The Games Gone By Podcast
Ramblings and retrospectives from three lifelong gaming enthusiasts.
The Games Gone By Podcast
Titanfall 2
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Before Apex Legends, Respawn delivered Titanfall 2, a shooter defined by unrivaled movement mechanics, chaotic large-scale battles, and memorable mechanized combat. Join Adam, Austin, and Jeff as they break down what made it special, why it never found a lasting audience, and what might be the single greatest FPS campaign mission ever devised.
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Introducing Gameplay Concepts
SPEAKER_04Austin, have you seen The Pit?
SPEAKER_01I have. I have seen The Pit.
SPEAKER_04Uh so I finally discovered it this weekend and may have stayed up entirely too late watching that show.
SPEAKER_01So it's really good.
SPEAKER_04Um Friday, I was on episode two of season one, and now I think I'm on episode five of season two.
SPEAKER_01So Yeah, that that tracks. That shregs. It's addictive.
SPEAKER_00And welcome back to another episode of the Games Gone By Podcast. It is March 14th, 2026, at the time of this recording. I'm your host, Adam, and joining me as always, the gaming expert and enthusiast and wall running aficionado, Austin, and back from the dead, Jeff joining us once again. How are you guys doing? Woo, Jeff!
SPEAKER_04Yay! I have returned to offer you expert advice on how to wall run very poorly.
SPEAKER_00Yes, today we will be talking about Respawn's 2016 sci-fi action FPS, Titanfall 2. It's a game that was focused very heavily on dynamic parkour style movement and giant militarized mechs called Titans. Uh I had not played this game before we did this. I enjoyed it thoroughly. What about you guys? I know Austin, you had said you had played Titanfall 1 multiplayer a little bit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I played a ton of the original game's multiplayer. I got it like on launch day and was playing it on my like old cheap laptop, and like it was like smoking when I was playing it, but it was a lot of fun. And uh I really enjoyed kind of what they did with the attrition game uh multiplayer mode that was kind of the core of the first game, and this kind of like big-scale battle of like a bunch of pilots running around with all these Titans. Like it was a really cool idea, and I really enjoyed the few like months that I put into the original Titanfall, and then never touched the series again.
SPEAKER_04I distinctly remember like how hyped the first Titanfall was when it came out. Like everybody was talking about it back in what 2014 or something. Um but I've never touched these games before. This might be the first yeah, this is probably the first shooter that you can wall run that I've played, and uh as uh as evidenced by our multiplayer match scores, um, I don't really know how to do that. So it is a crucial part of this game.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I had played a tad bit of the first one, I think, on a roommate's computer, but yeah, not nearly as long as it sounds like Austin have, and I had never touched the second one. So this was definitely a new experience for me. And and what an experience it was. As we mentioned, the the movement in this game is just so key to making it something interesting because this is ultimately by the guys who had done uh the Call of Duty franchise before they made a new studio, and we'll get into that in a bit. But it's like they understood uh they looked at infinite, what was it, um, Advanced Warfare that came out in like 2013 and 2014, which is not one that they worked on, but they were like, you know what, we can do better than that. And truly they did. It's it's so fluid in this game. Um, as as bad as I can be at it, like Jeff, like you said, it's trying to aim and run on a wall is is not all that surprisingly hard as hell, but the auto aim is somewhat generous, so it kind of works, and it just it feels so damn good to just bunny hop between sections and flank your enemies.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think there's there's so many guns in this game, too, that feel designed with the purpose of using them while roll while wall running. Like a lot of the SMGs and pistols and stuff are just really easy to like hit fire. So you're just running along a wall and you're just like lighten things up, and it's it's super cool and super fluid.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I was very much taking the call of duty approach, counter-strike approach out of habit. Like I would stop and try and fire from cover, and that is not this game. Don't don't do that. No, always be moving.
SPEAKER_00Although you do get some cool abilities that allow you to kind of do things like that and not always just be a wall-running maniac, right? In the campaign specifically, you get the cloak and only the cloak. In multiplayer, you get a few more things like your hollow pilot that will distract people, or your little grapple or phase shift where you literally go into another dimension for two seconds, and it's very, very crazy. But I loved popping out of cover cloaked and just lining up the perfect headshot and then running it back into cover, which is something that you can't really do in a game that isn't like this either.
SPEAKER_04Cloaking did feel somewhat overpowered. I uh when we were playing multiplayer, I hadn't even figured out the loadout settings right yet. Um, and by the time we got around to the end of it, I finally had a pilot that could cloak and had an SMG, and that was actually very cool, especially once we discovered that meleeing doesn't um uh turn off the cloak or whatever. So that that felt almost overpowered.
SPEAKER_01Um and the melee is super effective in this game to the point where it's literally like a one-hit kill. So you're just running around like snapping people's necks, kicking them in the face. Like it's I I have this one clip of me just like meeting a dude in the mid like mid-wall run, we like meet each other and I just kick him in the face, and it's just awesome. It's invigorating.
SPEAKER_04It's always funny to see like a shooter where the melee is more powerful than the gunshots, but at least in the sci-fi game, that makes a little bit of sense.
SPEAKER_01Well, I also think it it works for the gameplay in this game because it is not like super easy to get close to somebody just because everybody's moving so fast and sliding and wall running. Like you have to be smart about getting in close.
SPEAKER_00And it has all these little intricacies to the advanced movement, because it's like when you are wall running, you are moving faster than when you were sprinting. And when you slide off the edge of something and jump, you boost faster through the air than if you just sprint and jump. So it really encourages all of this. And then, of course, we were talking about the melee. There's these really cool execution animations where if you hold the melee button from behind someone, it just kind of zooms the camera out. And I think there's only a handful, but they're all fucking awesome. Like the one where you just like grab the guy by the scruff of the neck and just like shoot him with your pistol that came out of nowhere like four or five times and then just throw him to the ground, all the while you're taking damage, but you don't care because it just looks so damn cool.
SPEAKER_04Yes, yeah, yeah. The number of times stuff like that happened to me, I felt like I should be more offended at just like the level of disrespect that was obviously intended. Uh but it looks so cool that I was like, eh, that's all right.
SPEAKER_01And the game, the game just moves at such a fast pace, too, that it it you don't even really have time to dwell on being obliterated like that because you're just right back into the action and you're like, all right, time to go, time to get my revenge.
SPEAKER_00Like both in the multiplayer and the single player, like the load times, and maybe it's because we're playing a game that's 10 years old, but the load times are very fast. Um, I found that even the couple rounds I played on PS uh four before I moved to my PC were pretty fast reloads. Uh, you got plenty of checkpoints. So it's like whether the quick respawn in multiplayer or just the death spawn timer and the campaign keeps you really like back into the action, like you said. Uh, another thing I thought was interesting is just not only are the guns good for the wall running and whatnot, there's just some really fucking cool guns. And I realized, you know, in the course of doing research for this episode that Titan or um Apex Legends is in the same universe as Titanfall. And Austin, we played Apex Legends for I don't know, a month when it came out, but I distinctly remember there was a shotgun pistol that was like three barrels. And then you get that in the campaign in this, the Mozambique, and I was like, oh, oh, that's the one. That's the gun. And that was so much fun to use. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, good, good gun. Great. A lot of these guns just feel so good to use. Like, there was not really any where I was downright miserable firing it, right? Like, there's definitely guns in other games where I'm like, I never want to touch this thing again. Uh, there were no guns like that in this game.
SPEAKER_00I think even the ones I didn't find to be overly effective, they all feel good and they all sound good. The sound effects on all the guns is they're so punchy. When it's an energy gun, it has a distinct laser sound. Uh, the reload animations are smooth. Everything about the presentation of this game is just kind of top-notch.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, honestly, it was very well polished. Um yeah, I'm I'm now coming to terms with the fact it's like a 12-year-old game, but to me, I didn't really notice that uh in any of it. It felt modern to me, and that could be the level of polish.
SPEAKER_01I'm about to say that's a really good point because this is an older game that we're playing at this point, but it didn't feel that way. Like from the movement mechanics, the the feel of the guns, the presentation, the like scale of production and everything, it felt like it's a game that could have come out in the last two to three years and be like, yeah, that would have totally made sense.
SPEAKER_00And you know, we'd be remiss not to mention uh half of the title's namesake here, the Titans, up uh in our overview. The Titans add such an interesting element to it. And while I was complaining constantly, like, I don't know, man, I think I'd rather it just be outside the Titan than in the Titan. There's still something that is just undeniably cool about getting in a six-story tall robot with a giant cannon, or in some cases a sword or a flamethrower or whatever the hell it is, and just wreaking havoc across the battlefield, especially in that attrition mode you mentioned, Austin, because they have all the little NPCs on the ground that you get points for killing as well. And sometimes the most effective thing for your score, once you got in a Titan, was to just kind of ignore the people and instead look at the NPCs and just obliterate them with huge explosions and whatnot. And uh, yeah, the Titan stuff just adds a whole nother dimension to this. So you already have the really cool advanced movement. Now you have the Titans, and it truly becomes unlike any competitive shooter I've ever played.
SPEAKER_01I I think it really helps with the sense of presentation and scale that we were talking about earlier, too, because there's just something really cool about running around as a pilot, like on the ground, while there's like two or three massive Titans like doing battle on top of you, and you're like trying to avoid getting stepped on or getting shot at by these giant cannons while trying to navigate through these kind of tight corridor areas in the multiplayer. Like it's it just creates this very unique sense of combat that I've never seen in another competitive shooter, kind of like you were saying.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I can't remember ever like playing another PvP game where my opponent literally felt like a rat in a tunnel to me, right? And I was like an exterminator trying to like pull him out of the sewers. It was like, you bastard, you're in that tunnel, and I can't quite get to you. Do I get out of here?
SPEAKER_01Get back here. There was this like really cool moment in the multiplayer for me where I was in my Ronin Titan, which is the one with the giant sword and like a shotgun, um, like a like a thr spread, a widespread shotgun. And I'm walking and I like cut a dude in half while he's trying to jump at me. I just like slice him out of the air, which was awesome. And then there's another guy like hiding in a building, and I just take the shotgun and I unload him there like three times, and it hits him. I don't even see him die, but I just I see the like pilot killed. I was like, yes.
SPEAKER_00It's truly invigorating. There's a shooting fish in a barrel element at certain moments that feels really good. Like if everything lines up perfectly, it just becomes you come around a corner and when you're in a Titan and it's like, oh my god, there's four players there. You do not realize the havoc I'm about to unleash upon all of them.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, again, like just annihilating someone with a giant mech feels like the right level of disrespect that you want in a PvP game, right? Um just hunting down these tiny peoples.
SPEAKER_01And it's really cool that, like, I don't think it's as effective as maybe the first game, but it's cool that even as a pilot, you have options to deal with the titans. Like, you can jump on top of the titan and like pull out its battery and then hop away, and that'll take down a chunk of its health. Or you get titan-specific weapons, like titan killing weapons, like a charge laser or a grenade launcher or stuff that you can then use to take out these titans from a distance. So it's like you do have options. You're not just screwed once a Titan shows up. It's like, oh no, it's over. Like you have options.
SPEAKER_04If anything, I felt like a target getting into my Titan and was like, oh, I'm deadly, but I'm also playing against these ridiculous veterans. Um yeah, I think the more than a few folks went in for the challenge of like, oh, this guy's terrible. Let's see if I can like 1v1 him without a Titan.
SPEAKER_01Let's see how quickly I can take out this Titan while I'm not in my own.
SPEAKER_00Total skill issue on my part, but it was it was almost embarrassing at times how much more damage I would do to Titans with the Titan laser, uh, the anti-Titan person weapon, than actually being in a Titan myself. Because I would go in and try to do something, and they're like, oh, I'm gonna throw up my little Vortex shield and absorb all your missiles, and then I'm gonna dodge out the way of your melee strike, and then I'm gonna use my ultimate on you. Whereas if I was a tiny guy in a building they didn't see, I could get like four or five hits with the Titan laser before they noticed me or could find me, really, is what it was. And I was like, Yeah, that's I need to get better at this, but I just instead of doing that, I just decided I would take out Titans from the ground.
SPEAKER_04Uh yes, again, my most effective PvP strategy was to be that little rat in a tunnel with a giant fucking gun.
SPEAKER_01So and that is still viable, like right, that's what makes it so interesting because that is still a very viable strategy.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I think my funniest kill was uh accidentally getting a pilot somewhat outside of the Titan with an anti-Titan weapon, which again feels very satisfying. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00So
A Brief History of Titanfall 2
SPEAKER_00we're gonna get a little more into the campaign in multiplayer here, but before we do that, I do want to talk a little bit about the history of this game. And of course, there was the untimely passing of the studio's creator. So I do want to just kind of give him his respects or his disrespects, possibly. Um, we'll we'll get to that. But we're gonna go through the history just for a brief second here. Because for those who don't know, Respawn Entertainment was founded in 2010 by Jason West and Vince Campella, and these were two guys who worked at Infinity Ward. I mean, they founded Infinity Ward, right? They were the original creators of Call of Duty. And if you, if listeners, if you don't remember, Modern Warfare, so Call of Duty 4, blew the hell up. It changed competitive multiplayer, especially on console, across the board. It was a huge success. And when they were negotiating their contract for uh Modern Warfare 2, the sequel to that, there was basically a part of their contract that was like if you get fired for any reason, you give up this huge bonus that we're giving you. And so the the sort of story goes that at that point Activision was just looking for a reason to get rid of these guys. And so they try to fire them. There's this huge dispute, it goes through the courts, eventually they settle. But in the meantime, these two guys decide to make Respawn. And Respawn, as we said, it comes on the scene with Titanfall in 2014. Decent success, end up making Titanfall 2. But the games that I remember uh really enjoying that I had no idea were by the guys who made Call of Duty and Titanfall were like the Jedi games, the Jedi Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor. Now, granted, those two guys, uh Jason West actually left before Titanfall 1 even comes out. It's he has like family issues. But Vince Campella just becomes more of a studio head at that point where he actually, you know, directly worked on the Call of Duty games. But just the fact that the guy who made Call of Duty 2, you know, the thing that had like an amazing saving private Ryan Beachhead scene, is making Jedi Fallen Order and Survivor. He's overseeing that, I thought was amazing. I don't know if that surprised you guys to learn that.
SPEAKER_01No, but when I first realized that Respawn was the one working on a third person, because I played a lot of the original Titanfalls. So whenever Fallen Order was announced, I was like, oh, respawn's doing Fallen Order. Like what? Like that was such a weird choice in my mind to do like this third person Souls like almost. I was like, why are they picking Respawn? And then they, I mean, absolutely killed it, they nailed it, like great, a great series of games there. But that was always such a strange thing for me learning that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I had no idea this was the same uh publisher developer as the Follow and Order games that we played for another podcast episode. So go check that out.
SPEAKER_00Nice plug.
SPEAKER_04But my very first plug, my very first impression of the uh campaign wall running segments was like, I've played this before. This is exactly like the Jedi games. That's funny. Um, and that's because it's like literally the same technology, right? It's the same team, it's probably some of the same code to do those wall running segments.
SPEAKER_02But because it is exactly the same wall running segments. Exactly the same.
SPEAKER_04Which uh, you know, uh made me think that I should have been better at it. But you know what? First person versus third person wall running, very different. Okay.
SPEAKER_00It's true, it's true. I'll never forget that article that came out sometime in the early 2000s, and I can't remember who wrote it or what it was about. I just remember a point where the guy was complaining about FPS jumping puzzles, and he was like, You can't see your fucking feet. This is a stupid idea. That's what I think of every time a game makes me do that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think I literally wrote that in our chat at some point because I was like, oh no, jumping puzzles in an FPS. My only weakness.
SPEAKER_00So Titanfall 2 comes out and it gets extremely strong reviews, uh, especially for the movement system as we described, but also the campaign, which I think at that point the Call of Duty campaigns had gotten like a little stale. People were like, Yeah, we've seen this before, which is very like hyper militarism, and there's a big bad guy. And while that is sort of the plot of Titanfall 2 as well, just the fact that the gameplay was so unique and there's the cool characters with BT and the commander and Jack Cooper and all this stuff, it just had a lot of praise. But unfortunately, it doesn't really become a breakout hit. And while they're continuing to support it, I think the real problem with this was that Apex Legends comes out about three years later, and it is a huge hit. And as we discussed in our Anthem game, it is like impossible for a studio to have a live service hit and not just immediately become the studio that does the live service game, right? It becomes an issue, as Mark Darrow said, from do we have enough people to how many people do we have? Uh, because there's never enough people. A live service, and you know, it's generating all this money and it's hard to justify doing anything else. Now, to their credit, they do come out with the Jedi game, so they didn't totally pivot away from doing anything else. But I think Titanfall 2 kind of fell by the wayside because it was like, well, we have a more successful multiplayer shooter in the same universe that's doing much better. I just don't think we can justify working on Titanfall 2 anymore. Although, unlike Anthem, the servers are still up.
SPEAKER_01So but say we we were still able to play it unlike another game. Yeah, it is a shame that it never caught on in a bigger way, especially with how hype the campaign was. It's like I would love to see them attempt another campaign now in this universe, because the first game doesn't have a campaign, it's only multiplayer. So the story is kind of told, eh, like sorta kinda through multiplayer, but it's not very heavy, right? Like this campaign is a very focused experience that I wish we could have seen the team take on another version of that.
SPEAKER_04Sure, sure. I have mixed feelings about a sequel campaign. I think I like this one so much because it does exactly what it sets out to do, which is like tell a kind of story you've seen before, uh, but in a fun and engaging way. And I feel like most of the gameplay is there to teach you the basics of the game, and I felt like it actually did that very well. Um after getting through the campaign, I was not immediately like, oh, I want more of this story. It's not like a Halo moment. Um, it felt very much like something they did uh uh you know to add on to their previous multiplayer title, which you know is impressive. You don't really see a lot of studios expand a multiplayer game into something that also has a good single-player campaign.
SPEAKER_01And it it's not like I'm dying for more story to the game necessarily. It's more of I would I would love to see what other like mission variety concepts they could come up with. Because there's so many unique mechanics that they put into this campaign and and create some really interesting missions that like I would love to see them do that again with like more focused mission design instead of just multiplayer. And and I guess you kind of get that with Fallen Order, but it's it's a whole different type of game, obviously.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, definitely, definitely. But yes, props to the campaign for the variety in level design. Um, it somehow manages to stay like consistent, but also different mission to mission. And that's just something you don't see a lot, I think.
SPEAKER_00And we're about to get into how awesome the campaign is, but one elephant in the room to address first. So Vincent Pella unfortunately dies on December 21st, 2025, as he loses control of his vehicle coming out of a tunnel. Now there's a weird reaction to this online, because obviously you have the more expected one, which is everyone is like, uh, this guy was a legend in this community. Um, you know, uh EA actually puts him in charge of Battlefield, the Call of Duty competitor. I think Battlefield 6 came out a couple months ago and was really successful. So there's a whole bunch of like tributes and stuff to him. But the we're the reason he passes away is because he's speeding a supercar through this tunnel in California, and coming out of it, he loses control and crashes into this concrete barrier. And they were going so fast that the the passenger is ejected from the car while wearing his seatbelt. Like the seat comes detached from the car. So it's like he was doing something incredibly reckless. He leaves behind three kids for a mistake that I'm sure if he could take back, he absolutely would. You know, he it's not like he thought, you know what, this is worth risking my life. It's just, you know, I'm sure he's in a mind he was in a mindset at the time where he's not thinking about it. It's just there were other reactions online where people are like, fuck this guy. Like, why are we holding him up? He could have gotten people killed, he did get people killed, yada yada. And it it is kind of a weird thing to talk about because it it's it's you know, people are nuanced, people are complicated, it's hard to want to praise things while people also did something bad, but it's also like you don't want it to overshadow it. So I think the real lesson to take away from this here is um, Jeff, you can say the line, you know, fuck cars. Thank you. Yes. Uh mostly I was just gonna say it's cars are already a super dangerous thing. They're already the thing, they're probably the most dangerous thing you do every single day. Don't make them more dangerous. It's not worth it. And I'm sure if Vince was here to change his mind and not do that, he would, right? So it's just like he left behind a great legacy. We also left behind three children. And that's like it's just it's such a tragic thing. So uh I don't want to harp on it here. I'm not gonna be one of those people that are like, fuck this guy. But just just think, use him as an example of of what you could be thinking about when you are tempted to do something stupid in a car and uh don't do it.
SPEAKER_04Remember, folks, if you want to go fast, ride a train.
unknownThere you go.
SPEAKER_00They go much faster and they don't have a danger. Or yeah, propensity to steer up directly. Correct, correct. Alright, so
Building up the Campaign (Missions 1-3)
SPEAKER_00why don't we get into the campaign now? Because it is awesome. Like, I do think as much fun as the multiplayer is, and while that was obviously the core of the first game, people were just blown away by how damn fun this is and how unique it is. And ultimately, it's the story of a rifleman named Jack Cooper who unexpectedly becomes a Titan pilot after the untimely death of his mentor and commander officer, commanding officer Captain Latamosa. And along with the Titan BT7274, he battles across the planet Typhon while unraveling an IMC conspiracy to deploy a powerful super weapon. As we said, in a lot of ways, this is kind of like a typical sci-fi shooter campaign. But it's it's really about like the level design and how they present each of the sort of obstacles in each level and the way they introduce new mechanics. It feels so damn cool. And it feels so damn cool, I would say 95% of the time. There might be like one or two moments where maybe it kind of slows down or you get slogged down in a bad part of a level design. But I I fucking loved this, and and I know you guys did too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's awesome. Like this definitely shoots up to one of the best shooter campaigns I think I've played. And people praise it that way all the time. And I think for good reason, now that I've played it, the the choices in mechanics and the way they weave in like new different ideas throughout the missions, it's just so cool, and something that I feel like you don't see very often. Like even in things like Halo or you know, especially like Call of Duty, you see a lot of the same types of things, like, oh, here's our requisite vehicle section. But this game does something very different where it doesn't have all those like requisite, oh, here's the turret section. And like you you kind of get some of that here and there, but they do something new with it instead of doing all the tried and true things over and over again.
SPEAKER_04I think they did a very good job sticking to their core gameplay, right? Which is like how you're going to play the pilot character when out of the Titan, and then how you're gonna actually play the Titan, right? So there are very few like unrelated gimmicks like unnecessary vehicle sections um or like siege defenses where you use a turret that you will never see again outside of this level. Um so yeah, it just works very well, and I think it's because they focused on designing the campaign around the thing you were going to do the most, which is like the multiplayer mode.
SPEAKER_01I was just saying it definitely helps that the presentation, the like overall presentation of this game is just so good all the way through. Like voice acting is great, the animations are amazing. Like watching your pilot jump up and get grabbed by your Titan and then like put into the Titan, it's just so cool every time.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the number of like just hysterical and ridiculous moments to me. Um, the number of times the Titan just chucked me across the map. And that was the whole plan. That was the story beat. Is that now he's gonna throw you? I will I will still never get over the fact that you literally have a data knife. And what's very funny to me about that is that like no one like the way the lines are delivered is just like, yeah, use your data knife. Like, that's a thing, obviously. If you're playing a sci-fi war game, why wouldn't you have a data knife?
SPEAKER_01Um everyone just buys into all of the zininess, it's just completely like in universe, and it's presented as like this is just this is what it is, and it plays it super straight in a way that works so well.
SPEAKER_04It flows together, and the animations are really slick.
SPEAKER_00They really are, and even there's really only I would say one proper like cinematic in the game, and it's the opening one, but even it is is dope as hell because it's like it's giving you some exposition on the war between the IMC and the Frontier Militia, and kind of the story of Titanfall 1 is summarized a little bit. But in all while this is happening, you're seeing a pilot just kick ass, and it's he's using all of the abilities from like the multiplayer and stuff to you. You see him cloak, you see him throw out a uh hologram thing, he like throws his grenades, he does the cool melee kills. It looks freaking awesome. It kind of reminded me of um remember that that like Matrix ripoff Equilibrium with um Christian Bale, where he's doing like the gun kata or whatever it was called. And he's just like that's what it kind of reminded me of. He's just like fucking up like eight people at a time by himself. It's a really cool cinematic. And then it bleeds right into the intro mission, which uh, Jeff, I know you played Modern Warfare 1 campaign. Austin, did you ever play that one? I did not, no. Okay, so there's this obstacle course at the beginning where Captain Price, who's you know, like a iconic character through a lot of these modern warfare campaigns, he has you run into a little obstacle course where you have to like throw a couple flashbangs, shoot some cardboard cutouts, you know, maneuver through this thing. And based on your timing, it recommends a difficulty setting. So no surprise that the guys who created that put something very similar in this the pilot's gauntlet. You're it's a little more complex because you're jumping off walls, you're sliding, you're trying to kill all these targets that if you don't hit them, reduce your time, yada yada. I I loved this, man. I think I actually went back and played this more than probably any any other mission in this game. I was just obsessed with getting a time that recommended hard. Um, but it was but it was so much fun to just have that smoothness where you're like, wow, I just I just wall ran and jumped and double jumped and slid across five guys all while like dropping a grenade in the process and using my automatic shotgun to just spray across a hallway and then oh man, it was it was such a blast.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think I'm very on board with games that put in the effort to make the tutorial a memorable experience. Like honestly, the first Halo game, like the first you know, 10-15 minutes of that level is a tutorial, extremely cinematic and memorable. Yeah. Um, the Call of Duty games, um, exactly what you're talking about, running that obstacle course, which when I did it in Titanfall, I was like, I know I've done this before. And then of course it's just like the wall running segments, it's because it's the same guys, y'all. Um but yeah, or uh to bring up a newer game, Helldivers tutorial, right? Any any game that can make the tutorial memorable is probably going places.
SPEAKER_01I I definitely thought it was awesome whenever I got to the end of it. And I think I ran my first run like one minute, 10 seconds or so, and I never tried it again. I I get I did get all 15 targets though. Let's go. Um, but I when it was like, oh, this recommends regular difficulty for you. I was like, that's cool. Like, thank you for telling me what I should be playing it as. I bumped it up to hard anyway, but like I thought it was cool that it just told you, like, based on your skill here, because I had never seen that before. Like, I don't know of another game that does that outside of the ones that we mentioned here. So like, and I didn't play the first Call of Duty uh Modern Warfare campaign, so I'd never seen that before. So when I saw that, I was like, that's great. Like, I thought that was a really neat thing to do.
SPEAKER_00I eventually got my time down to like 37 seconds after, I don't know, 30 runs. Uh but it was it was crazy to look stuff up online, and people are doing the shit where they like at the start of the obstacle course, they drop all of their grenades on the ground and then they run and jump and it boosts them, and then so they just have max speed, of course, like fly through the level. And someone could complete it in like 11 seconds. Um, that was obviously a bit of an exploit. You saw people doing it kind of the normal way, although in like the 20-second range, which was or like 25 seconds maybe, which was crazy though. Just just expert skill, the kind of uh god beasts who were killing us in multiplayer every day, I'm sure, is is really what those people were.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, there were a lot of people who just flew around the the map. Um I played the gauntlet exactly once, despite how cool it was. Um when I was I was moving pretty slow. I think I think my time was like 90 seconds, and I was like, oh, what did I have to beat to not fail? And it was a full two minutes, and I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, not a problem.
SPEAKER_01Did it recommend did it recommend regular difficulty for you, or did it recommend like story difficulty?
SPEAKER_04Um I don't even remember. I'm not sure I noticed.
SPEAKER_01I'm just curious, not like not like an insult.
SPEAKER_04I was just no, no, definitely, definitely. Um no, I don't even remember. It probably recommended regular. Um I said it on master because I started the campaign two hours before we did multiplayer, and I was like, all right, I should just get used to being utterly fucked for the next couple hours.
SPEAKER_00So the uh it won't even recommend story, it actually just tells you to try again.
SPEAKER_02Oh, really? Okay, all right. No, I have no idea. Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_04That would be good. I would appreciate that.
SPEAKER_02That that would be hilarious. Like, ooh.
SPEAKER_00So the the next mission, which I guess is like the first proper mission after the tutorial, uh so you it's kind of established at the beginning of this that Jack Cooper is being kind of handpicked by Captain Latimosa to be his, like like Latimosa is gonna be his mentor, and Cooper's like, why? And he's like, uh I see something special in you, kid, you know. Again, like kind of tropey. But you get down, there's a big, you kind of do these uh launch pod things, again, real sci-fi, gears of war. You hit the planet, you're going through a little bit of a battle as it's kind of reinforcing some of the things that you might have forgotten for the tutorial, the wall running. Uh, eventually your pilot suit comes online and you get double jump, yada yada. But in the process of this, Latimosa gets in an engagement and his Titan with another Titan, and he kind of loses, and he ends up dying. And his dying words are like transferring Titan control to rifleman Jack Cooper. And then he says, like, take care of him before he passes. And I remember thinking in that moment, was he talking to BT or was he talking to Jack about take care of him? And I think it's supposed to be a little ambiguous. Um, and of course, like so much of the story ends up becoming like the bond that Cooper and BT form. But this is an awesome mission because it has that emotional moment. It slowly introduces you to the double jumping and the wall running and stuff from being a pilot. It gives you the cloak, which we talked about, which is just so much fun in this campaign. This is probably the most wide open, non-linear level that you get through the whole campaign. So there's plenty of opportunity for flanking, catching enemies that aren't aware of you. It shows you how to hack the little robots, which I didn't get enough opportunities in the game to do, really, but uh you can make them fight for you. Uh, you it shows you the super cool animation execution. So it's really just a great tutorial level of letting you really play around with all of these things before the game actually becomes kind of like a properly difficult like shooter campaign.
SPEAKER_01I I really think this be is one of the best introductory missions that I've seen, just in a way of like giving you all of the mechanics that you're going to use in like a bite-sized way, and just showing you like everything that's to come. Like, this is all of the things you're gonna be doing for the rest of the campaign in one mission. Because by the end of it, you're in your Titan and you're fighting another Titan. So you have like Titan versus Titan combat, you see you know, multiple shootouts, there's lots of little platforming sections, like when you're trying to recover BT's batteries, you're having to like climb through these abandoned like wreckage of the ships that have crashed. So you're really getting this full spectrum of like every single thing that you're gonna be doing throughout the rest of the game. And I thought that was really cool the way it gave you all these little bits in like this small kind of contained way.
SPEAKER_04I was a little annoyed with BT when he was like, Okay, thanks for the battery. Can you go get me another one? Like, dude, I was right there.
SPEAKER_00I was right there. The um another thing I really like, because Jeff, you were mentioning that you love tutorial experiences that are memorable. Another thing I cannot stand sometimes, and I don't I don't want to pick on any particular game, but I will, the new God of War games, where it's like if you don't figure out the puzzle in 60 seconds, your little partner's like, hey, you should try pulling that lever over there, which is often both like patronizing and not helpful, and I find it's just annoying as hell. What this game will do is it'll say, like, just press down on the D-pad to activate the hollow pilot or whatever it is, and it will show you a little ghost image of where you can jump across to proceed through whatever part of the level that you clearly are not figuring out how to navigate through. So it's optional, but it's also extremely helpful because it's like, yeah, literally just do this. Like, wall run here, double jump here, grab this. That gets introduced in this mission. I thought that was pretty cool.
SPEAKER_01This mission also introduces the little like pilot helmets that you can collect, all the little collectibles. Uh those were really cool too, I thought, because a lot of them are just kind of on your way, but there's definitely plenty of times where you see one in the distance and you're like, I can get there. And then you just have to figure out how. And so you're like, hop in, maybe in a way that the game isn't feeding you exactly, but there's definitely a way to get there. So that I thought was really cool. I liked grabbing those whenever I could see them. And it's a lot of times they felt like a little puzzle platform-y challenge.
SPEAKER_04You must have been much more observant than me. I think I picked up three pilot helmets the entire time. And one level, like I found in the first one, and it was like one out of nine, and I was like, nope, not doing that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah don't care. They start they start to become a lot more tucked away. But I but I agree, Austin, like in the first couple missions, you'll see them, and I swear to God, it's like daring you. It's like, bet you can't get over here, bitch. Like, I'm like, all right, all right, I'll figure out how to get over there. But yeah, there does come a point, Jeff, where I had the same thing where I was like, Well, I found like three of them. That's gotta be most of them in this mission. Then you get to the screen that says three out of nine. It's like, no, never mind, who cares?
SPEAKER_04It's just that's just much better bait for y'all than than me. I am not uh a collectibles guy. And when I found the first one and realized it was a collectible, I was like, look, if these aren't blatantly in my path, I'm not gonna care. I'm not here for that. I'm here to be in a giant mech and fucking kill things.
SPEAKER_00So I I enjoy collectibles that make it feel like you're solving some sort of puzzle to get to. I do I do not like the ones that make it feel like you were just playing like uh peek around every corner to get through.
SPEAKER_01I never went like super out of my way to get anything either. I was never like hunting down every single helmet in the mission. But if I did see one in the distance that I knew I could get to and I just didn't know how to get there yet, I was like, I'm gonna figure it out.
SPEAKER_04Nice. Yeah, I had the exact opposite reaction. I was like, not doing that. That's just me then. Also valid. Also valid.
SPEAKER_00So from here, Jack is kind of stranded. You know, uh, most of the people he has dropped in with have died in this firefight. Captain Latimosa has passed. It's just him and BT, and he knows he needs to meet up with Major Anderson. So the next mission is him and BT kind of pushing through this derelict IMC facility. Do you guys remember what IMC stood for? It was like Interstellar Machine Corporation or something. I can't remember, but it's no idea. It's like in that vein. Uh so they're they're trying to find Major Anderson's last location. And so you end up in this, I don't know, Austin, would you describe it as sort of like an underground sewer facility type?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it felt very sewers to me. I got big sewer vibes. It felt like playing the early levels of a JRPG.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00It it is immediately more confined than the last one, which is cool in some ways, because I think it gives you a lot more, it gave the developers more opportunity to create like balanced combat encounters and it create and a little more linear so they can be more balanced, and you have a lot more wall running opportunities, but you do lose some of that kind of freedom of exploration from the last one. So it's kind of a double-edged sword there. This does end up being one of the weaker ones to me overall, because I just think compared to all the other missions, it does feel more confined. The things you're doing are a little more repetitive. It does introduce a new Titan loadout, so you basically can switch between these Titan loadouts and like pretty much whenever you want throughout the campaign. And this is the one called the Tone. It has a almost like sonor lock you can shoot out, and then you can track the enemy and fire these homing missiles. It ends up, Jeff, I know you really like this one, it ends up being to me the most effective anti-Titan loadout for the rest of the game.
SPEAKER_04Like up until the end. Look, the moment I figured out the core, the like ultimate ability was just fire all of the missiles. Not a lot of missiles, all of the missiles. That was the thing.
SPEAKER_02Every missile.
SPEAKER_04And they like follow your line of sight or whatever. That no, I was using that for the rest of the campaign. I don't care. It's incredible.
SPEAKER_01I I think this mission is is definitely my least favorite, and I think it's it's almost entirely because of this one little section at the end that I just think is awful. There's like BT is stuck behind some like toxic sludge, so you have to turn off the controls for that sludge and then make your way over to BT. But you have to wait like a minute and a half for these for this sludge to turn off. So you're just like running around as all these IMC troopers are shooting at you, and there's all these little like spider robots that are running around and they blow up a head. They're awful. And that this whole section, I think I had to restart like four times because they just kept blowing me up. And it is interesting in theory, I think, because it wants you to really utilize the movement mechanics to like run around and avoid combat and not get into like a straight firefight with all these things, but there's only so much room to maneuver, and it's just really hard to get away from these things that explode and blow up everything around it, too. So I thought this section was pretty frustrating, and just the level as a whole is kind of like environmentally, it's kind of boring. The sewers don't do a ton for me. It's just kind of very dull, uh, I think. Uh, as far as like color palette and combat encounters for the most part.
SPEAKER_04This was the first time I died on regular. Oh, and by the way, y'all, regular is not a difficult difficulty. You definitely play this game on hard. Um, I may have slept my way through some parts of it. Um, but yeah, this little siege holdout section. Um, I thought it was gonna be fine. I was originally very excited. I was like, yeah, watch me stunt on this like sort of classic uh uh game set piece. Uh and then eventually one of the spider robots got me. And I I couldn't quite figure out how this game decides to respawn you, uh, which it does quickly, you know, like I like, that's good. But it kept respawning me directly next to the spider that had just blown up and killed me. So I was like, what is going on? Um kept respawning, panicking. I like fell off and died in the sludge a few times. I don't know. Uh basically, I was like one wave of enemies away from winning the first time, and then had to repeat it like three times, which felt embarrassing on regular difficulty.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, dude, it was just despite playing this 12 times, I the explosion radius and damage of the spider mines surprised me every fucking time. I was just like, I was like, oh, I know I'm far enough away from this, I'll just slide by and boom, nope, you gotta restart. I it was just constant death here. But eventually, eventually we all got past it. Um, and this is where you get introduced to the mercenary faction that has been hired by the IMC, and they're kind of the main villains of the campaign, and you're kind of taking them out one at a time in these boss fights. Uh they all seem to have it's like all the good guys in this game have American accents or no accents. And then all of the bad guys have something that's like Eastern European or Australian or British.
SPEAKER_01It's just very clear they don't talk like you, and they're not on what better way to design villains than just make them talk differently to give them accents.
SPEAKER_04Uh, there's a lot to unpack there.
SPEAKER_01It's it's the tried and true methodology since the beginning of time.
SPEAKER_02Give them an accent. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I I will say the boss fight at the end of this, like, it was it felt cool because the tone, you get to use the tone and you really get to understand its its lock-on mechanics and stuff. And I think it's actually really difficult to beat this guy with the standard loadout. Um, but I did feel a little underwhelmed because once I, it's like I died a couple times, then I was like, okay, I think I know how this Titan works. And then I just wiped the floor with him. I mean, it was about a 17-second encounter. This guy was just obliterated. And I unfortunately, I don't ever feel like the Titan encounters in the campaign ever really improve over this. They kind of feel like this every time. But maybe that's just because every time I would play with a new loadout, I would get the floor wiped with me, switch to tone, and then destroy them. So maybe that's my fault.
SPEAKER_04I mean, on regular, it's even more ridiculous, right? Like that first Titan you fight is not much more difficult than any of the like regular stand-in Titan dudes. The unnamed Titan enemies, if you will. Yeah, yeah. I think the only time a Titan killed me on regular was the very last um boss battle. What was her name? Sloan or something. Oh, yeah, yeah. I managed to get stuck in a corner and then she fired her Death Laser.
SPEAKER_01So it's they were a little underwhelming, but I think the one-on-one Titan fights are a little less interesting than like some of the later missions where you have a bunch of Titans with you and then you're fighting a bunch of Titans. Like that's more interesting. But I would agree that a lot of the like one-on-one boss titan fights are yeah, they're they're kind of underwhelming. I think they serve their purpose like fine enough, but it definitely is probably the weaker part of the campaign is the boss fights.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. It it just didn't feel um punchy enough in the actual combat, but I thought like the lead up and like the narrative part of it, like that all worked well. Like I was I was so ready to fight these uh cocky mercenary assholes. Um then I kind of just like sleepwalked through the battle.
SPEAKER_01Oh well. Again, presentation-wise, this game just always knocks that out of the park.
SPEAKER_00So yeah. It and it does speak volumes to your campaign where it's like, oh, the most boring part is when two 40-foot-tall titans fight each other. All right, I think you've built a pretty exciting time. That's a very good point. This is the point where when you kill,
Campaign Goes Creative (Missions 4-6)
SPEAKER_00I think Kane is the name of the guy driving this one, you get his helmet. And so now you and BT kind of have access to the communication of these mercenaries, and that allows you to have a little bit of an advantage for a couple missions before they discover that you're listening in. And this is the one where you you're infiltrating this factory because you're trying to take a shortcut to Anderson, and you end up coming across, and there's this great bit at the end of this one where you know BT's like, all right, no more shortcuts. But this was a really cool mission because you get in and there's this sort of factory thing going on. It looks like these little office buildings are being constructed on this conveyor belt. It's not real obvious what's happening, but it's a really cool mechanical setup because, you know, Austin, you pointed out like this mission feels like it wants you to use cover a lot more than some of the other ones because there's not as many wall running opportunities and these platforms are moving, but there's plenty of things to hide behind. And um Eventually, as you go throughout this, though, you start to realize that they're building something. And man, I thought the final reveal at the end of this one was really cool.
SPEAKER_01It's also important to note that BT is like captured at the very beginning of this edition. So he's like, there's like this big arm at the factory that I think is building all these things. And it just grabs BT up, and you're like trying to find him now. And so you don't have your Titan for all of this. So you you are forced into this scenario where you're having to take cover and all these platforms. And as you go through this, it's like building a house around you, which is really cool. And then it turns out that house is building to this like simulation battle arena, which is like really awesome progression. And I love being able to get into these firefights where these guys are shooting at you and you're stuck on the platform and you're like hiding under some stairs or something, and you're like, okay, let me get the high ground. So you're like climbing up the stairs to shoot down these guys. It's just a really inventive on rails kind of mission, but that gives you cover being built around you, which is really unique. I hadn't seen anything like that that I can think of.
SPEAKER_04I definitely thought that, you know, uh, at first you can't tell what the factory's building. Um, and then you can tell it it's kind of like a house being put together around you. And I was like, oh, that does seem like an efficient use of resources. Good job, authoritarian military dictatorship or whatever, right? Like, what a what a pro-housing policy.
SPEAKER_02Um, no, it's it's nothing that it's nothing that that uh upstanding someone, right?
SPEAKER_04Right, no, and then it turns out they're not building housing. Um, the reason there are books on the bookshelves is because this isn't like a house for someone to live in, it's a battle arena so that they can test out all of their weapons of war, and you're like, oh, they are the bad guys. Okay, all right.
SPEAKER_00It's it's such a cool reveal, though, because you you know it's slowly building together. There's one section toward the end where you're kind of on the thing, the assembly line pieces being on their side, so it's almost like you're navigating a sideways or upside down series of houses. It's kind of cool. Then you get into this arena and you see them let out like eight or nine of these frontier militia people, and that's when you realize, oh god, these are target practice for all of their robots and stuff. And so all of these mechanized things come out, and you have to just kind of stay alive through this for a period of time, defeat them all, and that's when you get to join up back with BT, and then you take out the next boss of this level. There were some cool moments in this uh mechanically. You you get two new loadouts before BT gets captured, you get the scorch, which was a lot of fun to just basically put up your fire shield and walk through little militia on the ground that just gets set on fire. Uh, that was great, and you just feel like and I think it really works well when he gets captured because you just felt like such a steam train going through, and then suddenly you lose your robot. And then at the end you get the brute, which is this fires his quad rocket launcher and can fly around. This one was fun before I got to the boss fight. I then died like six or seven times on the boss fight, switched to tone and obliterated her because that just became the strategy for the rest of the game. But this one had some fun mechanical moments for sure. Yeah, I think the boss fight on this one is tough.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, is this the Ronin, right? I think she was piloting a Ronin. Yeah. This was Ash, I think her name. Yeah, yeah. She almost got me because I got too close, and then she's like cutting me up with her sword or whatever. Uh but again, I was playing on regular, so I just had to back up and press the fire salvo button, and my problem was solved.
SPEAKER_00This was a really cool mission. I remember thinking, like, oh man, it's it's gonna be hard for them to top this one. The reveal's so cool, the the obstacles are so cool, the way it goes upside down, all the enemy variety, yada yada. Man, the next mission might actually be the singular, coolest fucking mission I've ever played in FPS campaign ever.
SPEAKER_04By far. Um it's awesome. It's uh it's awesome. It's a narrative twist. Like, you you don't think that this is gonna play into the story at all. Um, but yeah, you finally meet up with Major Anderson, who of course is actually dead. You recover his body and you discover that he was on a special ops mission, and his special ability was time travel. Austin explained this to me.
SPEAKER_01I I love whenever you grab this armband that he has, and it's cool because the buildup to this is really neat because it's like this abandoned facility, and you're you're traveling through it, and everything's run down, and there's not a lot of combat or anything, and you're just kind of exploring the world and getting this it's almost like a horror vibe, a little bit. It's not scary, but it's kind of the same atmosphere of what a horror game would be. And you find this guy like half in the wall, his like body's chopped in half, like sitting in the wall. You're like, how in the world did this happen? And then you pull this armband off of him, and it's like I I was playing on controller, so it's like press L1 to time travel, and I'm like, okay.
SPEAKER_04I love what what is that? I love just how matter-of-fact it was. One of the great things they did with this mechanic in this level is like they don't explain it to you at all. Um, but it's very intuitive. That's another hallmark of good game design, is like, you know, like the um God of War games. They don't have to spell out what you're supposed to freaking do to you. If you just kind of use the mechanic a bit, it becomes very obvious how useful it is. Um, Austin, thank you for putting out the horror element. I had completely forgotten that like when you first start exploring the facility, you like go inside first, and that first room there is filled with like broken stalkers that start reactivating and coming to life. Like the first one gets up, and I'm like, yeah, whatever, bitch. And uh, you know, like I punch it, start emptying mags into the other ones, and then you slowly realize there's like 40 of them in that room. Uh, that might have been the only time in the campaign where I was like, I need to keep fucking moving.
SPEAKER_00It's such a cool idea, and uh something I was talking to Austin about. What's crazy to me is within two weeks of this game coming out, a game called Dishonored 2 would come out that has a level where there's a rundown derelict mansion in which you get a time travel device in which you can instantly travel between two different states of this mansion. And it's a little bit of a different game, it's more of a stealth action FPS, or I guess not S, just FP. And um, so it's not quite the same kind of gameplay, but it was just amazing to me that two different publishers, two different studios, two different dev teams had almost the same idea at the exact same time. There's no way, you know, dev cycles are way too long for someone to be able to copy this shit in like two weeks, right? So I was like, was there something in the zeitgeist where this was just something both of these teams wanted to do? But yeah, it works so well in this game, and it's not just from one perspective, right? It makes the combat funny shit in this, because you'll have like the little creatures that come out to attack you and the robots in the past, and then you have all of the militia in the present. And so sometimes you have to swap between them, and there's no respite because in each timeline there's things trying to kill you, but you can dodge grenades or gunfire or a leaping creature in one, immediately come into the other one, punch a guy in the face, jump back into the next one. You have to use it to navigate parts of the facility because there's like fire you have to get around or close doors. There's little puzzles you have to solve. You know, I know Jeff, the part you really liked at the end is you're you're falling down this um like shaft, and there's just this these spinning blades that will chop you up, but you switch time as you're falling to go around it. And then in the next one, there's a flaming barrel of something that you have to do the same thing to. And again, the game doesn't really explain any of this to you in any concrete terms. It's just you're sort of forced to figure it out on your own, but it's not, it's not like hidden from you. It's all so organically learned in uh, oh man. Uh, there's wall running puzzles the same way where it's like in the past the wall was on the left, and in the future the present's on the wall's on the right. So you have to switch it as you're jumping. Just there was there was no moment of this mission that I did not find satisfying. In fact, I unfortunately had a game-breaking bug like 10 minutes from the in where it was glitching out when I would switch phases and I couldn't see anything on the screen. And the only way I could get it to stop that was to restart the level over entirely. I did not mind. I did not mind one bit. It was so much fun to just play this level again.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you should play this game just to play this level. Like literally, it's if you install it, play through to the end of this mission, and then like never play it again. Totally worth your time, money, whatever. It's um I yeah, I think all of our takeaway was like, could you could you make a whole game out of this? I want to play this game, please.
SPEAKER_01It's such a I think the the part that you highlighted that I really appreciated was the fact that every mechanic in this level is like influenced by the time travel, right? Like the running, jumping puzzles, the combat, it replaces your cloak. So you can't hide with cloak anymore. Now your version of hiding is to switch into the other timeline. But if there's other things like you were saying, then you can't hide anymore. So you really have to be cognizant of everything that's around you. I think the the variety of like areas that you go to in this mission, there's like there's stuff that's like burning and on fire in one timeline, and then on and then in the past it's like pristine and clean, and everything's like like like there's so much variety in environment design. And then when this mission comes to an end, there's this like really cool segment where the time distorts and like you're having to run along the the like broken floating pieces of rubble as you're going for the the arc, the like the main thing that you're trying to recover, this this fold weapon, the like power source for it, and you're having to like navigate all these floating platforms and stuff. So cool. Like all the presentation of this mission is so cool.
SPEAKER_04I had actually totally forgot about the end segment there. Um, I had almost actually forgotten about you know the Death Star the bad guys are building. Um this is the mission where you sort of get introduced to that and start understanding um uh the stakes, which is again like another uh it's a story beat you've seen before, but it's uh again the narrative is there just long enough to hook you in, and it doesn't pretend to be something more than it is. So I was having a good time um learning about the secret super weapon that was going to destroy everything and and how to stop it.
SPEAKER_01You can find all that lore by just listening to like little laptops and stuff that are littered throughout the mission. So you kind of get as much of that as you want to engage in. But I always thought the presentation on those, like the writing and the voice acting for all those were really well done. So it was interesting to listen to.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think most of the audio logs were pretty short, but there's one uh of like the mad scientist, I guess head bad guy, dude, the guy, the designer of the weapon, uh, in this level at the end of it that is a full like three and a half minutes long. Um and I stood there and listened to the whole thing because it's just like it's not like other games where they might like tease out parts of the bad guy's motivation. Uh no, he has like one three and a half minute long monologue where he very, you know, explains like this is for the greater good. Does human life really matter? I don't know. The core worlds need to consume, so you guys need to shut the fuck up. Um it was great. I was like, oh, cool. All right, yeah, I'm I'm glad we're on the same page. I now understand your motivation and my motivation to uh you know murder you. Cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you you see the uh not just the audio logs, but also the kind of hollow logs of Anderson as he was exploring the facility, and that's kind of cool. And then the one at the end, he's like, someone kinds of sneak up and try to kill him and they get in this little fist fight, and then as the guy tries to tackle him over the edge, he like activates his time travel thing and the guy just goes flying off the edge, which I thought was a really cool move. Um, but I think I I guess the implication is that is about where he gets stuck in between the two walls because that's the last uh log you ever see of him. But that just all leans into the atmosphere. It's really cool. You know, 90% of this level is you on foot, which like I think really is the right choice. But then right at the end, you do get reunited with BT, and you can you get like one little combat arena where you can use the time travel while you're in the Titan, and that was a lot of fun because all of these like Titan, you know, little mini Titans will surround you and shoot their missiles, then you can just dip out and come back in. They're like, Well, what's he doing? Like, what is this about cloaking technology? And and then you can just destroy them. Um, yeah, that was a lot of fun. I mean, dude, this mission's just uh otherworldly and how good it is on like every aspect.
SPEAKER_04That's such a good touch with the like NPC dialogue of them being confused and assuming the infiltrator is using advanced cloaking and you know, not time travel, because of course not who would do that. Um, but that's just such a cool way to like um you know uh give the player perspective on like what they're actually doing, um, which is a little bit like cloaking, uh, but not. It's different in a fun way. Um, yeah, it's just there are a lot of small details to this level that really makes it like a holistically fun experience.
SPEAKER_01One of the greatest FPS missions I've ever played for sure.
SPEAKER_00Possibly the greatest.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, again, make a whole game out of it.
SPEAKER_00I'm thinking, uh, you know, Call of Duty 4 has that really cool one where you're back in time, uh, not time travel, but a flashback, and uh you have to take like that sniper shot from the top of the building like a mile away. That's got an uh that kind of reminds me of this and that it just has a really cool presentation to the whole thing and it's unfolding the story and all, but ultimately the mechanics are still just Call of Duty, right? What this mission does so well is it it just ratchets up every single aspect of this game to 11 for an hour, and it's so satisfying.
SPEAKER_04I had to engage my brain so much in like a fun way, which is a typical for a fast-paced shooter where it's more like reactive and you know twitched-based skill. Um, but I was somehow like thinking and also uh this is the most fun I've had since portal. So it was great. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The only downside of this mission is that like it comes not so close to the end of the campaign because it's like, man, now I have to play a bunch of missions without time travel, but they're still they're still really good. Uh the next one, so basically you you figure out about this energy source that's being used to build, you know, Titanfall Death Star here, and you have to try to transmit a message to the frontier militia. So you know that there's this, or you find out there's this beacon on the planet that you have to go reactivate. And of course, this is one of those missions where you finally reunite with some ground forces out of the good guys, and there's a couple characters. There's a guy named Davis, I think, from no, he might come later, but there's there's some characters I know from the first Titanfall campaign, which is not even really a campaign, it's like story multiplayer missions you had to play through. It's a little weird, but there's some cool throwbacks to people who have played Titanfall 1. There's just some actual interaction with humans that are not bad guys for once. Uh, but this one is all about the verticality of climbing this giant beacon so you can get to the top. You get this little arc laser that is used to both solve puzzles by like opening gates and changing the location of platforms and walls, and it can also stun enemies for a little bit. So, just again, them being really on top of like, here's a cool thing from a mechanical perspective, from a navigation perspective, and we have high stakes here. Like you have to, like we have to warn the militia that the Death Star is approaching the home planet, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes. I I thought this one was particularly cool because it gave a lot of interesting flanking opportunities, especially as you're climbing up this giant beacon. There's like a lot of open space, open sky. So you have to jump across these platforms and like wall run from one to another without falling. But it it opened up this really interesting flanking opportunity where you can either get above enemies or go around them in like a totally different path than maybe it first appears. Like, okay, I should go this way, but then you're like, well, what if I jump up here and then run around this way, and then I can give the drop on these guys who don't know I'm here yet? Like, I thought this level, kind of like you were saying with the the first level being really open, this one was really open in a very different way because it's smaller platforms and things, but it gives you a lot of interesting opportunities to navigate the level, I thought.
SPEAKER_00I thought that uh, you know, there's probably moments up to this point in the campaign where you could just bypass enemies, just run around them and keep going. I would have never thought to do that for the most part. But in this one, there's some moments where it's man, there are so many units there, and I know that I need to get to the top of this tower to activate this thing. Like that's what I'm doing. I'm not trying to clear a room, I'm not trying to save, you know, some other soldiers or something. So there are moments where I thought, to hell with fighting these guys, I'm just gonna wall run past them, climb up, and keep going up the tower. And so I thought that was cool. Um, there's a couple moments where you can activate uh little robots.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you actually get an achievement for building your robot army, which I love. So it was like built as the achievement's like build your robot army or whatever. And I'm like, yes.
SPEAKER_04My favorite part of the mission. Uh then you go to war with like six of them. Like uh Adam, you were talking about skipping enemies. I don't think I skipped anything, uh enemies because my robots went and hunted them down. So Right.
SPEAKER_01That that's how I treated that like little last encounter. I just let my robot army like take care of all of them. Yep. Uh but I love the there's so many interesting platforming sections in this one with the arc laser, because you could like shoot it to make platforms appear and disappear. It felt very like split fiction or it takes two in the way you're kind of like manipulating platforms and stuff. And obviously it's single player, so you're not doing it like with somebody else, but the way you interact with the platforming felt very much like those games to me.
SPEAKER_04It's a good example of them just designing a whole level around another mechanic for you to experiment with, which is where you know this game's solid, consistent variety. Like that's an oxymoron, but it's consistently the same game with a bit of variety sprinkled in and really tightly designed level around that new mechanic, that new bit of variety.
SPEAKER_01And it just feels natural with the mechanics that are already in place, kind of like you're saying. Like it doesn't completely throw you off or do something totally different, it just expands or or kind of changes a little bit about this one way that you interact with the world, but it still feels like it flows in with the Titan and the regular pilot combat.
SPEAKER_00I know this one introduces Austin's favorite Titan loadout, the the Ronin. Yes, give me the Ronin.
SPEAKER_01I didn't actually use it a ton in this mission specifically, but I love the Ronin.
SPEAKER_00I mean, you get a shotgun, a sword, and a teleport dash. What's what's not to love? Uh another cool part about this mission is I think you really start to hit some real emotional moments with, or maybe just a kind of like bro bonding moments between Cooper and BT, because one, you get to see the first time that he throws him, which BT throwing Cooper across gaps becomes kind of a thing that happens a couple more times. But once you activate the beacon at the top and you're falling down, and Cooper's just like, ah, BT, BT, and BT like sprints over to the edge of this platform and grabs Cooper. Jack, like, you know, lets out this huge exhale and then gives him a thumbs up, and BT kind of looks at his other hand and then just like forms a thumbs up thing and like pushes it back toward Jack. And it's just so funny and it's so heartwarming. And it's just um, you know, really has this like iron giant vibe or whatever, or the kid and the and the giant, you know. So I just I really love that part.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I feel like someone watched Wally for a while for some inspiration on how to make uh how to make a robot have
Setpieces Galore (Missions 7-9)
SPEAKER_04personality.
SPEAKER_00So this this next one's pretty interesting because you you finally, you know, you've met back up with the ground forces, you've sent the message, now you get to join back up with the front tier militia proper, you meet Commander Sarah Briggs, and at first she's like, BT, a rifleman is driving you. Like, this is absurd. We're gonna get you hooked up with a real pilot. And BT's just like, no, Jack Cooper is my pilot. Like he's like, our battlefield success is 95% or something. So it's really cool that BT has Cooper's back and says, you know, hey, that this is my guy. And Sarah Briggs is like, all right, you know, if if you say so. And then you get to see this really cool moment where all of the Titans drop out of the sky at once. And it's uh this is really the first time you've gotten to see very many friendly Titans. I think there may have been a couple after this point, but now you have just like a dozen that drop in with you, and there's this beach head that you're charging, and it's very D-Day kind of thing, except now you're all in giant Titans. And um, I I have my issue with the Titan combat at times, it can feel just a little less fun minute to minute. And I know Jeff, you were saying these guys kind of kept getting in your way. But overall, the presentation of this one is is pretty fantastic.
SPEAKER_04Running across the metaphorical beach, uh, watching like the the wall get breached, and yeah, charging into the breach felt incredibly cool. Um that uh the start of this mission, I was like, yes, finally, uh, we're going to fucking kill things in mechs, and it's going to be awesome. Um, and then you get through the breach and everyone gets kind of like stuck on corners, it's really like crowded. Um, your dudes like get in the way of your giant salvo missiles, and I'm like, what I uh so it was a little underwhelming, but um the beginning of it and the presentation was a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_01I I actually had a very different experience with this mission. I thought this is one of my favorites, like this might be my second or third favorite in the game. Sure. I I think that initial drop is so cool. And the storming the wall and like running across the beach, and it was pretty tough for me. I mean, again, I'm on hard, so I don't know how that played differently for you. But I thought this mission gave you a lot of opportunity to try a lot of different Titan builds. Like I was bouncing between Ronan and Tone and Scorch and just kind of trying to see like what makes the most sense in this moment. And I loved running around with Ronan and just like swinging my sword at Titans and like switching to tone to launch off a bunch of missiles. And the presentation is so cool. The like Normandy D Day Beach Storm is one of the coolest moments in the game, I think. Like, I Love this mission.
SPEAKER_04I'm just a little too empathetic to the NPCs. I felt like we landed with like a dozen Titans, and then within five minutes, I'm inside the base, and I feel like I'm alone, and I'm just like, where'd everybody go? What happened? I thought we were a team.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I I feel like Briggs is with you for most of the mission. She is. The only one. And there's one or two other Titans that appear periodically. Um I thought fighting with Titans, like having multiple Titans fighting with you in your own Titan gave the it gave the scale that I think was missing before, and it made the Titan combat more fun for me. 100%. Because I didn't I didn't feel like I was one-on-one. I felt like it was it was like I was a pilot shooting other grunts, but now it's just in Titan scale, which was which was cool for me.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it just didn't feel quite as smooth for me.
SPEAKER_00I would I would see a lot of times where like an NPC would like get into like a melee animation with my target, and I would just be confused who I was shooting and if I was doing damage, but I'm also just bad at the game, so I was dying a lot in the initial charge until I switched to the thing they give you at the very beginning, which is the North Star loadout, and it's this rail gun sniper rifle kind of thing. That was awesome to just line up Titan headshots from across the map and kind of support your your cannon fodder titan that are going in there ahead of you. Uh and you have this kind of snare trap you can drop. So you would get inside the building, and I was like, well, I should probably switch to a different loadout because there's like some Scorch guys that are charging me, there's some Ronin that are charging me. But instead, I would just drop the snare boost backwards and continue to snipe them as they were caught again. So I had a lot of fun with that loadout in this one.
SPEAKER_01And I think that's one of the cool things about this mission is it gives you a chance to try out a lot of the different Titans if you haven't up to this point. Because it's so Titan focused. I I found myself switching a lot just so I could try out the other builds.
SPEAKER_04That would have required me to be like not utterly in love with the tone, so maybe that's where I mean all also valid.
SPEAKER_01I use tone quite a bit too, but it was cool to experiment uh in a way that the it wasn't as detrimental as like experimenting in multiplayer, whenever they can just crush you. Yes. Or in some of these other missions where it's like there's a very clear favorite. Like this one, I felt like there was the opportunity to try a lot of different builds.
SPEAKER_04No, you're you're totally right, because at the end of the day, you're running in there trying to kill a lot of Titans, right? And the level is flexible enough to let you try out different things. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So once you get through this mission, you've basically discovered that this arc thing that they're trying to power the fold weapon with, they've gotten away with it. Uh, there's this great moment right at the end of the last mission where you're trying to charge the ship that they're, the transport ship they're putting it in, and Briggs is like, oh, they're gonna get away, they're gonna get away. And of course they get away. But that leads to what I think is probably one of the game's coolest, like from an atmospheric and presentation cinematic perspective. It's called the Ark. And you're now the IMC has launched this all out assault on this airbase to capture when I say air base, I mean like a base in the air, um, to capture the arc. And all of this takes place in the air. So you first start off, you're on the side of this big transport ship, and you have a giant rocket launcher, and you're like shooting these IMC fighters out of the sky. And it seems to be going really well until suddenly Viper, one of the mercenaries, shows up, and he is in a Titan that has very extraordinary air capabilities, and he just starts obliterating all of these transport ships, and then another like enemy ship pulls up with all these guns and suddenly becomes all right, Cooper, we need you to get on there, and we need you to like kill the guns that are fucking up our guys, and then get to the front of the ship and take over the ship. And so, of course, how how how do you get on the ship, Jeff?
SPEAKER_04Uh, your Titans gotta chuck you. It's called a fastball.
SPEAKER_01It's called a fastball. It's it's so great. And and there's this moment where you like land on another ship as they're like flying to catch you in the air. Oh, so sick.
SPEAKER_04Just some true absurdism. But again, you have some fall damage protection and stuff, so it's fine. It's fine. You just gotta trust in the in the robot.
SPEAKER_01I I like I stupidly miss this jump like three times after landing on the ship. Like, it's it's trying to get you close to the other ship, and I like could not get on the main ship for some reason. I fell like three times.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. After you like infiltrate and start taking out the guys on the ship, um, you do get on the enemy ship and start taking it over, but it succeeds in shooting down like your own big uh capital ship or whatever first. Um and uh finally another like pilot squad pulls up alongside you and joins you on the mission, uh, the 6-4 or whatever. And I struggled with when they get introduced, the next thing they do is like there's uh the aircraft with like the loading bay shows up, and so you have to wall run off of their drop ship to get back onto uh uh the enemy ship. And that's where I fell down like three times, uh, which is funny because the NPCs, like six of them, do it no problem. And then I'm like, oh no.
SPEAKER_00They actually give you six hollow images of exactly what's going on, and you still correct.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You you you're a brand new pilot, so thematically it makes sense, right? You would struggle to make this jump. They're all experienced veterans.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think they're literally teasing you about being a newbie, and then I like faceplanted into the sky metaphorically. Um, yeah, it was uh it was good. It was good.
SPEAKER_00So I I actually replayed this mission this morning because it was one of the ones I felt like I remember as I went through it, I was like, this one's kind of underwhelming to me. But then I kept reading Austin's notes and I was like, was I just like tired or not in the right headspace? So I played it again this morning. It is awesome. It doesn't introduce anything new mechanically, which I think I was just mildly disappointed in because the missions had done so much of that up to this point. But it is a fucking fantastic mission. And the little ship you were describing, Austin, that you land on, that's the 6-4, right? They're the ones piloting that. Right. And it's funny because like I was just looking at my phone, and so he's like, All right, we're going in. All right, you missed your chance, I have to pull back. And then and then it takes a couple seconds for him and says, All right, let's try again. And then, but but if you time it right, dude, you have so much speed. And I managed to fly off the ship, hit a wall run, and like curve around through the base and just shoot at the guys missing mostly, but it was still awesome. Uh, just right off that jump. It was super cool. Like you said, Jeff, there's that moment where all the pilots join you, and it's really cool because they're a lot more they don't necessarily fight a whole lot differently than the normal soldiers, but they seem to be better armed and more competent. Yeah. And um, so you can you go in this little arena where you're fighting with all of them, and it's pretty cool. And then you get up to this part where it's it's the bridge that you have to get to to control the ship. And they're like, stand back, Cooper, watch how the sixth four does it. And the guy starts throwing these charges on the glass. He's like, Everyone got their target, and you can say, like, yeah, I've got my target. Well, everyone else is like, I got the guy on the mezzanine, I got the guy by the console. And then when the glass blows up, they're all just like and tank them out. It is such, it is so cool. Like, it just feels so badass. And then you get to fly the ship in this weird little segment where you get your hacking knife again, and it's like, Cooper, you gotta line up the ship. And you're literally steering the ship behind the one that has the arc because you're trying to line it up. And then BT drops in and breaks the glass so you can hop in them. Then you go to fight the uh Viper, the guy who was flying through the air earlier as the boss fight of this mission. Every part of this is so over the top, and yet it just works. It works so well. It's so much fun all the way through.
SPEAKER_04The flying the ship was so funny because you uh it's the same hack you've done before with your data knife, because like, you know, obviously, you stab it into the console and they're like, all right, Coover, like maneuver us behind the other ship. And I'm like, how am I how am I gonna do that? And you just pull on the data knife like it's uh it's a joystick, and you're like, Oh, obviously. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_01It is a true spectacle mission, like like you were saying, it doesn't introduce anything new mechanically necessarily, but every moment of it is just an awesome set piece segment. Like you're fighting along the gun batteries is super cool because the ship will like lurch and move, so you like kind of fall back, and the the whole ship is kind of shifting so you don't have your balance completely, and running along all the walls and the breach, like all these moments are so cool, and like I just felt like uh so excited. It felt like I was playing an action movie, you know.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. And again, they they do it in a way where it doesn't feel like the particular bits they're trying to pull off don't stay around too long, right? It's not like they're hamming it up with the 6-4, it's like there's a couple of segments. Um, they use the Titan eating you in the appropriate spots to where it's like funny. Uh, this is the only time in the game where you fly a ship for a second, and that's why it's so memorable. Um, it's just like really it's elements of classic game design and storytelling you've seen before, just used and in an intentional way that makes it really fun and enjoyable.
SPEAKER_00Jeff, you mentioned the the robot throwing you. You're about to do that after you kill Viper, right? So you shoot him down, and BT's like, you know, tighten down, like initiating fastball or whatever, and he starts to rear back, but then it just turns out that Viper's not dead. And he comes up and he shoots all these missiles and like he knocks you out of BT's hands, and then you're kind of getting back control of your characters or running back toward BT fighting Viper, and Viper's really starting to get the upper hand. Uh, he rips off one of BT's arms. BT is managed to like knock the protective shell off of the front of Viper, though. And then BT's like, Jack, I'm like, I need you to shoot the pilot. Like, I need you to shoot the pilot. And I happen to still have the sniper rifle from the start of the mission at this point. And that was so awesome to just zoom in and get like a headshot on Viper. And then, you know, he rears back and his Titan and he falls out of it. And it's um, it's a really cool moment. It just kind of ties all these things together. But then you you get on the ship with a BT and you're going to get the arc. And you're like, how am I going to transport this? And you jump out of BT and he's like, We'll just put the arc, you know, inside of the cockpit of the Titan. So you get in there, you push it in, and then suddenly the it kind of explodes, and you both get knocked on your ass, and the ship's going down. And Cooper's like, BT, like, get out of here. Like, you have the arc, that's the mission. Like, you gotta go. And BT is just negative, like, protocol three, I will not lose another pilot. And he just gets on top of Cooper and like protects him from the explosion. And it is, it is kind of like a heartwarming thing because you sort of see this bond slowly form between them. And it's not always, you know, the most obvious thing. They're not harping on it a lot. But if you pay attention to the dialogue, you pay attention to some of the um emotes that BT is doing throughout the campaign, you see that this bond is forming. And this is kind of the final moment where he says, like, I won't lose another pilot. You know, in the beginning, he says Captain Latamosa was a great man. So clearly, despite that he is a robot, they had some sort of connection with their human pilots, and he has forged this one with Cooper, and so he wants to protect him. And of course, after this, the the final level opens up where BT is captured by the main bad guy, who is of course Australian, and you're you're kind of being captured too. And uh yeah, this is how the last mission starts is like you sort of realize, oh man, it's it's over for BT as far as I'm not gonna be able to get back in him. He's falling apart, he's captured. But the Austin, do you remember the kind of cool sequence in this one where he's like throwing the little UI elements up on Cooper's helmet that's like, trust me, like play along or whatever?
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah. This is a tough scene to watch because like BT is literally getting tortured. Like this is this is brutal stuff.
SPEAKER_00BT kind of executes his plan, but it doesn't go totally according to plan, and the guys still kind of get the arc from him, and they sort of leave you both to die because this wherever you were in this facility, the ship is now on fire. So they're like, they'll burn alive, we gotta get out of here. And BT's like, Cooper, like take take the Sayer kit, and you're like, what the hell is that? And he ejects this kit that has his memory court in it, so you can take that, and then this like smart pistol that they've just been hiding from you the entire game that turns out to actually be some of the most damn awesome weapons in any FPS I've ever played.
SPEAKER_04It is an extremely overpowered gun. It auto-locks onto enemies so you don't have to aim. It's got a nice 16-round magazine with a real fast reload, and apparently you have infinite ammo. I'm not I'm not quite sure what you're reloading every time. So uh it goes from like uh your reflexes being like, oh, find the enemy, aim and pull the trigger to just notice the enemy and pull the trigger, right? Because they are literally homing bullets. There's this great sequence where you can like zip line down and there's like a squad of enemies below you. So you're like ziplining and just firing the pistol, and they're dropping like flies, and then you slide under the base door like as it's coming down to get into another room, and then you stand up and hose that room with your god tier pistol. It's just it's it's it's comical, right? Like uh your first thought is where has this weapon been the entire time? Why can't we use this technology on all of our guns? Uh, but it's a great thing from a gameplay's perspective.
SPEAKER_01The this is definitely a callback to the original game that the smart pistol was one of the like primary selling points of the marketing and stuff was like, ah, we've developed this really cool smart pistol thing. Like, I remember that being the gun that everybody was talking about when the game came out. It's the one everybody wanted to use in multiplayer because I mean it literally locks on to people, like it's so sick. Uh the the difficulty with it in like Titanfall 1 multiplayer is the lock-on takes a second and pilots are moving very fast. So, like, that's where it became a little less OP. But here in the campaign where all the grunts are just looking like stupid standing there, it's awesome. Like, it all it becomes all about how efficiently can you navigate this area because your gun's just gonna do all the locking on, and all you have to do is pull the trigger, and it's so cool to watch.
SPEAKER_00Which of course feeds into all the wall running and double jumping and stuff so much because yeah, the auto aim is generous, but through a lot of parts of this campaign, I was really struggling to hit things while while running, right? But this just it locks on. So you can do for a game that has done so much up to this point to make you feel like a badass. The fact that in the final mission they can go above and beyond all of that and make you feel like the most badass you have the entire game was something I really appreciated. And when you get through the sequence, you know, you end up coming across another Titan that needs a memory core. I don't remember how it got there, it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01It it drops in the the militia drops it in. That's right. They're like standby for Titanfall, and it drops it like this. The first time you see your own Titan drop in.
SPEAKER_00How have we not mentioned standby for Titanfall up to this point? Standby for Titanfall. That's just one of the coolest lines in the whole game.
SPEAKER_04Uh because this this is the moment for it, right? Like the whole campaign is a little bit training you for multiplayer, and this is the first time that you're calling in a new Titan, right? Um, so this is when uh it gives it a clear second, and uh Sarah delivers the standby for Titanfall, and you're just like, hell yes. Oh, it's so cool.
SPEAKER_01And I love that the one they give you is the Legion. It's like kind of the it feels like the last one, like the the ultimate one. And it also has like lock-on mechanics with its core um its its core ability, also has like lock-on functions. So it feels like the Titan extension of the smart pistol, which I thought was really cool.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, they give you the super overpowered version and then introduce like the actual in-game mechanic, uh, which is the uh Legion's ultimate ability.
SPEAKER_00And yeah, so both in the form of the pilot and the titan, they're like, Oh, you thought you've been a badass through 10 missions. Well, here's here's the ultimate form. Um, but of course, you get to a boss fight at the end here, and I just switched back to the tone because it did.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_00But you you fight the final mech mercenary that you're going to fight in this game, Sloane. She's a little a little more interesting, I think, because she has these phases where like once you get her health down to a certain point, she disappears, and all these little titans come out. And so there's actually like three distinct phases to the fight. And that and that was a little more fun, I thought, than just uh me obliterating them in 20 seconds and it being over. So that's a cool moment. You you know, you put the core from BT in this new one, so you're like, yeah, I got BT back basically. But then the way the events play out at the end is they get the arc into this thing, and you know that the only way you're going to be able to stop it is for someone to blow up the thing that the arc is in. And it sort of plays out to where BT is like, you know, protocol three, protect the pilot. So he's gonna he's gonna throw you away from the explosion while he charges in to sacrifice himself to blow it up. And of course, it's just uh it's like no BTA, I I thought you were back. Like, first I thought you were dead, and then you were back, and then it's no, you're pulling up my heart strings again. Really cool moment, really cool like emotional climax to the whole thing. There's this cool part in the end credits where like his helmet flickers for a second at the end, so you know that like, oh, BT is out there still. Um, just a cool little setup for the Titanfall 3 that's probably never coming. And um, yeah, I thought it was uh I thought it was a really great final mission because you have uh, you know, again, it's not like necessarily mechanically deep, but there's a cool new mechanic and all of the homing stuff, and it's a super great set piece moment, emotional climax. The mercenary leader, Blizz or whatever, is just kind of like, yeah, they're not paying me enough for this, and like decides not to kill you for whatever reason.
SPEAKER_01Well, he also, I mean, he also teases Apex Legends here, too. Oh, does he drops that little thing on your window that's like apex and it's just a symbol for Apex Legends? So that's like that's like your your tease for Apex Legends. Um I it does feel a little weird. I thought that moment was a little strange where he's just like, see ya, like I can kill someone, but I I won't.
SPEAKER_04And I was like, oh, he's a classic mercenary. He didn't put it in his contract, man. Sure, sure, sure.
SPEAKER_02Not to mention uh should should have been more specific.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, he's not he's not an ideologue, right? Like he's just here uh uh because they're paying him good money. And you did just murder all of his best mercenaries, so in the back of his mind, he's probably like, well, maybe I'll recruit him later.
SPEAKER_01Maybe I'll need him. I'll I'll invite him to my Apex Legends Battleground arena thing that'll show up in a couple years.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's it's definitely like a a trope I've seen before. But again, it's like well executed, and you know, like if you wanted him to sacrifice his life to save your ancient super weapon, uh, you should have paid him more. I mean, come on.
SPEAKER_00That's a good point. Uh up through the campaign, you've had this little Cooper's logbook that shows you just a little briefing before each mission, and before this final one, you don't get one. And when you press start, you don't see anything. But if you press it during the credits, you'll see that it's now filled in. And it says, There are a lot of people saying they owe their lives to me. They're wrong. Their lives were saved by so many others. All the men and women of the Ninth Fleet who died fighting on Typhon, and a Vanguard class titan to whom I owe my life. They're true heroes of the Battle of Typhon. They are the true heroes of the Battle of Typhon. Here's to you, BT. Wherever the militia sends me next, I won't let you down. Trust me. And of course, trust me is what BT always said to you right before he slingshotted you across the map, right? So I thought that that was a really cool moment. Um it it is interesting to me that we fight these mercenaries hired by the IMC. Do we ever interact with any position of leadership in the IMC itself at any point in this whole campaign? I have to feel like this might have been one of the ideas for Titanfall 3, is you might actually meet someone involved with the IMC proper because it's all all of the antagonists in this are those mercenaries. So I don't know. It's it sucks because between Zimpella's
The "Future" of Titanfall
SPEAKER_00passing and the fact that Apex took over and the fact that this game didn't do as well as they hoped, I just don't think we're ever going to get a Titanfall 3, at least not in the near future. So I guess all those questions will just remain unanswered.
SPEAKER_01It sucks because I I do think there is room to do some interesting things mechanically. Like we've seen how creative they can be with their mechanics and stuff, and you know, maybe maybe an idea in the next game was like landing on the IMC home planet or something and like taking that planet back or whatever it would be, right? Like there's probably a lot of cool ideas they could have gone with that I don't think we're ever gonna see anything else from this franchise outside of what we see from Apex.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I feel I feel like there's something kind of weird where there's like a variety of franchises that try and make giant mechs like cool, uh, right? And like there's been various games that I feel like mostly were in the 2010s, um, that were trying to like make mechs a thing. And uh I've seen these games repeatedly and they just never quite take off. Like the mech combat itself is never never seems to be quite popular enough. We always go back to like one dude wall running or you know, throwing knives like in Call of Duty, uh, or a Halo type super soldier. It's uh you know, uh the mech warrior games had never been huge. There was another PvP mech game, I think it was called Hawken or something, um, around this era.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I think I remember it. Hawken, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I just have this idea in my head that it seems like mechs are a thing that are in games. Hell divers has mechs, right? Those are cool. Um, but no one's ever quite succeeded in making a hugely popular mech focused video game. And Titanfall is the closest we got, and that evolved into Apex Legends.
SPEAKER_01Which then removes all the Titans.
SPEAKER_04Right, exactly. Which that's they get they got rid of the Titan part, the the the giant.
SPEAKER_00I know uh mech warrior was the thing that was popular in the early 2000s for a while, and there's like five of those, but to your Point that fell off at some point and isn't really at its Apex anymore either.
SPEAKER_01And there's obviously like front mission, like front mission from from software is also a mech focused game, but I've never been able to get into those either.
SPEAKER_04I'm just thinking how like um uh 40k is a popular franchise right now, right? Um they have giant mechs, but I've never really seen like someone try and make um a game focused around like the Space Marines like dreadnought character or whatever. So I I don't know if there's just something about like the giant mech warrior that like doesn't have engaging enough long-term gameplay or something. I just feel like I've seen a lot of folks fail to build a whole franchise around being in a giant cool mech, even though it seems like an obviously popular thing.
SPEAKER_00I don't know. Did you ever play Zone of the Enders from the early 2000s? I have not. Well, yeah, two games to your point that had mech focused combat and then they didn't make another one. So it just kind of fell off. A lot of attempts have been made, but they don't yeah, they don't seem to stick around very long. So that that wraps
Some Multiplayer Shenanigans
SPEAKER_00up the campaign, which I think at this point should be obvious. We loved uh maybe to talk a little bit more about the multiplayer. It is unfortunate that we played it in 2026 instead of 2016, because you know, we were making the joke as we were playing it. It's like there's two types of people playing this game. It's god beast and podcasters. And we were definitely in the latter camp as we were just getting obliterated by people who were like sniping me from positions that I was like, okay, I know you can literally wall run in this game, but how did you get up there? And uh I would get into a Titan combat where I literally would come across a guy who looked like he was one hit from death, and I would die still, and I have no idea how he avoided every bit of damage I was trying to do to him. So yeah, I that was unfortunate that we were just getting creamed, but it was still a really good time. I like you mentioned Austin, the attrition game mode was a lot of fun. Really felt like an active battlefield instead of just a death arena.
SPEAKER_04Our very first multiplayer match, I sprinted into combat and killed an actual human opponent immediately, and then that that was I was accomplished. I had reached the peak of my multiplayer ability, and it was all downhill from there.
SPEAKER_01I had a little bit better experience playing on PS5 than I did on PC, probably because less mouse and keyboard, you know, no mouse and keyboard, I guess, on PS5. Uh so that that helped a little bit. And the auto aim is really generous, so like even on PC, I never felt like at a huge disadvantage, but being on PS5 with everybody using a controller, and I imagine probably just a little less hardcore scene on PS5 in general, uh, felt a little better when I was playing it there. And I feel like I had a little more success. Like all of my coolest moments came from playing on PS5. Um But yeah, I think the I think the multiplayer is really fun in this game. I it's so fast-paced. I love the instant respawn. You just get right back into the action. Like the attrition game mode feels like this full-on, full-scale battle. You shoot guys, you build up your points, eventually you earn your Titan fall, you drop in your Titan, and now you're the giant beast on the field that's like stomping on the small grunts, shooting shotgun blasts at all the pilots running around. There's just this this really cool flow to a multiplayer match that comes in, you know, kill the kill the small fry, get your titan, rinse repeat until the mission's over. And then you even have this end where you have to like stop the victor from leaving because they can extract. And so now you're like hunting them down or trying to destroy their transport out. It's just a really cool game mode that I think does a lot of expanding on a traditional like team deathmatch style game.
SPEAKER_04I would have appreciated a way to retreat while inside of your Titan. Um, the number of times that we were all kind of standing under the escape transport ship. And I was like, wait, how do I get up to it? Uh, which gave the enemies just enough time to blow it out of the sky. You know, it happened a little too often.
SPEAKER_00The and it's worth noting that like the reception to this at the time, I was going back and reading a lot of stuff, and of course, just reading, like watching like video essays that are like, what happened to Titanfall 2? The it does seem to have had a huge learning curve. And especially when it came to the level design in some of these multiplayer matches, because the developers were talking about how they had a 3D Swiss cheese design philosophy, and sort of what it sounds like, right? The interiors had a lot of paths you could go through. There was a lot of verticality. And I think if you give yourself time to learn the maps and learn the mechanics, that is probably really, really fun. But as the three of us were coming in, you know, 10 years late, and all these god beasts were roaming around the map, it was like I felt like I didn't have time to learn any of these maps before I was just destroyed, which is why I think I liked the uh the frontier defense mode a little more. Now I'm just more of a co-op guy generally, but I had a lot of fun with that where you know you're like defending this beacon through like four or five waves of enemies, and you uh, you know, you start off as a pilot, but you you get your little Titan meter charged up as you kill more things, and you can summon in the Titans. I could just I could see me having had a lot of fun with that when it first came out. As it stood now, it's it's balanced for four people, and we had to wait like in seven-minute cues for a fourth man in person. So that was a little limiting, but that that was a pretty good time.
SPEAKER_04A a good comp stomp is always fun. Um, so uh it's always cool to play a you know wave after wave of enemies defense type game. Frontier, the frontier mode's most useful function might have been to give you a chance to learn the maps before you go get your ass absolutely handed to you in the multiplayer battles.
SPEAKER_01It's a very, very good point. And I did I did like that mode. I feel like despite me being horrible at PvP and like losing to the players all the time, I still prefer PvP type game modes because there's just something about fighting other people that I find invigorating, even though I suck at it.
SPEAKER_04Um the thing about um and I think partially what what might be part of Titanfall's problem is like to keep a PvP game interesting, to keep any game interesting, you want to have like a variety of playstyles you can go through, right? Like you want to give these complex and interesting mechanics to players so that they like keep coming back. When you add in the PvP element, that means you can potentially like raise the skill ceiling really high. And that's what Titanfall has. Um, like it's pretty easy to get into and get started, but you can pull off such ridiculous things that anyone who's been playing the game for a couple years knows the maps really well. It's just going to absolutely destroy a beginner. And that's just a hard thing to design around when you're trying to make like a PvP game. Like, how do you keep it interesting while still giving new players the space to not get completely obliterated? Uh, I mean, I got I think I got one kill in every match, but uh there were a lot of matches where I only got one kill.
SPEAKER_01Sure. And and I do think the having the frontier defense like kind of horde mode option is cool. I think there's a lot of cool moments that came out of that. I think we had a lot of fun with it. I I liked that the first match we played. I don't know if it was like bugged or we just didn't unlock things that we needed or what was going on, but like we couldn't buy half of the things that we that like you could buy at the end of each wave to help defend. We just couldn't buy those. So, like, once we could do that, I saw how it could expand and flesh out a little bit. And like having sentry turrets like positioned all over the map was really cool.
SPEAKER_00We just like 27 of the electric traps scattered around the place.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, which were like okay, that's useful enough, but it it definitely like those later waves got really brutal. But when you were playing with four people, it it was cool, and I like you know, I like that they had a bunch of these specific type of titans, like the nuke titans were exclusive to this mode, and it was just their whole purpose was there to explode on death. So like you had to kill them before they got close, or you're you're you were screwed. So, like I thought there was some cool twist on the gameplay with that mode, but I I think I'm just more of a PvP guy in general, which is weird because I'm so bad at it.
SPEAKER_00But there's an element to this game that does make me think like its greatest strength sort of became its great if greatest weakness from like a commercial perspective because it just led to an inaccessibility with that skill ceiling. So you think about something like Call of Duty, it's just so straightforward. You sprint in, you find cover, and you shoot. And some people might complain that you're camping because you're playing smartly, but you know, that there's there's a reason they never went back to that advanced warfare where you had the wall running and the jumping and everything. And there's a reason Apex doesn't have any, I think it has the sliding and it has some of the cool abilities and and um guns from from this franchise, but it doesn't have the wall running and it doesn't have the double jumping, and that just allows it to be so much more approachable for the kind of player that they're looking to have play a game for five, six years straight, right? Um so in some sense, it's like the game was too good, like it was too innovative in order to really become a lasting success. And I think you sort of see that in the way that Battlefield and Call of Duty and Apex Legends just dropped all of the more advanced parts of the movement, um, despite maybe keeping some of the other ideas. So yeah, it's unfortunate because like it it's something that is so unique, and you do wish it would have stuck around longer and maybe influenced more games itself.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01I've never played a game with movement that feels as smooth as this game, like at least in a first-person shooter. Or honestly, I don't know of any game that I can think of off the top of my head that feels as good to just maneuver around in as this one. It's so fluid, it's so fun. The sliding, the jumping, the wall running, like it feels so good to just interact with the world moment to moment.
SPEAKER_04So I haven't played Apex Legends. Does that game feel like an evolution of some of the pilot movement in Titanfall? Or does it feel more like a regression, a simplification or something totally different?
SPEAKER_00I would say it feels more like a little bit of a regression. Like they do have a uh a slide that feels really good. So you can slide down hills and stuff.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, playing Titanfall, like my expectation would have been that uh I I I I could very easily see them uh dropping the Titan mechanic, right? Like it felt like there was a little bit of a dichotomy because Titan gameplay and the pilot gameplay is so different, and even in the campaign, you spend a lot more time being the pilot mode than the Titan mode, that it makes sense to me that they would simplify it. And if you're gonna simplify it a lot, uh getting rid of the the Titan combat is the obvious choice. But it's surprising that there still isn't a game that feels like just the pilot combat from Titanfall. And again, that might point to the problem with too high of a skill ceiling and you get rid of your mass market appeal. And at the end of the day, you need more sales to make a good game.
SPEAKER_01So I and I think I would agree that the Titan, like removing the Titan stuff, makes the most sense if you're going to remove anything. But I do feel like part of what makes it so special is having that dichotomy of being able to drop in the Titan and get in, and it it creates this totally different dynamic and this totally different feel. And I don't think I'm just not sure Titanfall 2 would be as engaging to me without having the option for the Titan. Like I feel like it would get maybe a little more stale, quick quicker, not having the option to have the Titan and not having the the Titans drop in to give a little bit of a mix-up here and there.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no, that that that that's a good point.
SPEAKER_00And I'm not sure.
Outro
SPEAKER_00Well, that about wraps up our discussion on respawn's Titanic sci-fi FPS, Titanfall 2.
SPEAKER_01You can find this episode as well as all of our other episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcasting platform.
SPEAKER_04And as always, you can find everything we do on our website, gamesgoneby.com. Signing off for Games Gone By. I'm Adam.
SPEAKER_00I'm Austin. Stand by for Titanfall. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll see you next time.
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