There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Gearbox Software’s Aliens: Colonial Marines exists. There was a Game Informer cover story for the game back in 2008 that had early screenshots of the game and everything. After that came word that publisher Sega and Gearbox had gone big and hired David Weddle and Bradley Thompson, writers from last decade’s Battlestar Gallactica remake, to pen the story for this full sequel to James Cameron’s Aliens.
Sure no one saw so much as a press release about the game until 2011 when new trailers started coming out. Then it was supposed to come out in spring 2012. That happened but at least people have reportedly played the game.
Guess what? It’s all lies. Aliens: Colonial Marines is an elaborate hoax perpetrated by Gearbox head Randy Pitchford and his band of ruffians in Texas to torture people that love pulse rifles and hate aliens. Gearbox has now delayed Aliens from its fall 2012 release to February 12th, 2013.
“I am thrilled to announce the definitive launch date for Aliens: Colonial Marines,” said Pitchford on Monday. Apparently he wasn’t being sarcastic going on to describe the game as “the culmination of a life-time of inspiration from the films and relentless passion and drive from the exceptionally talented development team behind the scenes.”
Unsurprisingly, fan reaction to the fact that Aliens would release almost exactly 5 years after it made its magazine debut—and nearly 7 years after it announced it was working on the Aliens franchise with Sega—caused Pitchford to further elaborate on the delay. “We’ve remained true to our vision. We’ve been committed to it, through and through. We’ve always prioritized the goals we had for the game over any particular launch window. The game’s development has been invigorating and natural relative to our experience making games and the objectives for it. Because the game was ‘announced’ with that original press release, it might feel, to those of you who have been waiting for the game since then, that it has been in development a long time. In fact, with the release date now set, it turns out that the total development time we have spent creating Aliens: Colonial Marines is about the same length of time as we had spent creating the original Borderlands or the original Brothers in Arms, both games that we had waited to announce until we were much farther along in the development process. If you have had that feeling that you’ve been waiting a long time, then today should be a good day for you!”
Unkind, sir. Unkind. Worse still for those anticipating Aliens, this release date is only for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC versions of the game. Sega said the Wii U version’s release will be discussed “at a later time.” Ominous.
