Titanfall: I don't get the hype

[Oskuro]

As the title says. All I say in game-related websites is Titanfall, Titanfall, Titanfall.

Yet the game to me looks like Battlefield with some parkour and mechs.

So can anyone explain why is this game being hyped so much? Is it just the marketing machine trying to make this into the new Halo/Gears of War/MW or is there some genuine reasons this game is supposed to be the shittm?


Maybe I'm wrong, but from what I gather it is just a futuristic military multiplayer team-based shooter. Hardly an innovative concept, I mean, at least in ET:Quake Wars one of the factions is made up of wacky aliens, and they have a big stompy mech.

Heck, from my perspective, pseudo-realistic military shooters seem to be focusing so much on streamlined fast paced jump-all-over-the-place-combat, pretty soon we'll come full circle and be back to Quake 3 gameplay mechanics.

[TheFeniX]

So can anyone explain why is this game being hyped so much? Is it just the marketing machine trying to make this into the new Halo/Gears of War/MW or is there some genuine reasons this game is supposed to be the shittm?

It's an Microsoft platform exclusive (because those are super important these days, at least to publishers) published by EA. That's really all you need to know. Yes, EA and MS are likely spending as much on marketing as they did on development.

[DaveJB]

I think most of the hype has been related to the Xbox One version, and people are predicting/hoping it'll do for the One what Halo did for the first Xbox, or Gears of War did for the 360.

[Oskuro]

If that's the case.... It is both ridiculous and very sad. I mean, plenty of outlets are over excited about the game, including The Escapist which I held as being somewhat free of publisher manipulation... So, yeah...

And since Yahtzee doesn't usually do multiplayer only games, I guess I won't even get a laugh out of it.

[TheFeniX]

The Escapist has never felt all that tied to ad venue in my experience. Their writers seem much more "bandwagoners" than anything. If something is popular and manages to be good, they're all over it. They'll save any real ire for heaps of trash if it's a safe target (like smaller developers/publishers) or if the "Interwebs" has designated it a fair target.

Forbes is the only gaming news outlet I've read that seems to be immune to either bandwagoning or paying hommage to the big guys in game development. Some writer's are ridiculously biased (like how some defend micro-transaction shit to the death and others hate it with a passion), but that seems to be due to personal bias and they usually explain themselves with lines like "I don't have much time for gaming, so it's nice to pay $5 and skip gameplay." It's dumb to me, but it makes sense.

I mean, Forbes is complaining that a MP only game has no SP. See, this used to not be a problem at all with games like Battlefield and Unreal Tournment. The whole point was: "It's MP, get with it" and there was nothing to be done with SP. Trying to do both leads to stupid shit like Brink where SP "campaigns" had obviously 0 thought or resources devoted to them, but all the unlocks had to be done through them. It was.... idiotic to say the least.

Though, everything I've read about Titanfall: It's a good game. Sure, the 6vs6 with bots and my distaste for FPS these days (a line I never thought I'd utter) means I probably won't ever be buying it. But it does what it does well, except for the 35GBs of uncompressed audio files in a 50GB game.

Really, the only failing of the gaming media right now seems to be they are falling over themselves since EA released something that wasn't both filled with marketing lies and an unoptimized shit-heap. It's like "hey guys, remember all those shitty things EA and MS tried to kill gaming with over the past decade? Remember all those old series they dragged through the mud? They released a game with none of that! Yay, gaming is saved!"

[Grumman]

I will not be buying the game because EA, but it does sound like a good game so far. If they're going to make a crazy game where people don't use squad tactics and bunny hop everywhere I'm glad that they put it into a sci-fi Mobile Infantry sort of game instead of making another Call of Battlefield Duty. And I do like the idea of the extraction phase of the match, where the losers have to retreat to their Space Helicopter before they're overwhelmed.

[bilateralrope]

I will not be buying the game because EA

What is wrong with EA ?

[TheFeniX]

How much time you got? Marketing M-rated games to minors with the tagline "your mom will hate this game," mercilessly chasing ActiBlizz success at the expense of every IP they have. Marketting P2W garbage on par with Gameloft games as AAA titles worth $60. Pioneering pre-launch DLC, and banning users who inform people how to access said DLC that was contained on purchased disc copies. How about banning players from all their Origin games for forum shenanigans. How about Origin in general?

That's just a few things off the top of my head and is nothing near a definitive list. I could literally sit here and type for an hour or more listing examples on how shitty EA is for gaming, even going back over a decade. Other developers and publishers do these same things, but anything you bring up: EA has likely already done it and probably did it "better" (for lack of a better term).

[Losonti Tokash]

I will not be buying the game because EA

What is wrong with EA ?

There's nothing actually exceptional about them compared to other large publishers, other than when Valve got pissy at them and temporarily removed some of their games from Steam. Now they've got their own digital distribution service (which also isn't exceptional) that competes with Steam, and this makes people very angry. Origin's sales aren't quite as good or often but their customer service is light years ahead and they'll actually give you refunds if you don't like a game you bought from them. I've got a game I bought ages ago that I lost the disc for and they just gave me a free digital copy of it with no fuss.

[Zaune]

We could also throw in the way they treat their employees, though they may or may not have eased up a bit thanks to the bad PR.

Anyway, the usually reliable TotalBiscuit did a video on the game, and apparently it's fun to play but not earth-shaking in terms of quality.

[TheFeniX]

There's nothing actually exceptional about them compared to other large publishers,

People always say that and offer nothing to back it up. At the least, no other publisher combines the failure that EA does. Sure, Sony lies about everything and Blizzard has done nothing but cash in on 3 IPs for 15 years, but EA is literally the culmination of everything wrong with the industry. Which is likely because they are so big and also have their hands in every part of the industry.

other than when Valve got pissy at them and temporarily removed some of their games from Steam. Now they've got their own digital distribution service (which also isn't exceptional) that competes with Steam,

Valve were dicks about that, but EA knew the drill with Steam patching going in. Further, Origin had been out for over a year after that happened IIRC. Besides, EA just thinks they're competing with Steam, like they did with SWTOR and WoW and CoD and every other IP they own.

and this makes people very angry.

Probably about as angry as people were dealing with the buggy and broken Steam that replaced WON. However, by the time Steam came around, the only games that required it for online play were those that had been out for over 5 years. Even then, you didn't have to use Steam until WON pulled the plug on their servers. Origin managed to launch with about the same optimization of beta Steam with even less support.

valve made users beta test Steam with dated video games. EA forced it on their customers for brand-new AAA titles. And it says something that there were enough people playing HL, CS, and TFC after so many years to make that possible.

Origin's sales aren't quite as good or often but their customer service is light years ahead and they'll actually give you refunds if you don't like a game you bought from them. I've got a game I bought ages ago that I lost the disc for and they just gave me a free digital copy of it with no fuss.

Are you serious? I got a full refund for FFVII after it ran like a brick on my PC. My ticket was "This port is garbage and doesn't run on my i7. I would like a refund" and had the money back in my wallet in under 2 hours. I've had to open more than a few Steam tickets over the years and the support wasn't A+, but I've recieved what I needed with little fuss. At the least, someone actually responded to me.

Maybe Origin itself has good support (I don't use it for obvious reasons, but you will surely get the karkland), but EAs support all around is dogshit. I learned this the hard way "recently" in SWTOR as I submitted numerous tickets that were closed with canned replies. As did my friends, as did thousands of other players. Even going years back when the BF2 patch broke people's computers (as in, your computer wouldn't boot because the patch deleted key .ini's) EA was in full damage control mode deleting posts and banning users left and right. Kind of like they did with SWTOR. It's basically like a habit for them.

After over a week, they finally posted a fix. It was the same after BF2 would forget it was installed, except you couldn't reinstall it because the installer would say "game is already installed."

And hey, it's not like EA offering refunds wasn't obviously done in response to the brutal hilarity that was Sim City 5. A game so fucking bad and broken, only IGN can really be bothered to give it a happy ending. I'm sure they did it because they're pretty cool guys. valve gets around this by not releasing shitty broken software. At least not since 2003.

[Losonti Tokash]

We could also throw in the way they treat their employees, though they may or may not have eased up a bit thanks to the bad PR.

Anyway, the usually reliable TotalBiscuit did a video on the game, and apparently it's fun to play but not earth-shaking in terms of quality.

Yeah, and that's a major problem in the gaming industry, but, again, not exceptional. Game development, especially around crunch time, is almost cartoonishly brutal and has a job security best described as "laughable."

Anyway, the game is actually pretty fantastic. I was pretty meh about it until I got a chance to try it in the beta and realized how well the different aspects come together, rather than it just being "COD with robots." It can take a while for the gameplay to click with some people, though. The bots add a lot to the atmosphere of even just regular team deathmatch, along with the round openings and extraction phase at the end. The story is about par for a FPS but getting to play both sides makes it more interesting than it would otherwise. Plus the meta element where since you play through the campaign with the same people on each team, the enemy players become your "villains."

You'll still see sad sacks running around on the ground and being dumb enough to use stairs but they're still good for unlocking more attachments when you kill them.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I'd heard all the hype and was skeptical, and avoided the game until release. On playing it for this past week, though, my reaction has been generally positive. There is a lot in it that I don't like, or which is soundly mediocre, but there's also a lot to like and a lot of interesting things they have done very well.

Some interesting stuff:

• Fully integrated multiplayer campaign. There is really no single-player, and while that may be a disappointment to some, I think it's a cool way of doing things by making standard multi and the story campaign one-and-the-same.
• Extraction epilogue. It's a really cool idea in concept, instead of the game just freezing and saying Counter-Terrorists Win ROUND OVER, there is some resolution and a chance for more scoring. Essentially a more sophisticated and immersive iteration on Team Fortress 2's round end. Mechanically, it doesn't always work well, but most of the time it adds a little extra depth to victory or defeat.
• Bots. Not bots per se in the way a server admin might add scripted AI players in old school shooters, but still essentially bots. Still, they're interesting, because they provide things to shoot, ways to score points, they enhance the story, atmosphere, and aesthetic of the matches, and they matter quite a lot in Attrition mode. Unfortunately... Attrition mode is really the only place they do matter.
• Robits! Credit where credit is due, the whole "CoD plus stompy robits!!!" thing could have been pure gimmick, but I'm pleased that it's not. It's very dynamic, very well integrated into the game.
• Burn cards. Neat little one-use bonuses you get and can use, but I think the system needs a little work still.

The not-so-interesting:

• It's CoD. Oskuro hit the nail on the head, above: The game design has indeed gone so far up its own ass with "fast paced tacticool warfare action!!" that it's become the new Quake or Counterstrike of the shooter scene, leaving Day of Defeat and Red Orchestra fans out in the cold. If "low and slow" and "controlled bursts" are terms you enjoy, forget about it. This is bunny-hopping circle-strafing spray-and-pray hopped up on meth. Or crack. Or both. The addition of burst-fire rifles and sniper rifles to the game seems to be, as far as I can tell, some sort of bizarre joke being played by the developers; there is no reason to use them against players who are even remotely "good" at the style of shooter the game encourages.
• Pretty limited guns / customizations / play styles. There are two different SMGs, several pistols (including a neat primary option, to be fair), one shotgun, and one perhaps two worthwhile rifles. Titan loadouts feel similarly limited. There just aren't many options to keep things fresh or varied. The perks and such feel well-balanced and reasonable, even if there aren't many of them, but that's the extent of the customization. No skins or dress-up if that's your thing.
• Some matches are just downright awful. This is as much a symptom of the stupid matchmaking lobby system that's in vogue these days as anything. Certain players just make the game absolutely un-fun; you might as well just leave the match and find a different one sometimes.
• Speaking of matchmaking... matchmaking. Lawl. It works reasonably well in a technical sense, to be fair; I haven't had too many serious technical issues with it (except when the servers were down all night once).

[2000AD]

The other reason it's getting hyped is because it's the first game from Respawn, where most of the ex-Infinty Ward people went after their acrimonoius exit from Activision.

Last time they did something new/innovative it was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare which set the standard for FPS multiplayer for the next few years. This is pretty much their 'next big idea' where they're doing what they want to do rather than churning out a yearly update sequel for their publisher. (Not to say it wont end that way, if it's even half as successful as EA is hoping it to be I fully expect a Titan Fall 2 to be announced pretty quick)

[Meest]

Heard good things about it's netcode so if anything I hope that filters out to more multiplayer games.

[Tolya]

Forbes (snip)

Forbes published a review of Bioshock Infinite in which the author outright stated that he didn't understand the plot and therefore it was awesome. I stopped paying attention to what they write about games after that.

Still, I had a good laugh, so I guess I came out with a positive experience.

[Vendetta]

Forbes (snip)

Forbes published a review of Bioshock Infinite in which the author outright stated that he didn't understand the plot and therefore it was awesome. I stopped paying attention to what they write about games after that.

Still, I had a good laugh, so I guess I came out with a positive experience.

Yeah, but he wasn't saying anything that every other reviewer on the internet was saying about it. "I didn't understand it so it was probably Deep" is a common misconception for dealing with literature. Sometimes you didn't understand it because the author was terrible at communicating what he wanted you to understand, and sometimes you weren't meant to understand it because the author disappeared up his own arsehole at some point during the writing process and became replaced communication with pretentiousness (Bioshock Infinite).

[Cykeisme]

Heck, from my perspective, pseudo-realistic military shooters seem to be focusing so much on streamlined fast paced jump-all-over-the-place-combat, pretty soon we'll come full circle and be back to Quake 3 gameplay mechanics.

Ssh, don't ruin it.

[Oskuro]

Hey, I actually like Quake-style gameplay
It just rubs me the wrong way how they keep rebranding stuff just so it seems novel. What now passes for a "military shooter" has little in common for what it was supposed to be a few years back.

It all feels very manipulative, just like some features that were already common in the pre-always-online days are now being touted as innovative.

Battlefield 1942 had a silly single player mode which was just the standard maps with BOTS. And now bots are being touted as innovative? Guess they are since they were all but removed back in the BF2 days just because always-online was the new black. (To harp more on the BF franchise... When I saw helicopters as the new hot stuff highlight of BF:Bad Company 2, I groaned and went back to playing a few Desert Combat matches with a couple friends and 60 bots. Oh, and BF2142 had stompy mechs!)

Waiting for the day mods are announced as the new innovation (Guess it'll happen when they find a way to monetize them).


I'm personally not hating Titanfall, what I've seen looks like a decent shooter, and the mechs/parkour do pique my interest... But the hype is Duke-Nukem-Forever level ridiculous.

[Vendetta]

Titanfall's bots aren't FPS bots though, they're like the creeps in a MOBA game, small and weak and there to be farmed by the players to level up (unlocking their Titan).

The core difference between Titanfall and a game like Battlefield is exactly that. In the core game modes you start off without your Titan, and the process of unlocking it via farming creeps/killing other pilots gives the matches a sense of escalation. There have been gamemodes that tried to bring escalation into FPS (Invasion mode in Halo Reach, Rush in Battlefield, etc) but they're always forced by staging the map. Titanfall's escalation is more organic because it varies based on the rate individual pilots get access to their Titans.

Other than that it's CoD with Parkour and Robits, but CoD with Parkour and Robits turns out to be quite a lot different to just CoD (apparently you can spot the CoD players easily because they don't parkour, and because they don't parkour they die like noobs and miss all the farm).

It's CoD. Oskuro hit the nail on the head, above: The game design has indeed gone so far up its own ass with "fast paced tacticool warfare action!!" that it's become the new Quake or Counterstrike of the shooter scene, leaving Day of Defeat and Red Orchestra fans out in the cold.

Thing is, Day of Defeat and Red Orchestra fans don't hand over untold millions of dollars for them every year. CoD and Battlefield fans do, so they are the ones getting what they paid for. Which is more, newer, and shinier CoD and Battlefield.

[TheFeniX]

In what world is Counter-strike even comparable to the modern shooter? Same with Quake. You might, in some form, compare Titanfall to the Unreal Tournament series, but it's a stretch and then some. But the game seems to cram enough concepts together to make it hard to compare to anything, which is a good thing. And Day of Defeat? Is that even worth mentioning?

The old-hat guys who still bother with DoD or CS. Or those young enough to get in on Source or CS:GO are way to rabidly loyal (in my experience) to bother with a hard shift into something like Titanfall. At least not in numbers to make them worth pandering to.

CoD post-MW was never targeted to the Counter-Strike audience or any other gaming audience really. Those guys play CS or one of it's derivatives and trying to pander to them was a recipe for failure, so they didn't bother. CoD:MW managed to cull most of it's playerbase from either people who never gamed seriously before (hence the Dudebro label) or those who came into the scene from Halo or basically anything on console after the release of the Xbox. Hell, even MW isn't comparable to any other FPS, unless you try out "Old School" mode and then it only bares a passing resemblance.

[Cykeisme]

Hey, I actually like Quake-style gameplay
It just rubs me the wrong way how they keep rebranding stuff just so it seems novel. What now passes for a "military shooter" has little in common for what it was supposed to be a few years back.

No, don't get me wrong, I grew up on Quake. Moving back toward UT/Quake style gameplay is a GOOD thing.

I'm saying don't call attention to the fact that FPS games are slowly moving back toward faster, more vertically-oriented gameplay.. lest you jinx the process

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Thing is, Day of Defeat and Red Orchestra fans don't hand over untold millions of dollars for them every year. CoD and Battlefield fans do, so they are the ones getting what they paid for. Which is more, newer, and shinier CoD and Battlefield.

I don't know - Battlefield always seemed to occupy a sort of middle-ground between the fast-paced "twitch" shooters and the more realistic/tactical shooters (the original two Calls of Duty did too for that matter, but the franchise has since moved away from that. BF4 too, maybe, but I haven't played it so I can't say). You can't just bunny-hop around and spray bullets everywhere and necessarily expect to do well in Battlefield. It's more cerebral than that, with class roles and team interaction and tactical options (like mining a bridge, for example).

Anyway, there's nothing necessarily wrong with Titanfall's style of shooters, I just wish it wasn't wrapped in notions of "hardcore tacticool," but I suppose that's a complaint that can be extended to a number of games. I mean it's cool that you can literally bounce off the walls and headshot everything in a room; trying to justify it with pseudo-realism "oh well it's the future and you have these jump kits, you see, and you're a PILOT which is way better than a regular grunt, so..." just seems like the game is suffering from delusions of being down-to-earth when it's the exact opposite.

Don't get me wrong, though, it's a pretty minor complaint. The game is, for the most part, pretty fun.

[Joviwan]

heaven forbid someone uses worldbuilding and storytelling to explain extraordinary abilities

[Zaune]

heaven forbid someone uses worldbuilding and storytelling to explain extraordinary abilities

The trouble is, with videogames you have to make the storytelling part really good if you're going to have it at all, especially if it's going to do this weird combination of a proper campaign storyline and standard-issue online FPS gameplay.

In fact I think we're getting to the point where the plot, characters and worldbuilding are probably going to be what FPS games live and die by, because developers appear to be running out of new gameplay mechanics to add.