Titanfall 2. A name that shall echo in eternity. On this day in 2016, the first-person shooter genre was blessed by a title unsurpassed before or since. And 10 years later, we still haven’t heard a peep from EA about a third – while its core developers went on to make Highguard.
Perhaps it is fate dictating an unwritten rule: that which is the pinnacle shall never be surmounted. But it would be a damn shame, since gaming as a whole would suffer greatly if we couldn’t go on and make better things now and again. However, it would also explain why so many great and “best” games came out years and even decades ago. Titanfall 2 is a decade old today, and even before it launched, few games could rival its quality and its approach to fast-paced first-person action.
Made by Respawn Entertainment, itself founded by the late Vince Zampella, who tragically passed away last year, Titanfall 2 was the epitome of the knowledge and experience accumulated by its developers who worked on the original Modern Warfare series, particularly the first and second games in that subfranchise.
The game adopted the Source engine, which, even then, was still one of the best engines to use to make an FPS. After all, Valve made CS:GO, CS:S, Half-Life 2, Portal 1 and 2, Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, and even Team Fortress 2, among all the other Source ports. Hundreds of other games were built on the engine, but it was Respawn that brought it to perfection.
The movement was made smoother, the verticality increased. Controls were ironed out, and total command over the gameplay was given to the player. You could run on walls, grapple and summon massive mechs to help you in fights. Every idea that you had about movement was allowed, which bumped the skill ceiling into oblivion and let the best do their best without limitations.
And with the game being so approachable despite the skill cap, everyone had a chance to show what they could do, and each playstyle was reflected in its array of weapons, Titans, and tools. It was everything the kids of today would want to play. No need to turn CoD into a jittery spasm-fest packed with slide cancels and other exploits: everything is baked into the core experience itself. The movement is the name of the game in Titanfall 2.
Even after a decade, no one realized this concept more fully, though attempts were made. Some developers decided to inject their games with movement mechanics similar to Titanfall 2‘s but never realized that they simply do not mesh well with their titles. There is always something lacking. Even Respawn made Apex: Legends, which, though Titanfall at heart, still feels rather floaty and full of those same horrors like CoD: slide cancels, spasmed camera, etc.
No one knows how to make a third Titanfall. And perhaps no one needs to. Titanfall 2 is perfect. And so it shall remain.
