Quote:
Originally Posted by
Nexus-7 
They could have gone several different directions. It could have been a prequel game with Hadley's Hope. A few enterprising company men(or women) with a few Marines go to check out the place before the events of Aliens without changing anything in Aliens or leaving behind any evidence they were there.
Actually (and I say this without a comprehensive knowledge of the
Alien tie-in material/expanded universe, so maybe it's been done,) if you really wanted to do a prequel game, why not do the story of
how Hadley's Hope got doomed? It's pretty clear from the movie that there was a struggle, but beyond the fact that Burke initiated the re-investigation that led to the disaster, there's not a lot made clear about the details/timeline (aside from the deleted scene where Newt's family does the discovery,) so there's your opening: start off in a kind of
Half-Life mundane-fantastic way with a routine investigation on orders from some suit back at Corporate going unexpectedly wrong.
From there, write in the colony's small guard team, sent out to check out the derelict while Newt's face-hugged dad is being held for examination; maybe have that go a little wronger, or maybe have them "safely" bring back an egg for examination and comparison. The game can follow them around as the whole thing comes apart at an increasingly frantic pace, first trying to contain the threat and protect the civilians, then developing into an all-out pitched battle against the xenomorphs, and finally culminating in the player character, the last surviving member of the team, making a last desperate dash to a station where they can send out a distress call before the battle is finally, completely lost. It could work, I think; outside of
Halo: Reach (and some classic arcade games that just didn't have a "win" condition,) the idea of a doomed-to-lose game pitting the player against literally impossible odds is pretty unexplored territory, and the
Alien franchise is a natural fit for it.
