. It takes two perspectives on those questions - the religious one built upon faith and the coldly scientific one based upon reason and juxtoposes these views when they come face to face with humanity's creators.


Well, the problem with Prometheus is the same as Revenge of the Sith. Absolutely stunning cinematography, one absolutely standout performance...and not much else.

Maybe Scott was raising the question “Where do we come from?”, but what he needed to be answering was “Where do the Xenomorphs come from.” Give Lindelof an Alien script and what does he do? Answer everything with the X-Files Magic Black Oil that does whatever you need it to in order to paper over any holes in the story you can’t be bothered to deal with.

Is the space jockey an engineer? Maybe one afflicted with gigantism and then placed in 2 feet of suit.
Why do the Xenomorphs make nests and have bodies shaped like the interior of the ship?
Is the Space Jockey ship filled with eggs to be an Engineer Genocide Ship?

So far the cycle is Black Oil on humans gives you Neomorphs. Neomorph DNA plus Engineer DNA plus Neomorph implanted stuff on Covenant Planet plus a crazy Android give you Praetomorphs. David tells W-Y about Praetomorphs and that he wants to perfect them. Supposedly David turns Praetomorphs into what we know as Xenomorphs, so the question remains?

How did David created xenomorph eggs get into the Space Jockey ship? That derelict craft there for so long the Space Jockey body was completely ossified is now...less than 20 years old.

The problem with Scott is the same really as Lucas. Being a brilliant filmmaker and spending decades having Hollywood and everyone else worship the ground you walk on doesn’t give you the license to flush the films you made decades ago down the toilet so you can create your new “artistic masterpiece”.
 
Weyland is "dead", remember?

But that aside, these people aren't there to help him, Weyland doesn't care about the archeological or scientific aspect of the mission, they are there purely to appease Shaw and Holloway.
Yeah but he’s not actually dead, so taking a look at the Bios of the people who will be on the Mission to Make Him Immortal kinda seems like something he’d interest himself in.
 
Maybe Scott was raising the question “Where do we come from?”, but what he needed to be answering was “Where do the Xenomorphs come from.”

Yeah, I get that was the expectation most of the audience had coming into the film, as it was pitched as a prequel to Alien. And I get why so much of the Alien fans were disappointed the film really had nothing much to do with Xenomorphs.

But I don't personally care, Xenomorphs have been so played out to me over 30 years. I am a thousand times more interested in The Engineers and AI/David.
 
Yeah but he’s not actually dead, so taking a look at the Bios of the people who will be on the Mission to Make Him Immortal kinda seems like something he’d interest himself in.

Again, they have nothing to do with that mission, they are there as part of Shaw's expedition as a pretense. Weyland doesn't need any of them, he needs someone to translate and communicate with the Engineers so he can ask his question, and do his dirty work. David fulfills those roles all by himself. Weyland doesn't even bother coming out of cryo until the team members are dead.
 
A you can tell by this thread, the movie is polarizing, but it's on my top ten films list of the last decade and sitting pretty on my top 100 favourite films ever made. There are three main reasons to see it:

1) the visuals - it's an extraordinarily beautiful film

check out just the opening scene


2) Fassbender - as mentioned by others, his performance is exceptional. Prometheus and Covenent are both far more akin to Bladerunner than Alien, and Scott's fascination with humanity as viewed through the eyes of AI



3) the story - Prometheus has been compared to Lovecraft's masterpiece At the Mountains of Madness, and while I see the analogy as apt, I think that it touches on a much more fundamental concept of science fiction and human nature. It asks the questions "where did we come from?" and "what is our purpose/place in the universe?" and sets out to provide answers, even if those answers aren't the ones we want to hear. It takes two perspectives on those questions - the religious one built upon faith and the coldly scientific one based upon reason and juxtoposes these views when they come face to face with humanity's creators.


I'll say it to anyone who stands still long enough to listen, we need a final installment of the franchise with David as the central character.
 
I don’t know but I’m guessing the Xenomorphs were wholly lab creations? They don’t seem “natural”.
 
I don’t know but I’m guessing the Xenomorphs were wholly lab creations?

Ahhhhhh....yes and no, it's actually pretty complex. But Xenomorphs don't appear in Prometheus at all, except on a mural on a wall.
 
Is the space jockey an engineer? Maybe one afflicted with gigantism and then placed in 2 feet of suit.

Yes. Or, one type of Engineer, specifically a Mala'Kak. As is shown in Prometheus, the Engineers can genetically engineer themelves for specific purposes. And they stand 9-12 feet tall.

Why do the Xenomorphs make nests and have bodies shaped like the interior of the ship?

I'm not even certain what you mean by that question - they make nests because they are animals and instinctually do so like every other animal species. I don't know exactly how you mean by "bodies shaped like the interior of a ship", besides the fact that both the Engineers ships and the Xenomorphs are biomechanical creations that are "grown" rather than built, so I guess there's that similar HR Giger aesthetic.
Is the Space Jockey ship filled with eggs to be an Engineer Genocide Ship?

Maybe. Prometheus doesn't deal with the ship that is discovered by Ripley's crew in Alien. There are a lot of questions still surrounding that. Shaw interprets the goo as a biological weapon, and David certainly uses it as such on the other race created by Engineers that David encounters in covenant. But I don't think that's exactly correct, and think the opening scene in Prometheus contradicts that. Its also clear that the Engineers "worship", or at least place some sort of theological importance on xenomorphs. I have my own theories, but I don't think the interpretations of the humans in the films is meant to be relied upon.

So far the cycle is Black Oil on humans gives you Neomorphs. Neomorph DNA plus Engineer DNA plus Neomorph implanted stuff on Covenant Planet plus a crazy Android give you Praetomorphs.

David doesn't have access to Engineer DNA yet, as of Covenant. The aliens at the start of Covenant are not Engineers - that seems to be a common mistake.

Whatever the "recipe" for Xenomorphs as they appear in the Aliens films, we dont really have it yet. Covenant shows us more steps along the path, but we weren't there yet.


David tells W-Y about Praetomorphs and that he wants to perfect them. Supposedly David turns Praetomorphs into what we know as Xenomorphs, so the question remains?

Yes, that question remains. I personally find it to be one of the least interesting questions of the series, but that was what Salvation, the third film in the trilogy was set up to answer. Sadly, looks like we will never get it after the Disney buy-out.



How did David created xenomorph eggs get into the Space Jockey ship? That derelict craft there for so long the Space Jockey body was completely ossified is now...less than 20 years old.

I'm not sure I understand that question. You're talking about the ship in Covenant? David grew the eggs himself out of the bodies of the aliens. But there's no ossified Space Jockey body on that ship.
 
So these Engineers were the beings who created humans and xenomorphs?
 
So these Engineers were the beings who created humans and xenomorphs?

They created humans - or at least, seeded the planet with the potential for life, and things evolved naturally from there, possibly guided at the beginnings of primitive civilization by them. They are indirectly responsible for xenomorphs in some way, but it's still ambiguous - I think the safest answer is they provided the biotech that made the creation of xenomorphs possible (although that may have been provided to them by their creator(s). Theologically, the Engineers are like angels and the xenomorphs demons. There's something else beyond the Engineers, but we haven't gotten there yet.
 
Yeah, I get that was the expectation most of the audience had coming into the film, as it was pitched as a prequel to Alien. And I get why so much of the Alien fans were disappointed the film really had nothing much to do with Xenomorphs.

But I don't personally care, Xenomorphs have been so played out to me over 30 years. I am a thousand times more interested in The Engineers and AI/David.
Everyone wants to know about the Space Jockey. But completely ignoring all we knew about the species and the Xenomorphs in Alien is dismissing his prior work. Who cares about AvP and Dark Horse, about Alien 3 and whatever the fuck Resurrection was, this was Ridley Fucking Scott about to give us a real prequel to Alien and...that ain’t even close to what we got.
 
I watched Covenant when on a long ass flight to Tokyo (this is my general approach to watching movies that I expect are going to be pretty bad. I'm stuck in a plane for 14 hours, and I can't sleep on planes, might as watch random bullshit).

It's not great... but it is better than people give it credit for. And yeah. Fassbender is 99% of the reason it is worth watching.
 
Again, they have nothing to do with that mission, they are there as part of Shaw's expedition as a pretense. Weyland doesn't need any of them, he needs someone to translate and communicate with the Engineers so he can ask his question, and do his dirty work. David fulfills those roles all by himself. Weyland doesn't even bother coming out of cryo until the team members are dead.
Dude, you’re going out into Space. Where you’re flash frozen and go through vacuum decompression if anything at all goes wrong. Even if that doesn’t kill you, radiation is likely to, and don’t me started on the likelihood of finding an atmosphere that doesn’t dissolve you and your ship. They were not in a time of Space Truckers where trips to a different spiral arm of the galaxy are commonplace.

You do not suffer fools on a mission like this, I don’t care how seriously you believe that you’ll actually find aliens, or if all you care about is talking to an engineer. If you have a crew of fuckups, you’re not going to live long enough to do anything out there.

The idiocy of the crew beggars belief, and the idea that they’re gonna accept just any old rando to go on this mission is laughable on it’s face.
 
Dude, you’re going out into Space. Where you’re flash frozen and go through vacuum decompression if anything at all goes wrong. Even if that doesn’t kill you, radiation is likely to, and don’t me started on the likelihood of finding an atmosphere that doesn’t dissolve you and your ship. They were not in a time of Space Truckers where trips to a different spiral arm of the galaxy are commonplace.

You do not suffer fools on a mission like this, I don’t care how seriously you believe that you’ll actually find aliens, or if all you care about is talking to an engineer. If you have a crew of fuckups, you’re not going to live long enough to do anything out there.

The idiocy of the crew beggars belief, and the idea that they’re gonna accept just any old rando to go on this mission is laughable on it’s face.

The crew of the ship itself is top of the line. All we're talking about is two scientists who are kinda dumbasses who form part of a mission that doesn't matter to Weyland. He left his daughter in charge of hiring the research team for Shaw and Holloway and she deliberately picked some idiots, because who else but idiot scientists are going to go looking for aliens. It doesn't affect Weyland in the slightest. He has the pilots, which are top in their field, and David, who is the pinnacle of competence, and that is the crew. The two idiots are not "the crew", they have zero to do with the operation of the ship , and are in cryo-sleep the whole trip, ad like Shaw and Holloway are deliberately expendable, there solely on the pretense that this is Shaw's mission.
 
Everyone wants to know about the Space Jockey. But completely ignoring all we knew about the species and the Xenomorphs in Alien is dismissing his prior work.

Well, Ridley made it very clear that this was a prequel to Alien - the first film, and that's it, and it doesn't contradict anything in that film.
 
I watched Covenant when on a long ass flight to Tokyo (this is my general approach to watching movies that I expect are going to be pretty bad. I'm stuck in a plane for 14 hours, and I can't sleep on planes, might as watch random bullshit).

It's not great... but it is better than people give it credit for. And yeah. Fassbender is 99% of the reason it is worth watching.


I disliked it the first time I watched it, but over time I've come to like it more and more. It's not as good as Prometheus or Alien/Aliens, but it is fascinating, and I'd rank it 4th in the franchise overall. You can tell though, it was made because of the fan outcry over Prometheus not being about the Aliens. So, Scott was like: fine, here's half the film I want to make, and half a recreation of the first Alien film. And , predictably, all the Alien stuff is boring, and all the David stuff is awesome.
 
Well, Ridley made it very clear that this was a prequel to Alien - the first film, and that's it, and it doesn't contradict anything in that film.
I do love how he never comes out and says he's ignoring everything from ALIENS, because he knows it'll piss everyone off. And yet...
 
What is considered canon for the Roleplaying game? I’m just curious about what I really should watch vs fluff.
 
I do love how he never comes out and says he's ignoring everything from ALIENS, because he knows it'll piss everyone off. And yet...

Aliens is like T2...it seems like a pretty direct sequel on the surface, but the closer you look, the more it undermines what was established in the first film. Sure - the alien queen is awesome (like the T1000 is pretty awesome) visually, but she actually makes no sense and is completely unnecessary in the life cycle of the xenomorph - especially if one considers the deleted scene from the original film that shows the xenomorph transforming one of its human victims into an egg.
 
What is considered canon for the Roleplaying game? I’m just curious about what I really should watch vs fluff.

I think all the films except for the Aliens vs Predators ones - and maybe not Aliens: Resurrection, since the game takes place hundreds of years before that. Very early in the thread I asked about Prometheus and Seadna confirmed it was part of the game's canon.
 
This all seems very interesting and we are barely talking about the aliens, which I find to be the least interesting thing in both movies I’ve seen.

Yeah, there’s a philosophical angle to Prometheus that is far more interesting to me than the origins of the Aliens. I mean, I think the Aliens work better when unexplained, honestly. They’re more a metaphor anyway.

Who was the giant mummy in the first Alien movie? I’ve never really felt the need to know. Mnay habe though, and I think that expectation is a big part of the problem that people have with Prometheus.

Having experienced the same expectation shattering disappointment with Alien 3, I can understand it. But if we take the movie on its own terms, there is less to criticize (still some things, but less).
 
I think all the films except for the Aliens vs Predators ones - and maybe not Aliens: Resurrection, since the game takes place hundreds of years before that. Very early in the thread I asked about Prometheus and Seadna confirmed it was part of the game's canon.

Yeah, the Prometheus stuff is absolutely in the game. I think it assumes everything in the films through Alien 3, and also a good chunk of comics and novels, although some things are necessarily changed to be more cohesive.
 
There’s Dark Horse stuff in there, and they’re definitely including Prometheus/Covenant. They have stats for Neomorphs, Praetomorphs and Xenomorphs. The Black Goo is a thing, and one of the setting mysteries so far is who is using the Black Goo to wipe out colonies (been two so far IIRC, and the PCs are involved in one of the incidents in one of the adventures). They break down the Praetomorphs and Xenomorph lifecycle and different forms.
  • I. Ovomorph (Egg)
  • II. Facehugger
  • III. Chestburster, Queenburster, Imp
  • IV. Stalker, Scout, Drone
  • V. Soldier, Worker, Sentry
  • VI. Praetorian, Crusher, Queen
  • VII. Empress, Queen Mother, Palatine, King (hinted that there’s rumors of such things but no facts or stats)
There’s no Predators mentioned (I’m sure Alien, AvP and Predator are completely different licenses because Corp) or any Resurrection Easter Eggs that I’ve seen.

Alien 3 thing they’re kind of (at this point) keeping it a mystery. The Sulaco is presumed lost with all hands and everyone knows Hadley’s Hope blew up on LV-426. The prison complex on Fiorina-161 is closed down, and one of the surviving inmates wrote a book about it, Space Beast that is being completely suppressed by the Gov’t and W-Y, but of course is spreading around the spacelanes anyways. That the Sulaco made it to Fiorina-161 and crashed there isn’t mentioned with any certainty.
 
I want to see Dutch Schaefer in a future sourcebook, dammit! More badass than any Colonial Marine.

85B60C17-21E3-4997-8875-748908E80972.jpeg

That quote would work for an Alien movie.
 
I want to see Dutch Schaefer in a future sourcebook, dammit! More badass than any Colonial Marine.

View attachment 34706

That quote would work for an Alien movie.
They could have Dutch and Mike Harrigan on ice just in case of some Predator event. Maybe they want to keep two guys who have killed Predators around because they’re the only ones the Predators respect.
 
I love Arnold but I don’t want to see him in another Predator...or any other movie for that matter. If they want to CGI him for Terminator movies still, that’s fine.

He's done some low budget, character based genre films and I find him quite charming. After 40 years of movie making he has also actually developed some decent acting chops.

maggie-6066.jpg
 
I disliked it the first time I watched it, but over time I've come to like it more and more. It's not as good as Prometheus or Alien/Aliens, but it is fascinating, and I'd rank it 4th in the franchise overall. You can tell though, it was made because of the fan outcry over Prometheus not being about the Aliens. So, Scott was like: fine, here's half the film I want to make, and half a recreation of the first Alien film. And , predictably, all the Alien stuff is boring, and all the David stuff is awesome.

I felt Covenant worked better just in terms of suspense/horror and Fassbender of course. Not a patch on the first film of course but I don't consider any of the sequels remotely equal to the first film.

The documentary on the making of Alien, Memory: The Origins of Alien is quite good btw.

 
The role-playing game's default setting is shortly after ALIEN3. Morse's book about what happened of Fury has leaked across the network and more stories are floating about the frontier about ancient alien ruins, strange creatures and conspiracies among the major political players/corporations.

Prometheus
Alien Covenant
Alien
Alien Isolation
Aliens
Alien3

These are all canonical and form the core of the game's setting, while supplementary material coming from unused scripts, novels and comics fleshes it all out.

Alien Resurrection
AVP
AVP Requiem

These are all non-canonical. The license includes nothing from Predator. A:R is probably included in the license, but is centuries away, if it happens at all. While Alien3 is divisive, few seem to give a shit about Resurrection, including anyone involved in making or managing the franchise overall.

It is worth mentioning that the Colonial Marines book and boxed campaign both push forward the timeline a bit, effectively nudging events and changing the dynamic of some of those major powers. How canonical this is... Who can say. I'm sure any new movies or the upcoming TV show will ignore these events if they don't fit.

I don't know where the new Aliens video game will fall. It probably depends if anyone likes it...
 
Why do the Xenomorphs make nests and have bodies shaped like the ship?

This almost sounds like a nod to an idea a scriptwriter (blanking on his name, sorry) had published in Starlog that the alien craft the eggs were found in in Alien was actually a nest built like a spaceship by the Xenomorphs solely to lure victims inside.

....I didn’t say it was a good idea.
 
Wouldn’t the bodies be like to camouflage themselves inside their own craft?
 
Wouldn’t the bodies be like to camouflage themselves inside their own craft?

A very valid point, but that wasn’t the route he went in what, in retrospect, seemed like a mini-pitch for him to write the script for a third movie not too long after Aliens released.
 
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