Are LV-1201 Aliens sentient?

[predxeno]

I remember an in-game conversation in the Alien campaign where one scientist objects to treating the drones like animals and says that they seem to show signs of sentience.  If one combines that with an information in Primal Hunt that states that the Aliens have managed to find a level with LV-1201 where they can still exist without destroying the planet's ecosystem and balance.  Humans were once like the Aliens in which they destroyed everything and took only for themselves.  Now, humans are starting to help their environment live with them.  Maybe the same thing is happening for the Aliens.  Any thoughts?

[Xhan]

Any Alien shows flashes of sentience, both cause and effect and awareness self (and the end thereof). They also understand what the Jockey Artifact does and why they need to get rid of it.

The analogy falls down at equating to human intelligence, Humans intelligence is based on sorting categorized patterns to inhabit the environment. Aliens have rather need to give a rat's ass about the environment, they're largely immune to its conditions and tend to make their own right off the bat.

Equating sentience on human terms doesn't really fit.

[Kimarhi]

If I remember the dialogue right I believe they were talking about the captured Pred(s) in that scene anyways.

"I don't mind research on the drones, but these things are clearly intelligent."

Or something like that.

[Xhan]

Aye.

[predxeno]

Ah.  My bad, but still; could the xenos at least be somewhat aware what overharvesting can do to their environment?  What will happen to them if the ecosystem collapsed?

[Xhan]

Overharvesting denotes they need a cycle to continue with the environment. Per the movies that doesn't seem to be the case. As long as the Alien survives combat, maintaining the status quo doesn't seem to be an issue. They go into hibernation/estivation and wait until action is needed. They don't seem to need to eat or respirate in the conventional sense, and if they have conducive-reactive metabolism and/or their blood functions as a battery then they simply have to maintain a very low equilibrium until they need to respond to something.

[predxeno]

In other words; they kill, they wait for the ecosystem to heal, they kill, they wait for the ecosystem to heal; in a continous pattern.

[Xenomrph]

In other words; they kill, they wait for the ecosystem to heal, they kill, they wait for the ecosystem to heal; in a continous pattern.

Exactly. In a way I'd say they're almost their own population control - if they wipe out all the hosts, obviously they can't make more Aliens. Sure that could leave a whole bunch of dormant Aliens around after all the hosts are gone, but we also don't really know how long they could stay dormant for.

[predxeno]

That makes sense.  That's also what James Cameron said sorta happened in Aliens.  All the Aliens left and went into hibernation when they used up all the colonists and became active again when the Colonial Marines came in.

[Kimarhi]

I think the game was implying that they ARE intelligent through you (the player's) discernation of the dialogue provided.  Your listening to humans speak english.  You wait until the conversation is over (or I did) to kill them soaking up any knowledge they unveil, then you proceed to run amok wreaking havoc while the humans attention was on the escaped Pred and Harrison.

I remember thinking, "Hey I'M f**kING INTELLIGENT," before I got down with the facebite.

Basically I think they were going for an insult on the drones to help spur the player into action.  If you read the premission reports as well as listen to the dialogue, the drones were thought to be dummies.  But you as a player basically bring down three human population centers.

The game was always implying that you were more cunning than originally anticipated. 

Or I'm giving them to much credit as developers.

[Xenomrph]

Well I took that as YOU (the player-character) were more cunning than your basic drone buddies, who run headlong into sentry gun fire and generally aren't anything special. Then again you could say that's AI limitations, but the impression I always had was that the player-character was intelligent, even if the other Aliens kinda weren't.

The newest AvP game takes that a step further by really hammering home that #6 (the Alien player character) is special and unique, which accounts for all the amazing shit you pull off by yourself while all the other Aliens get consistently killed by Predators and Marines.

[MadassAlex]

AvP2 made Monolith's perspective on Aliens very clear -- strictly cannon fodder. Why the player Alien is so special is unclear, but every other Alien in the game, perhaps excluding Queens, aren't much of a big deal.

AvP2010 was more generous here. They used the darkness, baited you, had quite a lot of health and did significant damage in a small amount of strikes. I didn't get the impression that Six was much different than any other Alien, simply that she had the opportunity to observe the capture of her siblings and react to that, putting her down a path where human beings implicitly fed her information about themselves.

Kind of ironic, really. Because the Six was doted on as "special", she was exposed to more human behaviour and -- as per the AR example of learning that the early game explicitly draws on -- she used the knowledge her captors freely gave her to get an edge over them that other Aliens didn't. You have Weyland's speech about meritocracy to support that, which implies that Aliens learn on an individual basis. The hive being a "meritocracy" is a concept I really like, even if the Queen molting thing damaged Six's cool factor.

[Xenomrph]

I didn't get the impression that Six was much different than any other Alien

There's dialogue in the game from both that head doctor dude and Weyland who both pretty much outright say how unique and special you are, on more than one occasion.

[MadassAlex]

We don't get more detail than that, though, so there's no saying if it's inherent and Six was destined to be a Queen -- which would violate Weyland's observation of a meritocratic hive -- or whether Six had the advantage of knowledge exposure or just some quick thinking in a pinch.

Not that Weyland or the scientists have any measurable evidence of Six's superiority, since she appeared to be like any other Alien.

[Xenomrph]

But she didn't. She does an escape attempt right at birth (which gets their attention as being special), and she goes on to have multiple escape attempts and successful sabotage operations where all the other Aliens on the planet failed. Even at the very end when Weyland re-captures #6, he recognizes that she's special.