Before August is over we’ll be getting a new paid expansion for Aliens: Fireteam Elite called Pathogen where the Aliens themselves find out that it’s not so fun being infected by a hostile lifeform.

“Something sinister has evolved in the wilds of planet LV-895 and not even Xenomorphs are safe from its ravages. The crew of the Endeavor must venture into uncharted lands and face new terrifying enemies if they hope to discover the source of this mysterious menace,” reads a description for the expansion.

To show off the new gameplay we have a trailer, embedded at the bottom of this story, showing off the effects of what seems to be a parasite. The infected Xenomorphs are white now and even more slimy than usual, sporting random growths and bulbous body parts.

Part of the infection reminds us of the real world “zombie fungus” and “zombie spiders” which were influences for the Infected in the Last of Us. Just a word of caution before clicking on those links, they’re rather unsettling and it may turn some people’s worlds on their heads to discover that zombie infections kind of exist in the animal world.

That got way too real way too fast so back to shooting Aliens in space and the Pathogen expansion is promising quite a lot such as three exclusive story missions, new weapons and gear, new customisation options and more.

When we played the base game at launch – read our review here – we finished the main campaign and had no real desire to jump back in any time soon and, if we’re being honest, what we’ve seen of Pathogen hasn’t swayed us.

At this point developer and co-publisher Cold Iron Studios would need to add something truly special to get us interested again, like a Powered Loader we could pilot.

Pathogen launches on 30th September on all platforms that the base game is available for, which is PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.