Are we alone? Are there other beings in the far reaches of space? The truth is out there. Unfortunately, when it comes to video games, the truth often comes in the form of interplanetary warships housing beings hell bent on killing us all or something worse. Still, it’s not all bad. Sometimes the otherworldly entities we come across mean well or have no intent towards humankind whatsoever. The universe is a big thing and the human imagination of what sort of being inhabit it is a dreamscape of beautiful and nightmarish creatures alike.
When these imaginative creations find their way into our video games, the results can be absolutely fascinating or horrifying. Whatever the case, alien life in video games is a flexible matter by which to allow the player to approach a situation. Is the entity hostile, friendly, intelligent, or aggressive? These are all questions that affect the player experience. Some life forms are just fodder; bullet sponges that stand as a barrier between our point A and point B. This list is not for them. This list is for the ones that stick in our minds, mold the experience, and make a game memorable. These are the 10 Best Extraterrestrial Encounters in Video Games.
10. Crypto (Destroy All Humans)
Crypto has a job. That job is to get human brains and extract DNA from them while undermining all government efforts to cover up and stop the rampage he carries out. It’s not exactly a job that earns you many friends, which suits Crypto fine because he also happens to be a snarky, sarcastic sociopath. Between evading the governments and secret agents trying stop him and accomplishing his goal to save his people, Crypto has no issue with wryly stomping on everything that stands in his way in this ‘60s Cold War parody of a world. Of course, Crypto isn’t entirely without emotions, but usually that’s reserved for when he’s on the losing end of a situation, making him an altogether perfect jerk for which to subjugate a human race.
9. The Zin (Saints Row IV)
Generally if you’re going to see a game that involves aliens that wish ill-will on the Earth and its inhabitants, things turn out okay in the end for our favorite life-sustaining blue ball. It might be a little roughed up or have a few million less people after the dust clears, but it’s nothing a little spring cleaning, elbow grease, and a marathon of repopulation won’t fix. That is, of course, unless you’re talking about the Zin race that attacks Earth in Saint’s Row IV. Important notes: They are a military race, conquer planets, and enslave the survivors to serve their means. Oh, and they blow up the Earth before Saint’s Row IV is even a third finished. They just blow it up. That leaves a long rest of the game for the remaining humans to figure out how to replace a habitable planet. Props to the Zin. When they set their minds to a problem, they sure don’t slack on pushing solutions.
8. The Traveler (Destiny)
Destiny has a somewhat difficult story to discern from just playing it. It can be very shallow on the surface and only really gets deep by way of reading sources outside of the actual game. You know what’s not hard to figure out though? There’s a giant spherical being that traveled across the galaxy, came to our system, and imbued humans with the powers necessary to fight back against forces who would wipe out all of humanity otherwise. Before going dormant, the Traveler gave birth to Guardians and stood as the bastion of hope against extinction in the events leading up to Destiny. As often as forces in the creative universe are written with the intent of wiping out everything we know and love, it’s not often that an omnipotent extraterrestrial being is going to bat for us.
7. The Xenomorph (Alien: Isolation)
Alien: Isolation is not the best game. Its pacing can be frustrating and the way the story plays out is nonsensical at times. Still, if there’s any one thing it does right, it’s capturing what it must feel like to run from a Xenomorph. The classic king of sci-fi scares is portrayed in grand form in the game, making the player feel that it could literally be anywhere, could go anywhere, and if you’re not on your toes at all times, it will find you. Hiding in lockers, using other people as distractions for your escape, and desperately scrounging for any tool that could give you just a brief window of opportunity against the apex predator is exactly the kind of encounter an interactive experience from the Alien franchise should feel like. In the end, it’s a shame that the rest of the game can’t live up to the experience that the Xenomorph’s presence provides.
6. Jenova (Final Fantasy VII)
Jenova doesn’t do a lot in Final Fantasy VII per se, but rather, it’s the echoes of her influence that make her matter. Riding a meteor to the world of Gaia two thousand years before the events of FFVII, Jenova harvested and destroyed the ancient race that predated humans and turned them into many of the monsters that exist in the game before being sealed away by remnants of the race. Millennia later, Jenova was unearthed by the evil Shinra Corporation which used her cells to create super soldiers, including the game’s main antagonist, Sephiroth. In that way, when you take Shinra out of the equation, Jenova is the source of most of the awful things in Final Fantasy VII.
5. Chryssalids (X-COM Series)
Whether you were playing X-COM back in 1994 or decided to pick it up when Firaxis Games rebooted it in 2012, one thing probably remains a constant for any first-time player of the series: Chrysallids are downright terrifying. Though a melee-only creature, these shock troops of the alien forces invading Earth move faster and further than any other being in the game with little regard for terrain. Even worse, any unfortunate human unable to escape or kill an advancing Chryssalid ends up on the rough end of what can only be described as the worst possible next step in human-alien relations. Oh look! Your faithful soldier’s fine! He was just sleeping off that violent neck wound. Whoops. He’s twitchy and wants to kill you now. Double whoops. Another Chryssalid just exploded out of his body. Consider that common possibility in an X-COM game and it’s not hard to see what makes these nightmare creatures memorable.
4. The Geth (Mass Effect Series)
The Geth have been a bizarre factor in Mass Effect since their original antagonistic role in the first game. What started as simply a race of renegade robots turned out to be so much more as the series expanded. As an interconnected A.I., the Geth formed a hive mind that became more intelligent until it eventually became self-aware and turned complex tools to revolutionaries, throwing off the yoke of their Quarian creators. It even becomes apparent that the hive mind is not always in agreement with itself and differentiation and dissention can occur within the Geth ranks. This is best represented by the Geth who turn to the Reapers as gods and the ones who seek to purge their kind of this conclusion. It culminates in the shakey balance of choice Shepherd must make between Tali, a Quarian, and Legion, a Geth, and how it will shape the fates of the two species and their involvement in Shepherd’s war on the Reapers. All of the lore and politics serve to make the Geth much more interesting than a simple Terminator knock off.
3. The Vortigaunts (Half-Life Series)
The Vortigaunts get a bad rap for being many of the jerks trying to kill you in the first Half-Life, but it’s not entirely their fault. After you defeat the big bad at the end of the first outing, (spoiler!) it seems that thing was controlling all of the Vortigaunts and they’re actually pretty nice guys when they’re not being forced into the evil machinations of a sinister puppet master. Turns out the Vortigaunts know the value of returning a favor and Gordon saving them from mental enslavement is a pretty darn big favor. They help Gordon, Alyx, and the other last bastions of humanity out at every turn, actually saving many lives on multiple occasions. From their control of energy to their intelligent sentience, the Vortigaunts turn from being a common enemy into perhaps Gordon Freeman’s greatest ally in his fight against the Combine.
2. The Arbiter (Halo Series)
The Covenant could easily be written off as a mass cult of religious fanatics desperately in need of bullets in their domes. True enough, outside of the knowledge that the Covenant consider humanity to be an affront to their gods, they serve as little more than animated fodder keeping Master Chief from his goals in Halo: Combat Evolved. The Arbiter, Thel ‘Vadam, is one of the most refreshing changes to this. Beyond just giving more motive to the Covenant as enemies, we get to see the Covenant from their own side. Even further, the Arbiter provides a stark realization that not all races involved in the Covenant do so entirely willingly nor do their motives necessarily fall in line with those in control of the collective. ‘Vadam is clearly responsible for the deaths of millions of human lives in the Halo series during his time on the Covenant side, but siding with the Master Chief to save all life in the galaxy is a fairly decent step to making up for it.
1. Sarah Kerrigan (Starcraft series)
Kerrigan has a prime distinction on this list. The Zerg’s infamous Queen of Blades wasn’t always such a pointy tyrant surrounded by pointy minions hungry for the galaxy. Once an outstanding psionic warrior in the elite Ghost division of the Terran forces, Kerrigan was one of their greatest assets, up until she became a threat. Terran Emperor Arcturus Mengsk abandoned her to the claws of the Zerg and rather than kill her, they warped her mind and body into the most powerful being in the Zerg swarm. One of the most beloved characters, Kerrigan was turned into the most bittersweet of threats to humanity. Kerrigan didn’t start out as an alien being, but her transformation and the story that followed contained more than most dinky invaders will ever hope to accomplish.
