Given Respawn's linage and history, as mainly formed from the developers that created Call of Duty, you wouldn't be wrong to expect an action-tastic set piece frenzy in Titanfall 2.
That won't be the case however, although even producer Drew McCoy admits it's an obvious assumption. "A lot of us came from making the original Call of Duty, on up to Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare 2. So at the outset we expected [Titanfall 2 would be] a very bombastic, scripted cinematic, lots of explosions type of experience, but what we ended up with is very different from that". He told me at Gamescom last week, adding, "not that we don’t have big set piece moments to drop your jaws at, but that’s not what the game is in total".
Instead he describes single player as having, "a lot more thoughtful moments where there’s puzzles, there’s challenges where you’ve got to get from point A to point B and we don’t tell you how. It’s up to you, as a pilot, to figure how". In my demo traversal definitely loomed large - from long wall running sections to incredibly mobile combat full of boosted slides, jumps and dodging.
Then there was the arc tool. It's a sort of lightning gun that activated switches. Using it you're able to move doors, walls and panels, most importantly while you're moving. So instead of just wall running through static levels there are moments when you're blasting obstacles and surfaces to change them on the fly.
As well as this more puzzley feel to the action Drew also explained the story would focus on "that relationship, that connection, that bond between a pilot and his titan". Essentially it sounds like a buddy movie between a man and his 60 foot tank bot. "It was pretty thin in the first game," he explains, "mainly because it was multiplayer and your titan could explode at any time, it’s very disposable. In single player we don’t have that so we can stretch it out and explore that relationship more".
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