Aliens: Colonial Marines Mistakes You For a Man

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
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Aliens: Colonial Marines Mistakes You For a Man

The Aliens: Colonial Marines preorder video invites you to "follow in the footsteps of legends."

On one hand, most of us have done this before. On the other hand, gearing up in state-of-the-badass-art and going on a bug hunt in the sort of thing that never really gets tired. Thus we have Aliens: Colonial Marines, which quite clearly isn't going to forge any new frontiers but will probably be pretty cool anyway.

And if you preorder, as this new video shows, you'll be able to play online as the baddest of the badasses: Hicks, Hudson, Drake and Apone, four of the lean, mean, Colonial Marines who got chewed up and spat out at LV-426. Apone and Drake look a little off, at least in the very brief flash in which they're seen, but Hicks and Hudson are just about dead-on.

The obvious question is, where are the rest of the badasses? Drake was a cool dude, but where's Vasquez? What about Dietrich and Ferro? And if you're offering us "legends," how can you possibly leave out Ripley? The preorder bonus also includes Ripley's flamethrower, but that's Hicks waving it around! Gearbox faced an uproar over the absence of female characters in Colonial Marines, which was particularly odd given the central role women played in earlier this month [http://www.amazon.com/Aliens-Blu-ray-Sigourney-Weaver/dp/B004RE29PO/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1347555810&sr=8-3&keywords=Aliens] that female marines will in fact be playable online.

So where's Vasquez, Randy?

Aliens: Colonial Marines [http://www.amazon.com/Colonial-Marines-Collectors-Edition-Xbox-360/dp/B007P0X7IA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347555833&sr=8-1&keywords=Aliens%3A+Colonial+Marines] comes out on February 12, 2013, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.


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chiefohara

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Sep 4, 2009
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Oh Dear... reinforcing failure here i see.

Considering the strength of the female protagonists in the series i'm kinda surprised they've just gone with the male grunts.

Do they not expect women to buy this game at all?
 

Krantos

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Jun 30, 2009
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I'm confused.

They said there will be female characters playable in the game. So.... you're complaining because they're not shown in the video?

Are you just fishing for controversy at this point?
 

The Material Sheep

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Nov 12, 2009
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Krantos said:
I'm confused.

They said there will be female characters playable in the game. So.... you're complaining because they're not shown in the video?

Are you just fishing for controversy at this point?
Well... I mean... two of the most bad ass characters in the series were female... and they weren't featured where as these guys were... I can understand the sentiment.

I mean come on... Ripley's flamethrower but no Ripley? When the game already faced controversy for a lack of female marines? Just seems like an odd bit of logic.
 

Jhooud

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Nov 29, 2011
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Krantos said:
I'm confused.

They said there will be female characters playable in the game. So.... you're complaining because they're not shown in the video?

Are you just fishing for controversy at this point?
I think he's just wondering why the bonus doesn't include Ripley and Vasquez as named characters rather than just want - and I'm assuming here - will be a random female grunt. Seems like this whole female character thing really caught them off guard - which is kinda surprising considering the character at the heart of the films is a woman - and they're still playing catch up.

Either that or there's some weird licensing thing going on. Either way, they still have time to get Vasquez and Ripley in there.
 

gardian06

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I know they are going to have Ripley, and Vasquez be Wii-U exclusives, and boom games sold
 

rbstewart7263

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There just holding out till later. That's just good business.:/ wait sorry hold on,THE SEXZISM IT MA GURDD! was that the reaction you were lookin for?
 

Legion

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Oct 2, 2008
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Probably because the trailer was made before the "Where are all the female characters" controversy perhaps?
 

Dogstile

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Legion said:
Probably because the trailer was made before the "Where are all the female characters" controversy perhaps?
This. Poor attempt at getting everyone to be all OMG, NO GURLZ. Do we really need to be fueling the sexism fire again?
 

Upbeat Zombie

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I was originally pretty excited for this game. But from what I've seen it's just a little baffling the direction they took it. It just seems they're trying to shove as many little nods to the movies as they can into this game.

Captcha: "on a boat", aren't we all captcha, aren't we all.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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The problem with articles like this is that those wanting to create a spectre of feminist contreversy are not going to be happy with any reasonable answer.

To be honest I'd say that the big reason why Ripley isn't playable is because for one she's NOT a Marine, and on top of that as the series hero she'd probably be overused and wind up having to be unfairly favored.

When it comes to Vasquez the issue might be that her defining trait was that she was a heavy gunner as opposed to carrying the same ordinance as the other marines. Tossing her in without the defining character trait, which could cause some game balance issues, would just be tossing in a token female character for the sake of having one, which is allegedly what those complaining about this stuff are also against.

From the way the statement reads it mentions that players will be able to play female marines in multi-player, but the way it's stated doesn't lead me to believe that means female marines from the movie. If they go in the direction of othr shooters I'm guessing they will have you take a generic avatar and customize them with unlocks and such, and there will be a female model for the ladies out there. Of course that's purely guesswork.

To me this smacks of a witch hunt, in general Borderlands (by Gearbox) has given us at least one female character in each installment, Borderlands 2 is going to have TWO of them (one as later DLC), as well as creating the somewhat iconic "Mad Moxxie" character. Getting on their case for not having Vasquez or other female characters in the game (or potentially not having them) smacks of entitlement at the very best, and honestly in cases like this when the entitled start being catered to it leads to all those token characters that never really fit in, an wind up making the problem allegedly being addressed worse.

Of course none of this might matter, Vasquez might be in the game, but they just didn't squeeze her into the trailer for whatever reason. To be honest I wouldn't get especially concerned unless her trademark heavy gun shows up and isn't overpowering... if it is overpowering, again that sort of explains why you wouldn't want to write in a character who by definition should be starting with one (as opposed to a general rifle) and using it all the bloody time. Vasquez with a normal kit, isn't Vasquez anymore... see what I'm saying?
 

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
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WHERE'S WIERZBOWSKI?

Anyway, it's hardly an attempt to stir up trouble, and the whole "made before the controversy" thing doesn't hold water because according to Pitchford - as I said in the post - Gearbox had been planning to include female characters anyway. And does it really take that long for a major game studio to whip up a single skin?

It's a simple fact: Drake is cool but Vasquez is far and away the "dominant" gunner in Aliens, and her omission from the "movie character pack" is glaring.
 

Canadish

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Jul 15, 2010
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2/10 article. Would not read again.

You need to be more subtle if you wanna start a gender war.

(The game itself looks alright I guess.)
 

shintakie10

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Canadish said:
2/10 article. Would not read again.

You need to be more subtle if you wanna start a gender war.

(The game itself looks alright I guess.)
This entire thing has never been simply about the lack of female characters. The series that the game is based off of has been entirely about women. Its main protagonist was a woman. Technically speakin its main antagonist was female. To completely exclude women like they originally had planned to is against the very ideas of the IP the games are based off of.
 

Realitycrash

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Andy Chalk said:
WHERE'S WIERZBOWSKI?

Anyway, it's hardly an attempt to stir up trouble, and the whole "made before the controversy" thing doesn't hold water because according to Pitchford - as I said in the post - Gearbox had been planning to include female characters anyway. And does it really take that long for a major game studio to whip up a single skin?

It's a simple fact: Drake is cool but Vasquez is far and away the "dominant" gunner in Aliens, and her omission from the "movie character pack" is glaring.
Remind me again; Who was Werzbowski?