Tuesday 25 November 2014

What exactly is the Xenomorph Life cycle in Alien: Isolation?!



Alien: Isolation is an action-adventure video game that focuses more on stealth as the protagonist, Ripley has to safely avoid this one, annoying alien on the ship, Sevastopol. The alien learned from his mistakes and grew stronger and smarter as the game progressed. This game was a success in many levels just like the movie it was based on- Alien (1973) by James Cameroon.

Leave now if you don't want any spoilers because things are about to get intense from here on.

(I warned you)

Near the end of the game, Ripley finds a nest full of alien eggs. Now the question is how did that nest appear in the first place. If you have seen the movie Alien then you must know that Aliens have a very intricate reproduction cycle:-


First the queen lays the eggs. The eggs don't have to be fertilized because it is done by the host. When a hapless creature (human, dog, duck, whale....anything) comes in close proximity to the eggs it hatches open blurting out a facehugger which does exactly what the name suggests. It latches on to the being's face and secretes the alien embryo and dies. After a few weeks once the embryo has matured it kills its host as it comes out of the chest as a chestburster. And it finally grows into an adult. It must be noted that a normal alien can not become a queen just like that.

This leads to the paradox or loophole in the game's plot- How did the nest form when the alien in the game is not a queen?

There are many theories for that for example, some say that eggs can be naturally formed when the dead host is excreted upon by the alien. This is seen in the deleted scenes of the movie Alien where 2 crew members- Brett and Dallas were slowly being digested by the chemicals in the Alien's black gunk. Maybe in the game the alien had lured and killed some crew members in his lair and made eggs out of them, though this theory sounds quite far-fetched.



Another more believable theory I came up with was royal jelly. Many novels have introduced this new technique of reproduction where a normal alien can make its own royal jelly from which queens are made if they can kill a huge number of human beings. Our blood reacts with the alien's to make this jelly. This is quite similar to the way normal ants become queens. If they have a lot and I mean A LOT of food then they grow wings and start laying eggs. It can be said that both species have many similar life procedures because both have the same caste system- there are worker ants, soldier ants , collector ants, etc... just like the aliens portrayed in the movie. Both can be said to be eusocial in nature. But since the existence of aliens is such a controversial topic all I can do is speculate and guess logically.

And as always,
THANKS FOR READING, HAVE A NICE DAY!

No comments:

Post a Comment