So I keep hearing about this terrible cameo/retcon that happens later in the game, and I'm itching to know what it is.

I'm pretty sure I will never play this game through far enough to find out what it is, so can someone explain what happens?

Alex mentioned it in his review -

I cannot explain much beyond that without outright spoiling the game, but let's just say that a late-game cameo (that the game telegraphs in its opening credits) is one of the dumbest, most hamfisted twists in anything of Alien's canon. Yes, dumber than the entire Aliens vs. Predator franchise.

I've heard Hicks is in the game, could it be him?

Yeah, it's Hicks.

I hope it's Michael Fassbender. Or a big pale man.

@yummylee: So what's so bad about it, besides the fact that he was supposed to be dead...

No idea, haven't actually seen it myself, but I would say that reviving a dead character just because is bad enough. I think it's also because of the terribly thin explanation of why he's alive, and that, according to Alex's review, why Hicks is alive is apart of ''another story'' or something. Meaning that they're planning to explain it in DLC, or they were just too lazy to actually come up with a reason and just settled on putting him in because 'fanservice'.

@eskimo: Well, you pretty much answered your own question. For as big of a deal as they made about this game being considered a canon sequel to Aliens, it retcons parts of that movie and Alien 3. Eventually, the question is asked as to who was in Hicks' escape pod in 3 but it's then immediately sidestepped and never brought up again.

On top of all that, Michael Biehn give an extremely phoned-in performance.

Also, if you were wondering why the colony is still around when it was nuked in the end of Aliens... don't. It's never brought up.

From the Penny Arcade review:

My absolute favorite part of the game was the moment they brought a character back from the film, and another marine pointed out the giant plot hole this created. “That’s a long story,” the returning character said, and I’m pretty sure he waved his hand as he said it. He didn’t have time to explain the impossible situation. When you have to write in a character literally hand-waving away something that made no sense, your story is a mess.

That's hilariously stupid.

Haha, that's pretty awesome. In the sense that it is terribly, terribly stupid.

Yeah...it's pretty dumb. There's a couple of story elements that the game just writes off as, "Eh, yeah, that's kind of weird, but OH HEY ALIENS AND WEYLAND-YUTANI SHOOOOOOOOT".

It is actually Michael Biehn voicing him?