General Information:
Platforms: All thangs Microsoft
Release Date: March 11th, 2014 (Xbox One, PC), March 25th 2014 (Xbox 360) All dates US
MSRP: $59.99
Developer: Respawn Games (Xbox One, PC), Bluelight Games (Xbox 360)
Publisher: Electronic Arts
DLC: Yes, both free and premium. Season Pass also confirmed
Boxart:
Titanfall Goodies
Titanfall Xbox One Bundle: $499
What better way to jump into next gen than a Titanfall bundle? You get the game for free.
Titanfall Collectors Edition: $250
You get the game, an artbook collection, a Titan schematic poster, and your own goddamn Titan! A bit too pricey for my blood, but cool nonetheless.
Titanfall Controller: $60
A cool, custom themed controller to celebrate the Titanfall release. A stark contrast to the solid black pad the console ships with, this controller has all the typical features of the normal Xbox One pad, including those delicious rumble triggers.
The Story of Titanfall *from the Titanfall website*
The Frontier
Welcome to the Edge of Civilization
In Titanfall, many generations of humanity live in the deepest reaches of explored space. This vast region is known as The Frontier. It contains many well-known and inhabited solar systems, but many more worlds remain uncharted.
Most people will never travel this far away from normal civilization. But for pioneers, explorers, mercenaries, outlaws, and soldiers - the Frontier offers both adventure and opportunity.
The Factions
The Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation (IMC)
The Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation, or IMC, started out small, in natural resource extraction industries, under the name Hammond Engineering. Fifteen years later, demand for Titan manufacturing materials, combined with Hammond’s market-cornering planetary survey technology and map database rights, contributed to explosive growth for the company. Over the course of a century, a series of acquisitions, mergers, and re-brandings lead to the transformation of Hammond Engineering into the sprawling commercial empire that is the IMC.
Despite their reputation for exploitative behavior on the Frontier, they receive little criticism from their shareholders and customers living in the Core Systems – the material conveniences and widely used products provided by the IMC generate considerable ‘consumer inertia’, to the corporation’s benefit.
With the Frontier’s valuable shipping lanes and vast planetary resources ripe for exploitation, the IMC is dedicated to maximizing profits and shareholder wealth, using the legal application of force when necessary.
Graves
In the IMC command structure, Vice Admiral Graves is formally known as the CINCFRONT, or Commander-in-Chief, Frontier Command. Despite the elaborate title, Frontier operations are notorious for their lack of adherence to traditional protocol, allowing Graves to personally command IMC forces in the field, and to operate far more informally than commanders in the Core Systems. Graves has a reputation as a maverick within the IMC. His calls for policy change have often been deemed too risky to IMC forces, and too lenient to Frontier citizens. During the inquiry into the Odyssey scandal, Graves maintained that the ship was forcibly commandeered by MacAllan and his band of mutineers.
Blisk
Blisk is a South African mercenary working under a new long-term contract with the IMC on the Frontier, providing Combat Intel and Counterinsurgency services. His first contract concluded with his outfit making enough money to retire to a tropical paradise, but after considering the excellent pay, and more importantly, the opportunity to lay waste to everything in sight with state-of-the-art hardware, Blisk decided that the IMC’s offer of renewal was just too good to pass up.
Spyglass
Spyglass is a physical manifestation of the IMC’s vast computational network identity, handling logistics, navigation, deployment, and communications between all IMC forces on the Frontier. Spyglass units are built on a modified Spectre chassis and are considered expendable in the field, often accompanying ground forces aboard dropships to provide up-to-date mission information and live surveillance.
The Militia
The Frontier Militia represents the military arm of the Frontier systems' territorial defense pact. The Militia is a loosely governed mishmash of homesteaders, bandits, mercenaries, and pirates, all rising up as 'citizen soldiers' when the need arises. Many homesteaders have taken on a ‘can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ attitude regarding working alongside different criminal groups. Naturally the people in this melting pot don’t always see eye to eye on how to deal with the IMC’s exploitation of the Frontier, but they are unified in fighting against it.
The Militia is loosely divided into Brigades. Each Brigade is responsible for fighting in an assigned section of Frontier territory, which might span as far as several planetary systems. The Marauder Corps, a.k.a. the M-COR, is a small part of a much larger Brigade tied to the Freeport System. Although some brigades are little more than vast pirate organizations, the Militia has enough resources to be a real obstacle to the IMC's ambitions on the Frontier.
The Militia often claims that direct action against the IMC is in the best interests of the homesteaders whom they allegedly represent, but not everyone on the Frontier sees it that way.
MacAllan
A highly decorated veteran of the Titan Wars, MacAllan served as the executive officer of the IMS Odyssey, under the command of Vice Admiral Marcus Graves. The Odyssey’s mission was part of a peacekeeping operation on the Frontier for the IMC. Official IMC reports indicate that MacAllan led a mutiny aboard the Odyssey fifteen years ago, citing numerous grievances with the IMC’s treatment of Frontier citizens. However, these reports have not been proven, in the absence of the ship’s flight data recorder, which was lost when MacAllan and his people escaped with the Odyssey, and disappeared into an uncharted sector of the Frontier.
Bish
The name Bish is short for Bishamon, the mythological god of warriors within the Japanese Seven Gods of Fortune. Bish is an IMC-trained electrical engineer, born and raised on Earth. After getting screwed over by the IMC on a Frontier job placement that cost him all his savings just to move out there, he ended up in the right place at the right time – the notorious ‘Bish bar brawl’ - to take the Militia’s timely offer of employment.
Bish now serves as a Combat Intel Specialist, remote hacking into IMC systems during combat on behalf of ground forces, tracking mission progress, and giving tactical guidance to Pilots on the ground.
Sarah
As a child, Sarah lost several close members of her family to incidents in which the IMC displaced Frontier citizens by force. As a result, she vowed to take revenge on the IMC at every possible opportunity, refusing to rest until they have been removed from the Frontier. For most of her career, she served in Covert Operations for the Militia, before moving into the command ranks of the Militia’s Marauder Corps. Her long list of successful attacks on IMC installations landed her on the IMC’s High Value Target List, where she remains listed as one of the 50 most dangerous Militia operatives still at large.
Campaign
Unlike most typical shooters, Titanfall has no offline dedicated campaign mode. Instead, all of these characters shown and their stories, are told via online campaign missions played out via multiplayer. It's a very interesting, borderline revolutionary spin on your standard MP first person shooter. If successful, you can bet your sweet butts that other franchises like Call of Duty and Battlefield will follow suit.
Basically on certain playlists and levels, the match becomes an actual campaign match. You'll be given specific tasks to complete, and various cut scenes. Win or lose, the story will advance. It's worth playing through not only because the people at Respawn have a history for making great campaigns, but it's also the only way to unlock the Ogre and Stryder Titan classes.
General Gameplay
Titanfall, since its reveal last year, has received almost universal praise for its gameplay and design. Ignorantly brushed off by some as "CoD with mechs!", the game is much more than that. At its core, like any other modern FPS, it does share a lot of elements with Call of Duty. Though, that's only natural. After all, these guys DID create Call of Duty.
You can run around, you shoot your weapon. You get XP, you level up. You unlock stuff. That's just about where the CoD similarities end. Of course, by this logic, Grand Theft Auto is just CoD with cars. Last of Us is CoD with crafting. Mario Kart is CoD without XP. There are some key elements in Titanfall that really separate it from the pack when it comes to gameplay. Those are the wall running/parkour, the double jump, the AI creeps, Titans, and Burn Cards. I won't go into detail about the first couple, but here is information on the rest.
Pilots
Pilots are the human controlled players. Like any other shooter, they come in a variety of skins, and you can customize their loadouts, which changes the skin they use. On the battlefield you can easily spot other Pilots by their movement. These are extremely quick, very agile characters who can jump high, run on walls, and have jet packs on their back allowing them to double jump. Each match pits 6 of these on the Militia side versus 6 others on the IMC side.
Grunts
The Grunts in Titanfall have been the subject of debate and criticism since the day they were announced. Think of them not as replacements for other human players, or worthless characters used to populate the maps. Think of them as creeps in a MOBA game. They are integral to the gameplay, particularly in objective modes. Not only that, but at times they are simply a pleasure to hang around and watch. Anyone who has played Halo: CE can remember all the hilarious banter that the grunts in that game had. Titanfall also has that. Plus, sometimes you enter a room and you see an enemy Grunt about to execute one of your guys, you want to save him. Or, the other way around. You run into a room just in time to see your guy roundhouse kick an enemy grunt and kill him. And then he'll even go over and do a death check. Very cool. Aside from Grunts there are also Spectres, which are basically drone machines. They pack more firepower and are harder to kill than Grunts. They also will shoot rockets at your Titan, so watch out. Spectres can be hacked using the data knife, allowing them to switch over to your team.
Though slow, and weak, and packing little punch, the AI in the game serves a huge role in managing the flow of combat throughout the match.
Titans
Atlas - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LasnLHhJm0
Atlas Overview
As a multi-role Titan, the Atlas excels where all other models fall short. The Atlas represents the state-of-the-art in weapons platforms and provides good protection and increased mobility over the Ogre chassis. Whether the mission demands reconnaissance, rapid assault, fire support, tactical support, or a combination of all these, Atlas frontline elements are dependable, powerful and, importantly, get results.
Ogre - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biKVCzOS2LM
There are no two ways about it—the Ogre is engineered to be the ultimate battle tank, in Titan’s clothing. As a consequence, the Ogre places a premium on its armor and offensive capabilities. When your mission demands maximum survivability, the Ogre is the only battle platform which consistently out-performs, out-shines, out-lasts and outlives everything else on the battlefield.
Stryder Overview
Survivability through speed and agility is the key to the Stryder’s considerable battlefield prowess. Faster than every other Titan chassis on the market today, the Stryder’s mobility is the culmination of many years of award-winning R&D into linear and rotary actuator technology. Of course, even with this agility advantage, the Stryder does not sacrifice any of the superior features your mission has come to depend on in the Hammond Robotics line of Titan battle platforms.
Burn Cards
Burn cards are one of the areas where Respawn takes an element they put into Call of Duty, and really reinvents it for their new franchise. Take out all the over powered ridiculous kill based rewards you get from that game and instead replace them with one time use cards you get for winning games and completing challenges. It's a very balanced, genius way of incorporating kill streak rewards and perks, without actually having kill streak rewards or perks. These cards can be equipped in the lobby (max of 3 per match) and used before any spawn. They only last one life. They range from faster movement to advanced radar to a goddamn Ogre Titan.
Here is a list of all 50 Burn Cards in the game.
This last section of the thread is where I will be a little lazy. I am going to link to the official Titanfall Wikia page for more detailed information on maps, modes, and weapons.
Maps
There are 15 maps shipping with the game. Respawn CEO Vince Zampella recently confirmed that yes, the game will have DLC. Some paid, some free. And yes, the game will have the Season Pass DLC offer every game seems to have nowadays. You can view detailed maps and descriptions of each map here.
Modes
While we can never know for sure exactly what the game will ship with, since Respawn can add/subtract whenever they want, the game is rumored to launch with 7 modes. There is no custom match support at launch, but it is something Respawn is working to deliver as soon after launch as possible. Here is a breakdown of the modes, and below is a picture of the modes, credit to TheOddOne on GAF:
Weapons/Ordnances/Abilities
Each Pilot can equip a primary weapon, a weaker secondary weapon, and an anti-Titan weapon. They also get Tier 1 and 2 kits, which extend their abilities, and an Ordnance, which is like your grenades or knife. Titans also get primaries, and they get Ordnances as well, plus tactical abilities and their kits. Check out this link for a detail view on every weapon and ordnance and ability in the game.
Reviews!
Reviews are dropping in and they are great.
You can view the Metacritic page with all the reviews here. Currently sitting at an 88.
Roll Call
Lets make Titanfall a huge game on VGChartz between Xbone owners. If you plan on buying the game and want to play with other forum dwellers, reply and post your Gamertag and I will add you. This can be a reference list for you to then go on and add followers so you always have a VGC buddy to play with.
J_Allard / GT Cpt RonCodpiece
IronmanDX / GT IronDX
Thanks for reading, stand by for Titan fall!
