Aliens: Colonial Marines is pitched as a direct story sequel to Aliens, but it won't put a bow on the series. Comments from Gearbox cinematic director Brian Burleson seem to indicate the company is grooming the franchise for future installments, though not necessarily in game form.

"Looking at the end of Aliens - we've got them getting off the planet, we've got that atmospheric processor going off," Burleson told Official Xbox Magazine. "Where can we pick up that thread? What are the repercussions of that?

"That's sort of where we come in, 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."

That doesn't sound like Gearbox already has Colonial Marines 2 in the works, but if the first game is a hit it does leave the studio some room to continue the series. Burleson, for his part, just seems excited about working with Aliens fiction in general. "Hopefully there's going to be lots more stories," he said. "I think we've picked an interesting bit for ours, and I hope other people are going to continue to make more stories with this universe in the future."