How Respawn crafted better mech combat and single-player play in Titanfall 2

GamesBeat: Is that back, the Triple Threat?

McCoy: It’s not. It was a bit of a crutch. But there are some more lenient weapons. There are a couple of things we’ve change and tweaked and made better.

For single-player specifically — we prototyped a single-player for the first game, after we prototyped the multiplayer game. The reason we didn’t do single-player — we looked at the time and the manpower we had and knew we couldn’t do both and meet our quality bar. So we focused all our attention on multiplayer for Titanfall.

For Titanfall 2, when we were starting development, we decided to go back and solve this problem and make an awesome Titanfall single-player game. It turned out to be a lot harder than we thought. You can’t graft the uniqueness of Titanfall onto a scripted, cinematic single-player game. Our lead single-player designer says “you can’t cage the bird.” In Titanfall the player is a bird. You can’t create a bunch of invisible walls and box them in.

We failed a whole bunch at the beginning, so we went back to the drawing board and what we know to be the most true north star of Respawn, which is gameplay first. We set out our designers, a week at a time, to figure out what makes single-player Titanfall fun. What can you do with it?

They made these things called “action blocks.” One week at a time, each designer made a bunch of them. We had 100 or 200 at the end of the process. Each was a little bite-sized piece of gameplay – a weapon idea, a mechanic, a level idea, an interaction with the Titan. The purpose of the exercise was to fail fast and succeed quickly. We made a lot of stuff that didn’t land. We also made a lot of stuff that really resonated. That’s our gut check. If we make something we like, there’s bound to be other people out there like us.

The thing that was striking, when we looked at a list of all the good ones, is the variety on display. It was immense. It wasn’t just shooting people with a Titan. It was traversing dangerous environments. It was solving puzzles. It was working with the Titan and doing interesting things you can’t do in other games.

The designers had this well of mechanics to pull from and string together into levels. Then we figured out a story to marry with those levels. The story focuses down, not up. This isn’t a story about a big galactic war and all the players on the board. It’s a story about one guy and his Titan.

GamesBeat: Who’s your main character?

Welch: You play the role of Jack Cooper, who starts as a grunt and eventually becomes a pilot. Lots of games have moved away from that. You’re the everyman soldier, a body in a much bigger war. This is a very personal story, which gives it a cool angle, a lot of emotional lean into the relationship between pilot and Titan.

As a result of all this stuff, we have a game you can’t just judge by a 10-minute segment that has the coolest explosions. The game builds. It has this ramp. We have so many mechanics and things to learn that we can’t throw you in the deep end. You have to start off and work your way through. The goal should be, if a new player is shown the last level, they’ll say, “There’s no way I could ever do that. It’s way too hard.” But in reality, because the game is crafted so carefully, by the time you get there you can do it. That’s proven to be a hard thing to demo. What you’ll play is a couple of different areas, and every so often I’ll pop you forward to another level with some new stuff. Each level, because of that action block process, has its own set of mechanics and things it’s introducing and iterating on for you to play with. It’s pretty unique.

The special thing about it, I think, is the way that it’s not special. Nothing is totally unique about Titanfall or Titanfall 2 except how well it’s all put together. You’ve seen double-jumping and wall-running and robots and AI in multiplayer, but you’ve never seen it the way it’s done in Titanfall. You’ve seen platforming and all these other things, but the magic is in how it’s all cooked together.

Welch: When you get done with the real single-player, call us back and let us know if you still need the crutch. [laughter] You won’t need it. The ramp will do this in the single-player, and then go crazy. Call of Duty is the same ramp all along. This is going to stay down lower, and then go crazy. You’ll learn how to be a much better player. Maybe you’ll never be the competitive guy, but you’ll be far more proficient in the mechanics of Titanfall after going through the single-player.

That’s important to us. We have a huge new PlayStation audience, and millions more people who bought an Xbox One after the launch window that didn’t get into the franchise. We needed to start somewhere, introducing mechanics of wall-running and movement, plus the weapons, plus how to work with the Titan. In single-player you’ll learn the six Titans that are in multiplayer. When you defeat each one, you get their weapon and ability and learn how to use it.

GamesBeat: There was a sort of single-player, a narrative story in the original game. It gave you a little bit of motivation to play the next round of multiplayer. I wonder how you approach story in this case, given that there’s maybe a growing appreciation for it among gamers nowadays. A lot of different approaches to storytelling are springing up.

Welch: We took the approach of “do, not show.” There are only a few places in the game where there’s a true cinematic sequence. It’s never just a video that’s playing. It’s always in-engine. Stuff happens around you. It’s more like a Half-Life than an Uncharted.

The story wasn’t actually the focus. The story is something we deal with very carefully, but it’s a means to an end, to be emotionally invested and have characters you care about. Some studios care about technology above all else. Some are storytellers, like Naughty Dog. Our bread and butter is gameplay. But with that said, knowing that — our game director chose this smaller story about Jack and his Titan, as opposed to trying to tell some big epic. That works in our favor. It’s a comprehensible story.

A problem I have with a lot of games — I can’t always finish them in one sitting. I have kids to take care of. I can’t ever just absorb it all in one go. I have to play for an hour, come back a week later, and try to keep the story together in my head. This story, you can follow it.

GamesBeat: Would you say the missions are less about a narrative, more about learning to do something?

Welch: It’s a story-driven game. There are reasons for everything that happens. It’s told in a linear way. It’s not like The Incredible Machine or something like that. But it’s a story you take part in, as opposed to just watching it happen in cutscenes.

McCoy: Science fiction is just a vehicle, but the setting is pretty timely. We see a renewed interest in sci-fi these days. Star Wars coming back doesn’t hurt. Elon Musk talking about going to live on Mars, talking about being in space. It’s a great time to be thinking about the future, where things are going. It’s a nice backdrop for Titanfall. But I love the personal story that’s told. People make a personal connection between themselves as the pilot and this Titan. Which sounds strange, but it’s like when you watch Terminator 2, Arnold bonding with the young John Connor. You find a similar relationship in the game.

GamesBeat: A boy and his dog.

Welch: Yep, a boy and his robot.