Quote from: Corporal Hicks on May 12, 2020, 10:31:18 AM
What are people's thoughts on the (spoiler for the end of the book)
Spoiler
blue lighting continually mentioned during the hive sequence? Is it a throwback to the laser light from Alien? I'm struggling to make my mind up, as the book also references the light coming from the eggs and such.
Spoiler
I think yes and yes. Visually (in the mind's eye anyway) it has that immediate association for us from the original film to instantly let us know that our heroes are in the final level as it were, the den of the beast. Contextually for Ahiliyah it offers her an instant telltale that she's not waking in any place she's ever known or is aware of. Expositionaly, it's another callback to the unique bioluminescent traits of Ataegina's waters and given how wet things are in the hives and in the eggs and such a really nice way to create some unsettling imagery, provide the characters something to see their surroundings with that isn't ancient or Ataeginian made and also a fun callback to the rarely referenced watery translucence and inner glow from the eggs of the original film. I think the blue glow water is just infused into anything containing moisture that happened to grown in that environment.
Somewhere I've got a McFarland Alien vs Predator two figure set that features an egg with a little light inside that makes it glow from within, it's always been my favorite part.
I've always loved the laser light from the egg chamber scene in the original film, and like the AvP2 game I've always preferred to think of it as (failing) stasis field, Pilot technology that's breaking down due to age and seismic activity, the egg containment starts to breach and the acoustic warning beacon immediately starts blasting through the æther. Isolation did such a gorgeous job picking up on this theme with the Marlowe beacon scene on the derelict. I think Steel Egg is the only time it was ever inferred that the mist field was some kind of emission from the eggs themselves (thankfully the only time IMHO).
On another non sequitur side note, the bit with the water droplets dripping up from the eggs has always been another one of my favorite little details from the film, and one of the few atmospheric tidbits that I thought
Colonial Marines really got right, if I'm remembering correctly, anyway.