Aliens Fireteam surprised last month when it debuted as a co-op shooter coming later this year. IGN has been covering the game exclusively through March and has now provided more details on the story and where it fits in Alien canon.
First things first, Cold Iron’s Studio Head Craig Zinkievich provided the following context:
“Aliens: Fireteam is a cooperative shooter, but it’s here to tell a new story too, and there’s a cohesive narrative spread across its campaigns,” Zinkievich explained. “Colonization has exploded, there’s a lot of new developments, your battalion is sent out to patrol the lawless frontier that exists out there. On the way, your ship picks up a distress call from LV-895.”
Aliens: Fireteam takes place in the year 2202, 23 years after the events of Aliens and Alien 3. Narrative designer Chris L’Etoile provided IGN the following insight into the setting:
“One of the major events in our backstory is the passing of the Colonial Protection Act in 2187. That is a government reaction to what the companies were doing in the outer rim in the frontier, basically saying, ‘[Corporations] have been running roughshod over everything out there, causing a lot of people misery, we’re going to take a more active hand in this.’”
Zinkievich added:
“It is a co-op survival shooter, but it’s pretty heavily bent towards RPG,” Zinkievich tells us. “That’s where a lot of Cold Iron’s team comes from – you’re not playing a preset person, we’re trying to make it so you can inhabit the world yourself.”
According to Zinkievich, some of the themes from the modern releases in Prometheus and Alien Covenant will also play a role to a degree:
“There are themes, there are things that happen in Prometheus and Alien Covenant that do show up in the game as well,” Zinkievich tells us. “I think we’re planning on talking about those later, but we are pulling Prometheus and Covenant into the future of the timeline.”
For more on the class types, enemy variations, and weapon counts, be sure to check out our prior coverage of Aliens Fireteam.
Our Take
As seasoned gamers and huge fans of the Aliens IP, we continue to be thoroughly impressed by what we’re seeing out of Aliens Fireteam. We’ll continue to provide more coverage in the coming months as we learn more!
[…] Aliens Fireteam will be joining Xbox Game Pass on December 14th. This coincides with the launch of the game’s season two content which includes the following: […]