Fireteam Elite’s Pathogen DLC Takes Place On The Timeline
Aliens: Fireteam Elite is a part of the franchise’s canon timeline, and fans may be wondering where the recently released Pathogen DLC fits into it. Fireteam Elite tells its story through campaigns, which are made up of various missions made in the Left 4 Dead style. The base game contains four campaigns, but the DLC adds another fifth campaign, titled “Promise of a Flower”, which picks up after the main story is over.
On the Aliens timeline, Fireteam Elite falls in the year 2202, around 80 years after the events of the original Alien. In the base campaigns of Fireteam Elite, the United Americas Marine Corps responds to a distress signal from the planet LV-895. There, they find two threats related to the Xenomorphs; a secret Xeno breeding farm on the orbital refinery Katanga, which has become overrun, and a mysterious substance known as “Pathogen”, which scientists have been harvesting from Engineer ruins on the planet surface. While the Marines manage to destroy the Katanga breeding farm, the base game leaves the Pathogen experiments as a loose thread.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite’s Pathogen DLC Doesn’t Mention The Timeline In-Game
Once the player installs Pathogen, Aliens: Fireteam Elite‘s recent Prometheus-inspired DLC, they will need to talk to Sgt. Herrera on the deck of the UAS Endeavor to get started. She commends the player for their actions in destroying Katanga refinery but claims there is more work to be done. The Xenomorphs on the surface of LV-895, who have been mutated by the Pathogen, are still loose and have begun to infest the Engineer ruins on the planet. The Marines are tasked with finding out why they are acting strangely.
Fireteam Elite doesn’t have a traditionally told story, and its dialogue options are the main conduit that the game uses to deliver information and atmosphere. Because of that, there are no specific references to the timeline in Pathogen. However, the Aliens: Fireteam Elite Twitter account quietly confirmed where Pathogen falls on the timeline when it tweeted an image of the Pathogen Queen, one of Fireteam Elite‘s scariest Xenomorphs and the DLC’s final boss.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite’s Pathogen DLC Takes Place In 2202
This image is in-universe intel about the queen, and the date at the top left verifies that Pathogen takes place in the same year as the base game – 2202. Since this intel is dated 21 June 2202, it’s safe to assume that Aliens: Fireteam Elite‘s main story takes place in the first half of the year. This makes sense, since Herrera’s introductory dialogue implies that the destruction of Katanga happened recently, and she mentions a few major characters central to the base game’s story.
Although the Pathogen DLC does not answer some of the mysteries surrounding the titular pathogen, which mutates Xenomorphs and inspires Fireteam Elite‘s new enemy types, it does suggest that it could be a fungus native to the subterranean caves of LV-895. Herrera’s dialogue once Pathogen‘s campaign has finished also hints at the expected arrival of Weyland-Yutani to reclaim the planet, which could be the basis for Aliens: Fireteam Elite‘s next DLC expansion.
Source: Aliens: Fireteam Elite/Twitter
