Trivia / Aliens: Colonial Marines

• Creator Backlash:
  • Let's put it this way: Michael Biehn had such a bad experience working with the game that he almost refused to do Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (which he did enjoy) as a result.
  • Judging from some comments in the promotion for Alien: Isolation, it seems Sega regrets their part in this game and how it turned out, regardless of Gearbox's attempts at defending the title.
• Executive Meddling: One of the factors that allegedly led to ACM turning out the way it did was Sega mandating that the game be more like Call of Duty, with the Marines focusing on fighting other humans rather than Xenomorphs. This was reflected in a negative reaction of a lot of reviewers, who were expecting more Xenomorph-fighting. Sega was apparently also responsible for the addition of Bella to the plot, although that one isn't really a negative.
• Fandom Nod: As noted on an XBox Magazine pre-release feature about the game, Bishop's first line was supposed to be the ad-libbed "Don't ask me to do the knife trick. I can see it in your eyes." This references actor Lance Henriksen's constant requests to do said trick by many of the fans he met over the years. However, the line itself does not appear in the final game.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: The Collector's Edition of the game includes a statue of a Marine fighting a xenomorph in a power loader, a dossier of supplementary information and photos, a USS Sephora schematic, iron-on badges and digital content in addition to the Pre-Order Bonus (including a special training course).
• The Other Darrin: The Hudson bonus skin DLC had Hudson voiced by Andrew Bowen instead of Bill Paxton.
• Promoted Fanboy: The higher-ups at Gearbox were huge fans of the movies.
• Saved from Development Hell: Colonial Marines is infamous for its numerous delays and production problems. An early version (developed by Check Six Games and published by Electronic Arts), featuring the same concept - Marines go looking for the Sulaco after the events of Aliens - was announced in 2001 and cancelled sometime later. Sega announced they were working on a new Colonial Marines game (apparently unrelated to the Check Six version) in 2006, and the game was subsequently teased and then delayed multiple times. It finally arrived on February 12, 2013. Even then, several reviewers said it needed a lot more time on the polishing wheel.
• Troubled Production: Very troubled.
  • Fox had been trying to license the franchise to a qualified developer for over a decade, beginning with an aborted attempt by Check Six Games in 2001, then lining up Gearbox for the task in 2006. However, production was slow, there were a lot of "cooks in the kitchen" with different ideas about where to take the franchise, and allegedly, Gearbox was using money Sega paid them to work on other projects, rather than Colonial Marines which led to SEGA stopping development, but later gave the game back to Gearbox after the success of the first Borderlands game. In 2010, Gearbox subcontracted development of the single player campaign to Timegate so they could work on Borderlands 2, which led to Timegate allegedly discarding much of the work done to that point and began again from scratch. By 2012, most of their replacement assets were still incomplete, and Sega was becoming impatient with progress to the point they threatened legal action for contract breaching. Gearbox had to step up, try again from an incomplete product, and rush the game out the door despite knowing it was in no condition to hit the market in order to get their contract fulfilled. And on top of all that, it's been alleged that Gearbox outright stole money Sega gave to fund the project and instead funneled it into Borderlands 2 DLC.
  • From Timegate's side, insiders have alleged that Gearbox had sent them very few assets to work with, certainly not four years' worth of material, and what they did have didn't work, which was why they had to scrap most of it. Also, the script still hadn't been finalized by that point (probably due to both the development of Borderlands 2 and SEGA's demands to follow Call of Duty's lead), so Timegate was forced to continually scrap or redo content due to last minute story changes. There was also the fact that Timegate and Gearbox had diametrically opposed design philosophies. Gearbox usually takes its time with its titles to maximize quality, while Timegate has traditionally worked to get games shipped as fast as possible. The end result of the mess was a game that was hammered out in nine months from scratch that didn't satisfy anybody.
  • It also turns out that it was ridiculously easy to break the game thanks to a misspelling in the code. Scripted encounters with the Xenomorphs were head in place with the word "Teather", which led them to wander around aimlessly and not acknowledge the user at all. This would not be the case if it was changed to "Tether" (the proper spelling).
• What Could Have Been: A large amount of content was either stripped from the game or changed in pre-production, including:
  • The E3 2011 demo, which does not appear in the same shape or form during the final product. The demo included different characters (a CO who had a robotic arm, Keyes - who was present on Hadley's Hope and not just in the Sulaco), different setpieces (defending the access tunnel from a horde of xenomorphs with other Marines and multiple sentry guns, getting knocked out of Operations by a Xeno, having to outrun a Charger, fighting a Queen in the Hadley's Hope maintenance bay), and many different gameplay elements, including dynamic lighting, different backgrounds on Hadley's Hope and enemy corpses that didn't disappear.
  • Several moments seen in pre-release trailers (including a shot of the Sulaco and Sephora crashing to the surface of Hadley's Hope) never appear in the game itself.
  • The first single-player gameplay demo (from 2012) had a wide array of changes during the opening "Distress" mission as opposed to the final product. There's blood left throughout the Sulaco umbilical bridge, O'Neal is introduced when the door to the hangar bay is opened (not tending to a downed Marine), Winter has more dialogue with his CO in the Sulaco hive, and the player had the ability to wield a smartgun during the xenomorph assault in said hangar bay, among other things.
  • The game was originally planned to have no HUD.
  • A Wii U version of Colonial Marines was supposed to be released under Demiurge Studio, but due to the negative reception, SEGA canceled it.

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