No this isn't a "not enough content!" post.


I really dig the bit of world building they do with the level design, art style and campaign, I kind of wish there was more to it! I am really looking forward to a bigger, better sequel, I think there is a bunch of great narratives that you could tell in this specific setting.

Is anyone else digging the world Titanfall is set in?

Mechs are pretty cool too.

Personally, if a game has a sweet universe it's hard not to wish it had a singleplayer campaign, so, yeah.

hmmmm, kinda, there's a lot in the world, I would want to slow walk, admire and not be shot at. At least explain character names, even on burn cards come off weird "why are you quoting robocop?" reaction by me.

I tire of the over wrought single player dude bro campaign. If there needs to be single player content, it should be for tutorial, demo and training for in game systems.

I've spent roughly 14 hours with the game now (10 hours in beta, 4 hours today), and I don't feel like there should be a single player campaign. It feels like they really focused at making the best possible multiplayer game they could, and I'm glad there wasn't a shoehorned single player mode to distract from that focus.

No I can't remember that last call of duty single player I even played.

I'm glad they made an excellent multiplayer game. I almost never play the SP campaign in titles like Battlefield, and as scum-baggy as it is, I sometimes wonder if problems with the multiplayer would have been addressed if they weren't pumping so much cash and effort into a boring sequence of set-pieces I'll never play.

I know, I know, SP and MP components are generally handled by separate teams and it's bad logic to assume that money not spent on the SP would somehow make the MP better. But there it is.

That said, I was a little disappointed by Titanfall's MP campaign. I honestly couldn't keep track of which characters were who, what side they were fighting on, or why I should care. In fact, after beating both sides of the campaign, I'm still not even sure what the central conflict of the game is other than a vague sense that the IFC corporation is shitty and acting like a bunch of cock-knockers. I'd say Brink (yes, Brink) did a better job of melding an MP experience with a loose story - which is a backhanded compliment to Brink, and a pretty serious slight against Titanfall.

I think it was a noble ambition, but cruddy execution. I'm all about cutting out bloated SP campaigns from my MP experiences, but I'd rather have nothing than some confusing half-baked radio chatter filled with sci-fi action movie cliches. I mean, look at TF2. That is a game with ZERO story or logic, but supported by a rich world and background lore that they've slowly filled in over the years. It gives the game personality and characters to latch onto, but allows the game to be a game. I think Titanfall might have benefited from some more out-of-game content (a comic, web-series, whatever) and some more recognizable faces to give it's game some life.

Maybe that's the whole idea with the upcoming "live" action series. I suppose it would have been nice to see that first before the game came out, but if this is going to be a franchise that sticks around for years, it won't matter that much.

I kind of wish there was because I always think about how crazy it would be; I basically just imagine Modern Warfare 2 with mechs.

Why would it need to necessarily be a dude bro campaign? These guys are trying to break the Call of Duty mold, something tells me they wouldn't just want to do the bombastic set piece thing. A cool, subdued small single player campaign for their next installment would be really welcomed by me.

I would like one purely because of the setting. The reason I got tired of Call of Duty campaigns and have no interest in the Battlefield campaigns is because of how damn played out modern military shooters are. I still enjoy a good shooter campaign with a decent story and I believe titan fall could of delivered that. With that said I think they were smart and played to their strengths. They know how to make a multiplayer game, so they made the best one they could.

I really want to play it on the PC after watching that QL. I don't think it would be better with a standard linear campaign. I think it would be better with private matches & servers. After watching the AI I don't think a private server would be very CPU or mem intensive. And obviously with the limited players it's not going to eat much bandwidth.

Or a horde mode - survival waves. It would be cool to see someone do a variation on that mode that streamed in partially random terrain as your battle group crossed X distance to reach an escape dropship. Kind of like horde mode but with your group moving through waves of enemies through terrain to get to your escape ship. Your last trooper could plant a flag at the furthest distance your group made it. Maybe leave a cache of gear there to pick up on your next try.

I have to agree. I've only played one side of the multiplayer but it sounds like it's the same thing on the other side, more or less. I had a big problem with the way the "story" was delivered in their attempt at a campaign in multiplayer. I tried to keep up with the tale they were trying to tell before and after the matches, but during the matches there was no way I could pay attention to the progression while I was playing with other players. More often than not, something important would be happening in the corner of my screen that I couldn't focus on at all because I was locked in a gunfight or trying to grab a victory towards the end of the match. Heck, there were even times when the match would end in the middle of a main character's dialogue (possibly due to my team eliminating the other team during evacuation? I'm not sure).

I'm enjoying the game very much, but this campaign is absolutely forgettable. I can't tell you a single thing that happened story-wise.

These guys are also the people that created Call of Duty and all of its bombast. And if what little I saw of the story in Titanfall during the Quick Look is any indication, the ability to write a better story yet eludes them.

I am glad someone who has no interest in the game and hasn't played it, has such a strong opinion on the topic of single player narrative set in the Titanfall universe.

Well, no. I don't think it needs single player. I think it needs a coop campaign that has an actual story line with diverse mission sets. They could even mix in the competitive stuff if they wanted to but the campaign it has is literally still just competitive multiplayer. There's nothing more to it so it's a wasted opportunity.

If they want it to all be online I think that's fine and is in itself pretty innovative, but I don't think they did anything interesting with that and I find that disappointing.

If they had a fully fleshed out single player that incorporated the open battle fields (maybe something like a Halo single player) and it had co-op I would've bought an Xbone or a new PC for it. But not being a big multiplayer guy this is an easy pass for me.

I think the way they did their "campaign multiplayer" is really disappointing. I beat the militia campaign in around 2 and half hours. It was just story overlayed into either a team deathmatch game or domination game. Especially with the pedigree with high quality campaigns, it is even more disappointing to see how minimal the campaign stuff is in this game. I would like to see a single player campaign for titanfall 2.

The mobility mechanics are fantastic and I'd love to see those applied to a single player game.

Yes, but that's because I have no interest in a multiplayer-only game. I just figure this game isn't for me and move on to other games.

No, I still haven't touched the singleplayer for Battlefield 4 and why should I? I would rather them put more resources into making the part of the game more people care about better.

Not really, but if there were a decent single player campaign, I might feel more than my current absolute apathy towards the game.

I'm pretty torn about it. I know I'll get my $60 worth of gameplay from the game, but I am, primarily, a single -player gamer. It just so happens that I liked what I played of the beta. The "campaign" is actually kinda gross. It's a multiplayer playlist with some very few custom animations and some VO that you can barely follow slapped over the action. The ambition of integrating cinematic moments with multiplayer laudable but, holy crap, does this come off as half-assed. The least they could have done is create more mission-specific objectives, as Brad said on the podcast. But, even with more cinematic set pieces and custom objectives, the game wouldn't be able to spend time building a world like could be done in a single-player experience. I'm a huge fan of sci-fi, and especially the kinda dirty, space-western sci-fi universes like Titanfall's (and Firefly's, Starcraft II's, Alien's, etc. etc.). With the right team or writers and the right mission design, a campaign in this universe and with these mechanics would be fantastic. Having a proper cinematic campaign with set pieces to emphasize Pilot mobility and Titan power, and to introduce you to the various weapons and gadgets would be cool.

Beh, maybe it will be less shite in Titanfall 2... assuming EA doesn't shit-can the franchise if this sells less than 10 million copies, or something.

I'm actually not even thinking about the lack of a single player campaign. Sure a story mode would be nice but when I think back to the CoD games I really just wanted a multiplayer anyway. I did enjoy MW and MW2 campaign but at this point a game that straight up is just a shooter is all I need. I am also kind of OK with the current campaign mode but down the road I'm wondering if later comers will get to find people to join in on those. The game's controls are fantastic and I'm glad they got to spend time on that. Perhaps if they hire a team that will handle a better campaign for their sequel that would be cool.

God that campaign mode was atrocious and unnecessary. However I would like to see a fully fleshed out campaign using the mechanics of the game. I really like the aesthetic for the most part and would be interested in seeing a more cohesive story line. It would be nice if by playing the multiplayer you unlocked story bits that you could either read/watch/listen too on your own time cause lets be honest who actually paid attention to a single thing in that campaign?

The game isn't lesser for being multiplayer only.

That being said, it's a universe that has a lot of potential for exploration. You almost have to wonder what a narrative couched in Titanfall's archetypes would look like.

I'll give you a hint: If one wants to "break the Call of Duty mold" then one might want to not do a first person game where the player equips and uses a lot of guns, rewards for shooting guns, gives out perks that improve how the guns operate, and features giant robots that drive in the first person perspective equipped with a larger gun, gives out rewards for shooting that gun....

The idea that one can create a "subdued small single player campaign" with this setting and setup is pretty fanciful. The idea that this team can do it is laughable.

I used to think that a single player campaign would be nice, but after playing the multiplayer campaign, I don't think a singleplayer campaign would have been very good.

Within even the very limited boundaries of what they could do in a multiplayer campaign, it turned out to be very clunky and forgettable. They had very little room to work in plot elements, so they should have cut things down to the bare minimum instead of involving so many characters, and kept the plot simple. Instead they put in too many characters leaving little/no time to get to know them, and spent nearly all of the voice time on explaining why we're going from one map to the other for "reasons".

When you've got so little room to work with, a "less is more" approach needs to be used, like in L4D1 and L4D2. Plant the seeds of an interesting story and let the player fill in the gaps with their imagination.

I wish there was a good singleplayer campaign but that's a long shot in this genre. It makes more sense for Titanfall to be multiplayer only.

The Call of Duty 4 campaign was really new and amazing when it came out. I'd love to see them do something like that again.

I just wish the campaign wasn't just multiplayer with cut scenes in the corner your too busy to pay attention to anyway.

Exactly. They could make some insane set-pieces with the titans.

With the gameplay they've got there and the universe they've created, I'd love to see one. Seems like it'd be fun, but I'm totally fine with there not being one.

I'm not sure at all how the mechanics of multiplayer would transfer into single player. When would the player be on foot and when in a titan? Is there a way to replicate the experience of multiplayer into the singleplayer without feeling like it's some tacked-on junk?

I'm not sure how it would work, and the ideas I have about how it would work sound terrible. I'm sure Respawn did their calculations that trying to shoehorn in a real single player experience would not have worked with the time and resources they allocated. Maybe they'll figure something out in the sequel (or not).

At least allow bots. I fucking hate multiplayer only games that don't offer split screen and/or bots.

Only if the final boss involved the antagonist climbing into a Titan, which would then climb into a TitanTitan.

Yes, the people who created the super innovative Call of Duty 4 campaign and multiplayer perk system, the game that revolutionized the genre and was one of the last generations most influential series.

Please, continue to be a cynical jerk, I am sure it will get you somewhere someday.

For me, I wouldn't mind seeing that. Or at least no campaign and a reallocation of resources from the 'radio play' campaign to the multiplayer.

I usually play through the campaign because sometimes the multiplayer is a bit stressful when compared to the campaign. It helps break up the tone of the other modes and helps diversify the game overall.

I am not sure who is the cynical jerk. Did you miss how the super innovative Call of Duty 4 team kind of told a borked story that is about as subtle as a giant robot with a sledge hammer the size of a building with the word SUBTLE emblazoned in neon orange paint on the head? Or do you just ignore all of those things just to disagree with posters?

And since you need more hints: What does "subdued small single player campaign" do for this particular game? Is there an actual problem? The fallacy that your original post is based upon the idea that games, in particular this one, need a story when that is pretty far from the truth. You say "man I love the setting" but give no actual support or reason to behind that statement. Do you mean the generic sci-fi space marine? Or did you mean the rich narrative that comes about with CTF or Deathmatch or Holdout match types? It is just a statement you made and expect others to "yeah! yeah!" but upon inspection it is nonsense.

If you want a game that has a "subdued small single player campaign" then you are looking at Gone Home or Portal or Left 4 Dead which are games that are dramatically different in tone and scale and production. There is an honest complaint from producers that this content is expensive to make and only played once and forgotten so to make it worthwhile it has to go on for hours and hours. How many players are even going to make it to the end of a 10+ hour single player campaign let alone touch it again when new MP content is released?

Do you see how Gone Home would work in TitanFall? Actually thinking about that, it would be hilarious.

It's a cool universe, but I wouldn't want single player. I'd rather them focus on making an awesome multiplayer game.

If there's one thing I'm pretty done with, it's the linear, hyper-scripted first person shooter campaign with all the emotional and narrative subtlety of a jackhammer. That's not to say they can't be done well, but I'm not really interested in that kind of thing anymore.

I kinda wish they'd have gone more on the Brink route when it comes to the narrative in the campaign, even though it didn't have particularly varied mission objectives either, the goals felt more connected to what you were doing, I think. A bit of the Battlefield 2 multiplayer campaign, which altered the map progression depending on which side won could maybe have been interesting too.

Not really so much a campaign but more of a narrative as to the history of how we got here. Seems like they glossed over it. There doesn't have to be a story progression but more explanation on why we are in these battles and what each map means to the history of the universe this is happening in.

You know. Now that I've played some more of the game, I think that what I really want is more of this universe. I'd be happy with some well written books in this setting, rather than a single-player campaign

Yes, in that I would probably be a lot more interested in the game if it did have an awesome single player component. However, I do think it's cool that Respawn set out to just purely make an awesome multiplayer game in an arena where common practice is if you're releasing a multiplayer game you must have a single player campaign to go with it. Maybe DICE will be able to release purely multiplayer Battlefield after this.

As I was going through the Militia campaign I was a little bothered that I was having to keep track of everything along with learning the game. It's almost completely impossible to follow the story when running away from two mechs firing rockets at you. The more I played it, the easier it was to just let go of trying to follow it in the other campaign. Sure, I bet they could make an awesome setpiece-heavy five hour experience, but when every match turns into the best unscripted action sequence I see why they didn't bother with fleshing out the universe.

I agree that I LOVE the concept, but it was poorly done. For the sequel...

A) Give the matches stakes. If I lose the match, don't just cheat and skip forward in the story with an "Oh well, we'll make due." Instead, punish me! Make me play the level again and again and again if I have to in order to advance the story. Not noob friendly, I know... But this game isn't noob friendly. The bots are so easy to kill as to be condescending to noobs, and pilots running around hopping like it's Quake makes them much harder to hit. This game is anti noob! Any way, I think if you force people to have to win to advance the story, it's genius. You take what is normally a kind of boring easy Single player bot slog, and merge it with the kind of intense nail biting action multiplayer can give you. The best of two worlds!

B) More scripted stuff. Bring in that big Call Of Duty show stopper scripted moments. It's hard to do in multiplayer I'm sure, but they've got to take this further, and I think the best way is in the bots. The bots are currently just total filler. If you were to REALLY work hard on the AI and nail them down to F.E.A.R. levels, not only does it make them more important, but you can do a TON of cool scripted stuff just with bots.

C) Take a page out of Starcraft 2's book and make every level a unique experience. Explore this sci fi universe, instead of having dragons flying around as background, incorporate them INTO the game. Maybe one game is a mix of various modes, maybe one is Attrition but with special rules and goals exclusive to that map.

Titanfall 2 really has an amazing amazing opportunity to be this incredible paradigm changing game that could completely reinvent singleplayer, but they have to put A LOT more into it the second time around. Hopefully with more budget they'll get that time and that chance. Singleplayer that's actually multiplayer matches is just too cool an idea to be wasted on this lazy radio play stuff.

Yes, if not a single player, a much better 'campaign'. I would love a single player game though set in this universe, as it is, it's disappointing; fun, but disappointingly bare bones. I mean, it makes me wonder why they even tried to put it in there if they're only going to that extent.

I bet a single player campaign would be tough to execute, given the complete freedom of movement you have, but I suppose Halo has managed that, so they probably could do it if they had any aspirations to put effort into a story. They sure didn't have those, though.

I too would have loved seeing what a single player experience would have been like in this game. It might also help me tune my skills against bots before getting snipe a dozen times during a session with live players.