Developer comments on sequel or unused ideas?

[quijju]

Given the disappointing trend AVP has suffered from recently I went back to the games. Just finished Classic 2000 again and finishing AVP 2. I think it is safe to say this game will never be followed up on so I was wondering if anyone has any links to developers commenting on what they would put if there was going to be a sequel, along with any unused ideas. I saw some unused ideas on this site such as that bladed Predator weapon which looked pretty good and was wondering what else could have been.

[The Cruentus]

I think the reason there wasn't a sequel to monolith's one was because of rights dispute.

[The Old One]

Unfortunately yes.

[Samhain13]

I heard(probably on these forums years ago) that one of the ideas of the expansion pack that became Primal Hunt was to make it a sequel instead of a prequel, there would be a conflict during the Verloc's evacuation from LV-1201, the game did end with the predator ship going after it... it seems it would involve some Dunya vs Harrison stuff, but since we know she ended up making to Gateway Station and was continuing Rykov's plan, Dunya wouldn't have been killed. 

I imagine the predator ship would attack the Verloc, somehow aliens would have gotten on it through some evacuation ship, Dunya and the rest of Rykov men would have used it to escape.

I think the reason there wasn't a sequel to monolith's one was because of rights dispute.

You mean with Fox? Or by Monolith Productions being acquired by Warner Bros?

[x-M-x]

It goes way beyond Fox/Monolith Productions & Warner Bros.. this game is in copyright hell.

There are several corporations that own *certain parts* of this game.

if it was to be released on steam? would of been around 2007/8 atleast.

Still one can only hope.

[Samhain13]

It goes way beyond Fox/Monolith Productions & Warner Bros.. this game is in copyright hell.

There are several corporations that own *certain parts* of this game.

By certain parts, you mean third parties were hired during to development of AVP2 to work, do like some levels, voices or game engine? Like singleplayer was done by Monolith but they hired another company to take care of of the multiplayer or something?

I don't understand much about those copyright stuffs and how they relate to a game's development but have been aware of AVP2 not going to steam due to that.

EDIT: Nevermind, found this thread: https://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/index.php?topic=55649.0

[quijju]

I heard(probably on these forums years ago) that one of the ideas of the expansion pack that became Primal Hunt was to make it a sequel instead of a prequel, there would be a conflict during the Verloc's evacuation from LV-1201, the game did end with the predator ship going after it... it seems it would involve some Dunya vs Harrison stuff, but since we know she ended up making to Gateway Station and was continuing Rykov's plan, Dunya wouldn't have been killed. 

I imagine the predator ship would attack the Verloc, somehow aliens would have gotten on it through some evacuation ship, Dunya and the rest of Rykov men would have used it to escape.

I think the reason there wasn't a sequel to monolith's one was because of rights dispute.

You mean with Fox? Or by Monolith Productions being acquired by Warner Bros?

Really? I think the sequel expansion would have been better. Even though I loved that artifact story it pretty much went nowhere. The whole Rykov-Dunya plan I never liked, it felt shoehorned in the game as it was never discussed in a cutscene or anything combined with the fact Dunya was initially supposed to be fought and presumably killed. The whole plot is basically contradicted when you read the scientist's logs about Predator immunology before Rykov's (who is not a scientist) plan is described. It just screams of last minute change.

I am not the biggest fan of this game but we'll certainly never get a layered narrative and setting like it again. Such a shame. Here are the pictures on this site I mentioned earlier if you are interested and too lazy to bother looking for them. https://www.avpgalaxy.net/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=212

Interesting stuff indeed!

[The Cruentus]

It is basically the reason why it was never updated and released on steam. AVP gold was updated and released years ago, the copyright hell is basically why nothing can be done with it for now. Shame too, as I think this game could be brilliant with an update.

[skull-splitter]

I would love a remake in Dishonored's art style...

[Corporal Hicks]

Our first idea, the obvious one, was to start up where Aliens versus Predator 2 left off – with the Verloc leaving LV-1201. In order to do that, we had to do our homework, which essentially amounted to playing through AvP2 many, many times while making notes about the smallest details. In the end, I had detailed timeline of all the events in AvP2, along with approximate dates for a fair number of events that happened as much as two years before the story takes place.

With all this data available the expansion plotline started to fall into place. There were actually several events in AvP2 that seemed to foreshadow our initial idea for a script. The plot went something like this: while the Marines were busy planet-side, corporate spies (for a corporate rival of Weyland-Yutani Corporate) compromised one of the Marine dropships and in turn were able to compromise the Verloc. Unknown to the surviving Marines, when the Verloc leaves LV-1201 it is carrying both Alien and Predator specimens (why do you think the Predator ship was following the Verloc in the AvP2 credits, eh?). As you might guess, things turn bad for the Marines shortly after leaving LV-1201. No rest for the weary.

Fox seemed to like the ideas we were throwing out, but as the design progressed, we all noticed a few problems. First of all, most of the action in this design took place on an entirely new planet, run by an entirely new corporation. Since we were doing an expansion, time and budget constraints were very tight. It seemed unlikely that we would be able to generate the amount of content required to pull this story off in the time we had. Second, while the Marine plotline was detailed and engrossing, the Alien and Predator plotlines were less so. This could have been remedied with some time and effort, but because all three plotlines need to intersect, it wasn't at all clear that doing so wouldn't reduce or eliminate the events that made the Marine missions so interesting. I really liked this idea and felt it had a lot of potential, but it looked like it was time to go back to the drawing board.

With all those issues out of the way, here are a couple of other scenarios we came up with for the expansion:

Kenji. Tomiko and her (supposedly) dead brother turn out to be corporate spies for a rival corporation (I was told by Fox that Monolith had actually planned something with this being the case, but I am, unfortunately, not privy to any details about it). The story would have played out between the time that the Aliens broke free in the POC, to the arrival of the Marines on LV-1201. Unfortunately, the biggest problem with this idea turned out to be finding motivations for the Alien and Predator.

Far Past. The idea here was to go way back in the past of LV-1201 and find out what Predators were doing there after the Pilot race left or was overrun. It was more than a little difficult to work humans into this scenario without just doing something stupid, so it didn't go very far. However, I mention it here because it did provide important impetus for the chosen scenario.

Deckard. Deckard was a Marine that was barely mentioned in AvP2. Just before Harrison attempts to rescue Sergeant Hall, Deckard is mentioned as having been "badly burned". We don't hear anything about him after that. In this scenario, Deckard gets taken back to the Pods, where Dr. Eisenberg uses him for some experiments. When the player wakes up as Deckard, he's now part synthetic. This one had some potential, especially because we could add some new abilities to the human/synthetic player, but again, the motivation for the Predators and Aliens just wasn't there. There was also an additional timeline restriction, which made plot development difficult, since Deckard would only be playable from the time the Marines arrived up until Tomiko destroyed the Pods.

Iron Bears. This scenario revolved around the mercenary group, The Iron Bears, hired by Weyland-Yutani to provide security for the Pods and was eventually chosen for the expansion. There are numerous reasons why this scenario fit so well. First, we get to learn more about the motivations of some of the more intriguing characters from AvP2, namely Rykov, Dunya and a little bit of Eisenberg. Second, there weren't really any time restriction with using the mercs because, as far as the AvP2 story goes, they've apparently been on LV-1201 since the current expedition arrived. The lack of this time restriction allowed us to explore one of the larger mysteries of the AvP2 plot, namely, how did Pod 5 end up falling in the first place, as it happened before the Aliens got loose in the Primary Operations Complex (i.e. the start of "The Incident"). Finally, the clincher was that we were able to give all three species some good motivation, (i.e. the Artifact). Best of all, it was the same motivation. This increased the overall action in the plot and made it relatively easy for the plotlines of all species to intersect with one another.

In the end, we went through 5 potential scenarios before we found one that fit well with the existing story of Aliens versus Predator 2, and which was interesting enough from all three perspectives without forcing events. Due to the detail that Monolith made apparent within the game, designing an expansion Aliens versus Predator 2 was more demanding that one might think. Add to that the inevitable pressures that all games must deal with, those of time and money, and the parameters became narrower still. In the end, these restrictions actually helped us arrive at the best scenario. If we had ignored any one of them, we wouldn't have taken the time to grind through to the details of the story we now have for Primal Hunt.

https://web.archive.org/web/20020806024040/http://www.avpnews.com/avp2/diaries/diary3/

[Still Collating...]

Never knew this, thanks Hick! They really put a lot of effort in the story and it shows.

[Samhain13]

That's great info.

[x-M-x]

  Amazing !

[KingKenny]

I've read this before. There is a lot of unused dialogue about Kenji in the cres.dll of AvP2. Harrison thinks Tomiko (with the muffled voice at the time) is Kenji. One line of Kenji remains in the campaign where two poc guards mention him.

[nrcheever]

My memory is fuzzy, but you can ask me questions to kick it around. Maybe something of note will spill out from my time on the project.

I do have notes somewhere of what I wanted to call a "Designer's Cut" for the game which would rebalance some things add in some levels that were cut.  Like we had an earlier level where you got the sniper rifle and had to use it in this canyon run.  I remember being disappointed Fox Interactive didn't want my help with the add-on pack by the Third Law guys.

If I remember right I also had to push to get the mod material out to you guys, because Monolith was sort of done with working AVP.  We didn't even get a release party and were split up into other other teams.  Some looked down on the project because it was a franchise even though it made more $$$ than others they were doing at the time.

Here's a fun bit... the image I made to keep track of where the levels were taking place: