Here is my analysis of the events of A:CM. Enjoy !
First of all, why I wanted to do that ? I did it because I wanted to repair the problem of the 17 weeks instead of 17 days. For me it was the worst scam of this game and because I want it in my canon chronology, it was primordial to correct this. Moreover, we haven't got a lot of time indications in the game, and when you look at Stasis Interrupted, it's really complicated to understand how much time has passed between two events. This analysis intended to trace the events from Alien to Aliens Colonial Marines to understand why 17 weeks instead of 17 days.
Let's start to list the time indications we have :
"We responded to a distress call sent out 17 weeks ago from the USS Sulaco" Mission 1, Cruz.
"What do you know about the Marines that were sent here 17 weeks ago ?" Mission 4, Reid.
"Your file was closed K.I.A. 14 weeks ago" Mission 8, Bishop.
"13 weeks and 4 days they had me" Mission 11, Hicks.
"16 weeks and 4 days since the death of warrant officer Ellen Ripley" Suspense Trailer, computer.
"17 weeks ago the USS Sulaco was reported destroy" Suspense Trailer, Cruz.
"Time from last contact is now at 17 weeks" (about the colonists) Mission Briefing, Collector Edition.
In all of this, only the 2, 3 and 4 are in the game, correct and consistent among them. The first one is in the game too but we can suppose that it is just a poor term used to simplify the complexity of the situation. Because we know that the message wasn't sent from the Sulaco, and well after Aliens, so 17 weeks is too much. Cruz should have said "registered 17 weeks ago" and it's more simple to say that because the Marines were sent out here 17 weeks ago. Personally, I think that 17 weeks is too precise for such a long time, so we'll keep 16 weeks and 4 days from the Suspense Trailer. Because even if it's wrong about the death of Ripley, we can say that it is just a trailer and what they wanted to say was 17 weeks, but it is just a little more precise.
Now we have all of the elements to begin the chronology, and we have to accept that between the moment when the Marines were sent to LV-426 (their arrival), and the arrival of the Sephora, 16 weeks and 4 days have passed. So we'll try to understand why it was so long and what happened during this period.
But before the chronology we have to understand some problems :
Why there was there no rescue mission during this period, 17 days (2 weeks, 3 days) after Aliens ? Because Weyland declare the Sulaco officially destroy when the Fiorina 161 incident, and Hicks died in the crash. Like Hicks said : his message has never been sent because of interference. Logically, he should have sent the message just after the recording, before entering in hypersleep but maybe the Weyland-Yutani made sure to scramble the message. Sending a distress call is not necessary because of the procedure of the 17 days. So why Hicks did it ? Because it was a really serious situation seeing that he ask for immediate assistance. He wanted to override the procedure considering the situation.
Here is the chronology of the events between Aliens and A:CM :
- Aliens
- Hypersleep period
- Arrival of the Legato, Lisbeth's awakening
- Stone wake up Hicks, clandestine on the Sulaco
- Travel toward Fury 161
- Hicks and Stone captured, return to LV-426
- Escape of Hicks and Levy on LV-426
- Hicks' second capture
- Arrival of the Marines of the Sephora
- Hicks is release
We can't yet determined the exact duration of each events but some of them are already known. So it's necessary to take the timeline from the end because the central element on which we are based, is the capture of Hicks. So we can start with the fact that from the arrival of the Sephora and the release of Hicks, about 24 hours pass. Before that, Hicks was prisoner for 13 weeks and 3 days (4 days - 1 day during the Sephora arrival). If the Sephora leaves from Gateway Station, it take 3 weeks to go to LV-426, from the sending of the distress call, before the second capture. We subtract these 3 weeks to the 13 weeks and 3 days and we have 10 weeks and 3 days, between the moment where he is captured on Fury 161 to his escape with Levy. Before, there is two days of travel from the Sulaco to Fury 161. Finally, it remains the duration of hypersleep from the entering at the end of Aliens to the awakening by Stone, which is find in removing what we already knows : 16 weeks and 4 days - 13 weeks and 4 days - 2 days. That's make 18 days. We can remove from this, about 30 hours for the events of Aliens, which gives us 17 days on time. So what does it mean ? DUring this period of hypersleep we can guess that nothing has been try on the Sulaco by Weyland-Yutani because Michael Weyland wanted to wait the end of the procedure of the 17 days to intervene, in order to avoid any problem. And it is exactly at 17 days that the Sulaco has been reported destroyed.
Without transition, I will explain other problem that occurred after this analysis :
17 days ? It is 17 days for the rescue mission to come at LV-426, considering the distance ? Or is it a standard procedure, that is to say : after being declared overdue, they must wait 17 days to send a rescue mission + the time for this mission to reach the destination.
I believe it is the second possibility. If not, why Ripley ask the question to Hicks because she knows how much time it takes to come from Gateway Station to LV-426. Moreover, Hudson would not be surprised by the answer, because he knows too. And I think that the rescue mission if it's really urgent, would come from a closer place, not systematically from Gateway Station. And why the first mission wasn't sent here in the first place ? Because it was only an investigation on a transmitter failure, nothing indicated a possible hostile presence and deaths were not considered. And it takes 3 weeks for a mission to come to LV-426 from Gateway Station, why a rescue mission will take less time ?
There was a problem encountered in my analysis, it is for the speed of the ships. If it takes 3 weeks for the Sulaco to come to LV-426, 17 days after entering hypersleep, it should be almost to Gateway Station. So I rely on another document in the file of the Collector Edition, the blueprint of the Sephora. It says that there are two choices of speed : the normal speed or superluminal speed. I think that they use the superluminal speed to investigate, and the normal speed to come back. Maybe for economical reasons I don't know.
And for Stasis Interrupted, I think that the mystery of the egg of Alien 3 is resolved. When Lisbeth is alone after Stone and Turk leave her, we can see them in the umbilical. Two Xenos follow them but much more, as we can see in the mission 2 of Stasis Interrupted. One of them could bring a egg with in the hypersleep chamber, because it was a more secure place. It will also explain why it's a Royal Facehugger, because the eggs from the Legato come from the queen on LV-426. And now it's too far from the queen, they don't have any. So it's the occasion to have a new queen maybe.
To conclude, here is the complete timeline, with the durations :
- Aliens (from the beginning to the end of the mission) → ~ 30 hours
- Hypersleep, Legato's journey, ... → ~ 17 days
- Stone and Hicks on the Sulaco → ~ 1 hour (gameplay)
- Travel toward Fury 161 → ~ 2 days
- Hicks and Stone captured, return to LV-426 → ~ 10 weeks, 3 days
- Escape with Levy → ~ 1 hour, 30 minutes (gameplay)
- Second capture of Hicks → ~ 3 weeks
- Sephora arrival, until the release → ~ 1 day
And the result of it is 16 weeks and 4 days, just like I wanted at the beginning. And I think that is best way to try to understand what happened during this period, I think it's not really incoherent but it was a hard work to try to cross every informations we have.
Let me know what you think about it
