Quote from: predxeno on Oct 23, 2016, 11:04:08 PM
Quote from: SpreadEagleBeagle on Oct 21, 2016, 07:43:38 PM
Still, I prefer my Arcturians to be humans (i.e. originally originating from Earth) as I'm not a fan of human-looking extraterrestrials populating the universe of Alien. Can't help but finding it cheap; doesn't matter it they're "created" by the same creators that "created" us, the Engineers and possibly the Predators. Just feels like a cop-out to me even though I get the inherent logic of it all. It simply doesn't jive well with me.
I don't like the sound of it either, for what it's worth; we already have too many Star Trek/Guardians of the Galaxy type stories to deal with. The Alien/AVP franchise should have been it own unique entity rather than another genre stereotype.
Here we go again with "more aliens = Star Trek", why does everyone keep assuming that?
No, it's not the case. The Engineers didn't just create us. This is a good in-universe excuse for some biological similarities.
Even in the old EU, we had things like the Reapers, humanoid green skinned aliens hunting Xenomorphs and collecting eggs to sell in a marketplace.
We had a huge orange humanoid reptile thing putting Facehuggers on a grill.
We had a primitive tribe of humanoids encountering a Xenomorph from a crashed human space ship. And encountering a human survivor who was trying to kill the Xeno.
We had an alien who crash lands on Earth, self destructs his ship and is captured by humans who caught him just in time to witness a chestburster erupt from his chest.
We see another humanoid reptile collecting Alien eggs.
Then there's the "Cravenor" and another race in the Atari Jaguar AvP game.
Also the "Giff" from Alien: Steel Egg who mention another race that seeded worlds with Alien eggs in order to wipe out life.
And obviously the Space Jockeys and Predators were present in the old EU.
We had the Mala'kak (possibly Space Jockeys) from Original Sin (I think) set after Alien: Resurrection. They had a deal with a human organization, to be supplied with hosts for Xenomorphs.
Most of those are humanoid and a few have interacted with humans in various ways. So by this logic, Alien/Predator were "Star Trek" right from the beginning.
And those are just from the old stuff. I remember making a thread where we would list all the known sentient races.
What's the key difference between Alien/Predator and Mass Effect/Star Trek/Wars?
The lack of unity. No galactic society. No alliances. The "peace" with the Predators in Rage War only lasted for a while and they're back to hunting us again.
Another huge difference is lack of communication. Us interacting with Arcturians makes sense because by Alien era standards, Arcturus isn't that far away. But did they come to help us during the Rage War? No. It was the Predators who had very personal reasons for doing so. It seems relations with Arcturians may have fallen by the far future setting anyway. We've yet to see one in a comic or movie or a novel, so nowhere near is this "Star Trek", because it it were, why didn't we see a crew member or an Arcturian citizen? Sea of Sorrows and River of Pain implied a friendly relationship but Rage War hints at a distancing from them to the point that if you're sick of human society, just go to Arcturus - or maybe it's too late by that point because the "Arcturian humans" we see were there long enough to become recognizable as such.