Aliens Bishop

[xeno_alpha_07]

Link?

You'll need to use Internet Archive to access it now but here's a link:

https://www.angelfire.com/al/metalalien/index.html

[Kimarhi]

Still waaay worse than anything the "new EU" has given us yet.

I prefer the old EU so far.  And I'm personally defining the old EU as anything before the Disney acquisition, especially the darkhorse to marvel changeover.

The Marvel stories are bland and soulless entries.  Even though I've only been getting them as TPB so I can't speak for the last series as it is not available yet.  I expect that I will like it better just given the synopsis, but can't say for sure. 

Technically TCF was an old EU book by that standard, but I do think that Into Charybdis is the singular best novel in the Alien universe.  So the new EU scores a win here for me, BUT it is based as a continuation off a story in the old EU.  It captures the feel of the first two movies, flips some common plot points around (that have still been done before in the old EU), and has a more serious and somber tone that is missing from a HUGE portion of the EU. 

I also think that A:FTE also captures the feel of the old EU, but it isn't polished enough to win me over against games like the OG AvP or AvP2 or even Isolation, which despite being no fun to play is a great example of the Alien universe made interactive in just its presentation and worldbuilding.  It might be the most immersive Alien game ever made. 

New EU is still in its infancy, and is pumping out media like it aint no thing, so surely it will have some hits, but I grew up in that magic time where the series had unlimited potential and you could see threads of it in the stories of the old EU.  So far I'm seeing retread of old stories in most of the new EU, and some attempted fanbaiting with all the links to the old alien stories........instead of new ideas.  It is kind of a shame that FTE released without more polish, because it had potential that wasn't fully realized.  Especially since it wasn't beholden to previous locations or characters. 




 

[BlueMarsalis79]

To me: Old EU, everything before Alien Isolation, New EU, everything after Alien Isolation.

(I might say Prometheus in 2012, but ACM came out in 2013 and it is pretty definitively not part of current proceedings, The Weyland Yutani Report in 2014 made that fairly obvious.)

Because to be clear, in the past decade since the Weyland Yutani Report and with Alien The RPG, a more concerted effort by Dark Horse and Titan had their version of the universe more neatly woven together.

The Marvel stuff to one side, it is my understanding, that canon and continuity continues today, or am I mistaken?

[Corporal Hicks]

Old EU is anything prior to Titan. In-house at Fox there was a soft reset of anything prior.

How it's looking to shape up after the merger...Marvel is doing its own thing. Titan seems to still be sticking to the the state of the EU they had with Dark Horse.

[Engineer]

Old EU is anything prior to Titan. In-house at Fox there was a soft reset of anything prior.

How it's looking to shape up after the merger...Marvel is doing its own thing. Titan seems to still be sticking to the the state of the EU they had with Dark Horse.

Tbh I'm expecting a reboot of the EU at some point in the near future. Disney did it with Star Wars then started to reuse/reintroduce characters/concepts from that old star wars EU back in. The only thing that really surprises me so far is that with Star Wars they did that reboot very abruptly to much backlash, while with alien they've continued to let Titan,  fireteam elite and the free league rpg do their thing without interruption. I'm still trying to figure out if that's them waiting to do that reboot because they learned their lesson about abrupt reboots from Star Wars, or if they're still trying to figure out what they want to do with the alien franchise and letting this stuff continue while they do...

[BlueMarsalis79]

Or maybe it is fine how it is?

[HuDaFuK]

Does it even matter? Even with the more connected angle Fox went for from Out of the Shadows onwards, I still feel like there's not been an awful lot of coherence in the EU.

[Engineer]

Does it even matter? Even with the more connected angle Fox went for from Out of the Shadows onwards, I still feel like there's not been an awful lot of coherence in the EU.

I agree with that; that's always been the one thing about the EU that's been consistent... lack of coherence and constant reboots with each new film starting with Alien3.
 
From what I understand, the reason Disney did a hard reboot of the Star Wars EU was so they could have a fresh start and manage that EU much better. Tbh I think they have managed it better; not perfectly but better. Maybe Alien will be managed better from a coherence standpoint but so far the direction they've taken is total garbage and it's not doing them any favors keeping all the stuff PKJ wrote imo.

[Kimarhi]

I figured the lack of coherence was always just an EU thing.  I've always considered its own spinoff so the way it is currently doesn't really bother me. 

I don't know what the word I'm looking for is, but the old EU, going by my standards, seems to have more spirit or soul in it, despite its flaws or at times never even really feeling like the franchise it represents.

I maintain that AvP2 to me feels more like Jurassic Park for some reason, with all the callbacks and tropes of the Alien and Predator series.  Despite that, it has a certain spirit to it that some of what I'm reading or playing nowadays does not.  Todays stuff sometimes reads and plays like something that an AI thought up.  Or that some dude ran through a computer to process a story and then ran from there. 

[BlueMarsalis79]

I honestly think that's just old man syndrome. Monolith's AVP has no more "soul' to me than Phalanx, Into Charybdis or even Dead Orbit less actually, as they all are more deeply considered works of art.

Alien Isolation to me I think in terms of the videogames has the most "soul" but I would say pathos, especially in the atmosphere and score, and how it takes the time to give things weight.

[SiL]

I honestly think that's just old man syndrome.

That's just young person thinking older people can't have sincere opinions if they don't agree with them syndrome.

[[cancerblack]]

No, there's a known phenomena where things from when you were 10-13 stick with you more than novel materials, regardless of the quality of either. And that does often intersect with more rational opinions once you get into your late 20's and only gets worse, so she's not entirely off-base here.

[Xenomrph]

From what I understand, the reason Disney did a hard reboot of the Star Wars EU was so they could have a fresh start and manage that EU much better. Tbh I think they have managed it better; not perfectly but better. Maybe Alien will be managed better from a coherence standpoint but so far the direction they've taken is total garbage and it's not doing them any favors keeping all the stuff PKJ wrote imo.

Disney rebooted Star Wars because there was decades of existing lore spanning novels, cartoons, comics, video games, audio books, action figures, reference books, RPGs, and of course movies. It was all pretty tightly knit and even had a dedicated guy (Leland Chee) to catalogue all of it and make sure it all fit together (reasonably) well.
It got rebooted because it gave Disney the freedom to do whatever they wanted with the sequel trilogy without being hamstrung by 30 years of "lore".

As for keeping the new EU straight... some of it is, some of it is nonsensical, some of it sucks, and tons of stuff is lifted wholesale from the old EU anyway and shoehorned into the "new" framework. And that doesn't even touch on the sequel trilogy, its questionable quality, and its narrative ramifications for the Star Wars "franchise" as a whole.

Who is PKJ?

[Engineer]

Philip Kennedy Johnson
The writer marvel hired for the Alien comics. Recently replaced with a new writer.

[Xenomrph]

Oh yeah I haven't read any of the Marvel Aliens stuff (and I'm not convinced I want to).