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| The Pilot and his Titan |
Coming out "exclusively" for the Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Windows 8 in Spring 2014, Titanfall is a first person shooter, mech battling, multiplayer game. Created by the masterminds behind the original Call of Duty Modern Warfare, the guys at Respawn Entertainment (former employees of Infinity Ward) are changing their focus from a realistic shooter to creating an entirely new futuristic universe. With Titanfall taking center stage at Microsoft's E3 showcase, there is plenty of information, gameplay footage and more to examine as we try to sieve through the details about the game.
When trying to describe Respawn Entertainment's Titanfall, executive producer Drew McCoy states that the main focus of the game will blur the lines between single and multiplayer gaming: "taking the hand-crafted cinematic nature of a single player game and wrapping it up in super-fast, smooth, awesome multiplayer game." From the gameplay and cinematic shots shown at E3, Titanfall boasts that the traditional campaign experience will entirely rely on multiplayer battles. While this sounds intriguing, I can hear the collective groan from the many gamers who value the solo-campaign experience. Respawn Entertainment's answer to why they decided to blur the single and multiplayer experience is explained as such: "People spend hundreds of hours in the multiplayer experience versus ‘as little time as possible rushing to the end’ [in single-player]. So why do all the resources go there? To us it made sense to put it here. Now everybody sees all those resources, and multiplayer is better. For us it made sense.” The resources the quote refers to are how the studio would allocate resources between a single player campaign and online multiplayer system. The argument here is that by devoting all resources into a multiplayer-campaign experience, those playing the game will have a more polished and better overall experience. If you think of a game such as Mass Effect 3 (while I find the multiplayer incredibly fun) it definitely is not as well done as the single player game itself. This is clearly because the single-player campaign received a vast amount of resources while the multiplayer was a mere extension of the campaign itself. With Respawn Entertainment's multiplayer-campaign, gamers will be able to see a story unfold through competitive online multiplayer, something very new in the first person shooter world.
The gameplay for Titanfall was, in my opinion, one of the more eye catching videos at all of E3. Check out the video to see the game in action as displayed at Microsoft's E3 conference. Its interesting to watch the fighting dynamics between the titan mechs and the pilots themselves. The pilot appears to play much like a Call of Duty soldier with a jet pack and extreme parkour abilities. Using your jet/thruster pack to traverse buildings and running alongside walls looks rather seamless and reminds me of all the crazy acrobatics you can do in the Assassin's Creed games. The titans appear like your standard mech, much like what was seen in James Cameron's Avatar and the Lost Planet games. The sequence where the pilot jettisons from his titan and falls directly onto an enemy titan is a cool gameplay dynamic. Respawn Entertainment states that the pilot vs. mech combat is balanced so that players can choose between two distinct fighting styles. Basically it comes down to the speed and agility of the pilots versus the brute force abilities of the titans, which hopefully will provide endless different scenarios and encounters in the multiplayer-campaign experience.
The gameplay shown appears filled with visually stunning environments as ships overhead go in and out of hyperspace/warp/slipspace. The building texture and appearance looks well done and presents forth a war torn setting as you traverse the streets and buildings. From the gameplay above, you also get a sense of the multiplayer-campaign playing out as its your objective to take and hold locations for your faction within the war. I still don't get a sense of how this progresses the main story but I know those details will become available soon. I will say I was disappointed with how some of the characters looked for a supposed next-gen game. Granted, with a Spring 2014 release, I'm sure graphical enhancements will be made. I'm also not positive if this was being shown on the Xbox One or 360. I assume the Xbox One but you never know.
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| Pilot free-running across a wall with jet-pack |
Speaking of next-gen, Respawn Entertainment has stated that Titanfall will take advantage of many of the next-gen features incorporated within the Xbox One. Most notably is that the game will utilize cloud computing for the game's environments and will have dedicated servers. It appears to me that every next-gen game will have dedicated servers which puts a huge smile on my face (for those who read this and don't know, dedicated servers mean there won't be any lag while playing the game). With processing power placed in the cloud and dedicated servers, hopefully Respawn can turn up the appearance of the game even more.
While details are scarce, I can't say for how you outfit your pilot/titan but its safe to say it will mirror the typical FPS experience. Hopefully you will be able to change the look of your pilot or titan to make the game more unique and colorful to the specific player. Also, with a Spring 2014 release date, Respawn Entertainment is shying away from going head to head with Battlefield 4 and Call of Duty: Ghosts. It will be interesting to see when the next Halo installment will be released and if it will be anywhere near the release date for Titanfall. I'd say not considering they both are Xbox exclusives.
Overall, Station 1621 is incredibly excited for Titanfall. With the masterminds behind the first Modern Warfare at the helm, the station recommends that you not worry about their newest installment being a bust. Its sad that Playstation players won't get to experience, what it appears to be, a fun and fresh first person shooter. If anymore details drop about Titanfall, Station 1621 will keep you up to date with all the information. Next time we will be profiling Ubisoft's Watch-Dogs so keep checking back. Events will be streaming this weekend over at the Twitch channel so check it out as well.
See you starside,
-1621
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