Cold Iron Studios, the studio making the next Aliens title, has released a new trailer that reveals not only the game’s new title, but also the release date. The game previously known as Aliens: Fireteam is now Aliens: Fireteam Elite, and it’s launching on August 24. It’ll be available on PS4, PS5, PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X (the trailer doesn’t mention Series S, so I assume it’s not coming there).
Fireteam Elite is a co-op title, in which you play in teams of up to three players. From what we’ve been able to tell about the title so far, it’s set after the Alien film trilogy and stars a team of colonial marines who are attempting to save colonists from the bloodthirsty xenomorphs, which now come in several, colorful new varieties. They’ll also have to fight Weyland-Yutani synthetics and other threats in addition to the alien threat. There are five classes of marine from which you can choose.
I’m not exactly sure what prompted the name change from “Fireteam” to “Fireteam Elite.” I assume they both mean the same thing. The only thing I can think of is that the game is trying to distance itself from Alien: Isolation by having a two-word subtitle. Or maybe “Elite” is the name of the in-game squad. Either way, it’s not a huge change on the level of Rainbow Six going from Quarantine to Extraction.
An August launch date would mean the game has officially been in development for six years. The story of Cold Iron’s dogged attempt to make the Aliens game they wanted to make is a saga in and of itself, involving multiple other companies that purchased the studio over the years. The game also has several pre-order bonuses, most of them being cosmetics for your weapons and marines.