Aliens: Dark Descent - the story

  After watching another YouTube video with the full cinematics, I can tell you that I liked the story in Aliens: Dark Descent, but the same formula is starting to get old.

  You see, I loved the movies, I like the universe - especially if you consider Blade Runner as part of it, and I've also read a couple of books in the Alien universe and my impression is that with whatever you start with, even Prometheus and that crap, you will probably like it, too. However, you will start losing enjoyment as you go along, as almost every Alien story is exactly the same. You have to appreciate the Alien: Resurrection movie because, as weird and euro as it was, it felt different. I know it's an unpopular belief, but I really liked that film.

  Anyway, back to the game: aliens gets loose in a closed environment - even if it's big as a planet, there is no escape from it, and people try to survive, helped by marines and hindered by greedy psychopathic corporate shills. There, that's almost every Alien story. Sometimes they throw a Predator in there, for good measure, and lately they put Engineers in there, too, but the plot is the same. Dark Descent is no exception. There is a downed ship, some towns, a corporate tower, synths, automated turrets, APCs, marines, corporation stuff, Weyland Yutani and so on. The only difference might be the appearance of Cassandra, a woman that seems to be able to communicate telepathically with the aliens.

  Now, in the lore that is not movies, there is an extended version of the story described above where the aliens are not just mindless creatures, but somehow project this mental field that can sometimes attract some people to their side. There is also the royal jelly, a substance only the queen makes and that has great effects on humans as well. In the game there is no jelly and Cassandra's gift seems to be a genetic fluke. Whatever her abilities mean will have to wait for a sequel to the game.

  I can't say anything about the gameplay. Seemed to be mostly top down, like those cheap horror survival games that sometimes you play online, only slightly better. The cut scene animations, though, were pretty good and amounted to about two hours put together. It's funny when game companies just make full movies as an afterthought, to enhance the experience of the game proper.

  Now, about the story. There is this woman administrator in the corporation that sees aliens killing everybody and initializes the Cerberus protocol, which means satellites around the planet will stop anything from escaping, shooting everything down. Nothing in, nothing out. Even synths will make everything possible to enforce this. She ends up on a ship that gets almost shut down by the satellites, but it's a military vessel, so it survives reentry. It is her job (yours) to collaborate with the marines to save as many people as possible, get to the bottom of the mystery and, of course, live.

What would I change so that story feels fresh? Well, it's now canon that you have to have a sleazy corporate ass making everything harder. In fact, the main character of the game does start as one, only she's a good woman. I wouldn't do that. I would let the player decide the level of sleaziness and if they want to play it psycho or good guy or something in between. Basically Witcherize the game (talking about the game, not the books, where Geralt is a boyscout). Increase personal stakes, give her some competence other than "administrator" - which means she gets to move around talking to people all the time - and a secret to protect. Basically combine the main characters in the game: the admin, the father of Cassandra and the scientist.

  What if the main character is the mother of Cassandra? Maybe she's not her biological mother, to add some distance, so she could conceivably save her ass and sell her to the company. What if she is afraid something would come up and destroy her life, so she has incentives to leave everybody else behind, maybe even this Cassandra stuff. What is she is indebted to the company and she needs a way out, to add to the desperation? You could add a bit of romantic tension between the soldier and her, making an eventual death more meaningful. You could manipulate people, seduce them, intimidate them or even shoot them, kind of like Vampire: The Masquerade, adding to the agency of the player.

  Because in this game you only run a linear story. There are no alternative outcomes. You fail a mission, you die, and if you played the game already you know what's coming but you can't stop it. Just add a diversity of choice. And I know you will say that this would make the two hour cinematics be 10 hours. Not necessarily. Olden games managed to do wonders reusing parts of animations to construct multiple stories. The knowledge is there.

  Bottom line: a true Alien story, but bringing nothing new to the table. A linear gameplay, that provides little choice other than just go with the flow. The top-down thing, as well as the "command room decision" animations makes it look like a rip-off of Starcraft playing the marines, so it didn't really captivate my imagination. A decent game, but nothing more.