GuitarAtomik
Member
Because this question is asked in literally every thread mentioning it, I will try to explain why Titanfall seems more than "lol CoD with mechs" with an expanded post I've been having to repost over and over. Hopefully this will shed a little light on the game beyond what was shown in the gameplay demo and maybe explain why the press (who've had it thoroughly explained to them and played it or watched it be played) seem to like it so much:
The dichotomy and balance between mech combat and pilot combat
Apparently they've managed to both make the control and feel of playing as a pilot and mech significantly different from each other while maintaining balance between the two. Mech's aren't OP against pilots and vice versa and there are trade offs between being one or the other. Certain areas are inaccesible to large mechs and some areas are wide open enough to make it a bad idea to traverse them without one. They can also be put in a "guard" mode that acts independantly of you and I believe friendlies can even ride on yours. The fact that they're so ingrained in to the design of the game is why this is fundamentally different from just getting a mech vehicle in a CoD match. This is why I get annoyed when people reduce this thing to "lol CoD with mechs".
Character Movement
People want to downplay this for some reason but if you added double jump and wall running to CoD, it would totally change the game. Do people not remember how big a deal people made of adding sprint in Halo? That's because it had implications to fundamentally change the game and options available to you in any given scenario. Wall running and double jumping (plus ledge grabbing) means they have to make maps completely different from your average CoD map (or any other MP game without those options) and when you add the mechs, you add a whole other factor that has to be taken in to consideration.
Melding of SP and MP
This is different because no game has tried it to this extent. Brink is the closest I can think of but it's not to the level of adding AI enemies (who I have heard compared to MOBA style creeps), and cinematic style events and story. For example, the soldiers fist fighting each other in THIS part of the demo are both AI and I would bet the soldier that gets killed right before that was a tiny scripted event as well. The fact that people in the thread about Titanfall being "singleplayer only" thought the gameplay demo WAS singleplayer is a testament to it. We still don't know a lot about this in particular but I think the demo showed a pretty good idea of what they're going for.
The main point to take away though is the fact that there is no game that I can think of that includes ALL of this. You can break out any one element and say "Yeah, X game has that too. Why is this so special?" when the reality is that it has elements X,Y, and Z purposefully combined in to a cohesive design. Hopefully at least. Is it revolutionary? Not really, but I don't think anyone in the press is arguing that. They are only saying it's fresh and, most importantly, fun.
Also, please don't be confused why it still doesn't look or sound appealing to you when you're also not in to multiplayer or first person shooters. The game is just not for you. That's fine. But understand that a lot of people are in to that.
The dichotomy and balance between mech combat and pilot combat
Apparently they've managed to both make the control and feel of playing as a pilot and mech significantly different from each other while maintaining balance between the two. Mech's aren't OP against pilots and vice versa and there are trade offs between being one or the other. Certain areas are inaccesible to large mechs and some areas are wide open enough to make it a bad idea to traverse them without one. They can also be put in a "guard" mode that acts independantly of you and I believe friendlies can even ride on yours. The fact that they're so ingrained in to the design of the game is why this is fundamentally different from just getting a mech vehicle in a CoD match. This is why I get annoyed when people reduce this thing to "lol CoD with mechs".
Character Movement
People want to downplay this for some reason but if you added double jump and wall running to CoD, it would totally change the game. Do people not remember how big a deal people made of adding sprint in Halo? That's because it had implications to fundamentally change the game and options available to you in any given scenario. Wall running and double jumping (plus ledge grabbing) means they have to make maps completely different from your average CoD map (or any other MP game without those options) and when you add the mechs, you add a whole other factor that has to be taken in to consideration.
Melding of SP and MP
This is different because no game has tried it to this extent. Brink is the closest I can think of but it's not to the level of adding AI enemies (who I have heard compared to MOBA style creeps), and cinematic style events and story. For example, the soldiers fist fighting each other in THIS part of the demo are both AI and I would bet the soldier that gets killed right before that was a tiny scripted event as well. The fact that people in the thread about Titanfall being "singleplayer only" thought the gameplay demo WAS singleplayer is a testament to it. We still don't know a lot about this in particular but I think the demo showed a pretty good idea of what they're going for.
The main point to take away though is the fact that there is no game that I can think of that includes ALL of this. You can break out any one element and say "Yeah, X game has that too. Why is this so special?" when the reality is that it has elements X,Y, and Z purposefully combined in to a cohesive design. Hopefully at least. Is it revolutionary? Not really, but I don't think anyone in the press is arguing that. They are only saying it's fresh and, most importantly, fun.
Also, please don't be confused why it still doesn't look or sound appealing to you when you're also not in to multiplayer or first person shooters. The game is just not for you. That's fine. But understand that a lot of people are in to that.
