With Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 right around the corner, developers from Cold Iron Studios were kind enough to answer many of our questions across a variety of subjects, like Xenomorphs, game balance, progression systems, and the narrative. Among the developers who spoke to us include systems design lead Brock Robin, systems director Ron Allen, and art director Nic Stohlman.
Classes were present in the original Aliens: Fireteam Elite, but their identities could take some time to fully emerge as more abilities were unlocked. How has Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 changed that early-game experience so that each class immediately feels distinct?
Brock Robin – Systems Design Lead: We started by trying to distill the class down to specific roles in combat. These were things such as is this class good at killing single high value targets, eliminating swarms, dealing crowd control, supporting and enhancing other classes or even controlling space. We then leaned into those when creating and modifying each class’s suite of abilities.
Then when designing each class’s progression, we looked at how a replacer or perk would improve or modify their identity or forge a slightly new one. I’ll provide a few examples:
Overclock is a beloved Aliens: Fireteam Elite ability that increases the fire rate and reload speed of weapons of everyone around you (including yourself). While it did enhance the damage dealing capabilities of the Gunner it felt like more a support ability suited to the Medic. The Medic starts off being more purely heal and support focused, but Overclock as a replacer for Combat Stims allows them to support their teammates in a way that makes them feel different.
A Hunter at their core is designed to disable high value targets. They do that through a combination of a high single-target damage beam and a slow effect that, with some skills, can be attached to those high-value targets. Through upgrades they can either lean further into being purely damage dealing or purely crowd control, but their role at disabling targets is still preserved.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 features several different enemy factions alongside different damage types and weaknesses. How aggressively will the game push squads to change their builds and tactics rather than settling on a single optimal loadout?
Ron Allen – Systems Director: In Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2, we took a deeper look at the damage system and introduced specific damage types — electric, fire, cryo, and piercing — then built out a set of weaknesses and resistances for our enemies based on those types. From there, we tuned our weapons and abilities to lean into them, making the right loadout genuinely matter depending on what you’re up against.
On Casual and Standard you’ll still feel the difference, but resistances ramp up significantly at higher difficulties, giving you real incentive to bring the right tool for the job — or know when to switch on the fly. And while it might sound like you’re locked into whatever a weapon comes with, that’s not the case. As you progress, you’ll unlock a growing set of customization options that go well beyond what the first Aliens: Fireteam Elite offered. We’re not just talking attachments — you can change a weapon’s base damage type, alter how it fires, or swap out its trait entirely to behave differently in the field.
Robin: On Casual and Standard difficulty – not very much, it’s still very viable to take your favorite build in and enjoy destroying Xenos with your friends. On higher difficulties, however, you’re not going to be able to rely on a flamethrower to take out synthetic enemies without risking getting out-ranged and overwhelmed.
There are enough inputs for damage types across a player’s weapons, attachments, items, perks and abilities that let you distribute them more evenly. For example, if your favorite build relies on Phosphorus rockets to burn enemies but you’re facing synthetic opponents, you might want to bring an electric weapon or EMP grenades to augment it. Of course you can always coordinate with your friends, so in your capacity as the “incinerator” deal with threats that might be weak to that while your buddies handle other targets.
We are very excited to see how players engage with this system, but so far we’ve been able to show that a variety of builds and classes are capable of taking on our toughest challenges.
You’ve spoken about enemies being smarter and more aggressive this time around. What can the AI actually react to during combat – player positioning, repeated strategies, chokepoints, squad composition, or something else?
Allen: If you’ve played the first Aliens: Fireteam Elite, you’re going to feel the difference in Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 pretty quickly. Enemies are faster, more aggressive, and will swarm you if you give them the chance — they enter the scene a lot closer to you now and almost never let up, so staying mobile is key. As you push into higher difficulties, you’ll also start seeing more special and elite enemies in the mix, which can lead to some genuinely tense moments. Standing still is a death sentence, and if you’re not keeping an eye on the motion tracker, you might not last long at all. Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 rewards players who stay sharp and keep moving.
Chris Cross – Studio Design Director: A ton of work has gone into increasing situational awareness for all enemies and also the Companion Bots. A couple examples include adding evasion and dodge abilities to Xenos when you’re aiming at them head on, Companion Bots consider the Player and their environment constantly and will attempt to stay out of the Player’s line of fire, but some of my favorite behaviors we can’t discuss until after launch when all enemy types are known.
How will Horde mode’s progression work alongside the campaign? Will rewards, weapons and class progression carry between the two, or does Horde have systems that are exclusive to it?
Robin: Everything that you can earn and use in the regular campaign can be used in Horde Mode; there are no specific restrictions there. There are a handful of perks that you’ll unlock by playing Horde Mode that ONLY have an effect in Horde Mode. For example, one gives you escalating damage or max health for each wave you complete, allowing you to get stronger over time. Beyond that, Horde Mode does unlock some unique cosmetics like outfits.
Another example of this is that Challenge Cards in Aliens: Fireteam Elite often had mission specific restrictions (e.g. you can only play it on Mission Y). With the exception of a few cards that can only be played while solo, there are no such restrictions on other cards – allowing players to engage with the content wherever they like to.
With four players potentially entering a mission with very different skill levels and levels of progression, how do you balance encounters without either overwhelming newer players or making things too easy for veterans?
Robin: Adding a fourth player definitely forced a re-thinking of spaces and tuning values. We started by trying to address many of the common complaints with your allied bots to make them more useful and reliable to ensure that solo players could enjoy more success than Aliens: Fireteam Elite.
We added mechanics like crouch so that even within the claustrophobic spaces that the Aliens IP is known for, players could occupy a similar sized area but avoid shooting each other in the back.
Generally, I’d say that the standard difficulty, because of the bots’ increased effectiveness, while still challenging, is a bit easier than Aliens: Fireteam Elite. We wanted players to be able to get a taste for the game and hook them on all of our interesting and varied progression – only for them to graduate to higher difficulties as they get better.
Beyond that we also had to think of how balance should play out across different permutations of players and companion bots. For example, bots don’t have access to any of your high-powered abilities, so enemy health and damage actually increases a bit the more players you have – otherwise it was too easy.
Lastly, we have very granular and varied Challenge Cards which give players even more agency over the level of difficulty they experience.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 tells a self-contained story within the established Alien universe. How do you balance recognizable locations, creatures and lore from the films with the need to give players environments and threats they haven’t already seen before?
Nic Stohlman – Art Director: I like to ease players in with something familiar, then start to add new and strange things as the game progresses. It sets a recognizable tone for the game— that way we can add new elements to the story and have it harmonize with the Alien universe. We want to show you we can play the hits before we go into our new jams.
There is an inherent challenge in making Xenomorphs frightening when players may kill hundreds of them over the course of a shooter. What are you doing to ensure that individual Xenomorphs – or particular variants – can still make experienced players panic deep into the game?
Cross: Making sure the Xenomorphs and enemies in general stay scary and fun is definitely a challenge in a game with massive firepower like ours. Besides the visceral and visual differences in the many Xenomorphs in the game the solution is in how they are placed. Mainly we’re spacing out the enemy introductions, then staging the presentation of those moments and supporting them with set-piece lighting and audio.
With the Specialist eventually allowing players to combine abilities from different classes, how do you prevent that flexibility from making the five core classes feel less valuable in the endgame?
Robin: We felt it was more important to allow unparalleled flexibility and buildcraft than making all classes relevant in the endgame. The journey we wanted was for the player to experience what each class has to offer, while enriching their overall experience and options for the Specialist. This is something we’ve debated internally, and we’ll be monitoring on release, as we have some potential solutions depending on how the player base at large reacts to it.
What resolution and frame-rate modes are you targeting on PS5, PS5 Pro, Xbox Series X and Series S, and how difficult has it been to maintain those targets during the largest four-player battles with potentially huge numbers of enemies on screen?
Arnel Lim – Engineering Director:
- PS5: 1440p @60fps
- PS5 Pro: 4k @60fps
- Xbox Series X: 1440p @60fps
- Xbox Series S: 1080p @30 fps
Maintaining those targets during our largest four-player encounters has definitely been one of the challenges of development. We establish performance budgets for things like encounter complexity, environments, characters and effects, but as the game evolves and everything comes together, we’re constantly profiling real gameplay and making adjustments to stay within those targets.
Sometimes the biggest costs aren’t necessarily where you’d expect them. At different points in development, effects associated with things like cryo mines and flamethrowers had a significant performance impact when combined with large numbers of enemies.
Those are exactly the kinds of scenarios we’ve been profiling and optimizing—looking at everything from effects and rendering to what happens when weapons interact with large numbers of enemies simultaneously. It’s been an ongoing process of finding those hotspots and optimizing them while preserving the scale and intensity we’re aiming for.
With the Switch 2 version arriving later, what has been the biggest technical challenge in translating the game’s larger hordes and four-player encounters to the hardware? Are you aiming for complete gameplay and multiplayer parity with the other versions?
Lim: Yes, our goal is to preserve the same core gameplay and multiplayer experience on the Nintendo Switch 2, including the four-player co-op experience and the larger-scale encounters that are core to the game.
The biggest challenge is ensuring we can maintain that scale and intensity while delivering consistent performance on the hardware. A lot of the optimization work we’ve done for Switch 2 – particularly around how we manage and render larger encounters – also benefits the game across our other supported hardware configurations.
Beyond that, it’s largely about tuning the appropriate platform-specific settings to get the best balance of performance and visual quality without compromising the core gameplay experience.
The published PC requirements currently target 1080p at both the minimum and recommended tiers. How far does the PC version scale beyond that in terms of resolution, frame rate, enemy simulation and visual settings, and what upscaling or frame-generation technologies will be supported?
Lim: The PC version scales well beyond the 1080p targets listed in our minimum and recommended specifications. Resolution can scale up to the capabilities of your display, with a range of visual settings available to balance image quality and performance based on your hardware.
We also support NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR for upscaling and frame generation, giving players additional options for targeting higher resolutions and frame rates.
Enemy simulation and the core gameplay experience remain consistent rather than scaling based on the performance of your PC, so players aren’t getting a different gameplay experience simply because they’re running higher-end hardware.
