The Titanfall 2 multiplayer technical test has come to an end after two weekends, and it seems to have given players a good idea of what to expect when it comes to the finished product.
If the tech test is any indication, those who enjoyed the first game will get a kick out of the second. However, that doesn't mean there aren't a number of changes coming in Titanfall 2, some big, some small. Unfortunately, not all of them are for the better.
The Titanfall 2 technical test offered up several maps and three modes for players to take for a spin, alongside a number of new guns, abilities and Titans. Right off the bat, it's clear Respawn put a lot of effort into fixing one of the original Titanfall's main weak points, namely its lack of customization options. The first game sported a small arsenal of weapons, few upgrades and even fewer ways to customize your player and Titan.
That's not the case at all in Titanfall 2. Even in the game's test, there are far more options available than in the original game. There are new weapons in almost every weapon category, and even a new category entirely in the form of the grenade launcher. More abilities have been added, namely the grapple hook, which gives players more options for customizing their playstyle. There's a new type of grenade, more weapon upgrades and more. All across the board, Titanfall 2 has "more," with even more to come in the full game, including a single-player campaign sorely missing from the first Titanfall.
For the most part, Titanfall 2's big changes work. Nobody is going to complain about having more options or a single-player campaign. However, it's the numerous little changes over the original that have irked some fans, me included, specifically because there doesn't seem to be much reasoning behind them. After the first weekend of the tech test, fans found player mobility to be overall slower, and some players never even received a Titan in certain matches: a key selling point of the game.
That was because Respawn lowered player movement speed and removed the the ability for players to passively add to their Titan meter over time. Here's Respawn's reasoning for decreasing movement speed:
"Many players are wondering why we changed the mobility from Titanfall 1," the developer writes in a blog post. "We identified two major issues we wanted to solve in Titanfall 2. The first is that a lack of player predictability would often cause players to be shot from the back or sides. While flanking is an important part of gameplay death often felt random instead of skillful. The second issue is that close range firefights were overly chaotic due to erratic player movement. So, changes to pilot mobility stemmed from a desire to improve our gunplay, and not a desire to slow down movement."
Respawn did tune air speed and wall-running speed to be faster in the second weekend of the test, but it still seems to fly in the face of what made the first Titanfall so appealing.
Movement speed isn't the only problem. Respawn wanted to emphasize players battling for objectives so much that they made scoring points the only way to build up your Titan meter. Yet, less-skilled players and those who were simply having a bad game found that they wouldn't receive a Titan for an entire match. That too was changed in the second test weekend so that players once again built up their Titan meter slowly over time in addition to scoring points.
Another seemingly pointless change over the original is the introduction of red outlines for enemy players. Respawn says it views the feature as an important one, but it takes away part of the skill that made the original Titanfall so much fun. Clever players could blend in with the game's AI enemies in Titanfall 1 to ambush enemy players. Heck, a burn card in the first game even turned players into a Spectre robot, making it even easier to act like an AI and take advantage of less observant players. That's impossible now, as Respawn has decided it's necessary to slap an impossible-to-not-notice red outline around members of the opposing team.
Map design also leaves something to be desired. The maps present in the game's tech test still emphasize verticallity much like the original Titanfall, but not for wall-running purposes. Instead, the maps in the game's tech test seem specifically tailored for the new grapple hook ability, not the bread and butter wall-running mechanics that made the first Titanfall so much fun. If you're not a fan of the grapple hook and don't have it equipped, it feels impossible to reach certain areas of the map. The maps present in the test feel too wide open, and as a result, don't allow for many opportunities to chain together wall-runs between buildings like that in the original game. Of course, the full version of Titanfall 2 is sure to include more maps and more variety, but it was disappointing not to see more of it in the multiplayer test.
In the minor complaint department, I find myself missing the first-person animations that gave the original Titanfall so much style. Diving into your Titan, ripping an enemy pilot of theirs or snapping an enemy pilot's neck in first-person helped immerse me in the first game's fantasy of being a mech-piloting badass. In Titanfall 2, however, all those animations now zoom out for a third-person perspective. It doesn't sound like a big deal, and compared with the complaints above, it isn't, but it seems like change just for the sake of change, and that's never a good thing.
Rest assured, Titanfall 2 is still a ton of fun. The gunplay is still as tight as ever, and the game's parkour mechanics (when you get the chance to use them) are still a breath of fresh air for the FPS genre. Titans too are as cool as ever. The Titanfall 2 tech test simply showed that Respawn still has some fine-tuning to do in the months ahead. Titanfall 2 is without a doubt bigger than its predecessor, but Respawn needs to make sure it's actually better than it as well.
Titanfall 2 releases on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC on Oct. 28.
