At the heart of Titanfall is the Pilot and their Titan, a dynamic which Xbox One and PC owners will be able to experience during the Open Beta starting on Friday.
We got to explore it ahead of time.
Just on their own, the Pilot is superior to the ordinary troops and mechs being sent into by the warring IMC and Militia. They have more advanced weaponry at their disposal, like the auto-aiming Smart Pistol MK5, tactical abilities that can be recharge quickly and do things like cloak you to near invisibility. Their biggest advantage comes from vastly improved mobility thanks to the jetpack.
It takes a while to get used to, and even with a few hours under my belt I was still learning how best to use the jetpack.
It takes a while to get used to, and even with a few hours under my belt I was still learning how best to use the jetpack, but it adds so many possibilities to the way you play a level. Being able to double jump and wall-run has allowed them to create levels with a lot of verticality. You can get to the top of a building in a matter of seconds, rather than having to traipse up stairs for 10 times as long, leading to what can be an even more fluid and fast-paced style of play.
But then there’s the Titans. Coming in three varieties, though only one is in the Beta, they can be called in after a few minutes of gametime. Performing well and getting kills will cut the time you need to wait, before calling in a Titan to come falling out of the sky for you to hop into the cockpit.
There’s a stark contrast as you lose a lot of the mobility, without the ability to jump, pass through smaller passageways or go into buildings, but make up for it with a handy dodge or dash ability, much heavier armour, abilities like the Ordnance shield to send incoming bullets back at your enemy and much heavier weaponry in the first place, as well as a secondary weapon ability that can cover a reload with a hail of missiles. They’re the tanks of this futuristic war.
Because of that contrast, there’s a lot of nuance to the fight, with every Pilot able to dart around quite quickly, making use of the anti-titan weapons they all have, and supporting their friendly Titans in the fight too. A Pilot will die very quickly against a Titan, but working with nearby teammates can see a lone Titan taken down just as fast, though the mech might actually be on auto-pilot, following and supporting a soldier on the ground.
Though you can avoid death by quickly tapping X three times to eject from a doomed titan, sending you high above the battlefield and letting you get a quick picture of the fight around you, you can also pick and spend a selection of Burn Cards before you respawn. Things like an active sonar ping to detect enemies, faster movement or a more powerful weapon. These are earned during play, and picked before a match, but will only last for the duration of your next life.
Across the battlefield you also have the AI units. These fall into two categories, ordinary human Grunts and Spectre mechs, with the latter the hardier of the two and only appearing once the first Titan has dropped. But these aren’t really designed to provide you with any kind of challenge.
They’re closer to endless stream of grunts which you see in League of Legends and Defence of The Ancients, the Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas, and are more a quick source of XP and points or cannon fodder to use as a distraction. They mean that there’s always something to do, but it’s very easy to identify the Pilots either by how they’re acting on the battlefield or with a quick glance to your minimap.
What the AI does is bolster the number of moving parts to a match, when there are only 12 players on these maps. However, that’s not really a bad thing, and because the game has been designed around that player number, I never found myself wanting for real opponents to shoot at. Even with just four players on each team during an Attrition match, the game felt tightly focussed around a single area of battle.
Objective-based modes could actually benefit from this, so that you can actually play to the objective and not find yourself butting up against an impenetrable wall of gunfire, the low player count meaning that you have to stay in motion to control the match and can better flank and outmaneuvre your opponents.
This works in tandem with the maps themselves, and the two in the Beta are nicely contrasting. Angel City provides urban warfare, with tightly packed buildings, lots of interiors and a lot of verticality to the combat. Fracture, by contrast, is more open in design, more freeform. It still has buildings and plenty of places that Titans won’t fit into, constricting their motion, but it’s larger in scale and a different challenge.
In both cases, the maps are quite large, certainly larger than your average Call of Duty map. Depending on the game mode and how the battle is going, it would be easy to play an entire 10 minute match in less than a third of the full map, leaving plenty to see and explore as you learn the ins and outs.
One thing that was noticeable as I played the Xbox One version of the game, was that this was not running at 1080p. Though the art style has some nice moments amidst the gritty far future trappings, there was plenty of aliasing, for example, which came from what I’ve since calculated from captured footage to be an upscaled 1440×810 presentation, or there abouts, roughly 3/4 the number of pixels of Full HD. It’s maybe a little disappointing to not hit 1080p, but does generally deliver on 60 frames per second gameplay that people demand for fast-paced shooters, though I did notice one or two minor hiccups.
The beta also features three game modes, with Attrition your standard Deathmatch-like mode, Hardpoint Domination a domination mode and Last Titan Standing a multi-round single-life elimination mode.
But the last one is different to your usual elimination, in that everyone starts in the Titan. You’ll last a lot longer than if it was just ground pounders, and this leads to longer, but much less tentative engagements. You can also still eject from a doomed titan, and keep fighting on foot, but this mode is about which team’s titan is still standing at the end of it all.
The more traditional elimination style of play comes at the end of Attrition and Hardpoint modes, during the matches Epilogue once a winning team and losing team has been decided. The losers then have to extract, while the winners have to try and wipe them out before they can escape on the transport. Both sides have just a single life to play with, and it adds another simple but quite exhilarating twist to proceedings.
And that’s really what Titanfall is: a long, long list of interesting ideas and twists that takes the core mechanics of an online shooter and really pushes things on to the next level. Just adding the Titans, or the AI cannon fodder, the added mobility, even dropping the pretense of a single player campaign (with a story now to be interwoven with the multiplayer), wouldn’t have differentiated it from the rest of the market anywhere near enough.
Combine all of those things together and Respawn look to have created something that feels fresh and invigorating, which will certainly be one of the first major system sellers and must-have titles for the Xbox One.
Tuffcub
Imsorrywhat? “Titanfall bayter” – When did you become American, Tef?
Stefan L
Last week.
Stefan L
Now that I’m looking it up, it turns out American pronunciation is closer to Classical Greek. I think that should count for something.
bunimomike
I always think that too. They don’t deserve to stay on this sinking island. Begone!
gazzagb
Great preview, really hoping I get into the PC beta to sway my decision on pre-ordering or waiting a few months just in case there’s issues. Being online only, I really don’t want to see another Sim City debacle, however I think Respawn know what’s expected of them, and they’ve had plenty of time to work on it so it’s not as if they’re pushing for a release.
Taylor Made
So it’s CoD with robots. It does look cool but I’m not a cod fan nor shooters, if it’s not Killzone it’s not worth playing
Stefan L
That’s so sweeping an oversimplification as to be inaccurate.
It’s certainly not like Killzone, though.
Tuffcub
Well it’s obviously crap then :)
Blair Inglis
Superb preview, I’m really excited for this one. The beta can be my Valentine.
Tuffcub
oh… *throws away card and box of chocs*
Tuffcub
Have to say it doesnt look that good. Very square and grey and washed out.
Bilbo_bobbins
thats what I thought, graphics look tired. i know its a beta but crikey.
Tuffcub
Incoming…
DividSmythe
The only chance really of winning me over is if I can get into the beta. The chances are I’ll probably have my fill there.
boeboe
So if you buy a PS4 you won’t be able to play this game then? How is that fair? Is my money not green enough for your bursting pockets?
Lieutenant Fatman
More a matter of MS having more money than we do and that they want some exclusivity. But if you want to play it that much on PS4, it will be coming out eventually, you will be waiting a while though.
Nate
I’m pretty sure they outright confirmed it would not make it to the ps4, but that sequels likely would.
boeboe
Just venting really, especially as this is thesixthaxis not the friggin kinecthsense (traitors).
Stefan L
Hey, it might be an exclusive, but we can appreciate a good game no matter what platform it’s on!
I’ll see if we can get you a green background to match your envy. ;-)
boeboe
haha as long as I get commission from each post I make.
Nate
The Titan concept doesn’t do much for me, but I really like the idea of vertical gameplay that the jetpack offers. Sadly I have no Xbox One to play on, so will have to await a cross platform sequel!
Dominic Leighton
I’m really interested to see how this fares on 360 – I can’t justify getting an Xbox One just to play it but if it’s alright on the older console I’ll definitely pick it up.
Kennykazey
With Bluepoint at the helm I’m sure it’ll be pretty good.
Kennykazey
I’ve pre-ordered the PC version, so it damn well better be good.
But what an odd choice of resolution on Xbox One that is. Not 1280×720, not 1366×768, not 1600×900, not 1920×1080, but 1440×810… It’s the same aspect ratio though. I have to admit to finding it both a bit annoying and interesting.
Stefan L
Looks like my pixel counting was a little bit off and Respawn have now said the beta is running at 1408×792 to Titanfall Blog. Though they do hope to increase that to 900p or so for launch.
It’s not really about picking a resolution, but inching the resolution they have up a few notches at a time as they finialise their optimisations. Rumour has it that the alpha test ran at 720p, so this would be an increase since then already.
Kennykazey
Yeah I’ve heard. Too be fair it would perhaps be better to for them to focus on AA. Should come in cheap with the eSRAM.
It’ll be interesting to see where they end up. And if they do reach 900p, that’ll be great.
beeje13
Tbh, I think it’s quite refreshing to see a developer prioritise a high, consistent frame rate. Resolution definitely matters in fps’ (picking people out etc) but it surely must come second to framerate.
Kennykazey
That’s true. A high framerate does wonders for fast paced games, I wouldn’t mind it being 720p @ 60FPS (that’s what I’ll be aiming for on my low-end Pc). It’s just the choice of a non-standard resolution that intrigues me.
Kennykazey
Also: Hah, refreshing! :-D