A lot of the story elements seem to be chosen for no other reason than "rule of cool," except the person deciding on what's cool is 12 years old.
I was going through one of the UNTIL mission arcs (can we call them Task Forces; they kinda remind me of those), the one where you have to take out the VIPER shield generators, with my 11 year old son, and all he was interested in was exploring the surrounding jungle. Or running from mob to mob in the bunkers yelling, "I'm a ninja!"
We died a lot.