You Should Play This: Titanfall 2

You Should Play This: Titanfall 2

You Should Play This is a running column by Brandon Hyde detailing the unnoticed intricacies in video games.

Titanfall 2’s campaign takes the player to the far reaches of the galaxy as they control the main character, Jack Cooper, and his Titan, a mech, BT. The two lead characters barrel through the story at a break-neck speed, with each mission upping the ante on action and storytelling. As the game deepens, so does the relationship with Jack and BT, the two of them eventually forming a bond between Titan and pilot. There is a point halfway through the game, a mission entitled “Effects and Cause” takes place. This mission introduces a gameplay mechanic of switching between two timelines, the past and the present. The significance of this mission is not just for the story of Titanfall, but for shooter games as a whole, by making a distinctly different mission for the game. Titanfall 2’s “Effects and Cause” asks the players to reconcile with the violence of the story’s past and how it affects the future. 

The mission of “Effects and Cause” distinguishes itself by introducing a mechanic that changes the entire dynamic of the game. Early on in the mission, the player is given the ability to press a button to instantly warp back to a previous time in the mission’s area. The mechanic goes beyond being an exposition device and soon becomes a part of the gameplay. The player must navigate a dilapidated research facility in search of information. As the game progresses the research facility is shown in flashbacks to be the height of technological advancement. The game retains some shooting action, but the primary focus of this section is about platforming through the two timelines of this area. This change in gameplay allows for the player to slow down and consider what has happened in this place. The research facility of the past is bustling with scientists and artificial life, but when the player switches back to the present, it changes everything. No people in sight, robots in shambles, and nature has begun to take over the area. The mission has a sense of sadness, whenever the player switches back to the past timeline, but even more so a greater sense of foreboding danger in the present timeline. There is no action the player can take to reverse course for this research facility; the inevitability of time is always coming for the past timeline. 

Throughout “Effects and Cause”, the player must contend with a myriad of threats. The dichotomy of these threats are seen in the two timelines that the player must navigate. As the player makes their way through the past timeline, the enemies are security turrets and robots, still being maintained and functioning at their highest caliber. Switching back to the present timeline, the once newly chrome robots have been reduced to a shell of their former self: decrepit, stumbling, withering away. The game is showing the player the cost of this world’s own hubris, when it comes to creating military weaponry. As the player continues through the mission, more and more is revealed about the happenings in the facility: this was a research site for creating a deadly new weapon that specialized in destroying entire planets. By seeing first-hand what the implications of this weapon has done to an area, the game instills a sense of urgency to ensure this does not happen again. Titanfall 2’s threats are both seen in the robots and unseen in the foreboding danger for what will happen next. The flashing back and forth between timelines gives the player the immediate consequences of what will happen, if they fail to act.

All of these factors of “Effects and Cause” come to fruition in the final act of the mission, where the player is confronted by the full force of their actions. Due to manipulating the past timeline, the player has set in motion events that are now affecting them in the present. The enemy forces of robot guards and soldiers converge on the area, attempting to regain control. The player then has to fight their way through this onslaught of combat, until there is a full stop in time and space. Everything around the player is frozen in motion: soldiers, animals, and transport ships all unable to move. Once the player is able to restart the time stop, there is a full wipe on the screen, with the player finally being taken back to the present timeline, sans the enemies. The mission ends with the solemn acceptance that this knowledge of what has happened to this area is yours and yours alone to keep. The only secondary character to understand what has transpired during this mission is your sentient mecha partner, BT. The inclusion of BT in this mission does not change the weight of what has happened on the player, but more enforces it: No other human has survived this area. The violence and death that has been caused by this research facility haunts the player, like a spectre looming over their victim. This mission is a direct statement on the power of first-person shooters to completely envelope the player with the ramifications of their own actions.

Titanfall 2 remains a shooter with more than just bullets on its brain. The game implores the player to consider the larger ramifications of their own actions, beyond what benefits them from a gameplay perspective. “Effects and Cause” stands out in Titanfall 2, because in a genre that values action in such a high regard, this mission takes a step back to consider what happens after all of the action comes to a stop. The rest of Titanfall 2 stands on the foundation of this mission and its themes that are built into it. Once the player has completed “Effects and Cause”, there’s no going back to the previous half of the game, there is only the effect of what their violence will bring.