Aliens Fireteam Elite 2 (AFE 2) is a bigger sequel to its 2021 original. That may go without saying in the video game world: “More” is often the TLDR version of any sequel’s intended scope. But AFE 2 is doing more in a way we don’t often see, by revising its three-player co-op structure to suit teams of four.
Lately, I’ve been wondering what benefits and limitations factor into designing a co-op game for three versus four players, so when I sat down with the AFE 2 team earlier this summer, it was a fun surprise to learn this is one of the very few series that has lived on both sides of the divide.
When deciding what this sequel could and should be, “the big thing was all about what players wanted from AFE that they didn’t get,” narrative director Jake Kriegman told me during a hands-on demo, “and then doing what we could to give them it. That fourth [co-op] player was one of those things.”
“I’m old school,” creative director Chris Cross added. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years. Three is an awkward number for a fireteam; two and two makes four, so you can do two splits, strategically. The other thing is, coming from an older era, you’re used to four-player split-screen, so the even-number balancing, it just works out.”
Cross explained why it’s not nearly as simple as just plugging in an extra player, though.
“Now, it was more challenging, because you need a little bit more space for people and you need more enemies. I call it the attention economy. You have four guns active; you not only need more targets, but you need to fill the active space with enough that everybody’s not just ganging up on one enemy, right? So, you have to have a minimum of four enemies at a time that are pulling attention around.”
“On higher difficulties, when you put friendly fire on, things can get pretty crowded,” Kriegman said. “We needed to consider what we can do to alleviate players shooting each other in the back constantly. So, there’s a [new] crouch button, and you’ll snap into cover as well. That allows you to make sure that you can have two people in the front crashing down, two people in the back; that way you can coordinate.”
Further to their point, the fourth player created balancing issues that the team needed to address as well.
“The other complication is making sure that all our classes balance together with four. We had to revamp all of that to make sure that four wasn’t so overpowering, but what’s nice about that is, because our rewards schedule is faster, it’s less grindy,” Cross explained. “But also, because of that, and the amount of customization we have, you can run four medics, for example, and no two will be the same. Like, maybe I’ll be a fire medic, he’ll be a cryo medic,” he said, pointing to Kriegman.
Cross told me that the decision to go with three-player co-op in the original game was partly due to a technical limitation, saying that at the time the thinking was “three is good,” emphasizing it in a way that sounded like “good enough” to my ears. “I don’t mind going on record and saying like, look, going from three to four was work. It was a lot of work, but it’s worth it.”
Aliens Fireteam Elite launches on August 25 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. A Switch 2 version is set to follow later this year, but no date has been announced.
