I saw it as an improvement
Last night, the first open beta for Titanfall 2 (on consoles at least) concluded. I was actually kind of sad because I had just started enjoying myself, particularly with a few major design shifts and improvements that were made on the foundation of the first game.
One major change that I actually loved is that AI is now relegated off to their own mode (Bounty Hunt), and out of the core playlist. Hardpoint (Domination, with three capture points) is basically what I played the whole weekend, but now instead of having awful AI bots stupidly running around the filling the arena to make it feel “epic,” it was just player-on-player action. I dig the idea of “hardening” the points to allow them to accrue more points for your team, incentivizing players to launch guerrilla strikes to take out super-charged objectives instead of just comfortably holding A and B like every other game.
Hopefully the campaign will actually be good, and draw us into the universe in a way that the original didn’t. Some (read: any) investment in the story might help people stick around longer, and prevent the game’s servers from becoming ghost towns. All of the great core is still there though, we just have more mechs, a prettied up engine, and more gear to fool around with (did the grappling hook remind anyone else of Attack on Titan?), which is always a good thing. I saw some people say the game was less accessible now, but I didn’t mind concepts like curbing the “you get a Titan, and you get a Titan”-level frequency — the first doled them out like candy, and now it feels like you’ve earned them.
I’m anxiously waiting to see if the full release can measure up to all of the great shooters we’ve been getting recently. What I’m really enjoying is that the sequel seems to have none of the sky-high hype the original got. It’s refreshing to be able to have a critical discussion of Titanfall without being accused of being opposed to “the future of shooters.”
