I just had this convo in dchat.
The lore implication of the Corrupted Hive is that they’re more intelligent, and thus have empathy/can be reasoned with, etcetera; that’s part of what Ciphering is. Our researchers have parsed the intricacies of the Xenomorph mind, and have re-arranged it to be more sentience-inclined.
The natural conclusion is that they can do this with any organism if they tried hard enough. Including gorillas.
Re: First Contact being already established in canon, I’d expect the United Americas would be more than willing to experiment with alternative forms of combat soldier when it comes to contact with xenomorphs.
Gorilla marines, but if they get hugged it’s a 3-4 larva for the hive instead of 2.
