When it comes to exciting third-person survival horror experiences, Aliens: Fireteam Elite does a lot right. It has solid combat and co-op elements, as well as a pretty brutal horde gameplay that can test your teamwork skills and tactical planning to its absolute limit, especially on the higher difficulties.
However, it's far from a perfect game. There are a few rough edges here and there that need smoothing out and the difficulty levels might need a little balancing, but these can all be fixed with patches down the line. And ,with how regular the devs are putting out updates, in that shouldn't be too long. But regardless of patches, there are still a few things in the game that don't make a lot of sense, so for those that are curious, here are a few things in Aliens: Fireteam Elite that are kind of weird.
10 Why No NPC Animations?
One of the most noticeable mysteries in Aliens: Fireteam Elite is the complete lack of any animation in the friendly NPC's found around the Hub that you can talk to. Whenever you interact with them, they stand there stock still, faces unmoving, occasionally glancing around as their lines are narrated at you by an unseen voice.
Although it could be chalked up to budget or time constraints in development, at the very minimum it would have been nice for some canned animations to be thrown in either with a few poses or at least some minor mouth movement. For now, whenever you talk to them, it's a little immersion breaking and unnerving to hear conversations from superior officers and support staff that stare you out and communicate through what seems to be telepathy.
9 The Guilt-Free Working Joe Murder
Aside from Xenomorphs, other hazards your fireteam will also have to deal with take the form of various Synths controlled by a Rogue AI. They range in strength from basic infantry to heavy troopers, snipers, and elites that can drop down turrets. Whilst the military combat models provide a challenge when they appear in the second and third set of missions, what doesn't make sense is why you can brutally murder the docile Working Joe maintenance synths in the first campaign with no repercussions.
When you first encounter them, they're in their charging bays and for some odd reason the game lets you blast them apart and it registers their deaths as a kill for the player. Whilst it is a good way to introduce a future enemy type as they show up very briefly later on, it feels a little unnecessary and excessive to be able to just brutally murder them whilst they're completely defenseless.
8 The Working Conditions
Despite what you might think, apparently the working conditions in the future are not only bad, they're downright unlivable, and the fact this is treated as completely normal doesn't make a lot of sense once you start to think about it.
This point stems from a conversation with the Requisitions Officer, where he expands on the lore. According to him, most colonies' safety is reliant on one security officer with a stun gun, OSHA violations be damned. Any complaints are dealt with through assassinations or sudden black ops kill team purges of entire workforces. It's working conditions that oddly feel more at home in the grimdark universe of 40k, not the Aliens franchise.
7 How Does Weyland Yutani Keep Getting Contracts?
One of the oddest things in Aliens: Fireteam Elite — and the Aliens franchise in general — is how Weyland Yutani keeps getting contracts for different industries. Surely, this far in the future, with their track record of continual Xenomorph break out after break out, there would be some sort of repercussions — but apparently not.
According to in-game NPC dialogue, the company is involved in a lot of different parts of the government and that it's "too big to fail." It's an odd line that seems to speak of the dark future of capitalism pushed to the absolute extreme.
6 Does Weyland Yutani Never Learn?
To follow on that point, why does Weyland Yutani never learn that Xenomorphs are not a good thing to mess around with? Countless comics, games, and multiple movies all feature this classic corporation doing what it does best: trying to weaponize Xenomorphs — and it always goes the same way. That is, it goes badly.
It doesn't make sense that nobody in this vast-reaching company thought to have a big meeting or at least send out a workplace memo explaining why maybe their current plan of using uncontrollable, wall-crawling, egg-laying, acid-for-blood, violent monsters is not the best plan. At this point, it's almost farcical how often they fall back on this plan even though it never works out.
5 Why Are Synths Still In Use?
Similar to how Weyland Yutani still won't stop trying to domesticate Xenomorphs, other corporations just can't get enough of using helpful Synths that without fail always suddenly go a bit... haywire. They either murder and experiment on their crew, or in the case of Michael in Alien: Covenant, commit genocide on an entire civilization. So why are they still used if they're so unstable?
Your ship's synth, Elaine, explains that psychopathy in Synths only happens in a small percentage, but even if it's a small risk, you're still bringing along someone that could potentially, at any moment, turn into a murderous monster that doesn't sleep, eat, age, or ever stop. It doesn't make a ton of sense as to why Synths are still kept around if they're so prone to instability. Even if it's a small percentage, there's still a chance they could snap, and you wouldn't want that to happen whilst you were in Hypersleep.
4 The Rogue AI Problem
Mild spoilers for the campaign, but your team faces off against a rogue AI named SYNTHIA. Aside from being a real pain to deal with, what doesn't make a ton of sense is how easy she was able to gain control of her huge army of Synthetic soldiers with no built-in failsafe to stop her.
Surely, if you had a super complex artificial intelligence that not only controlled every facet of your ship from life support to the engines and the vast onboard robotic workforce, you would want an insurance policy in place to stop her going haywire. With how consistently AI in the Aliens franchise likes to go rogue and do its own thing, surely failsafe precautions would be everywhere, but apparently not.
3 How Did Nobody Notice This?
Another of the more noticeable head-scratchers in Aliens: Fireteam Elite is how nobody noticed the giant Engineer research site on this planet in the second campaign. It's absolutely gigantic — so much so that it doesn't even fully fit on your screen at times, and yet it apparently went completely unnoticed by everyone.
In fact, it's such an obvious inconsistency that even your dropship pilot comments on how weird it is that they were able to miss it. Giant heads are everywhere and multiple parts of the station are wide open to the environment, and yet you're expected to believe that nobody who colonized the planet years ago ever noticed it once. How?
2 Why Can’t Technicians Recover Turrets?
More minor nitpick than massive confusing issue, it's a little odd that Technicians can't retrieve turrets that are placed down. Whilst you can easily drop and recover the turret that's part of your special ability as a Tech, the consumables you bring in cant be retrieved.
This doesn't make a ton of sense when you think about it, as there's no reason you shouldn't be able to recover them. Yes, they are consumables, but if there's enough space in your bag to bring them in the first place, surely you can retrieve any that have a little ammo left. Again, it's a minor bugbear as being unable to retrieve such a helpful item means you're more inclined to horde them for later in situations when you really shouldn't.
1 These Holes
Boy, do you see a lot of these holes when you're playing Aliens: Fireteam Elite, and you really start to find them annoying after a while. These are essentially Monster Closets, which means they're a spawn point for Xenomorphs. But it can get a bit egregious and immersion-breaking in certain missions when you see them plastered all over the place every couple of feet.
On lower difficulties, they don't spawn as many Xenomorphs to deal with, so there isn't as much of a reason to have them there. But on higher difficulties, they pump them out constantly and it can become a huge slog to make any progress as aliens spawn all around you. You'll find yourself just always aiming at the holes or dropping mines and turrets in front of them when you're walking around.