Former Obsidian Director speaks about “Dysfunctional” Environment during Development of Sega’s Cancelled Aliens RPG
Progress on the game was very slow, especially when it came to creating workable game levels. We had another game in development with SEGA at the time, Alpha Protocol, and SEGA (understandably, IMO) shelved Aliens in favor of AP.
— Josh Sawyer (@jesawyer) April 16, 2023
In the past, the Alien franchise has had a strong association with shooter games. However, in the 2000s, Obsidian Entertainment attempted to change that by developing Aliens: Crucible, an early Onyx engine game published by Sega. The game was touted as “Mass Effect but more terrifying,” but unfortunately, it was eventually shelved with little explanation. Recently, Pentiment director Josh Sawyer spoke about some of what he described as the “dysfunction” surrounding the project.
Sawyer explained that he worked on the Aliens RPG for SEGA from 2006 to 2009. During that time, Obsidian didn’t have directors, only leads who were considered peers. This led to a lot of dysfunction, particularly when the leads didn’t agree on how to handle certain aspects of the game. Despite having a lot of cool ideas in the works, progress on the game was slow, and as Sawyer put it, “you don’t ship ideas.” One idea that has been described elsewhere was that squadmates could get impregnated, and the player would have to decide whether to mercy kill them, put them in a sleep chamber and use them sparingly, or simply let them pop.
Sawyer’s biggest takeaway from the experience was that if you don’t have playable levels, you don’t have much of a game. As a result, Obsidian moved on to develop Alpha Protocol, a secret agent RPG that still has a small but fervent fanbase to this day.
