Aliens: Colonial Marines picks up on and leaves "dangling threads" of canon

Aliens: Colonial Marines is a love letter to the franchise form Gearbox Software, but it also helps tidy up the Aliens canon - and add to it.

The shooter's story is designed to both fit in with and expand the universe established by the films and their many carefully guarded tie-ins - comics, novels and more.

"Looking at the end of Aliens - we've got them getting off the planet, we've got that atmospheric processor going off. Where can we pick up that thread? What are the repercussions of that? That's sort of where we come in" cinematic director Brian Burleson told OXM.

"Because as storytellers it's always fun to figure out where someone else left some dangling threads in their story. That's another cool thing about this universe: all the stories do that, they always leave a few dangling threads for somebody else to pick up.

"So we've run with a few of those, and created our own fiction from that, and left a few dangling threads of our own for other people to hopefully pick up one day, and expand the universe even further."

Aliens: Colonial Marines arrives on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in early February.

Thanks, Shack News.