Sat, 09/05/2009 - 14:01
I decided to put this in here because this seems to be an appropriate forum for game design discussion, which this relates too.
In science fiction, aliens tend to be important. And in aliens, being unhumanlike is also important. But how humanlike can an alien be before it crosses the line? Obviously, klingons are on one side and headcrabs are on the other, but where should the line be drawn? Where, for example, do vortigaunts fall on the extended metaphor I am going to call a spectrum? If we are going to make good science fiction games, we need this issue resolved. Feel free to draw on the vortigaunt example, it being (probably) close to the line.
I feel that vortigaunts are physically on the headcrab side- but emotionally and mentally seem to be more human and sometimes they are definitely more than human.
I think there has to be some sort of allowance made for communication- the player has to know what an alien is saying if need be. Although if you want to make your aliens more alien you could make it so the player cannot understand what they are saying. And I suppose you could make your alien look all kinds of ways but if they can somehow communicate with you (especially if their voices sound human-like or sound friendly to a human) then that will make them feel more humanized.
So for me I suppose it isn't so much what they look like but how well the human character and the player can communicate with them- which I didn't even realize until I wrote this.
Heh.
I've always been, personally, weird about making humanlike aliens. Another thing I like to focus on is alien psychology - sometimes I just ponder things like whether xenophobia is a natural thing in sentient species, and whether their would be a galactic civilization that wasn't prejudiced against outsiders from the start. I also try to make my languaged realistic, and mesh with the anatomy.