‘Titanfall 2’: More Than a Shooter
Titanfall 2 might seem like a clone of a Modern Warfare or Call of Duty game that makes itself “different” by including robots, armored suits, and a seriously enjoyable wall running feature, but reducing it to the rinse and repeat franchises of war games is disingenuous. Instead, Titanfall 2 deploys a narrative that engages a player in not just gun battles, but a healthy dose of character creation through the lens of friendship and acknowledging that some circumstances require inter-dependency. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Titanfall 2 has fascinating dynamic characters. What it does support though are round characters, characters who have fairly developed personalities, interacting within a linear storyline in a way which comments on the inter-dependency we rarely see in shooters. In this regard, BT-7274 and Jack Cooper provide Titanfall 2 a brilliant example for character creation in a game, while also keeping the gameplay linear.
Many linear war-story games, such as Modern Warfare, use static characters, the typical action-hero character who doesn’t change much other than slaying countless enemies and surviving. Titanfall 2 avoided this troupe by how BT-7274 and Jack interact with one another, both when Jack pilots BT and when Jack fights externally. Granted, the game has plenty of actions sequences where Jack and BT mow down enemies, but in those moments the game does something a little different with the characters. It has them rely on each other, almost need each other to survive. BT for Jack functions as an external protective shell, while also giving Jack command of BT’s formidable and interchangeable weaponry. In return Jack becomes a narrative foil for BT, exposing BT’s humor and the sub-text struggle BT has with coming to befriend and trust a stranger. This struggle BT has is noticeable at the beginning sequence of the game. The platoon Jack was a part of has been wiped out, Captain Lastimosa, who a few scenes before trained Jack, bleeds out while giving him a final command: “Pilot BT.”
This scene leaves you with the mission to manually refill BT’s energy stores. After the refill and when you enter BT, he responds to your instructions in a distant and albeit, robotic tone. When I saw this scene I got the sense there was discomfort, but also sadness in some of BT’s early responses. For me, I felt the interaction between these two strangers forecasted that this game deserved some analysis. My hunch was confirmed as over the course of the game BT reveals the depth the pilot and AI integrate. This proximity between the pilot and the AI the game portrays makes it understandable why at first Jack and BT are more like strangers forced to interact than simply a man and a machine duo. This distinction was enjoyable to see in a game touted as a shooter. It gave the characters a profile and a relative depth to the gameplay. It also showed some critiques weren’t paying attention to the character writing when they called it a “buddy comedy.” The tension between the two characters at the beginning adds complexity to how BT and Jack get to know one another. They learn from one another and get to know one another through the missions.
In later missions, when BT gets captured, that distance so apparent at the beginning of the game has evaporated. At this point, BT actively calls out for Jack’s help as a friend in need. This friendship gets built through Jack’s and BT’s banter. In the beginning, there was little to no banter besides BT referring to Jack as merely “Pilot.” The writing might seem simple and forgettable, yet the writers cleverly implement a graduated naming system which BT moves Jack through. This naming system roughly mimics how humans become familiar with one another, adopting less formal names, while moving towards more intimate ones.
To BT, Jack is unknown to him, not just in name, but also in personality. BT’s use of “Pilot” implies that Jack is easily replaceable and without a real name. As the game plays out this distance closes and BT, without alerting the player to the change, begins to call Jack “Pilot Cooper.” A few missions further in, the one I mentioned previously when BT is captured, he actively yells out for “Cooper” to save him. By this time their relationship has become one of interdependency and the game mechanics bolster this. Jack and BT fight as a unified team, speaking and cajoling one another through their battles. This familiarity they gain through the game is introduced by the graduated naming system BT uses. It is not just a quirky trait BT has, but an important character-developing mechanic in the game portraying how the characters come to know each other. Furthermore, these name changes are cleverly unassuming in the writing, yet are connected to key game elements. These key elements revolve around Cooper and BT facing down threats, encountering worldly obstacles and puzzles, or engaging in new gameplay mechanics. Each time narrative events happen in the world they both comment on the features, which usually lead into a short conversation about the topic and what they think. This affects the game in an important way since it rejects the lone badass hype most action games piggyback on and instead places Jack and BT in a symbiotic role.
Althroughout the game it has slowly developed the main theme of developing friendship and trust between Jack and BT. As Jack completes BT’s requests and continues to prove his mettle, BT’s position softens and he comes to trust Jack.
The partnership and trust theme doesn’t stop at the BT and Jack though. The theme expands to include the enemies as well. How it does this is through Jack and BT defeating the enemies and then integrating their weapons into BT’s systems. Most, if not every time BT and Jack incorporate new weapons it is usually due to them taking the weapons from enemies. This is an adversarial relationship, but it is still one of incorporation as it physically alters how BT appears. This simple game mechanic of leveling up just after a boss fight and getting the bosses outstanding gear might be fairly common, yet it lends itself to this particular storyline well due to the theme I mentioned earlier.
Titanfall 2 building the friendship and trust between BT and Jack through BT’s graduated naming system, while Jack becomes a foil to highlight BT’s personality helps move Titanfall 2 away from the shooter genre and into a more character driven story. That the game also explores a theme devoted to gaining trust between two seeming strangers and also combining the enemies into the theme as incorporable pieces allude to how dismissing a game for shooter based mechanics misses the purpose games are trying to aim at.
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