(intense spoilers) Xenomorph acting strangely near the end.

[Vesper]

If you have finished the game you probably saw the group of xenos on the outside of the ship and the final QTE alien.
Anyone else think they were acting really strangely. Up till this point they have charged you without hesitation and ripped your face off. Suddenly they take their time. A group of xenomorphs all wait paitently before all attempting to grab you. they were looking at each other like they were debating what to do. Then the one in the ship slowly creeping towards you, even when it was close it didn't seem hostile. Just predatory teasing or was there something different about amanda?

Last thing that happens before she gets on the ship is she is captured and hived. Unconcious for a short time, before waking up and escaping. The hive is on fire, a few eggs hatch and their payload begins creeping for prey in a panic to spread before they are burned up. Multiple chestbursters has been shown in some situations. Possible that a royal facehugger got to amanda while she slept and the very young queen couldn't tell them to back off?

Would explain the xenomorph's behaviors. Slow, creeping. looking at each other as to if they should just kill her or recapture her. The queen would have been very young, likely unable to communicate with anything other than a chemical signal in her sweat. But they were in space how would the signal be sent out? Its been shown that their suits spray out a gas regularly. Likely built up CO2 that cant be converted back to O2, that would be an easy way for the signal to escape. Once she gets on the ship the final xeno would have had a much more closed enviornment, the signal would have been surrounding her. The final xenomorph walks slowly trying to recapture the host of the queen and recreate the hive. The hive had reaches a point where it had plenty of eggs and xenomorphs, it didn't need to waste any more hosts making new eggs, so why wouldn't they have created a royal facehugger.

What do you think?

[Koranis]

1) There is no queen in Ridley's universe.

2) I also thought they were acting strangely, there was a moment when I had two aliens in front of me, looking at me and they didn't charge. I was left alone till the very end. But it would be incoherent if Ripley was impregnated - there simply wasn't enough time. Lucky for her she woke up in time to be able to free herself and the egg was still closed.

3) I'm fairly convinced the final sequence is just a bad dream. Imagine: she's outside when Torrens finally frees itself from the falling Sevastopol but she managed to hook herself up. The violence of the detachment might have cut the rope and stun her. The light you see is Torrens coming back to pick her up.... it certainly improves the ending in my eyes.

[Vesper]

Originally posted by Koranis:

1) There is no queen in Ridley's universe.

2) I also thought they were acting strangely, there was a moment when I had two aliens in front of me, looking at me and they didn't charge. I was left alone till the very end. But it would be incoherent if Ripley was impregnated - there simply wasn't enough time. Lucky for her she woke up in time to be able to free herself and the egg was still closed.

3) I'm fairly convinced the final sequence is just a bad dream. Imagine: she's outside when Torrens finally frees itself from the falling Sevastopol but she managed to hook herself up. The violence of the detachment might have cut the rope and stun her. The light you see is Torrens coming back to pick her up.... it certainly improves the ending in my eyes.

Xenomorph impregnation times have varines immenstly. one in the first movie took hours. the ones in other movies took a few minutes to do their business.

[Koranis]

What movies? Aliens didn't provide any information regarding the embryo gestation. And in Alien 3 the timings are all off, included the supposed 1 week the WY needed to get to Fiorina, so it's also very unclear.

What remains is Resurrection which is a failed french parody of Alien movies.

[Vesper]

Originally posted by Koranis:

What movies? Aliens didn't provide any information regarding the embryo gestation. And in Alien 3 the timings are all off, included the supposed 1 week the WY needed to get to Fiorina, so it's also very unclear.

What remains is Resurrection which is a failed french parody of Alien movies.

The time it takes for a Facehugger to implant a Chestburster in its victim varies wildly throughout the Alien series. In Alien, it takes around 24 hours for Kane to become impregnated. This timescale is borne out in Aliens (in fact, a scene originally showing Burke conscious in the Hive at the end of the movie was removed because it would have contradicted this timescale) and Alien3. In Alien Resurrection, no specifics are given regarding the length of time taken to impregnate a victim, although the impression is given that the process is occurring faster than before; the novelization of the film states the Xenomorphs' reproductive cycle has been accelerated due to genetic alterations,[16] but the film never makes this clear. By the time of Alien vs. Predator, however, impregnation happens almost instantaneously; several victims in the film are conscious again within minutes, including Scar, who is impregnated in less than the time it takes the pyramid on Bouvet Island to rearrange itself, which would be under 10 minutes. Many of the video games based on the franchise also drastically accelerate the impregnation process, most notably Aliens vs. Predator and Aliens: Colonial Marines.


http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/Facehugger

[Koranis]

Originally posted by Basilius:

The time it takes for a Facehugger to implant a Chestburster in its victim varies wildly throughout the Alien series. In Alien, it takes around 24 hours for Kane to become impregnated. This timescale is borne out in Aliens (in fact, a scene originally showing Burke conscious in the Hive at the end of the movie was removed because it would have contradicted this timescale) and Alien3. [...]

Exactly, they removed Burke because it would not be plausible and Ripley spent even less time coccooned than Burke. The only clear "proof" is provided by Alien. In Alien 3 E.Ripley has a queen inside her, so it's a different story.

Resurrection - if you really want to take it into account - treads new ground as genetic recreation is at work so anything can be made up. I won't comment on AVP for obvious reasons as it's as close to a fanfic as it gets.

[Vesper]

Originally posted by Koranis:

Originally posted by Basilius:

The time it takes for a Facehugger to implant a Chestburster in its victim varies wildly throughout the Alien series. In Alien, it takes around 24 hours for Kane to become impregnated. This timescale is borne out in Aliens (in fact, a scene originally showing Burke conscious in the Hive at the end of the movie was removed because it would have contradicted this timescale) and Alien3. [...]

Exactly, they removed Burke because it would not be plausible and Ripley spent even less time coccooned than Burke. The only clear "proof" is provided by Alien. In Alien 3 E.Ripley has a queen inside her, so it's a different story.

Resurrection - if you really want to take it into account - threads new ground as genetic recreation is at work so anything can be made up. I won't comment on AVP for obvious reasons as it's as close to a fanfic as it gets.

The games concidered canon have spead it up as well. AVP 2 had a pretty fast life cycle. Facehugged, before the guy woke up or anyone found him, before the sun came up. boom you get outta the ♥♥♥♥♥. their life cycle is random and strange. Dramatic convenience is probably an explination for most of these but still.

Their behaviors have rubbed me the wrong way, they just don't act like they would normally act. So it just seems like something is different.

Having the very last one be a hallucination or dream would be pretty horrible. I just imagine the pilot being like "ripley calm down its me" and she just slams the airlock button.

[Koranis]

Originally posted by Basilius:

The games concidered canon have spead it up as well.

Sorry, but since when the games are considered canon? The first one to try was ACM, but try to ask someone at the Fox about it again...

[Whatever]

Amanda Ripley was never impregnated. In Aliens (the sequel to Alien) there is a deleted scene that features in the Directors Cut version where it is shown Ellen Ripley asking the faith of her daughter, a picture of a old woman was shown and it was said that she lived to be 80-something then died with no children. The egg grown into every organ, making the removal without killing the host impossible at the current time-frame of Alien: Isolation.

[Lord Flenser]

I'd suggest we do not use AvP or AvP2 when arguing a point about the alien life-cycle. Those movies didn't seem to do any research into previous movies.

Example: Both Predator and Predator2 state that the Predator prefers extremely warm weather and only comes to Earth during heat waves. "Only in the hottest years does this happen." If that race likes it warm, why would they build their alien test ground in Antarctica?

The movies are fun popcorn movies but nothing like ALIEN or ALIENS.

[Whatever]

Originally posted by Lord Flenser:

I'd suggest we do not use AvP or AvP2 when arguing a point about the alien life-cycle. Those movies didn't seem to do any research into previous movies.

Example: Both Predator and Predator2 state that the Predator prefers extremely warm weather and only comes to Earth during heat waves. "Only in the hottest years does this happen." If that race likes it warm, why would they build their alien test ground in Antarctica?

The movies are fun popcorn movies but nothing like ALIEN or ALIENS.

For the record, in the movies it was stated that a few 100.000s years a go there might not have been Ice in Antarctica. Same logic applies in real life. The glaciars move, continental drift. So the example you provided is moot.

[Lord Flenser]

Ok. Fair enough. (Although evidence for continental drift is more like millions of years and not thousands -- well before mankind. http://www.divediscover.whoi.edu/antarctica/history.html. But we'll overlook that because.... Hollywood. *wink*)

I'd still take it as a personal favor if we didn't talk about those AvP movies. Great idea. Great game. But I lump those two movies in the same category as AR and pretend they were just bad dreams.


On the original topic, the aliens at the end move slowly because ... plot needed suspense at that point. It's similar to the end of the first Alien movie. It's interesting to note however that Ridley Scott explains the alien's slow movement was due to it reaching the end of its life expectancy. An alien that only lives 24 hours makes it seem far less threatening. And it totally goes against Alien Isolation's timeline so we can be thankful that director's commentary isn't considered canon, either. :)

[Graithen]

Im going to throw in and say that I too thought Ripley had been impregnated. There is one point where you are in a burning train car and two aliens drop in. One seems to sniff the air. Both could have had you dead, but they disappeared off. Almost like they could sense you carrying one of their own. And at the end when sorting the blowing of the umbilical... They were hovering, not on a murder mission. As far as I was concerned there could have been a period of a few hours while the station dropped out of orbit. Long enough for a facehugger to do its business in a hurry. The weird lack of run ins with an alien post capture seemed to be intentional also. It just all seemed to be pointing to impregnation.

[NinthElement]

Another possible explanation for the xenomorphs not attempting to kill Amanda at that stage is they could see staying inside the burning station was hopeless and so no longer gave priority to killing or capturing humans. Maybe they even started to realise they might be able to follow Amanda to wherever she was trying to escape to. Why else would several of them be hanging around outside in space at the end?

[Inferno]

Amanda wasn't face-hugged. As someone already mentioned, in the Director's Cut of ALIENS, you see Amanda on a PDA as an old woman.

The Aliens in the last sequence taking their time are done mostly for gameplay reasons, but in a narrative sense it can be theorized that they didn't quite know how to react to someone in a space suit at first.

It should be noted that if you take too long with the umbilical sequence, one of the Aliens will eventually flank and kill you.