Where are the little guys (SPOILERS)?

[Mazryonh]

Yes, the title is made so not to spoil people who haven't got to a specific level in the game yet. SPOILERS start from here on out.

I was looking through video walkthroughs of this game to help myself make an informed choice about whether or not to buy it, and one particular thing I've noticed in the videos I've seen is the absence of Chestbursters. You get to see and kill Facehuggers once you get into the Reactor Maintenance level and uncover the Alien nest, but you don't see any Chestbursters there or anywhere else.

Does anyone else think that's strange? I thought that the Chestburster scenes in the Alien and Aliens films were among their most iconic scenes, so I don't know why they weren't featured in this game.

An older game in the Aliens franchise, Aliens vs. Predator 2, was much better when it came to Chestbursters. There was one level where you got to play as one, and had to sneak around a human colony to find something to eat so you could change into a full-grown Alien Drone. You could even see lots of Chestbursters as a Colonial Marine when meeting cocooned humans, because pressing the "use" key on them would either get them to moan and wiggle, or find some supplies on them, or cause them to "hatch" a Chestburster that would attack you (and sometimes a Chestburster would hatch if you just got near a cocooned victim). You can see a video showing this gameplay mechanic below:

https://youtu.be/EKXWnx8wkl4

If the above Chestburster gameplay mechanic was in Alien: Isolation, it would make going through the "Alien nest" sections much more tense. You would have no idea whether a cocooned victim would start making noise randomly or if they were actually about to hatch a Chestburster, and looting cocooned victims for supplies would be a gamble because you don't know if you'll have to kill a Chestburster, which would of course attract attention from the Aliens.

Would seeing a comatose Ricardo hatch a Chestburster make his death scene more horrifying?

[slimak]

facehuggers mean all out infestation with queen and all that, or number of eggs transported to station(the last one didnt happen), and towards end of the game after reactor purge they seemed to leave the nest. generally presence of facehuggers is a major plothole, because how anyone brought safely an egg to station in the first place? not the corporation becuse there isnt any word about that, they silently bought station only to secure what already was there (please correct me if Im wrong!) with their special corporate order imprinted APOLLO, but there was no queen too to lay the egg, only a male Xenomorph "killer". and all of the sudden, boom, whoel nest under the reactor.

as for chesbusters it would turn game into action game and also huggers were too jumpscare-alike, they would flatten the suspense a lot. aaaalso their presence would give too much of a plot away to the player.

[Naomi]

Originally posted by slimakPL:

facehuggers mean all out infestation with queen and all that, or number of eggs transported to station(the last one didnt happen), and towards end of the game after reactor purge they seemed to leave the nest. generally presence of facehuggers is a major plothole, because how anyone brought safely an egg to station in the first place? not the corporation becuse there isnt any word about that, they silently bought station only to secure what already was there (please correct me if Im wrong!) with their special corporate order imprinted APOLLO, but there was no queen too to lay the egg, only a male Xenomorph "killer". and all of the sudden, boom, whoel nest under the reactor.

as for chesbusters it would turn game into action game and also huggers were too jumpscare-alike, they would flatten the suspense a lot. aaaalso their presence would give too much of a plot away to the player.

i think (and this is not fact) that the facehugger that latched onto marlos wife was a queen facehugger but that the queen went to a place in the reactor maintnace or just in general anyware on the ship that we dont go to. we never acctualy see the first chestburster comming out and if i remember correctaly we dont acctualy see the face hugger that attatched onto his wife so we couldent acctualy see if it was a queen facehugger or not.or maby somehow the queen died that would exsplain there being only one xeno for the first half of the game as the others would need to stay and protect the nest. who knows maby they did ignor the whole there needs to be a queen for there to be eggs wich would be fine if they told the player that marlos ship did transport the eggs to the ship but im pretty sure he would have said that sense he was so pissed of at the company.

[slimak]

okay so it had to be queen that had to get away just as alien aboard Nostromo, and some time after first drone xeno aboard Sevastopol appeared and started to capture humans one by one. but what are the odds of Marlowe's team accidenttally waking up queen/royal facehugger's egg is beyond me, probably only writer of the plot od Alien Isolation knows the answer to that ;) also queen is generally huge so she had to capture first human down in reactor level early on in the plot when she was relatively small...

[sorceror171]

Note that a "queen egg" is not logically necessary. Many eusocial species have some kind of 'backup plan' if the queen dies. Naked mole rats have a communal latrine, and the queen's urine contains a pheromone that prevents other females from developing into queens. If the queen dies, that pheromone stops being produced, and the other females start fighting. Eventually one establishes dominance and becomes the new queen.

If the xenomorphs really are 'perfect organisms', one would assume there'd exist a way to handle this eventuality, too. Quite possibly any drone could become a queen, but the queen inhibits this process somehow. A lone drone, finding no queen around, might well develop into a queen.

[F.Ultra]

Originally posted by slimakPL:

facehuggers mean all out infestation with queen and all that, or number of eggs transported to station(the last one didnt happen), and towards end of the game after reactor purge they seemed to leave the nest. generally presence of facehuggers is a major plothole, because how anyone brought safely an egg to station in the first place? not the corporation becuse there isnt any word about that, they silently bought station only to secure what already was there (please correct me if Im wrong!) with their special corporate order imprinted APOLLO, but there was no queen too to lay the egg, only a male Xenomorph "killer". and all of the sudden, boom, whoel nest under the reactor.

as for chesbusters it would turn game into action game and also huggers were too jumpscare-alike, they would flatten the suspense a lot. aaaalso their presence would give too much of a plot away to the player.

Actually the whole queen lays eggs stuff is only something that they invented in the second film (Aliens). In Alien the lifecycle was that the Xenomorph captured humans and turned them into eggs, now that particular scene where never included in the theatrical release which opened the opportunity for Aliens to introduce the Queen but there where never any Queen in the original plans or life cycle of the species.

That said we do not know if there was a Queen or not on Sevastopol, that we started off chasing the non queen warrior does not say that this particular Xenomorph where the one that where brought to the station by the salvage crew, it could simply be one of the later offspring.

[sorceror171]

Originally posted by F.Ultra:

Actually the whole queen lays eggs stuff is only something that they invented in the second film (Aliens). In Alien the lifecycle was that the Xenomorph captured humans and turned them into eggs, now that particular scene where never included in the theatrical release which opened the opportunity for Aliens to introduce the Queen but there where never any Queen in the original plans or life cycle of the species.

Well, sure. Of course, the character of Amanda Ripley wasn't introduced until Aliens, either. Also in a deleted scene, for that matter.

[F.Ultra]

Originally posted by sorceror171:

Originally posted by F.Ultra:

Actually the whole queen lays eggs stuff is only something that they invented in the second film (Aliens). In Alien the lifecycle was that the Xenomorph captured humans and turned them into eggs, now that particular scene where never included in the theatrical release which opened the opportunity for Aliens to introduce the Queen but there where never any Queen in the original plans or life cycle of the species.

Well, sure. Of course, the character of Amanda Ripley wasn't introduced until Aliens, either. Also in a deleted scene, for that matter.

Yes but that scene where brought back in the Directors Cut of Aliens later and thus put into cannon, similar with the turn-humans-into-eggs that where brought back in the 2013 Special Edition of Alien.

[Mazryonh]

I've posted a video showing the Chestburster mechanic I mentioned in my original post.

Originally posted by sorceror171:

If the xenomorphs really are 'perfect organisms', one would assume there'd exist a way to handle this eventuality, too. Quite possibly any drone could become a queen, but the queen inhibits this process somehow. A lone drone, finding no queen around, might well develop into a queen.

I hear the various Aliens comics over the years mentioned that Facehuggers needed "royal jelly" to become a Queen facehugger like that seen in the film Alien 3, but that's non-canon material.

Originally posted by F.Ultra:

Originally posted by sorceror171:

Well, sure. Of course, the character of Amanda Ripley wasn't introduced until Aliens, either. Also in a deleted scene, for that matter.

Yes but that scene where brought back in the Directors Cut of Aliens later and thus put into cannon, similar with the turn-humans-into-eggs that where brought back in the 2013 Special Edition of Alien.

Who said that Director's Cuts had to mesh with other films in a series? :-)

Anyway, if there's a sequel we need to see an Alien Queen.

Originally posted by slimakPL:

as for chesbusters it would turn game into action game and also huggers were too jumpscare-alike, they would flatten the suspense a lot. aaaalso their presence would give too much of a plot away to the player.

Chestbursters would be easy to kill just like Facehuggers in this game are, and should only be seen after you get to Reactor Maintenance. Besides, they would still have horror value because you don't know if a cocooned victim you get close to will "hatch" a Chestburster or is just moaning and groaning.