I thought the game was multiplayer only. You're saying there's a single player campaign?

There's a "campaign" mode thingy which throws a story onto competitive MP games.

There is no single-player campaign.

I'll have the try that Firefly trick. That'll probably help tremendously.

RIGHT? Just don't step on Mal or Zoey, or I'll hate you forever.

Honestly, I understand why Respawn did what they did (both from a resource and business perspective), and the gameplay and graphics are so well polished it's hard to be critical. That said, I kept thinking about how awesome a REAL campaign in this universe would be, and once my mind got on that track, it was hard for me to suppress my disappointment. On the other hand, you can't program enemies to be as smart as the pilots are.

Yeah, a campaign would be cool, but it just wouldn't have the same magic as it is now. Having intelligent, creative enemies like Pilots can only work if those enemies are, well, human.

Plus, the Grunts and Spectres are just there for more creative problem solving on the part of the player. Pop a Conscription Burn Card at the start, and soak up all those Grunts you spawn with. When you hack a Spectre, it jumps to the buddies, so 4 for the price of 1 (and the same number of points for killing a Pilot in Attrition).

It's still a hell of a lot of fun, and I'll keep playing. At some point I expect that the story, such as it is, will become clearer to me.

Kermit

P.S. Let's play! You can explain the story to me.

I'm on PC. :( So here's the rundown. :D

Spoilers obviously for anyone that might care.

IMC is milking the crap out of the Frontier. The Militia hate this, so, fighting. MacAllen used to serve under Graves, and they used to run war games about how the Militia might defeat the IMC. They had a K/D of 1.0 against each other, and their best plans always ended in one place: take the key fueling stop of the Frontier, Demeter, out of play. This keeps the IMC from sending reinforcements.

MacAllen eventually decides he's sick and tired of the IMC's bullshit, Mal Reynolds this shit, and leaves the IMC with the Odyssey. Graves lets him leave because bros.

While fighting the IMC, the Militia stumble across MacAllen. MacAllen mad the IMC killed innocents, so he's gonna fuck up the IMC. He takes the plans for Demeter from the Odyssey, grabs Barker because he used to work at the Dragon Planet, then goes to the Dragon Planet to learn how Repulsor Towers work (they allow humans to keep out nasty wildlife). Once they know this, they can take out a major IMC military installation, giving them a shot at Demeter. Kill Sentinel along the way cause big ships are bad.

Basically, once the Milita grab MacAllen they go from rag tag ruffians to goddamn Rommel. Which is nice.

They attack Demeter, and MacAllen realizes the only way to destroy Demeter is to overload the system himself, commiting suicide and murdering everyone on the ground (This makes the "Who's right, and who's dead" line interesting. MacAllen is right, but dead).

Graves, because helped his bro die, joins the Militia. Spyglass (the robot) takes over for the IMC, Blisk (the South African) is a dick, and basically endless multiplayer war forever the end.

Honestly, I understand why Respawn did what they did (both from a resource and business perspective), and the gameplay and graphics are so well polished it's hard to be critical. That said, I kept thinking about how awesome a REAL campaign in this universe would be, and once my mind got on that track, it was hard for me to suppress my disappointment.

They've actually said they may do a real single player campaign in the future but they didn't want to worry about it on the first release, so maybe in Titanfall 2? My only disappointment in the campaign is that your team's performance doesn't actually affect the story at all. I know making a huge branching campaign would be crazy, but at least slight changes in the audio or cutscenes would be appreciated.

I didn't see any clipping and the effects were great - two things I noticed a lot in ME3, which ironically despite being much more campaign-focused really kinda faltered on the cutscene graphics...so that's a point in Respawn's favour.

Man I cannot tell you how much that drove me crazy in all three Mass Effects. You don't even have THAT many armor options, at least make them not clip!

The ending of the Battle of Demeter confused me a bit. I mean, we all died, right? And then we didn't. I don't really know what happened there.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think in the campaign you are technically supposed to be a different pilot each time you spawn, so everybody died that was on Demeter, and now you're a different pilot in the next mission.

Hmm, what would your perfect version look like? Good question.

I picture something like the original Wing Commander, where your performance in each mission impacted the overall campaign in the sector, and IIRC dictating where you went next.

Doesn't have to be a long game either (brevity is the soul of Portal), think of it like any multiplayer game where you switch sides, only it's over the course of like 9 maps and it changes based on how you do. Could be neat. Really only considerations would be time and resources for something like that.

Which, as a sidenote, I give Respawn a lot of credit for. They clearly knew what they wanted, and focused extremely well. Anything outside that focus (which there's a lot we take for granted, like proper matchmaking) could just fuck right off (lol). I'm alright with that, because what's there is polished to an incredible sheen (think TF2 when it first came out).

Compare that to something like Mass Effect, where there clearly wasn't a long term plan, and way too much was more or less figured out on the fly. Titanfall didn't bite off more than it can chew, and I think that's worth noting and trying to emulate.