Titanfall 2

The first Titanfall felt like a prototype: a great prototype, but a prototype nonetheless. It had a bizarre campaign carelessly thrown inside multiplayer battles and, despite building a solid gameplay foundation, presented nothing that came close to using it to its full potential. It was a barebones game that was bound to become outdated as soon as its sequel launched. Titanfall 2 indeed offers a more complete package, with a separate campaign mode and a more robust multiplayer, but it still could have gone a step further in some areas.

Titanfall 2’s story is as paper-thin as the first one. We have the evil IMC – the oppressors – and the good Militia – the rebels. What they are actually fighting for and what they actually stand for are questions considered irrelevant by the narrative. Early on, you hear a character saying that the IMC “thrives on the casual indifference of others. They prey at the downtrodden, inviting them to trade all their freedom for a little security,” which marks the beginning of the development of certain themes – and clearly appeals to certain North-Americans with the word “freedom” tossed in as a generic, undefined ideal that must be protected at any cost – but these are issues quickly forgotten by the narrative. The protagonist is Jack Cooper, a bland straight white alpha male soldier that would certainly please Ubisoft’s executives and is part of the Militia, and so fights the IMC, and that’s all that matters.

The narrative is so sparse that the writers feel the need to remind the player of the protagonist’s ultimate goal not just once, but twice during the final missions. “Just in case you’ve forgotten, you’re killing all these people so that you can save a planet that is important to the Militia from being obliterated by a Death Star or whatever,” Jack’s titan, BT, keeps reminding him. The story actually focuses on the relationship between both characters, which develops in an expectedly simple way: they start as awkward companions and grow to become friends that are able to work seamlessly together, with BT’s charm coming from it being a machine that is unable to understand some idiomatic expressions and sarcasm, giving serious answers to what are often rhetorical questions. There’s a moment when BT even goes full Terminator 2 and gives a cute thumbs up to Jack after saving him.

The thing is: BT only becomes Jack’s titan under extraordinary circumstances. The Titan’s original Pilot, Captain Lastimosa – who doesn’t, well, last very long – is dying, and so, in a desperate attempt to make sure his mission will still be completed, he transfers the rights to his mecha to the only soldier left alive around him, which happens to be Jack. The relationship between Jack and BT, therefore, begins out of desperation – the Titan even refers to Jack just as “Pilot” to cement that professional distance – but lasts because they become best pals.

Let’s examine the game’s intro. The first lines in Titanfall 2, delivered while a character slaughters a bunch of people, are:

“Of all the things I’ve seen in the battlefields of the Frontier, the Pilot is the true dominant force. Fast and agile. Graceful, yet devastating. Perceptive… resourceful… and relentless. A Pilot sees the world differently. Sheer walls become flanking routes. Pilots fight differently. Experienced in deception and maneuver, even overwhelming odds shift in their favor. But what separates the Pilot from all the grunts and machines on the battlefield is the bond between a Pilot and a Titan. When linked to a Titan, a Pilot can only be stopped by overwhelming force… or an equal. The Frontier has been the only home I’ve ever known. For years, our lands have been destroyed by the IMC, forcefully taking our resources, polluting and destroying our planets and killing us off if we try to resist. Despite recent victories at Demeter and beyond, we have a long way to go before the IMC is defeated. Now I serve as a rifleman in the Militia, fighting to save the Frontier. I’m a long way from becoming a Pilot, but when that day comes I hope I can live up to the honor.”

It starts right out of the bat with a powerful statement about what the game’s story is going to be about: a power fantasy. The Pilot – and, therefore, Jack and the player – is not just one more basic soldier; he is special. He’s described as a force of destruction, something to be reckoned with, a dominant player in the battlefield. And indeed the game’s writing is not shy in hammering this theme home: when you complete a later mission, you hear the characters around you saying, “That was impressive, Pilot,”, “Those moves were something else,” “You, sir, are one hell of a Pilot.” The game doesn’t want you to simply feel awesome by playing a super-powerful character; it will also drown you in praise to make sure you’re getting the point.

It’s also interesting that the line “Graceful, yet devastating” is said while a Pilot is shown simply punching another guy in the face. It all sounds like a comedy, but the narration is dead serious.

After establishing how badass a Pilot is, this intro quickly shifts its focus to the Titans. The words “bond” and ‘link” appear, establishing how the relationship with your mecha will be the central point of the story. Then, the narration stops sounding like a company advertisement and Jack finally introduces himself, stating that he’s defending his home from the evil IMC, which is doing all sorts of terrible things to the Frontier.

Finally, the intro ends with “I’m a long way from becoming a Pilot,” which is supposed to function as a teaser of things to come, but it’s just hilarious since the “long way” is just, like, ten minutes into the game.

This opening scene, then, already reveals everything about the story in Titanfall 2: it’s a shallow power fantasy, with bland villains and a white protagonist named Jack, that takes itself too seriously and wants to give you “the feels” by making your buddy Titan a charming robot – and even a bit tragic too.

This is the point where the writing mostly succeeds, because it makes the Titan a bit ambiguous, not making it clear to the player if BT is trying to save Jack at any cost because it really cares about him or simply because that is what it’s programmed to do – or even a mix of both. The Titan repeats its directive “to protect the Pilot” throughout the game, which would make one believe it’s just doing what’s its programmed to do, but the delivery by voice actor Glenn Steinbaum is so aptly low-key heartfelt that it makes anyone wonder if BT is not just stating his directives as a way to cover-up its genuine feelings toward Jack, using its programming as a way of justifying its behavior without having to outright expose them: even in the scene in which it responds if it “loves” Jack, BT uses statistics and neutral reasoning to arrive at an answer.

The game, however, ends in an anticlimactic note, as the generic main villain (spoilers, just skip to the next paragraph to avoid them) doesn’t get his comeuppance, but instead just sticks a note with the word “Apex” on the player’s screen – which refers to an obscure group in the game’s lore and/or is just a foreshadowing for the developers’ following game, Apex Legends. Either way, the player is left out without the final climactic battle that the whole game was building up to.

Incidentally, while the main threat is the IMC, the main villains are just mercenaries who are working for them. This distinction is, however, irrelevant since it doesn’t change anything: they are still just bad guys that appear out of nowhere, guns blazing, at the end of some levels, and go out with a whimper. Some of them have a striking design – like wearing a strange mask – but they are still just bland, boring villains.

It’s a pity that the game’s story is not that great, as the level design is usually stellar. It’s true that the missions feel disconnected from each other, mechanically and thematically, but isolated they’re great: in a way, Titanfall 2 feels more like a Nintendo game in the vein of 3D World, just testing new ideas to work with its core mechanics, than like a common FPS such as the current Call of Dutys and Battlefields.

Nowhere this is made clearer than with what is Titanfall 2 best level: Effect and Cause. The mission is built around time travel – a theme playfully displayed in its title – and has Jack finding a device that sends him into the past with a simple press of a button, which makes the environment drastically change.  In the present, you are in a devastated area dominated by alien wildlife – the mission even begins with a Jurassic Park moment as Jack stumbles upon a sort of pterodactyl that just flies away as the camera pans over burning buildings – while in the past you’re inside those same buildings, but when they are at their prime. In the present, the areas are full of hostile beasts; in the past, they’re full of hostile soldiers. This breathes new life into the combat – as you will often find yourself fighting two battles at the same time, switching between past and present to surprise your targets by going around them in the other time period and then switching back – and into the platforming, as moving between past and present also makes some walls and ledges appear and disappear, as parts of the buildings collapsed in the fires. When you finish this level, the device stops working and you simply move on to the next set of challenges.

About platforming, Titanfall 2 makes the most of its wall-running and double-jumping with a level design that uses verticality to hide a lot of secrets in hard-to-reach places. It’s unfortunate, however, the fact that these secrets are ultimately irrelevant: they are the usual collectibles that reward you with just an achievement. The game puts new weapons for your Titan very clearly in the main path during the levels so that you don’t miss them. However, this can leave one wondering if exploration wouldn’t have been more rewarding if instead of useless collectibles, these weapons were the actual secrets hidden in the levels.

About the multiplayer, Titanfall 2 is much like its predecessor, but bigger. It’s still made of fast-paced, chaotic firefights, which constantly produce rushes of adrenaline. Now, however, there are six Titans instead of three, with their unique set of skills and drawbacks, and there are also more weapons, more skills, more maps, more of everything. The changes are few, but some are significant: the Titans’ shield is gone, for example, which means that now every hit they take damages their core. It also means that after climbing an enemy Titan, you remove one of its batteries, which you can then use to recover the health bar of any friendly Titan in your team.

In the end, Titanfall 2 certainly represents a step in the right direction by introducing an interesting – if problematic – campaign mode: while its level design far surpasses its genre rivals, its story and narrative remain just as obnoxious. Titanfall 2 certainly accomplishes more than its predecessor, but it also shows it can still get much better.

August 07, 2020.