Feature - Your Titan Is Ready

With the Xbox One’s first major heavyweight exclusive about to roll out of the traps this month, early adopters are, quite rightly, very excited about the system right now. For the best part of a year now, Microsoft has been championing its coup of Respawn Entertainment’s debut title as a company exclusive, and the time has finally come to see whether or not it can handle that weight of expectation. With Xbox One and Windows versions landing tomorrow and the Xbox 360 version arrivingon March 25th, can Titanfall really be the revolutionary step in online shooters that the gaming world is so desperately hoping for?

Titanfall is the huge mechanical elephant strapped with missile launchers and Gatling guns in the room. It’s the hulking behemoth lurking just around the corner to sap Sony’s ever-building momentum. It’s the hopes and dreams of a fledgling studio comprised of some of the most talented and experienced FPS developers on the planet. It’s big, it’s bold, it’s ballsy and it’s going to be a huge event whatever way you cut it.

When studio founders Vince Zampella and Jason West upped sticks and left Infinity Ward under a cloud of controversy, shooting all kinds of accusations in the direction of publisher Activision about working conditions and a lack of royalty payments, the gaming industry wondered what the future held for the FPS genre. Call of Duty was dominant then, as it remains now, but without the growing sense of user frustration about the lack of perceived progress in the title, and the loss of two of the most important members of the Infinity Ward team seemed to potentially hold dire consequences.

However, you can’t keep talent quiet for too long, and within a few months the pair confirmed they were in the process of staffing a brand new studio of their own, which would be known as Respawn Entertainment – a fitting title given the new lease of life they had found for their careers. Sadly, the fairytale ending of happy ever after wouldn’t quite ring true for the duo – last summer it was announced that West had left the studio for “family reasons”, although some of the gaming press reported a bust-up with Zampella as the crux of the issue. Whatever happened, it’s always a shame to see a company founder step away from a project, but we’re sure Jason West is looking on at Titanfall with the pride of a new father eagerly waiting for his progeny to take its first solo steps.

Internal politics aside, there are plenty of reasons why Titanfall is a big deal beyond the team behind it. For starters, it’s attempting to be forward thinking in its approach to online first person shooters. For the last half decade or so, we’ve had to suffer with tacked on single player campaigns of ever-shorter durations, typically adding little to the value proposition of titles like Battlefield or Call of Duty – a mere side note to the online action, not even offering enough challenge to allow players to hone their skills before stepping onto the multiplayer war grounds. So Titanfall has simply eschewed offline play completely, tying its narrative elements into the multiplayer mode by virtue of NPCs and objectives.

Whether or not this will actually come together and work as we hope remains to be seen, as does whether or not gamers actually care about storyline in online shooters. How Respawn aims to keep things fresh for the player entering battle for the thousandth time, we’re not sure, but all will be revealed tomorrow, and it’s at least encouraging that they’ve been happy enough to give it a go for such a high profile release. Sure, it’s been done before, plenty of times, but never on this scale, and never with quite so much riding on it.

And then there’s the gameplay. Titanfall offers players a unique mix of foot and mech based warfare – unique insomuch as it hasn’t really been done on a console to this extent before, obviously PC gamers will be able to point at several examples of great titles that have managed to do just that in the past. It’s this balance in gameplay styles that’ll really drive Titanfall onwards, ensuring that no battle is over until it’s actually over, with the threat of a competently-manned Titan running rampage very real at all times.

Ensuring that the Titans aren’t overpowered or ill-balanced has clearly been one of the main focal points for the team at Respawn, and it certainly appears that they’ve struck a solid enough compromise to ensure players never feel hopeless. Indeed, the base mechanics of the Titan system are incredibly well-wrought, as players must initially battle on foot to establish a lead over their opponents, decreasing the amount of time until their first Titan drops, while the first few seconds after the mechs are deployed sees them shielded, protecting them for just long enough to ensure someone on the team has time to commandeer the unit and find their footing.

This will allow for a unique split among players; there’ll be foot-based specialists, Titan specialists and those competent with both approaches. No team will be able to succeed without getting that mix right, and that’s arguably the strongest selling point of the game – teamwork. We’ve seen it before in titles like Zipper Interactive’s M.A.G. where the tactical nuances of play brings gamers together, fostering friendships and encouraging a level of cooperation that’s typically not found in the “every man for himself” kill frenzies of online play, and it really is a sight to behold when it works.

In putting so much of a focus on players working together as a unit, there’s a notable side benefit that sees the community regulate itself.

If you’re an ass, you’re going to have a bad time. If you’re a lone wolf, you’ll fare a little better, but it’s still not going to be quite the same experience as intended. If you’re willing to work together, though, the whole thing springs into life, and you realize what online gaming could potentially become if it weren’t filled with the disturbing battle cries of angsty teens and anonymous mouth pieces.

Titanfall is more than just a first person shooter. It’s about more than blowing things up and frag-fests. Sure, those are very important parts of the gameplay experience, but there’s a boundless potential here to change the way the mass market sees first person shooters forever, and that’s something that’s not to be sniffed at.

Will it succeed on all fronts? We’re going to find out pretty soon, and it’s going to be one hell of a ride along the way, but if Titanfall really is going to prove revolutionary; it’s going to need patience. Multiplayer games are often at the mercy of server issues, load problems or balancing faux pas’ that weren’t spotted during testing. All of these things are likely to feature prominently in the early days and weeks of Titanfall’s life, but we urge you not to throw in the towel prematurely because, once any potential teething problems have been remedied, the chances are we’re all in for something incredibly special.In Short: Respawn Entertainment's Titanfall launches tomorrow, March 11th, and it's a game that's been generating a huge level of hype - but will it live up to it?

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