Aliens: Fireteam Elite Creators Discuss Action vs. Horror, New Xenomorphs, and Future Content

Aliens: Fireteam Elite is an upcoming multiplayer third-person shooter game developed by Cold Iron Studio in collaboration with Disney's 20th Century Gamings. It is the very first Alien game because Alien: Blackout and also is a standalone follow up to the initial Alien trilogy. In comparison to Alien: Seclusion, Fireteam Elite will certainly focus on action as opposed to survival-horror. The game will be a third-person co-op shooter, able to be had fun with pals or AI teammates.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite from Cold Iron Studios will soon offer a new take on the Aliens universe by pitting players against unrelenting waves of Xenomorphs. While those who know Alien and Aliens front and back will already be familiar with the iconic multi-mouthed creatures by now, Fireteam Elite has a few surprises in store with some brand new Xenomorph variants created. It’s also a surprisingly engaging and entertaining game overall, much more so than one typically might expect from a licensed game of this kind.

The new game launches on August 24th, and ahead of that release, we spoke to Cold Iron Studios co-founder and creative director Matt Highison and fellow co-founder and CEO Craig Zinkievich. The pair spoke about some of the new Xenomorphs they’d created, the difference between their game and past Alien games we’ve gotten that skewed more towards horror than action, and the possibilities of the post-launch content planned for Fireteam Elite. You can see that and much more in our Q&A below.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Aliens is a big franchise to be working with. The community, they know their stuff. They know if it’s wrong, or they’ll hit you with the “well, actually.” So, are there any pressures associated with working with something this big?

CZ: It goes back to when we were first talking with 20th century about this and they offered Aliens and asked us what we could do with the franchise. I think the best part about that is that we’re huge fans too. We did not go into this with a slide rule and a calculator and going, “Oh, this will be a good franchise to make a game of.”

MH: We’re part of that community that [says] “well, actually.” We definitely are.

CZ: So when they brought it to us, we just jumped at it. And so I think shortly afterwards, we were like, “Oh my gosh. Now we have to make it as good as we want it to be made.” We’ve learned so much. we were huge fans of the movies, the novels, the comics, the other video games, even the crazy action figures. We all had those and were super fans of that stuff before we started, but we’ve still learn so much from the community. You’re right. They are very, very into it, very, very loyal to it. And we’ve tried our best to make sure that we’ve taken all the things that we’ve loved about the extended universe, not just the movie, and tried to sprinkle those throughout the game with lore items and other little references here. So hopefully the super fans end up coming to the game and seeing that we really, really tried to make it a love letter to the franchise.

Most Alien games gears more towards horror or survival horror as opposed to other genres. Whereas to me, your game is more action oriented. Do you think that there’s a trade-off to be made there? Are you losing something by doing this?

CZ: So, for us, when we looked at the Aliens landscape, there’s Ridley Scott’s Alien. That is just pure horror movie. It’s the mono y mono experience of Ripley being hunted down by a Xenomorph. And quite frankly, in video games, Alien Isolation did a fantastic job of bringing that to life with the atmosphere that they have and the feelings that they had. When we looked at the landscape and the type of gamers we are and the type of Alien fans we are, we really wanted to do something Aliens with an “S.” The James Cameron movie. It is arguably an action movie. There’s a lot of firefights. There are a lot of Xenomorphs, and that is the experience that we’re really trying to go for with Aliens: Fireteam Elite , not the Alien experience, but I think it’s the “S” underlined experience.

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It’s a three-player co-op game. Typically, you see duos or you see a four-player, like a squad. What was the intent behind a three-player design? What does that add that you maybe lose with any other option?

MH: Some of it came from just going back to what is true to the franchise, and a key component for some of our environments that you go into is those tight, claustrophobic spaces. Especially when you put on harder difficulties and there’s friendly fire, it’s that moment when you feel like you’re surrounded on all sides, and you have to watch where you’re shooting, and three players was the most fun. Yeah, we’re trying to be true to the license. It’s also a video game and three players is where the sweet spot was for us, for sure.

CZ: Yeah, four players just pushed the environment to the point where they didn’t feel like Aliens anymore. So, we kind of took our cue from Destiny and were like, “Yeah, three-player’s good. Three-player’s good.”

So, if it’s designed to be a co-op game, what do you feel is the best way to play this game solo? How does someone go about playing this game by themselves?

MH: You can play offline solo. We will fill in your Fireteam with two other AI synthetic bots, Alpha and Beta. They have a standardized gunner-like loadout with an M41 and a frag grenade, and they do pretty well in watching your back. Up through the harder difficulties, you’re going to want a human though. There’s just no real replacement. Can’t trust a Synth at that extreme difficulty.

Was there ever an option or considered to customize their loadouts for them? Because like I said, I’ve been playing with bots mostly myself, and sometimes I thought, “Man, I wish I could give them something to compliment what I’m choosing.”

MH: We have a year’s worth of content updates coming out. The first one is coming out September 8th. I’m kind of taking a side here. On September 8th, we’re releasing a new class called Phalanx, and that’s our big gameplay update, free for every owner of the game. Of course, we’ll look at adding new features that the community wants, but really at launch, we wanted to lean into playing this game with three human beings. It’s a co-op game first and foremost.

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I’ve seen a lot of people say, “Can I play Xenomorphs?” You can’t, but a lot of games tend to take that route – Left 4 Dead, Friday the 13th: The Game, you play as the antagonist. Was that ever an idea you considered with this game?

CZ: We couldn’t sit here and say, “No, we never thought about that.” But being a game studio of 45 to 50 devs throughout the project, the time you have is finite. And we wanted to make sure that that core Aliens experience of you role playing as a Colonial Marine going up against these Xenomorphs was the best experience that we could get and the coolest experience that we could get. So, we could have gone really broad and tried, “Let’s do this, let’s add this, let’s do this.” Maybe there’s time for that stuff post-launch, but really for the launch game, we wanted to really focus and make sure that we had a really polishing and great co-op experience.

Just to be clear, is a PvP mode out of the question for your game?

CZ: It’s not there at launch and we currently don’t have any plans to do PVP.

The classes that you guys have, the loadouts, I really like the diversity in the loadouts and the different tech that they bring. Was the inspiration behind the loadouts more driven by the Aliens lore or was it gameplay needs?

CZ: It was both. I think that they ended up marrying fairly well, but it was both. We do believe in if you’re going to make a co-op experience, you have to make sure that each of your classes, each of your players can have different roles, whether or not it’s doing support roles, damage dealing, crowd control, those sorts of things. So, it was making sure that we had the disparate roles and then figuring out how that stuff ties into the franchise, and make sure that when you are going against those really, really hard difficulties, you and your friends are thinking about who’s coming and what class makeup, or what perk build for this class you’re using.

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You guys created some new types of the Xenomorph. How do you even go about creating something new? How do you touch something worrying about people saying, “Oh, that’s not how that goes.”

MH: Oh man. It’s one of those things where we are the first gatekeepers of that, and if we, as fans, don’t think that it’s cool, the public isn’t going to pull any punches with us. So, it has to pass our fandom muster first. And then I think we look at what is … Xenomorphs are so terrifying in so many ways. And we’re like, “How can we really, really take advantage of that in a survival shooter setting?” And you look at something simple, like it’s scary that Xenomorphs can crawl on walls, and they can come from anywhere, and that’s already in the game. Would it be scarier if we filled one of them with acid sacks that explode and drip on top of you? Well, yeah, let’s lean into that and see if we can make a specific Xenomorph that amps up that pressure.

That’s one of the best examples. Or, hey, if there’s a Xenomorph that can crawl on walls and lob acid grenades at you, how do we make that really cool and put even more pressure on you to stay agile and change positions in the map and not get too bogged down? So there’s that gameplay need, and then tying it into the established lore of Xenomorphs and how they can shift around to take advantage of the environment.

CZ: There’s so many different types of Xenomorphs in the extended universe, in the comics and in the novels. There were a lot of things that we could draw on there as well. But like Matt said for some of the ones where we went even off pace there, it’s us being fans and being the gatekeeper. I can remember several different Xenomorphs that we were like, “Let’s try this. Let’s get it in game.” And we’re like, “This is not right, no.”

Like what?

CZ: I’m not going to … [Matt laughs] Let’s focus on the things that got in the game and the really awesome. Months down the line, maybe we’ll release concept art of the failed Xenomorphs.

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What is gained from locking equipment to a class as opposed to letting people just pick whatever they want?

CZ: So there’s a ton of customization in the game. The perks, as you open up the perks, you can use other classes’ perks. They go back and forth between the classes, so there’s movement there. As for the weapons, we played around with full freedom across the board. But as I was saying earlier, we really wanted to make sure that each of these class kits felt like they had a role, felt like they had a place and they had their flavor. And for us, the weapons were really big part of that, to make sure that… The Demolisher, our heavy, that’s the one that has the Smartgun or the flamethrower or the big grenade launcher there, in that, the Gunner is the one who always has a rifle and that close-quarter weapon. We just felt that that was integral to those roles, integral to those flavors of Marines within the franchise.”

I want to talk a little bit about what I think is my favorite part of the game so far is the Challenge Cards, because I think that is probably what changes it up the most for me, it makes every single play through different. So, what did you guys hope to achieve with the Challenge Cards? What ideas did you think, “Oh, we got to do this, this and this.”

CZ: What we wanted to achieve is exactly what you said, which is, “Oh my God, this is a great system and I love playing this over and over again because of this system.” But it really came out of all of us devs … When we started the game, because people are people and slightly competitive, it was all about how fast we can get through missions and keeping track of that, and our whiteboard at the office with who did this mission the fastest. Then we just started thinking about “what ifs.” What if you only had your pistol, can you get through the mission with your pistol? What if you’re losing health regularly unless you’re making kills? The system just came out of that, where it’s let’s give the players the ability to do all these what ifs and try all these what ifs on their own.

Do you have any Challenge Cards that are your favorites?

MH: Just because I’m masochistic, I like bringing people with me and using the… I already forgot what we ended up calling it. It’s the one where we switch all the Runners to Bursters. And you put it on a harder difficulty so acid damage does more, and then people start panicking and there’s friendly fire on. And so, there’s just the floor is completely covered in acid, and friendly fire is on and you’re just screwed. I love the agent of chaos type cards.

CZ: I probably go into that realm a little bit, which is … I don’t know, maybe that’s telling for Matt and I. But for me, a lot of Aliens is feeling like the ultimate badass as a Colonial Marine and feeling like you’ve got this, and then things starting to go wrong, and then just the overwhelming odds come in and get you. There’s one Challenge Card that jams your gun on a regular basis, and that happening at the wrong time is just so memorable. Or your motion tracker going out, because again, that’s so important when Xenos are coming from all over the place. I like the little extra added story that happens when it’s like, “My gun, it’s my gun!”

MH: And some of it’s just … I remember playing Halo 1 and being like, “Can we get through this with only melee and grenades?” And challenging friends to and going through it over and over and over. And we’re like, “Hey, as devs, we can make this a thing that players get to experience too and make it official and give extra rewards for it.” It is a super, super cool system, and it’s pretty expansive. Craig and I both have our crazy, crazy buffed up characters. And sometimes I go in there and I’m shocked at how many different Challenge Cards there are. It’s a lot.”

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I understand that you mentioned the future classes, you’re adding the Phalanx. Is there anything that you can tell me about that one?

MH: Phalanx, he’s all about drawing fire and protecting your team. He has a portable shield that he can take out. So, he’s in cover and can still move and turns all of his weapons into single-handed so he can still be firing with the shield out. It’s awesome for going against Synthetics, obviously, because you don’t have to hide from ranged fire anymore. It’s also great for being the front of the line when fighting Praetorians with that challenge card and taking more of that tank role on the team.

CZ: And Phalanx comes out in season one, which is just a few weeks after launch, and we have four seasons planned for the first year with additional classes, additional gameplay and all that stuff is free with the base game, all the season content, all the additions that we plan on making.

MH: New rewards as well. There’s new rewards that you get to unlock during that. It’s pretty cool that we’re not locking this stuff behind a paywall. I know that’s something that we could do. We could probably sell classes. They’re really fucking cool, but anybody that buys the game is going to be able to log in on September 8th and get yet another class and expand the game for free. Again, we’re big nerds. We’re big gamers. That’s what I want as a gamer, so that’s what we’re doing.

Anytime anyone talks about Aliens or Alien , not far behind that is always Predator. Is there a possibility we ever see any Predator, or is he staying over in Predator: Hunting Grounds?

CZ: We have no plans on including the Predator anytime soon. I’ll say it like that.

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