How Aliens: Colonial Marines Seriously Screws Up Alien Lore

According to 20th Century Fox and Gearbox, Aliens: Colonial Marines is part of the official Alien series canon. That means the disastrously bad shooter, which takes place shortly after the end of 1986's Aliens, has ramifications on 1992's Alien 3 and 1997's Alien Resurrection (which didn't do the lore any favors either). Major ones. Aliens: Colonial Marines' storyline features some lore-breaking elements that directly contradict major events from the films and makes me wonder if Fox and Gearbox (or TimeGate, or whoever actually developed the campaign) even understand what "canon" means. Here are my three biggest problems with this incredibly damaging new version of the Alien lore. Note: We're about to delve into MAJOR SPOILER territory.



1: Hicks Lives... Somehow

Corporal Dwayne Hicks, composed yin to Ripley's yang and fan favorite, is alive. If you haven't played yet and seen for yourself (and I don't recommend that you do) you've likely seen him in the preview trailers and reasoned, "Well, this is obviously just a recording of Hicks created after the events of Aliens and before Hicks' unceremonious off-screen death at the beginning of Alien 3." That's true, as far as the recording goes, but Hicks -- voiced by actor Michael Biehn and all -- is actually physically present in Colonial Marines -- living, breathing, and fighting alongside you.


How, you ask? Good question. We're told at the start of Alien 3 that Hicks was aboard an escape pod jettisoned from the starship Sulaco, along with Ripley and Newt. The pod crashed into penal colony planet Fiorina, with Ripley the only survivor (as the franchise inexplicably washed its hands of two of its best characters).

According to Gearbox's new and "official" Alien lore, though, Hicks was never aboard that escape pod. Fooled you! In Aliens: Colonial Marines, we learn that the Sulaco was seized by the omnipresent Weyland Yutani Corporation before the ship could make its way back to Earth. Hicks was pulled from cryo sleep somewhere near Fiorina, at which point he started a gun battle and caused an electrical fire (previously believed to have been started by an alien facehugger) that led to the escape pod ejection of Ripley and Newt. Then Hicks was taken back to LV-426, along with the Sulaco, and held prisoner while Weyland Yutani got down to the business of trying to capture, study, and breed Xenos. So who was the dead body cremated in Alien 3, the one everyone was told was Hicks? No clue. Gearbox has thus far avoided trying to explain that one.

2. Hadley's Hope is Still in One Piece

Equally perplexing is the fact Colonial Marines takes place on LV-426, and we are able to return to the planetoid and explore many of its familiar places, including Hadley's Hope and the derelict alien spaceship that kicked off the chest-bursting terror phenom in the original Alien. The fanboy in me loved seeing the hallway and lab in Hadley's Hope where Hicks, Hudson, and crew made their "Oh, you want some too? Get some!" last stand, and walking around the giant alien Navigator (or Engineer, as Prometheus calls them) in the derelict was pretty damn cool. Still, seeing all of these sites made me question how the hell any of it wasn't completely obliterated by Aliens' thermonuclear conclusion.


Here's what we know: when the nuclear-powered atmosphere processing plant on LV-426 went kablewy, it was, according to milk-blooded android Bishop, comparable to a "40-megaton nuclear blast," with a radius of roughly 18 miles. That sounds like it should be a pretty thorough means of obliterating everything we saw in the film. And yet... in the levels outside Hadley's Hope in Colonial Marines, you can actually see the dome of the massive plant looming large and burning in the background, but the colony itself is still largely intact. The derelict ship? Completely untouched by the blast.

So the seemingly world-ending nuclear explosion Ripley and crew were so desperate to escape wasn't so bad afterall, Gearbox? In fact, they'd have been fine if they'd simply hunkered down in Hadley's Hope or hidden out in the derelict to survive the blast instead of going to all the trouble to retrieve the dropship. Contamination and the danger of radiation poisoning are also never brought up in Colonial Marines, which leads me to believe Gearbox's writers employed the vaunted Chewbacca Defense to explain how any of this is even remotely possible.

3. Xenos are Everywhere

Aliens: Colonial Marines takes place 17 weeks after Aliens. During that time, Weyland-Yutani Corp. has been very, very busy. It's managed to find and capture the Sulaco in the vicinity of Fiorina (which, according to Alien lore is roughly 19 lightyears from Earth), return to LV-426 (39 lightyears from Earth), construct an enormous new research facility, staff it, find, capture or somehow breed another alien queen, and have her start cranking out eggs like some sort of fertile Xeno chicken. The facehuggers that popped from those eggs were then allowed to have their way with some unfortunate, hastily gathered test humans, after which the baby Xenos chestburst to freedom, grew to maturity, were held in captivity, and studied. Did I mention they did all this on a recently irradiated planetoid 40 lightyears from Earth in just over four months?


Oh, and those Xenos are running rampant all over LV-426 (not to mention the Sulaco) by the time you arrive. If you know anything about Alien lore, it's about as easy to swallow as a facehugger embryo, particularly when you consider what happens in Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection. This is Aliens Vs Predator level of dumb writing.

Looking ahead at Alien 3, more questions are raised. Weyland-Yutani is so desperate to get ahold of the lone Xeno on Fiorina (and Ripley) that they dispatch Michael Bishop Weyland himself, not to mention a squad of soldiers, to retrieve them. Aliens: Colonial Marines makes me ask, "Why?" According to Gearbox, LV-426 is overflowing with the double-mouthed buggers, and they were still running rampant when I took off. In fact, based on Colonial Marines, it's now safe to call LV-426 the thriving Xeno home world. Why go to so much trouble to grab just one on Fiorina?

Then, in Alien Resurrection, which is set some 200 years later, it seems the only possible way to find a Xeno anywhere in the galaxy is to clone Ripley, extract alien queen larvae inside of her, and go from there. An odd choice when Aliens: Colonial Marines makes it seem like Xenos are plentiful.

It's Not Game Over, Man

Hicks lives, the prisoners on Fiorina cremated some random dude who decided to take a nap in Hicks' cryo chamber, Hadley's Hope and the Derelict are not only still standing, they're impervious to atomic blasts, and capturing, breeding, and researching Xenos, even though the queen and nearly all her eggs were destroyed in Aliens, is a snap. Welcome to the new Alien canon.

Oh, and Gearbox isn't done with the rewrites just yet. Aliens: Colonial Marines ends with Hicks, player character Winter, a new Bishop-bot, and a couple other survivors learning the intimate details of Weyland-Yutani's Xeno plans. In fact, the game concludes with Bishop telling the crew he knows "everything."

Seems like he's the only one, because based on the storyline in Colonial Marines, it appears Gearbox doesn't really know much about Alien at all.