Post Thoughts: TitanFall 2... (Part 1)

... and we all roll over and one falls out.

Back when Titanfall 2 launched, I heard a lot of good feedback about its singleplayer storyline - not just from critics but also from the playerbase as well. This was a welcome departure from the first installment which tied its storyline to the multiplayer matches and thus had to build the pieces semi-dynamically. I originally wrote most of this review back in January of 2018 but then replayed it recently in order to finish the review and see if the negative emotions caused by a (then recent) break-up affected my perception of the game... so if the review reads a bit more negatively than per usual, that's why. However, that only applies to the similies, metaphors and general text, not what I'm speaking about (I've made sure of this in my re-review). Good sci-fi is still lacking in gaming (in my opinion) so I thought I'd check out Titanfall 2 and see what all the fuss was about. This is what I think about the game...

As usual - thar be spoilers!

Story:

*Increase dramatic tension by 14%... rotating camera angle by 3°..... calculating gaussian shift....INITIATE PLAYER EMOTION!*

Titanfall 2 starts off rather abruptly; there's very little introduction to the setting, the characters and the factions involved. In fact, the game commits one of the very few major faux pas in story-telling: it does not set the scene of normalcy. What is it to be in normal environment in the universe of Titanfall? What are our motivations? Who or what are we fighting for?  What changes our lives in such a way as to make this a personal, interesting fight? 

While the universe of Titanfall is largely unexplored and unexplained, the role of a titan pilot is shown rather glossily in a highlight reel of some awesome (mostly completely impossible in-game) things that the superior pilots are able to do on the battlefield. I think that this is supposed to serve the purpose of making the player want to fill the role of a pilot but, as many parents (and grown-up children) know, desire is intensified through denial.

Instead, the player is immediately granted pilot status and shoved into a training simulation that teaches the mechanics of the game and this pretty strongly hints that this is the developer's comfort zone. Training mission aside (which takes place within a simulator so the player can't even walk around the ship or loading bay of the titular titans), the player is dropped (unsuccessfully) onto an enemy-infested planet on a mission to get some doodad or somesuch in order to help win "the war". 

The resulting sequence is completely unsatisfying from both a gameplay and scene setting perspective. Gameplay-wise, it is not a difficult segment - I wandered forward, killing masses of enemies really easily. These enemies ceaselessly spawn in squads of two or three that, I suppose, was supposed to show the numerical superiority of the enemy but, in reality, just show that the enemy have no tactical or strategic ability and are easily defeated and disposed of. It also teaches the player to advance in the face of impossible odds... In fact, the turning point occurs in a cutscene, where the player is 'defeated' in such a specific manner that they are conscious but unable to act or move but also 'hurt' in some specific manner which is easily recoverable from a short time later with no ill side-effects or long-term issues.

It's a lazy mess.

The player proceeds to watch the mentor they just met, and to whom they have zero emotional connection, meet his untimely end at the hands of the moustache-twirlingly evil enemy titan squad which (unsurprisingly) are the primary antagonists for the player character, despite the majority of them even having any involvement in this particular scene. After passing-out, the player character wakes up some time later and is just in time for the mentor to die in thier arms, passing-on control of his special pilot's suit and control of his titan, BT-7274.

This sets the stage for a whistlestop tour of magnificent vistas and set-pieces. If there is one thing I am unable to reprimand the developers on is the quality of the set design and world art. The set dressing to this game really is top notch.

Whether the environments make any logical sense or not, they are beautifully constructed and lit.

However, in terms of narrative build-up, Titanfall 2 fails in all aspects: The writers attempt to push the idea that the player character and the NPC titan build a bond throughout the game. Both writing and acting refuse to back this premise. The reason I say this is that the writers attempt to cash two cheques they are unable to pay:

First off, the story reaches a point where the superior within the army tells both the player character and the titan they are piloting, "Hey, you did well but now we need to maximise our resources so we need to swap out the newbie pilot in our experienced titan for a more experienced pilot/mech combo."

The player character stays silent. The titan says that they are an effective pairing and that it thinks that it would be sub-optimal to split them up at this point... due to logistics (aka, the titans somehow interpret how the pilots react and perform and thus they have a synchronisation in action that leads to better combat efficiency). This premise is completely shot down later on when you realise that titans are just frames that can have their AI downloaded to them (and maybe even duplicated/cloned, though this aspect is not discussed or explored at all in the game - to its detriment). So, what possible benefit would this unsanctioned pairing really have that a fully synched pilot/AI combo (freshly downloaded to the BT frame) would not?!

This is as an unstatisfying denouement to the whole issue of legitimacy as there can be. The player doesn't appear to even want to be in this position (from a character perspective), the robot (AI), that religiously or dogmatically observes orders chooses to ignore those orders and the whole chain-of-command falls apart because the writer says so, rather than the higher ups recognising the promise of a pilot within or outside of the framework of the titan programme, the commander just accepts BT-7274's assessment of the situation - which causes its own issues that I'll get to next.

This brings me onto the titan programme in the first place.

The whole thing makes no sense. These things as essentially intelligent, semi-self-driving tanks and, according to blurb within the game, quiet rare and expensive pieces of equipment -  losing just one or even their accompanying pilot is a huge blow to either force. This, though, is undermined by just how many titans the player encounters and dispatches over the course of the game. Sure, you say, the enemy have a lot - that's what makes them so bad and dangerous. But put it into perspective - a group of mercenaries are able to afford one each!! 

Let's get that straight: A highly advanced, incredibly expensive war machine with customised AI exists in the world and they are basically only in the possession of nation states. Next up, we have pilots, who are incredibly rare and gifted soldiers who also have to go through intense and thorough training in order to qualify for their position... and yet we have a groupd of 5-or-so, gung-ho mercs who are all pilots and all have their own special, customised titan (not just some production-line variant that you could hand-wave as being cheaper to mass produce by the enemy).

This is like a group of mercenaries each having their own F15 jet fighter and each one of them being Maverick (Tom Cruise) in Top Gun!

Or to make the comparison even more ludicrous, it's like the group of mercenaries are all Oppenheimer and each one not only has their own atomic bomb but are all wearing cowboy hats and riding them around...

Each of the mecenary squad get an introduction like this but most of them have zero 'introduction' other than "Hey! Here I am!". There's no antagonism for these people and, quite frankly the mech combat is so terrible that these fights are very unsatisfying when they should be large, explosive fights of attrition.

Unfortunately, the exact nature of the AI in the titan frames is never specified. In fact, because they are able to operate independently I have to question why a pilot is even needed in the first place. These AI (or a least, BT) appear to be able to perform combat, threat assessment, both tactical and strategic operations through following orders, adjusting objectives to meet overarching objectives and even countermand orders in order to see the overall spirit of the order*. I mean, at this point they are essentially a fully-fledged human-level intelligence. There doesn't appear to be the need for any such human interaction with something so advanced and having a meatbag pilot just adds to the dead weight of these things in terms of armour, size/shape and life support systems... as well as adding in another point of failure.

*BT is able to adaptively continue on with the mission despite the mission being, "Meet up with this person and receive their information". Instead BT adapts it to, take on their equipment and determine what information they had discovered and then relay it to your forces on another planet (which was not planned because the fleet in orbit was unexpectedly destroyed) before receiving new orders.

Of course, BT could be the exception and not the rule. It appears that no other titan frames actually speak or interact in any meaningful way with their pilots as this is not shown throughout the game but the ending hints that the 'new' titan AI will have a personality of its own... 

The whole concept just seems incredibly poorly thought-out.

Every time you load up Titanfall 2 the game defaults to the multiplayer setting (though this screenshot is showing the title screen on the campaign setting because I pressed up on the d-pad after it loading). It's clear where the developers decided the player should be heading...

Moving back to the story, from a sci-fi perspective, the plot is actually an interesting concept if it weren't so done to death: at this point, fully three Star Wars movies have done the "planetary death ray" and even their worst storyline (take your pick and duke it out in the comments :p ) dealing with that concept did better in terms of characterisation and character arcs than Titanfall 2. What is at least interesting in Titanfall 2 is that the concept is fleshed out with a bit of hard sci-fi explanation and soft sci-fi 'mysterious ancient alien artefact'.

The failure of the writing staff is that they never actually cash in these cheques. Instead of expanding on the "how" using the hard sci-fi concepts that could be utilised to stop the firing of the weapon or drawing in on the mystery of the soft sci-fi alien artefact neither of these threads are ever used. There's just an immensely powerful, unstable ancient alien artefact that, somehow, the bad guys managed to work out how to use to construct and fire a planet-destroying death ray using gravitational lensing or somesuch and the player must stop the "bullet" reaching the chamber of the "gun".

The goals of the player character begin by finding out what happened to a previous expedition and then using a really cool (but totally unexplained) time travel mechanic enabled by a second mysterious ancient alien artefact which can never be used again in the entire rest of the game. Then move onto stopping the "bullet".

In fact, this mechanic, the device's appearance and total lack of explanation appear to be a late addition to the game because the whole thing just feels totally disconnected from the rest of the experience, despite taking place chronologically in the second mission arc in the game.

That's it. Yes, that's an 8-10 hour game - all explained in around three (edited down because I am exceptionally verbose today) paragraphs. You can't even really expand on that because everything else is just descriptions of what happens - not goals or conflicts or character beats.

Yes, all of these completely aerodynamic ships are flying propulsively through the atmosphere at speeds slow enough and elevations low enough for winged aircraft to follow and for people (and unsecured titans) to walk around on their outer hulls.... Not to mention that these frickin' frigates have gunnery positions EXTERNAL to their atmospherically-sealed hulls!!!! (Also, bonus points to whomever designed that frigate's engine system... 23 engine nozzles! I hope some of them are gimballed...)

If the medium-term endpoint of gaming is that games emulate the hollywood film experience, this game is worse than the cheapest summer blockbuster movie ever made. It asks the player to care about a robot (which audiences will gladly do!) without ever giving us a reason to. I saw reviews calling this a 'buddy' game. I'll show you what my idea of a buddy game is: The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Even the 2008 Prince of Persia reboot had more of a "buddy" feel to the interactions between Elika and The Prince. A "buddy" story needs conflict through personal goals and personality defects, resolution of that conflict, personal growth and witty banter between the two. Twins, Lethal Weapon, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future... these all had those elements between two characters (in some of them, they had multiple arcs between two different characters!!). There are so many more that I can't even begin to list them lest I create an almost neverending blogpost that people will never read but might reference purely for the curiosity.

The characters all need some work: The player is too quiet and needs a stronger personality to work. Maybe he's a hot-head and this is why he was never accepted into the pilot training programme but Captain Lastimosa sees his raw talent and does it on the side anyway. BT needs another character in order to work because, like a Robot movie, he/it is the comedic foil but worse than this, BT also needs better character building/a more clearly defined arc and dialogue improvements as well as a physical redesign.

His destruction and successive redeployment late in the game were completely lacking in emotional impact and, not only this, but the player didn't even feel the loss mechanically because they were given an unlimited ammo weapon with autoaim. The player should feel vulnerable at this point in the story and the mechanics and gameplay should reflect the loss of the titular element of the game. Instead, the gameplay is triumphant and the player over-powered.

This is such a weird sequence because within a minute, a new titan frame is sent down to the player character and he installs the equivalent of BT's hard drive - something that in-universe the character obviously knew was possible but that the player probably doesn't. However, the story, music and dialogue all play both moments as emotionally relevant and stirring when, if the game is being honest, nobody is or would be feeling jubilant or distraught at either moment in the game world and the player doesn't really fully understand the situation because nothing has been explained or foreshadowed by the game. At the end of the day, we live in a world where you can mirror data and an AI is just data - though we have no idea whether that's the case or not since they treat the AI as unique.

Then, from having lost BT and regained it once, as the final act of the game, the titan sacrifices itself to win the battle, save the planet and save the player character. Having only just gone through the loss a moment ago (storywise) the moment completely lacks any gravitas. 

Who is to say that a new image isn't in storage up on the mothership? Sure, this version of BT lacks the most recent data from the mission but its still the same AI... though, apparently, that isn't the case.

So the story isn't great but I will address the notion that some people might have that this game is saved by its mechanics...

Characters:

Ironically, this is actually the most dense scene of major characters in the whole game... and it's a loading screen!

You know it's bad when I'm just going to skip the character beats for this title. I covered a lot of what I thought was poor form in the Story section, above, but quite honestly, head down to the backseat designing section for how I'd fix this mess of poorly-used tropes for the main characters. As for the supporting characters, I just couldn't keep track of them: who the hell is Barker? Did I miss his introduction or was the game speaking about him as if I was expected to know him despite not being introduced to him...?

Mechanics:

I cannot fault the developers for any of their animations. This game features a tonne of them...

In theory, this game has excellent mechanics - it's a multiplayer shooter designed for immersion through control. Even the opening cinematic, describing what a pilot is by showing us what a pilot does, leans heavily on this concept. In practice, this game's mechancis are a mess.

First off, there is an inherent conflict between the level design for the pilot to manouevre around in and the level design requried for satisfying titan combat. Pilots are very agile; able to sprint, slide, double-jump, wall-run shoot, throw grenades, melee attack etc. Titans are able to shoot, lock on for release of a super power (which is charged by attacking) and move slightly faster (in what might be called a jog) instead of a walk - there is also a "slide" button for titans instead of jump but it has only two charges before it's useless so isn't really worth talking about.

I will not say that this is an impossible design conflict to work around but I will say that you need to have the best of the best designing the play space in order for it to work well.

Unfortnuately, I don't think Titanfall 2 had the best of the best working on this project. In fact, I think the team made the smart decision to separate out the titan gameplay and the pilot gameplay through level segregation and if you play through the game, I think you'll agree that the coolest parts are pilot-only.

That's not a surprising outcome though because, in reality, titan combat and the titan mechanics are BORING.

Seriously, you have a cool concept like mech combat (I mean, who didn't grow up loving Japanese manga/anime) but then create mechanics that completely neuter the coolness. When I think of the best anime in that genre, they're either slow, ponderous beasts which rely on strong characterisation of the pilots and world (Patlabor, Blue Gender) or they're lithe, swift ballet dancers (Knights of Sidonia, Gundam) although they also could have strong character exploration and/or stories of humanity and/or their creations (Neon Genesis Evangelion, Exo Squad). The world of Titanfall has none of these aspects. Titan combat is laborious and uninteresting precisely because the world is mostly tailored to the pilots. The only time slow, deliberate, two-dimensional mech combat is fun is when it is a game of cat a mouse - i.e. the terrain and titan abilities need to be designed around it... and none of the terrain in Titanfall 2 is designed around hide-and-seek mechanics, nor are the titan abilities.

The only ability out of all the loadouts I found for the titan within the game that was centred around area control was the magnetic vortex that allowed the absorption of bullets/missiles from the direction of view and then the release of them in the current direction of view. There were no loadouts with increased manoeuvrebility or the ability to really engage in more vertical combat (which might actually change things up a bit) outside of the overdrive abilities or whatever they were called. Universally, the titan combat revolved around firing at the enemy - charging up the special ability, occasionally taking cover to allow shields to recover or moving to acquire new 'batteries' which recharged your 'health' in a bullshit kind of way. This is not strategic or tactical play, at least not in any satisfying sense of the term because titans (the player's specifically) are VERY fragile. It doesn't take much to knock down the shields and most titan loadouts don't have a good defensive countermeasure or, if they do, it's timed or limited in some way as to make it almost useless. 

None of those mechanics are fun and especially not in a lumbering tin can.

This is from the opening cinematic... don't worry, titan fights are never this cool and you'll never be doing maneouevres which counteract each other's moves...

Worse still, most of the titan guns feel very lacklustre. These are powerful field cannons that should pack a punch but mostly just feel like larger versions of an infantry rifles with different rates of fire and/or spread. The one exception to this is the railgun which, when charged removes a significant portion of the enemy shields/health. Unfortunately, the developers decided to balance this by making the railgun NOT be a *hitscan weapon. Seriously, the one weapon in the game that absolutely should be undodgeable and should really easily penetrate deployable shields and be immune to the magnetic shield is none of these things...

*For the uninitiated, the term "hitscan" is conflated in gaming terms with "immediate hit". Whereas the actual term means the way the projectile path and intersection with potential objects/enemies is calculated.

Conversely, the pilot mechanics are, in my opinion, fun. Unfortunately, even in the levels that are designed especially for the pilot (and there are quite a few big set pieces dedicated solely to the pilot) virtually none of them really allow for true exploration and mastery of the mechanics available. Halo, back in the day, was notable for providing interesting arenas and competent AI to fight against. Titanfall 2, more than 15 years later, doesn't manage this feat. Enemies are one-note: they enter an arena (or are already pre-placed) and mindlessly attack. No flanking or covering tactics, in fact, the enemy types and range of behaviours are severely limited. Compare this to another recent first person shooter, Destiny*, and you'll see how different the approach between the two studios was. Destiny has varied enemy types whose abilities work synergistically to build the difficulty of any given encounter and thus require different ways to tackle each individual enemy as well as each group of enemies.

*To be fair to Respawn Entertainment, Bungie developed both Halo and Destiny...

I have to say that I also think the weapons are very unimaginative in their scope. There's a couple of assault rifles with very little to differentiate them, some hand guns (which really are not worth picking up), an uzi-type SMG, a sniper rifle and two types of shotgun-style weapons. This is the future, where people travel between star systems and have semi-autonomous AI-driven tanks that can survive entry into a planet's atmosphere and associated impact with the ground but they only have one slightly different weapon? (The heat shotgun) They can't even make a titan that can jump or leap or whatever so that mobile combat would be interesting!!

Combat aside, the level design is very flat. Players are not able to experiment beyond basic wall running and there are only one or two sequences that require more complicated skill sets (though still in that single dimension of movement).

Overall, I think the game would have been improved if the wall running was more akin to the Prince of Persia series - where players are able to more closely control their movement in all four planar directions - and the level design was slightly more open rather than its current linear format.

Ironically, I think the most fun I had in the game was during the time-switching level. This has shades of The Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Fez and other semi-puzzle games and, frankly I think this was not only the level with the strongest acting, writing, and best aesthetic design but also the most mechanically interestingly designed environment. I actually felt like I was a cool pilot like the developers showed in the opening cutscene.

Technical issues/bugs:

I *HATED* the fight with this mercenary. I just brute-forced the encounter and never felt like I was in any sort of control of the situation. Even trying to hide behind cover doesn't really work since the rocket spam can still get you.

I played this on PS4 and encountered no real frame rate issues or bugs within the game with the latest patch.

Conclusion:

The weapon models are actually all really nice and looking down the sights is satisfying in this game, whereas it isn't always the case for other games...

Titanfall 2 is a game that lacks focus: What IS the central mechanic of the game? Titans? But then the titan combat is very unsatisfying and boring. Time travel? But then it's only one mission. Pilot traversal? But then you really only utilise these skills properly during two levels (underground training yard and the powerplant/transmission dish assembly yard) with the rest of the levels being very linear and flat.

Quite honestly, if the game had settled on just one of these aspects and done it better then Titanfall 2 would, at least, be mechanically stronger than the game is in reality. There's two reasons that I think this may be the case

1. The design of the game switched several times and the pieces ended up being smooshed together to make the final product in time to ship it.
2. The developers felt unconfident of what they had and so stuffed the game with lots of extra ideas they'd had along the way in order to provide a "change" in pace in case the player got bored.

Furthermore, the pacing of the story also suffers from similar problems. Captain Lastimosa's death and BT's response to it, the events surrounding the destruction of the trial weapon which led to, what was essentially, a finale - a huge peak in terms of narrative which then dropped suddenly and the player was left grasping for things to do. Okay, BT says that they need to contact their forces to let them know where they are/what's going on but how do the forces not know these guys are down here? I remember it being mentioned around this point that the IMC had "ambushed" the player's army, however, the beginning of the game takes place as they CHOOSE to drop onto a planet they were planning on attacking. They weren't ambushed at all, in fact, there's no real reason why the frigates were even shot down as far as I can see unless they were driven into the atmosphere under heavy fire - which is just plainly stupid.

The conflict with the mercenary titan squad is forced and stupid and just never works.... not to mention that titan combat makes these encounters an annoying chore - they're either way too easy or overly difficult encounters due to the way BT handles movement and the design works for the titan weapons/power ups and health systems. In fact, if anything, the health systems are backwards in this game - the titan should have fully regenerating health and the pilot should be more fragile: It should be empowering and "safe" in a tank whereas you should feel reckless and challenged on foot...

I actually had way more problems with the story and design that I just couldn't fit into this review.

In a world where sci-fi is a minor part of the gaming landscape, it's possible that people, hungry for the genre, placed Titanfall 2 above its real place of value within the gaming landscape around the launch of the title. However, upon closer inspection, the game just doesn't hold up well. There isn't even the excuse that new, better games were released that shone a light on the pitfalls of the game. They just haven't been released. There are no games that are really competing with Titanfall 2 in terms of gameplay, aesthetics or genre.

My recommendation is to skip Titanfall 2 if, like me, you're primarily interested in the single player campaign. It's a decent romp for €15/£15 and lower but ultimately a disposable title that has very little emotional engagement, poor mechanics and mostly bland mechanical level design.

This whole entry has turned into a mammoth review so I'm going to split the review and the "Backseat Designing" section. So see part 2 for how I'd "fix" the game.