Then, of course, there are their Titans - massive, AI-enabled walking tanks that operate via a neural link with their pilots, or autonomously. In the world of Titanfall, pilots are the ultimate badasses - special ops soldiers with special abilities and jump packs that allow them to double jump and run along walls, shooting all the way. Narratively, Titanfall 2 presumes a bewildering amount of pre-suppositionĪs Titanfall 2's new-to-the-series campaign opens, you assume the role of Jack Cooper, a grunt with aspirations to pilot-dom. But in practice, it feels like a less focused exercise. On paper, Titanfall 2 is what it's supposed to be.
Respawn understood that it wouldn't be able to launch so minimally a second time around, and so this new Titanfall game has a full campaign component in addition to a revised multiplayer game with the kind of progression systems whose absence players lamented in the original. They wanted to root for the little guys, enough to forgive the absence of a singleplayer campaign and a $60 price tag for a multiplayer only experience. Titanfall was great, but people also wanted to be excited for it. With Titanfall, Respawn basked in the popular excitement borne of the studio's inauspicious beginnings as a sort of refugee nation state of developers who created Call of Duty before exiting their studio Infinity Ward with prejudice. Yes, it's a sequel, and Titanfall 2 isn't as groundbreaking or wildly inventive as the original game, but still. Titanfall 2 is Respawn's first real test as a studio.