Titanfall 2 campaign review

Have you ever played fetch with a dog? You go to a nice park, shake a stick in front of the dog's face, then throw it, and when the dog brings it back you pat it on the head and tell it how clever it is. Playing the Titanfall 2 campaign is a lot like that, only you're the dog. And sometimes the stick.

What I'm saying is that to me Titanfall 2's campaign mode just reeked of lack of respect for the player. There's a few reasons why I say this, and I realise that it might just be a matter of perspective, but I believe it's quite objective that this game hand-holds more than most - more than probably any game I've ever played anyway.

Perhaps I should go back a bit to give a little context to my experience with the game. When the original Titanfall came out everyone was making a big deal out of it, giving it all of the awards and everything. And I personally was very interested: I loved Mirror's Edge and had long felt that integrating a much higher degree of mobility into a proper combat-focused first person shooter was the logical next step for the genre and was bound to happen soon. So Titanfall initially sounded like what I was waiting for.

But when I tried to play it, I... didn't really get into it. It was multiplayer only, something that I'm generally not into (Overwatch being the only exception thus far for various reasons), and in that multiplayer I found myself spending most of my time surrounded by bots and then suddenly getting killed by a human who I didn't even know was there. Also this was around the time that I was starting to feel that a game needed an interesting narrative and/or characters in order to get me invested and keep me playing; without that investment I tended to just stop playing partway into a game.

I mean, I didn't think it was bad, I just didn't really feel it was what I wanted. So when Titanfall 2 was announced as having a full single-player campaign with what looked like large environments and attention paid to story and characters, I was very excited as it seemed I was finally going to get the game that I wanted all along. So I bought the game almost as soon as it came out and jumped right in with high expectations.

I shelved it just a few minutes into the campaign. It genuinely made me so angry that I only randomly picked it up again to finish it over three years later, when "social distancing" meant all the videogame shops were closed.

Now part of that is that I was completely fed up at the time with the incredibly restrictive direction first person shooters had been moving in for a few years. After Modern Warfare had proved to be such a big hit with it's strong directed gameplay, a lot of developers took the wrong lessons and released campaigns that were more interested in being movies than games, constantly pushing the player down extremely restrictive "gameplay corridors" and punishing them for putting a single foot out of line. I felt like a circus animal being forced to jump through hoops against my will. I absolutely hated it.

In retrospect I can see that I had been hoping for something like Prince of Persia, the first Uncharted, or more to the point the original Mirror's Edge: organic-feeling environments that at least gave the illusion of openness and freedom, that served as environmental puzzles I would need to figure out how to traverse. Instead I got a game that had a very specific, narrow and simple path planned out for me, highlighted in bright flashing neon, with a guy yelling in my ear every few seconds that I wasn't actively running down that path.

Most games have some sort of objective/waypoint marker system, but Titanfall 2 has the most obtrusive version I've ever seen. Typically you'll have a small icon on screen, possibly only there when you press a button to summon it. It's subtle and out of the way, only there when you need it. But Titanfall 2 has an icon over the objective, a somewhat verbose description of what it is on a side of the screen, and a "diagram line" (I'm not sure how else to describe it) connecting the two - often spanning across the whole screen. That would be fine if it went away and only showed up when you summoned it. But that's not how it works: instead it just pops up on it's own volition if you spend more than a few seconds exploring or just admiring the environment. At one point in the game I was listening to a long but interesting audio log I found in the environment, and the damn waypoint marker must have popped up a dozen times while I was trying to follow the dialogue. Why would you put audio logs in the game if you don't want the player to listen to them?

But what was even worse, what was the straw the originally broke the camel's back for me, was the "ghost runner". Let me be clear: this is not Prince of Persia or Uncharted or Mirror's Edge. The levels are full of areas where you need to use your advanced mobility to progress, but it's nowhere near the complexity of those games. It's just wall-running. There's an occasional little twist thrown it, but it's still just wall-running. And the walls are most often quite obvious. And wall-running is very forgiving too, far more so than something like Mirror's Edge. There's really no puzzle or challenge here. Despite this, if you don't immediately hop on to the correct wall, a damned hologram appears in the environment to indicate where you need to go and will act out the path you need to take if you press a button! Again, you don't summon it, it just shows up on it's own and makes damned sure there was never even the slightest question about what your exact next move is expected to be!

Not only are these "player aids" (that you cannot disable and that are there through the whole game, not just the beginning) highly immersion-breaking - an unforgivable sin on it's own - they are also extremely insulting! Did the developers think that if the player was left on their own without someone barking directions in their ear for more than a few seconds, they might get scared and turn the game off? I honestly found it, well, maddening.

And it's not just the player aids. Your titan, BT, spends the ENTIRE game telling you what to do at every stage. And he repeats himself if you take too long. And if not him then someone else; there's even a moment where one of the villains is telling you what to do. Yes, I know it's normal for NPCs in games to deliver instructions to the player; people are always telling Gordon Freeman what to do for example. But Gordon Freeman is a silent protagonist, and so cannot deliver expository dialogue to the player, forcing that duty onto the supporting cast. And even then the Half Life don't feel as bad. Perhaps they rely less on spoken directions and more on environmental design to lead the player along, or maybe the games react to the actions the player can or has to take in a way that narratively at least feels like Gordon Freeman is making his own decisions; the point is even silent protagonists can feel like they are doing more than just being led around by the nose.

However Titanfall 2's protagonist - a very forgettable Jack Cooper - is not silent. Non-silent videogame protagonists can and often do drive the story forwards through their own choices, but Jack does not; despite ostensibly being BT's pilot, BT is definitely the one driving. BT simply states what Jack's next job is, and Jack does it. There is no discussion, no questions, no input or opinions from Jack. Going back to my "playing fetch" analogy earlier, Jack is BT's (female) dog.

I mean, technically there can be a little bit of questioning or opinion-stating from Jack. You see whenever Jack speaks the player is presented with a pair of dialogue options. But it's purely decorative; the options are not very different and don't change anything (they certainly don't allow the player to make any actual decisions that change anything, the way you might expect from a game with this kind of dialogue selection system). Jack can occasionally ask a question, but at best it's usually something like "Are you sure about this?", it never actually matters or allows him to exert any influence on the situation. Jack, and by extension the player, has no will of his own and only does what he's told to by BT.

So yeah, to me it's symptomatic of the attitude behind the whole game: the developers don't respect the player, they don't care about what the player wants, they just expect him to do what he's told. And they don't even trust him to be able to do it on his own, so they constantly micro-manage. As far as they're concerned they've crafted a brilliant game and they don't want the player ruining it, so he should just shut up and do what he's told.

But that's not to say that they don't realize that the player's feelings matter. In fact they constantly pat the player on the head and tell him what a clever boy he is. Pretty much any dialogue that isn't purely expository is simply various characters telling the player how awesome he is. Hell, the game starts off talking about how amazing "Pilots" are and instantly promotes Jack to Pilot, and ends with the credits rolling over an extended animation of Jack getting high-fived and patted on the back for being so awesome. Every couple of missions BT finds a way to work some praise for how well you're doing into the dialogue, and the enemies keep screeching at each other over the radio about how important it is to kill you, even if it means blowing up their own infrastructure to do so.

To me at least it all came off as being quite condescending, at least considering how the game gives the protagonist no actual agency in the plot. Well, that's assuming that Jack is the protagonist. And let's be honest, the real protagonist is BT. He's by far the most memorable character, the one doing all the talking, making all the decisions, driving the plot, repeatedly saving Jack's life, and so on. Just look at the poster above and tell me: which of the two draws the eye more? That's right: Titanfall 2 is a videogame where you play the sidekick.


But let's move on from the game's attitude towards the player and talk about the core mechanics. The gameplay takes two basic forms: running around on foot and piloting a titan. Either way the mechanics feel good; the controls are highly configurable - which I consider a huge positive - and once set up to taste feel quite tight and responsive. Guns are generally satisfying to use (though mostly quite conventional, with a number of variations that don't have much obvious visual or gameplay differences between them) and enemies react to being shot in a way that gives the combat a nice sense of impact. I enjoyed the added mobility while on foot, and piloting a titan had a sense of weight without being ponderous, in part I believe thanks to the ability to dash. I did occasionally run into a touch of confusion after switching modes, trying to dash while on foot or jump while in a titan, but I believe that's a natural and unavoidable consequence of switching between two play modes - if the modes were too similar there would be no point after all - so I don't count it as a negative, just something to be aware of. Enemies were a little hard for me to see at times (a problem I've talked about in the past), but overall it wasn't really an issue, except perhaps in a few of the darker levels where it was kind of fitting anyway.

So overall the core mechanics are very good and the game is a lot of fun to play. While engaging in combat that is; the game does have an element of platforming / environmental puzzling, but as I mentioned previously this aspect is underdeveloped and suffers from too much handholding. Also, while the environments have a great sense of scale, the actual levels are basically linear corridors. Generally not as narrow as in some games, with plenty of larger areas for engaging in combat, but actually using your mobility to get from one place to another is a very linear process; there's typically only going to be one path, and it will usually be very obvious (especially since a hologram will pop up to guide you if you take more than a moment to look around). Walls that you're expected to run along are often textured to not-so-subtly draw your eye and suggest a path, basically signposting where you're supposed to go even without the hologram. What's more these walls are often quite contrived, sticking out like sore thumbs rather than blending into the environments naturally.

But don't take that to mean that the environments are ugly; quite the contrary, I thought they were beautiful. Yes, the design suffers sometimes to support gameplay, but other times the design and gameplay worked hand in hand quite well. There's also a lot of variety and some impressive spectacle, as you traverse massive manufacturing complexes, suspended networks of platforms, and actual airships mid-battle. Overall the environmental art direction and execution was great, as was the overall graphical quality of the game. The truth is I enjoyed the world created in this game more than most games I've played in the last several years or more. I only wish some of the levels were less linear and more open.


Unfortunately when I say that I enjoyed the world I meant visually; the actual narrative had some problems. From the beginning it's never established who the two factions are, what they are fighting for, what their methods and morals are, why we are supporting one over the other. In theory this may have been established in the first game, but I played it and I remember being confused then as well, so if it was there then I didn't see it. And even if it was, a bit of a recap wouldn't have hurt: new players do exist after all. As it was I felt no investment in the story, in my side's "cause", until maybe halfway through the campaign - and even then the motivation I found was more about saving lives in general than about supporting one faction over the other.

We don't get any background into Jack either. Who he is, where he came from, why he joined, whether or not he really believes in "the cause"; there's nothing there. That's not necessarily a bad thing for a player avatar, but in this situation fleshing out the character a little more might have been beneficial. First of all the game has the aforementioned dialogue selection system whenever Jack speaks: this is something more often associated with role playing games, where it makes sense to have deep characters with histories and motivations. But more importantly, a big part of the narrative was about the connection that formed between BT and Jack, and that might have worked better if Jack was a slightly more fully realised character.

Or maybe not. Perhaps going the other way, and having Jack be a true silent protagonist, would have better allowed the player to feel a connection with BT as it wouldn't need to be filtered through the half-formed character of Jack. Hell, maybe either approach would have worked better than the middle-of-the-road compromise the game went with. Or maybe I'm wrong and the compromise they chose could have worked as well or better; all I know is that the emotional connection wasn't quite there for me.

I mean I felt something; I was a little fond of BT, but I just feel that it could have worked better. I think part of the problem was that BT himself wasn't exactly as likeable as he could have been. He just doesn't really have much personality for one thing. I'm not saying he needed to act more human; I think it's possible to give a machine personality without making it behave like a human being. I just think that, despite having a LOT of dialogue (more than any other character in the game by far), he didn't really exhibit very much personality outside of his "I will follow my programming" thing. Most of his dialogue is just mechanical exposition. That and of course a whole lot of telling the player what to do, which as I've already discussed is something I didn't like, so it didn't exactly endear him to me.

I also think that some potentially dramatic moments were undercut by, let's call them gameplay issues. One particular moment stands out to me as I was just starting to feel something, when it cut to a black loading screen that went on for a while, and then of course it was just a time-skip. To me that just deflated the emotional aspect of the moment before it actually landed.

It didn't help that the game did that thing where people try to talk to you while you're in the middle of firefights. That does not endear me to the people trying to give me instructions at the worst possible time OR help me to enjoy the narrative. The game does feature the ability to adjust music, effects, and dialogue volume separately... in multiplayer only, for some stupid reason. Sadly in the single player campaign I was not able to adjust the volume in such a way as to allow me to clearly hear what BT was saying over the sound of gunfire. In fact I had difficulty hearing him over ambient sounds sometimes. I don't like to turn on subtitles in games if I can do without them because I am so used to reading subtitles that I can't easily stop myself from reading them and so I have a tendency to read ahead of the spoken dialogue, but nevertheless in theory the volume problem should have been easily solved by enabling the subtitles. However reading subtitles is a lot harder when you're trying to aim and avoid being shot, and it didn't help that Titanfall 2 is the only time I can remember seeing subtitles at the top of the screen instead of the bottom, meaning that I tended to not notice them even when I wasn't being distracted because they weren't where I was used to. The font was a touch on the small size too.

There's a few other characters in the game, most of whom are villains. None of them had much impact on me. I didn't find myself feeling a particularly strong desire to defeat the villains or support the heroes or anything. I mean, I did a bit, but not as much as I have in many other similar games. I suppose it all just felt a bit rote; I pretty much knew exactly what each character's role was and what would happen to them within seconds of each of them being introduced. It felt very by-the-numbers I guess.

Having said all that, the campaign has some very cool moments, and the emotional elements did work to a degree. So overall it's not that it's bad, it's just that it didn't live up to the potential that it showed.


Which is true of the whole game to be honest. There's a lot of things that I really liked, which is why the parts that let me down were more disappointing than they would be if they were in a game that wasn't good enough for me to care about to begin with. Honestly, just a few small changes would have gone such a long way towards letting me really get into and enjoy this game.

It's a single player campaign built from a multiplayer game, and it shows. It's built on a system that would play very well in a an open world exploration game, but it's a linear shooter that doesn't trust the player to be able to do anything more than follow simple directions and kill stuff. It tries to build an emotional element onto a pre-existing gameplay mechanic, and almost succeeds. If it had been a bit more focused in terms of gameplay, a bit more skillfull in terms of storytelling, and had a bit more faith in the player, it would have been amazing. Still, the environments are beautiful,  the core gameplay mechanics are great, and it has some impressive cinematic moments.

This has clearly been a very subjective review, more so than usual for me I think. I'm finding it quite hard to be objective on this one, so take my final score of 7/10 with a grain of salt. The game has some good features, and a lot of it's issues are shared by many of it's contemporaries, so you might enjoy it a lot more than I did. If you're thinking of picking it up then I would say it's probably worth a go, just be aware that it's ultimately a very directed shooting experience; this is not Mirror's Edge with guns (yes I know Mirror's Edge had guns, you know what I mean), this is Call of Duty with a bit of jumping. And a big robot.

#####SPOILER WARNING#####

I absolutely loved the time-jumping section of the game! It was a novel experience that worked really well, combining the visual interest of seeing the same place in different moments of time with the interesting combat twist of being able to step between different ongoing combats and the gameplay twist of needing to switch back and forth in order to overcome environmental obstacles. It's almost a shame it was just one level; it was my favourite part. It's a bit of shame it happens around halfway through; the rest of the game never quite measured up.

Hell, I reckon you could probably build a whole game around that mechanic. Especially if it was fleshed out a bit more. As much as I enjoyed it in Titanfall 2, I do think it would have been even better if things you did in the past dynamically altered the world in the future. Just simple things; for example there's several parts where you fight partially functional security robots in the present, and also the same robots in fully functional state in the past. Image if you destroyed a robot in the past it was no longer present in the future (perhaps with an aged wreckage suddenly appearing in the present where it fell in the past). Or what if some of the glass cages with the animals were intact and had skeletons in them in the present, but if you could destroy the glass in the past in which case the glass was suddenly broken in the present and the skeleton was no longer there? I just feel that adding some more interactive touches would really increase the impact of the time-travel element.


Speaking of time-travel, there was a pretty major plot point that didn't make sense to me. It seems that the events in the past were a few years ago, or at the very least a number of months ago, judging by the state of decay of everything. And as far as I could tell in the past the...  (checks wiki) "IMC" successfully tests their super-weapon, then moves to use it on the Militia's homeworld or something. You are then racing against time to stop them from using the weapon... in the present. Why haven't they already used it, seeing as they developed it a good while back? Did I miss something? Quite possible; as mentioned before I had a bit of trouble following some of the exposition on account of a fair bit of it being delivered while I was busy dodging bullets.


I also want to make special mention of the industrial construction line level. That was pretty insane stuff. It didn't make much sense tbh, but it was very cool to run and gun through. The radio dish level was also very cool, making good use of the player's mobility and abilities to create interesting gameplay.


The cloaking ability you have for most of the game felt a bit random. Initially I assumed you would accumulate more abilities and be able to swap them around or something, but no: it's just the cloaking ability the whole time (other than when you're time-jumping instead). I'm not saying there was anything wrong with it, it was useful, it just felt... tacked on. It doesn't really have any synergy with the other gameplay mechanics, and the game is built around it or anything like that? Unless it was intended to allow you to use your mobility to flank the enemy without being noticed or something? Which I did do, I'm not complaining, it just... feels a bit random as far as being your only cooldown ability. The duration was very short too, most likely because it was balanced around the multiplayer aspect of the game.

Speaking of which, I found it strange how little health you have - just a few shots or a single melee attack, or an explosion from relatively close by would be enough to kill you. At the same, your health regenerates extremely quickly; it seemed far faster than in any other game I've played. I'm pretty sure that was also balanced around multiplayer. I found it frustrating at times though, especially when facing those damned suicide-bomber ticks.


The game starts with a brief tutorial being run by a older "mentor" character. As soon as I realised he had a Titan and Jack didn't I knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that he was going to die and Jack would inherit his Titan. But even so I was surprised by just how soon it happened; it felt like five minutes in. It felt like such an obvious cliche and I knew him for such a brief period of time that I couldn't bring myself to care about him. Also, when fighting the mercenaries I felt as if the protagonist and/or player should have some sort of motivation to avenge him, but without being sure which one specifically was responsible for his death and without him ever really being mentioned again, I never really did feel that as a motivation for myself or for Jack. Hell, I don't think BT even mentions his name again, and just drops a couple of lines here and there about not losing another pilot. I just feel there could have been some more impact, more emotional weight, if it had been handled better.

While I'm on the topic, the mentor's death scene also annoyed me in a different way. Just before he dies he tells BT to "transfer pilot authority" and tells you to take his titan and gear. Then your HUD displays a message about BT's energy being low and it having found a replacement power source. Then BT says "Power lower, insufficient power" (which seems like a very redundant statement to me - "power low" OR "insufficient power" would have been enough)... over and over. Then a waypoint marker pops up on your HUD with the descriptive legend "Aquire a charged Titan battery".

Now you're in a relatively open environment which seems like it has several paths you might be able to take. And you don't seem to be in a particular big hurry, seeing as you just took the time to bury your mentor's body. Coupled with your advanced mobility abilities (which have just been unlocked), my personal expectation here was to be able to take a bit of time getting used to moving around an actual environment, perhaps do a bit of exploring. But nope, that excessively verbose waypoint description pops up on your screen all on it's own every few seconds that you haven't reached the next checkpoint, and the "ghostrunner" hologram appears to make sure you know exactly where the game wants you to go (and exactly how to get there).

After installing a battery, BT calls you "pilot", prompting two dialogue options: "Did you call me pilot?" or "Who are you?". WHICH ARE BOTH STUPID! You already know who he is AND that you're his new pilot! This information has already been given to you at least two times before! How stupid do you think your players are that you feel the need to tell them everything three times? Sigh. Look, it just annoyed me is all.


In the trailers for the game there's a big show-stopping moment where BT throws the player across a massive chasm; a move known as the "Fastball Special" to fans of the X-Men. It feels like a big moment in the trailer: an act of trust and faith between the two characters. And yeah, in-game it's pretty cool. The first time. By the third or fourth time, it's lost it's luster a bit. For something that's not an interactive gameplay mechanic, it gets used just one or two times more than it needs to be.

Speaking of non-interactive things that are over-used, the game does the whole "taking control away from the player" thing just one or two times too many. Like many FPS campaigns in recent years, Titanfall 2 copies Modern Warfare (well, the Half Life series did it first of course, but I think it's Modern Warfare that all these military shooters have been chasing for so long) in taking almost all control away from the player in some scenes (but not quite all, therefore leaving players in the "gameplay" mindset rather than the "cutscene" mindset), leaving players feeling powerless and frustrated. This is a very powerful technique that can work very well, but I've long felt it just becomes annoying if overused. Well Titanfall 2 uses it quite well, but pulled the trick just one time too many for me. Specifically the very end of the game has you sitting there staring at the mercenary leader as he kill-steals the IMC boss, has his little monologue, then walks away without killing you even though he could have  (and arguably has reason to seeing as you killed all his subordinates and he seems to think you want to kill him too). Yeah, I get it, it was a stinger to set up for a sequel. I just found it annoying and thought it stole some of the feeling of satisfaction and closure that the ending could have had.

This of course segues nicely into another point I wanted to bring up: the ending cutscene has Jack wondering around smiling while getting high-fived and patted on the back by everyone he sees. Which felt strange to me because the whole game had clearly been trying so hard to sell us on the idea of Jack and BT forming an emotional attachment - to make the player feel an emotional attachment to BT. And yet BT had just died, sacrificing himself while saving Jack, and yet here was Jack (the player avatar) strolling around with a big dumb grin on his face, not looking broken up about BT's death at all. If HE doesn't seem to care, why should I?

To be honest though I didn't really feel too much about BT's death even before seeing that Jack didn't care either. Part of this was, as mentioned, that I did not like the way the game had BT constantly telling you what to do, driving the whole plot, while Jack just obediently did as he was told and never actually even attempted to show initiative or make a decision or anything. But another big issue I had was the BT's death followed so shortly after a fake-out death. The earlier apparent death followed by a full revival was a pretty cool moment on it's own to be honest, but to me just robbed his actual death of impact. Perhaps if they had spaced the two out a little more, or varied up the scenarios a little bit, then it would have worked better, but to me BT's death just felt like a rehash of what I'd already recently seen.

Oh, speaking of BT's first "death" scene: it's followed by a level where you fly through tons of enemies, killing them all with ease using an incredibly powerful weapon with infinite ammo... that it turns out BT had on him the whole time! Why the hell wasn't Jack using this gun the whole game? I mean narratively speaking of course; I know why from a gameplay perspective, but it feels so stupid to find out that he could have been using this gun the whole time and didn't for absolutely no reason. Couldn't they have found a better way to give you the gun for this brief section of gameplay?


Right at the start of the campaign, you come across a pilot helmet, which turns out to be a collectible. Turns out there's several of these in each level that you have to explore to find. So let's reiterate:
- The game has environments that appear large
- It has great player mobility
- It has hidden collectibles that you have to explore to find
- The levels are actually extremely linear with limited playable area
- It's always trying to rush you forwards
- It's always pointing in the exact direction you're supposed to be going
So it's a game that can't seem to decide if it wants you to explore large environments or dramatically rush through linear levels.


I got surprisingly annoyed whenever I locked on with a burst of missiles in the large multi-titan battles only to have one of my allies step in front of me and have the entire burst explode against his hull instead of finishing off my target. I also wasn't too happy when I almost finished off an enemy titan, leaving him on a miniscule sliver of health, then decided to turn my attention to the two guys shooting at me from behind and leaving the first one to the several friendly AI titans swarming around him, only to get shot repeatedly in the back because for some mystifying reason they couldn't finish him off and he would rather shoot past them to try to hit me.


Man, why does commander Sarah Briggs have such terrible makeup? Seriously, why the hell is her eyeshadow so heavy? Did they just assign her design to the new guy and not bother to look it over before they approved it, because let's be honest, the only character they actually cared about was BT?