Gears of War Creator Cliff Bleszinski Talks Canceled Alien FPS Game

Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski has opened up about his canceled Alien first-person shooter. The Alien series is one of the most iconic franchises to ever come from pop-culture. There was nothing else like it when it made its debut in the 70s and James Cameron upped the ante with the legendary action-packed sequel, Aliens. The series has seen many different sequels, spin-offs, cross-overs, and even spun its way into other mediums such as gaming. We have had some really great Alien games over the years, most notably Alien: Isolation which really captured the true horror of being hunted by a Xenomorph. However, there is one that never saw the light of day that may bum fans out.

After leaving Epic Games, Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski went and formed a new studio known as Boss Key Productions. The studio would put out games like LawBreakers and had aspirations for even bigger projects. One such game would be an Alien FPS where players would play as Newt with Ripley serving as a Cortana-esque guide. Newt would battle her way through Xenomorphs in Earth-based Weyland-Yutani corporation labs, not too disimilar from Half-Life. Unfortunately, the project never saw the light of day.

When speaking with ComicBook.com about his new comic series, Scrapper, Cliff Bleszinski reflected on the project and how Disney ultimately shut it down when the company acquired Fox.

“I’m friends with a guy named Aaron Loeb, who wound up working at Warner Brothers. I worked with him on Unreal 2. He approached me and said, “I have an IP that you might want to [work on].” I’ve always been a staunch believer in making my own worlds and my own IPs. I was like, ‘Okay, there’s only two IPs that I would ever consider working on that weren’t ones that I made by myself. Firefly/Serenity or The Aliens franchise.’ And basically we were in talks to do it. One Friday I pitched it to the team and they were like, ‘F–k yeah.’ We all had the music in our head.

I had a whole pitch gathered together, and then of course the House of Mouse had to kick in the door and fuck everything up, which was one of the many cascading failures that led to the failure of Boss Key. And as much as my studio failing destroyed me, I was depressed for a full year, not only for my dog, but also my studio. In the long term, if you’re going through hell, keep going. And now that I have this comic book that seems to be doing well, and I’m having meetings with people to see if it could be a TV series, or a video game, or a movie, or something like that, I think it’s always darkest before the dawn. But Aliens will always be near and dear to my heart. The first one is such a perfect movie about suspense. The second one is suspense, but also the ultimate action movie. Cameron, I’m not the biggest Avatar fan, but Cameron just is brilliant. He can do such amazing stuff.”