This is sure to strike at least a modicum of controversy.
Brian Burleson, a producer on the upcoming game Aliens: Colonial Marines, said in a recent live chat with fans that there will be no playable female characters in the game. This is of course at odds with the storied “Aliens” legacy.
Developed by Gearbox Software, Colonial Marines is a spiritual sequel to the original trilogy of films that defined the alien movie genre. It will have both single-player and cooperative multiplayer modes.
Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford wrote on the official Sega blog when the game was announced that Aliens “inspired a generation. We can see all around us the clear and profound impact the films have had on our popular culture and our collective image of science fiction.”
He admitted that the release of the movie Prometheus – by the same man who created Aliens – made the alien mythos alive and interesting again, making the new Aliens game even more relevant.
“Our vision is for the game to be fully featured with an exciting, suspenseful, thrilling and action packed narrative campaign that can be played alone or cooperatively combined with a robust competitive game where human players can take on the roles of Colonial Marines or Xenomorphs and do battle online,” Pitchford continued.
Apparently, though, the team was not very concerned about keeping true to the film franchise, in which there are plenty of integral female characters.
There is now an online petition to get Sega to reverse course and add a strong, playable woman character to the game. It was set up with a goal of 1,000 signatures and already has received more than 2,000.
Aliens: Colonial Marines will be released worldwide on February 12, 2013.
