- Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 Game director Chris Cross says the sequel will have four-player co-op because it was “highly requested” and “just feels better.”
- Cross says four players also come with “challenges”
- Balancing the ‘attention economy’ is ‘basically an ongoing challenge for us’
Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 Game director Chris Cross explained why Cold Iron Studios decided to make the sequel in four-player co-op, but acknowledged that it ran into some obstacles during development.
In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest 2026, Cross said that one of the “challenges” of making the jump to four players was balancing the “attention economy” and the multitude of assets and effects on the screen at the same time.
“There’s four times as much stuff you need to put on screen,” he said, “like more enemies and stuff like that, because if everyone focuses their fire on something, it’ll melt.” [so] Managing enough goals and distractions for the team is basically a constant challenge for us.”
elite elite team was for two players, but when asked why the team decided to make the successor four-player instead of three-player, as typically found in other online cooperative shooters, Cross revealed it was for two reasons. One, it was “highly requested” by fans, and two, “four works better in a PVE game because you can do two and two.”
“You can have even more combinatorial skills, mix and match, but it’s also reminiscent of four-player split-screen, right? It feels good to have co-op first.”
Cross went on to say, “However, the thing about us is that if there are three people and one person breaks up, they would end up being a burden. Whereas, [with four players] you can do two and two now. But another thing, though, is the kind of three-person convention that I felt came from battle royale games, like trios. [in] Apex legends, fortniteetc
“It feels like a good combination for a solitary unit, but I like four, [it] It just feels better… A four-person rifle team feels good about having four slots with five classes and six possible. The opportunities that are mixed and matched are much greater than just three.”
Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 It doesn’t have a release date yet, but it will be released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC.
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