I don't think it was explained in-game, but that's an injury rather than a normal feature.

You could be right, though the Xeno that came out of the Jockey would probably be long dead by now.

But xenomorphs can live for thousands of years can't they -Bloo- ?

Im 100% sure that the raven is an deacon alien. Because in the game, i saw him beating up other xenomorphs.

It's never actually stated in the films how long they can live. It's implied they can live for hundreds of years because of the implication that the eggs (and by extension, the Facehuggers) on the Derelict have been dormant for a long time, but this isn't clear evidence of an adult Xeno's lifespan. The oldest Xenos seen in the series are the ones in Aliens, and those weren't even a month old. A deleted snippet from Alien was actually going to make the drone's life a short day or two - it was supposed to board Ripley's ship because it was finding a quiet place to die.

And while you guys may be right that the Raven could have been a Jockeyalien, the egg it came from was still part of the same hive as all the other Aliens, so the hostility doesn't make any sense. The only concrete evidence for its aggressiveness is the radiation emitted from the blast at the end Aliens, and even then, it's the only one of its kind while there hundreds of Spitters/numerous Crushers, other Xenos created by the radiation.

This is just me, but I think it was a Warrior morphing into a Praetorian for a number of reasons:

Its head was growing larger.
It was a big motherfucker.
There was only one seen. Praetorians are supposed to be extremely rare/rarely seen.
When Xenos morph into Praetorians, they emit a type of pheromone that makes the rest of its hive hostile toward it, and vice-versa. The reason for this is unknown, but this forces the pre-Praetorian to run and isolate itself form the rest of the hive until the process is complete. The Raven had its own little area when we're introduced to it.

Well did you read the comic books. There was a queen who was over thousands of years old in the books and there was one in AVP the movie and AVP3 (2010)

I'm going off information strictly from canon material, which are the four main films and Colonial Marines.

Otherwise, you'll find that I make up a shit ton of bullshit, especially during our RPGs. My character's been alive for 1000+ years, is an Empress, and is a sexual predator.

I just found out that the raven was definitely not created by the blast in the end of aliens. The same answer still remans. It is 100% a deacon alien. The only thing the radiation did was stop it from growing into a praetorian. Thats for sure.

Is that info from the developers, or what? This is the first time I'm hearing this.

By the way -Bloo-. Wana be friends? (Sorry if off topic)

No i found it out on a bunch of sites and most of them say that the radiation gave the raven a disorder that perminitly stopped it from growing into a praetorian. Wait, you didn't know that!

I thought every body knew

Nope, that's definitely news to me. Fascinating stuff.

And we're all friends here. But let's take this to the Off-Topic Thread.