While the multiplayer aspects of many contemporary games may be a lesson in frustration, as you die and die again in the never-ending grind up the leaderboards, single-player content is far different. As is highlighted by the new Titanfall 2 trailer, single-player content is about making the gamer feel like a god.
In the trailer, we hear the voice over of generic grunt soldiers — the hapless, AI-controlled infantry you casually mow down during gameplay — explaining what makes pilots so effective. Their speed, combat skills, and analytical abilities are only matched by overwhelming force — or another pilot.
While we can debate the efficiency of having your military’s supersoldiers also require extreme vehicular combat training till the cows come home, there is no denying from this trailer that the player-controlled pilots are badasses. They can run along walls, use grappling hooks, have decoys distract their enemies, and use their opponent’s own weapons against them.
All the while the grunts cower behind walls unsure of what to do next.
Beyond being a running, stomping dispenser of ultra-cool death, the pilots do have a purpose, a reason they’re fighting. The IMC has repeatedly “destroyed [their] lands,” taken their resources, “polluting and destroying their planets.”
That industrial conglomerate is the main bad-guy in this first Titanfall sequel, giving players someone to fight against, as well as to fight for when they step into the online multiplayer mode. But when it comes to the single player, gamers can feel justified in their wanton destruction.
Players aren’t haphazardly destroying everything around them, burning through billions of dollars worth of military equipment as they use up their second Titan of the match. No, they’re helping to free people from oppression and take down a big corporate overlord in the process.
The perfect video game fantasy.
Titanfall 2 will release on Xbox One, PS4 and Windows PCs on October 28.
