E3 2013 Preview: Titanfall

It seems like ages ago that Jason West and Vince Zampella left Activision and formed Respawn Entertainment, and yet we haven’t seen a game from the new studio until now. E3 2013 gave us a chance to try out Titanfall, Respawns newest shooter effort set to come out for the Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC.

Titanfall isn’t just another grey brown military shooter. On the contrary, it’s a grey brown military sci-fi shooter. All kidding aside, Respawn took the standard Modern Warfare shooter formula and overhaulted it by adding sci-fi elements and giant robots.

Essentially, every player has the option to get into a gigantic armored mech called a Titan. Titans tower over the battlefield, absolutely dwarfing anyone traversing a map on foot. They similarly dwarf foot soldiers in firepower as well. Their heavy weaponry can cause huge areas of the map to become riddled with bullets in mere seconds. Simply put, a soldier is no match for a Titan in a one-on-one battle out in the open.

Luckily, few battles actually take place out in the open in Titanfall. Soldiers are equipped with jetpacks and all of them seem rather proficient in parkour, allowing them to wall jump and rebound off ledges that Titans can’t even begin to look at. There are numerous back tunnels and alleyways that Titans cannot access and can barely point their weapons toward, while humans can traverse them with ease. If you find a save area that a Titan can’t get to, you can take pot-shots at it with your rocket launcher all day long. Even better, if you can get close enough to a Titan without dying you can pull a Shadow of the Colossus, climb up on its back, and stab it right in the engine to take it down all at once. Simply put, Humans have a ton of tools that they can use to fight against giant robots, leveling the playing field.

Other than that, the game is the same old multiplayer shooter that we have seen before, with an emphasis on multiplayer. In fact, Respawn isn’t adding a single-player mode at all. They said that millions of dollars and tons of work gets put into single-player shooter modes, and in many circumstances they are never even touched. As a result, they are integrating elements of Titanfall’s plot directly into the game’s multiplayer, something few shooters have ever done before.

Unfortunately, Titanfall’s demo was a hands-off demo, so we didn’t get the try the game out for ourselves. However, the guided gameplay that we did get to see was certainly intriguing. If Respawn really does manage to balance both humans and Titans, then this may be the next big multiplayer shooter release. If not, well at least we can have some fun with giant robots for a while.

Titanfall is scheduled to release in early 2014 on the Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC.