Not even a week after Cold Iron Studio’s Aliens: Fireteam Elite celebrates its first anniversary, the first campaign update is now available to purchase! Pathogen sees the introduction of Neomorph enemy, expanding the game’s pathogen-based enemy rota.
You asked for new missions. You asked for new enemies. You asked for a shot at a Queen. Well, be careful what you wish for, Marines.
The Pathogen hive is here, and the swarm is angry. Get your Fireteam and get ready for more gear, more enemies, and more action. Delve deep into a new campaign that will pit you against the first boss fight of Aliens: Fireteam Elite – The Pathogen Queen.
Pathogen also includes 2 new Kit skins and 4 new head accessories, 9 new weapon shaders and 4 new weapon decals, 4 new emotes. And through the completion of the new story campaign – titled Promise of a Flower – you can also unlock 4 new weapons, 7 new perks and a new weapon decals, as well as various new unlocks to be obtained through Hidden Caches found in the new campaign.
For those who haven’t purchased Pathogen, there is a still an update to the game featuring a new game mode called Hardcore, 4 new weapons to purchase from the armoury along with assorted attachments and shaders, as well as additional bug fixes.
For the toughest Marines looking for a true challenge, Hardcore Mode poses the riskiest gameplay yet. In Hardcore Mode, players will be able to start with new characters and play at a difficulty of their choice, but be warned, in this mode death means it’s “Game Over”. However, as you progress through Hardcore Mode, all unlockable items are made available in Park’s Armory, after your character faces permadeath.
Pathogen is available for purchase for £12.99/$14.99.
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I mean the no lip synching characters, the same guy cleaning the powerloader for the whole campaign (and other animations), the inability to fully explore the home base spacecraft for weapon/skill updates like you can in most other style of modern 3rd person shooters. It feels incredibly outdated and limited in scope.
I don't think it is a bad game.........but even with the DLC it feels very incomplete. It will continue to feel very incomplete even if they throw more campaigns in. I personally thought pathogen LOOKED cool........but felt pretty empty. My favorite part of the campaign are the last three levels of the OG campaign just because there is other stuff happening outside of your squad. It feels more lived in and less empty, it was slightly more immersive.
I guess sequel talk depends on how much money they are making. They COULD continue to update like they did Destiny.........it was very incomplete feeling as well but they worked on it for years afterwards to where it hardly felt like the same game toward the end.
I don't feel like we are getting any other campaign DLC, kind of felt the end for this game but who knows.
Seems like if we get another DLC, it will be based around WY, possibly with human enemies and maybe new normal Xenos?
Or even waves of different types of enemies.
I mean, the Regicide campaign is a great starter. It's a space station. Just blow it up from outside with missiles or something. Tow it out of orbit and fling it at the closest star. Why does this mission even need three Marines on a suicide mission to overload its reactor?
The answer is: It's a co-op zombie-style shooter game. The levels exist solely for you to shoot at hundreds of
zombiesAliens.It's the same reason the movie Marines hole up in Operations instead of doing the smart thing: drive one of the colony rovers miles away from Hadley's Hope and wait for Bishop to come pick them up. It's more exciting.
But yes, definitely a Pathogen map!
This chould have easily been part of this DLC.
That's exactly how I feel. The writers aren't really being thoughtful here. Especially when we've had Covenant, the RPG and Alex White's interpretations that have started to make more internal sense of it all. One step forward, then two steps back with recent releases.
And I'm kind of getting bored with the whole superhero logic of: just use a virus, or just use radiation to make some crazy, generic, fleshy mutants. If you're gonna change and mutate the aliens, at least stop making them more stupidly fleshy and generic, but lean into the more biomechanical side...
As for the lore and going by what we know from "Infiltrator", I would guess that irradiated pathogen is responsible for the not-neomorphs. Same logic could also apply to "Fire & Stone" considering the Prometheus' crash into the Juggernaut could've irradiated the pathogen within the vessel that then spilled into the environment on LV-223. At least that's my current head canon for the moment.
The issue's not what they make it do, but how, when something's fantastical in science fiction that's okay, what's not okay's when they do not give a reason the audience can grasp as to why things are as they are.
It's important to maintain suspension of disbelief that we for example get an explanation as to why the Aliens here can be affected when other sources say otherwise.
Story-wise, what's up with the suicide mission-type requests from the command? Go into a hive with a 3 man team and kill everything? Same for the Regicide campaign, but there we had 2 different teams (which doesn't make sense from a military standpoint to split up forces).
I wish they'd not use the "go explore areas off this main chamber" twice in a row though, but I did really enjoy it in the first mission.
I was really pleased to see Cold Iron had listened to the complaints and put in a boss battle, and a cut scene. So thanks for that!
But yeah, lore-wise, the campaign does bug me. The Aliens shouldn't be able to be infected with the Pathogen. I know we saw it the once in Fire and Stone, but we had moved past that. I dislike how Fireteam and Inferno's Fall has dipped back into Fire and Stone's take on the pathogen. I much preferred Alex White's take we had started got towards.
Would have loved to fight a normal Queen in a situation like this too.
The mutations are cool and stuff, but I think I'd rather them just be normal neomorphs. I'm not super into the pathogen designs or creatures themselves, besides the Neomorphs in the game. The Queen design was cool, but I don't know I buy all the designs and mutations myself. Kinda think I would prefer just more different breeds of actual Xenos maybe.
Also very nice to have an actual boss fight too; and she was tough! Took us a few tries on intense to beat her, but it was very satisfying when we did.
I was also surprised at how little intel there was on the reason the xenos could be affected by the pathogen though.
That's what I'm thinking too. One of the voiceover lines at one point spoke about how the WY scientists at Pala Station were directly injecting pathogen into facehuggers, so I'm taking it that this hive is the result of one of them getting loose and starting up a hive, not that xenomorphs can normally be effected by this stuff.
And yeah, we know for a fact that they worked with Andrew Gaska to tie stuff in to the RPG when they were making the main game, but it could be that there's some behind-the-scenes stuff going on that meant they just didn't have access to him for this. Or they just decided they wanted Neomorph enemies for this expansion and decided to go about introducing them into the game this way, regardless of any continuity issues it might have thrown up.
Either way, it certainly stands out given that everything had been tied so closely together prior to this.
I get the connection between the Brutes and the mutant Queen's hand, but at the same time things get weird. She can't reproduce, so either she infected the Aliens with her spores or goo in some non Neomorph creating way, or all of the pathogen xenos had similar mutations for some reason.
With how they did the Crusher, I have doubts they'll have a satisfying reason for why the pathogen can infect Aliens. Whatever convoluted reason they give one day, the fact stays. They are ugly, fleshy and look less armored, don't have the elegance of the Neomorph in most of the designs yet are depicted as so much stronger than those beloved silly original Aliens...
Why couldn't they just use the original Neomorph? Why did they have to make things so convoluted? Oh right, they wanted bigger, scarier xenos, so they literally went with the logic of creating the ugly Newborn in A:R.
That's why I don't like seeing the pathogen too much, cause writers get "itchy" fingers and start writing it as a "it can do whatever I want" kinda mutation virus thing. No thought goes into the rules, or the logic behind it that grounds those fantastical elements.
This.
We know, we're just confused should that even be possible since other recent media contradicted it.
As for the canon thing, I think they choose to reference it, but not go after any of the writer's input
The canon here, at least for this game, was always meant to be flexible and be it's own little thing that isn't meant to factor what is or not canon
I just prefer Alex White's take, and Alien The RPG, and I'm voicing I wish this was closer to that.
It doesn't exist.
Like you have said a tail works as a counterbalance for walking or running not climbing, so that intel makes no sense, if the Brute lost the tail because of the mass being used up in the clubs, that might actually make some sense, as something passed on from the Pathogen Queen, being that it is an asymmetrical design and the club looks like unintended inflammation.
I agree I do not feel enough explanation exists for how the Aliens got infected in the first place by the Pathogen, being that in other recent lore they are shown to be immune to it.
An Addition:
They are now claiming that they had no communication with Alien The RPG or other projects, in terms of maintaining any consistency, I find this difficult to believe.
As I wrote in a reply:
Spoiler
Just literally every conversation with anything concerning the military history with any character on the Endeavor. Being identical to stuff in Alien The RPG? That has never appeared elsewhere in the EU? And Alien The RPG released before Fireteam Elite.
Another Addition:
According to the writer, a reason does exist for the Pathogen being able to infect them, they just are not allowed to spoil it just yet.
the Mutated xenos look ugly and not in a good way. They're too fleshy and rubbery. They don't look as bony as the Neos, don't look as creepy as the creatures in Prometheus and Carlos Huante's artwork. The designs are meh... Giving these creatures badly designed clubs for arms seems like blasphemy to me IMO.
We finally have our first cutscene which is nice but short lived and not super effective. They wanted to see what was making all of these mutations. When you see the Intel, you'll know it wasn't the mutant Queen. Was it really just that little pool at the end?
So pathogen xenos and other creatures work together cause of the pathogen? That's what they say in the game. But aren't xenos part of the pathogen already? Be it by David's perfecting or that the pathogen is derived from the true ancient xenos, a connection is there. So why don't they like the pathogen creatures then if they all should get along?
Don't get me started on the intel about the Crusher...
Spoiler
I'm really not liking the writing here, less and less with every new expansion of theirs. They try to make it out like the new creatures are so much cooler and stronger that regular xenos. Let's ignore the fact that aliens maybe shouldn't even be able to get infected since they already are part pathogen, but the implication that by just adding more pathogen you get better and stronger xenos makes me sick. Especially when they don't look more biomechanical or more Giger inspired (that's the only "upgrade" of the original I'd consider accepting), they look like discount Neomorphs and generic fleshy white mutants.
I mean, the game mechanics are fun, and I'm sure this DLC would be too, even though most of those mechanics make zero sense in the Alien EU. I do have a blast playing the game, but it really makes me sad to se how the lore is being treated, like it's being made up along the way.
P. S. those Neo looking spore pods are there, but not black like they should be, and our marines can breath all that stuff in without masks, no problem...
And the intel about the new brute:
Spoiler
I mean, how about a shoulder-mounted SADAR or a mountable machine gun?
Here's a lovely deep dive though:
https://www.aliensfireteamelite.com/en/community/pathogen-deep-dive-an-exhilarating-new-story
The Neomorph hive was the best level.
Still have to collect all the intel.
Would have liked to explore the shack mentioned in Aliens: Infiltrator though, or see a live Engineer.
The game hinted that the next DLC could be about Weyland-Yutani trying to take back the planet.
Also would make sense to have a mission on the Endeavor.
I also took it as a sort of mutation/abomination angle, so it didn't really bother me either.
I think the pathogen queen still has a lot of elegance to it's overall design as well.
My only (un)legitimate gripe:
I didn't like that the final boss had an asymmetrical design. Like that right clobbering arm.
key aspects of creature design in the Alien franchise, are symmetry and elegance. This was Heresy.
Spoiler
I only got a change to play it once, but these are some of my initial thoughts (I'll go ahead and put stuff in spoiler drop-downs, just incase):
Levels:
Spoiler
Mission 2 is like a darker and moodier version of Giants in the Earth. Some cool and different engineer structures, with rain and lightning in the background. Seeing the engineer husks from the pathogen is a nice touch from the films, and also adds to the darker atmosphere.
The descent from the dark engineer structures into the pathogen hives is pretty cool. I like the visual mixup of the pathogen hive. Lots of brown and yellow hues to mix things up. The white neomorphs contrast and compliment the level well, from a visual standpoint.
My only real gripe with the levels is it feels like they redo the thing of having a point in the level where you have to go to multiple room/points nearby to find an object that's needed to progress. Kinda felt like a way to avoid adding more to the level. But didn't bother me too much tbh.
Enemies:
Spoiler
Of course the BIG addition in the campaign is the legitimate boss fight with the pathogen queen at the end. And man, this was so awesome and worth the money imo! It's great to see that the developers saw that this was something people wanted and made sure to add it in. Thankfully, the boss fight is a lot of fun too! Once I saw that queen drop down and that big health bar show up, I had a big smile on my face haha. I like the element of chipping away her armor to do better damage. Makes it more interesting than just shooting it til it's dead. There's even a small cutscene after you defeat her, which was a nice touch. This boss fight made me very happy, and absolutely made the new campaign worth it for me!
My only criticism with it is that it would have maybe been good to have an escape sequence like at the end of "Only Way to be Sure". Feels kinda awkward to just have it end there, while we're still surrounded by enemies in the middle of a hive lol. But I can understand them not wanting to be too repetitive.
Overall I'm pretty satisfied with this expansion and can't wait to play some more!
This just makes me more hopeful that we continue to get more big DLC like this!
While the game has it's bare-bones problems, content-wise, it seems clear to me that the developers are actually passionate about the franchise, and are trying to add on content that will satisfy both casual and hardcore players.
I also noticed new intel, so one is probably related to that.
DLC with Deacons Hive!
and final boss Deacon Queen!
DLC with Engineers!
and Final Boss Engineer in Jockey Suit!
DLC with Androids like terminators!
and final boss like Skynet!
DLC with Predaliens Hive!
and Final Boss Predalien Queen!
Where are the 8 new weapons though? I got no new arsenal in the inventory (except the Prometheus suit and some random cosmetics) and the store guy only lists 3 new weapons.