Poll Destiny Vs. TitanFall--Good Read. (42 votes)
Titanfall vs. Destiny
How this war will change shooters for ever...
Realism can be an over-rated quality. The modern military titles that have ruled the first-person shooter genre since Call of Duty 4 have invented or adapted plenty of intriguing mechanics, like character classes, killstreaks and customisable load-outs. However, they have also brought with them the most limited colour palettes game design has ever seen, an unnerving fixation on real-life firearms and a jingoistic post-9/11 obsession with Middle Eastern terrorists and geographically indistinct Euro-bullies. This has all led to some extraordinarily silly and confused plotting.
But the future looks very different. At both E3 and Gamescom – the major events on the gaming calendar – the talk was of two shooters set far away from current geopolitical interests. Bungie's breathlessly ambitious Destiny is an action role-playing blaster set in a distant future where mankind's colonisation of space has been ended by some apocalyptic catastrophe, and now survivors must re-group on Earth with the help of a mysterious alien presence known as the Traveler.
In Titanfall, the multiplayer-only battle drama revolves around two factions – the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation and the M-COR militia – slugging it out to control a dark cyberpunk landscape, dominated by mech warfare. Okay, so in narrative terms, we're not talking about great originality here, and for Destiny developer, Bungie, this latest project is a natural evolution of the space operatics found in previous titles Marathon and Halo. But you know, at least we're no longer saving America from an inexplicable yet obsessively justified land invasion.
As shooter fans, we’ve been waiting a looong time to see what the creators of Halo and the minds behind Call of Duty would do for their next acts. Bungie and Respawn (the guys and gals who once called Infinity Ward home) finally gave us a good look at their respective projects at E3, and we can now speak with some knowledge and insight about two sci-fi shooters that could very well play a big part in defining the next generation of gaming: Destiny andTitanfall. What are their core features? What makes each one unique? Which sci-fi shooter is for you? In an effort to help answer those questions and more, we threw both into the Game Front Octagon for a little head-to-head fun. We’ll let you be the judge and decide who wins each round and, ultimately, who comes out on top. Ring the bell for Destiny vs. Titanfall!
Everything flows
The key innovation both of these titles explore, however, is the interplay between single, co-op and multiplayer action, and the demarcations between them are set to blur forever. In Destiny, for example, the setting is a vast open galaxy, a persistent online environment, where players can carry out narrative missions, strikes and raids with friends, but where at times, they will stumble into the activities of other groups.
Community manager, David 'DeeJ' Dague puts it like this. "We're sort of making good on a very old ambition to create a story that different players can experience cooperatively but at the same time have chance encounters with other heroes who are blazing their own trail."
So its a seamless interplay between missions and multiplayer groupings? "Seamless is exactly how we like to describe the experience," he confirms. "When you play Destiny, you can choose to be a lone hero or you can invite people to be on your fire team. The fire team is a three-guardian band that will go through this world together, solving mysteries, fighting enemies and reclaiming the solar system. And as that lone hero or fire team moves through each destination, they will see other players in this living social world - these others will be exploring their own mission objectives, but there will be interactions where their paths cross. Those moments are completely elective, but we're going to try to lure silent, lone gamers into these spaces because they'll find rewards that will make them better at the game and make the experience better and more dynamic over time."
Both titles also make slight changes to familiar customisation and loud-out options.Destiny allows three main weapons: a primary assault option, a secondary CQB option and a third 'heavy' slot for weapons that do ridiculous amounts of damage. Furthermore, as players progress then can pick up new modifications for their arsenal, so that each gun becomes a sort of narrative instrument. "We're giving players almost endless options for customisation," says Dague. "Every weapon we put in their hands will tell a story about where they've been and the sorts of activities they've engaged in, and every weapon is customisable. The arsenal for this game is bigger than anything we've ever put into the hands of the player."
Meanwhile in Titanfall, players start each match by selecting a character class for their pilot (currently Assault, Tactical and CQB) and their Titan. These come in three flavours. The main battle titan is equipped with an XO-16 battle rifle and defensive vortex blocker that acts as a shield against enemy fire; the heavy weapons titan gets a 40mm cannon and electrical smoke to hide in; and the high explosive titan boasts a rocket launcher that fires multiple spirally projectiles that'll pummel other mechs into robot heaven. Mixing and matching pilots and titans should provide an intriguing little twist, allowing players to build diverse roles for themselves, taking on stealthy roles as pilots, but transmogrifying into apocalyptic denizens of fiery death when in the titan.
Looking back to move forward
According to producer Drew McCoy, Respawn started with an interesting question: what would be the FPS version of mixed martial arts? So they started looking at classic titles and sub-genres, pulling in ideas from Doom, Counter Strike, Battlefield and more. "We went through a long prototyping process," says McCoy. "Our guys were trying all sorts of crazy stuff. It was all really rough, but it gave us an inkling of what could be good. And early on, one of the key things was movement, which has evolved into wall-running and double jumping - that sense of verticality. The other thing was survivability in a multiplayer game.
"The current trend is high lethality, one shot and you're down. It's popular, but if you go back 10 years, you had health and armour in Quake and Unreal, you could shoot guys 50 times - we wanted to try play with that, to lengthen the player's life without upsetting that quick kill balance. That's where the titans came in. They act as a kind of second life for you - you can take damage then eject out. Also you have AIs running around which are often easy to beat, so you get that quick kill loop."
There's also an ambition to add longevity to player vs player encounters, to get out of the twitch core rut that some well-known military shooters have ploughed. "The movement and face-off gameplay was influenced by Doom, especially the rocket launcher and plasma gun," says McCoy, "Those were projectiles that you could see coming, that you could dodge - there was this really cool back and forth dynamic. So Titans bring in a lot of that - they shoot a LOT of projectiles. And with the dash move, you can get in and out of cover real quick. This way, you're really fightingsomeone. It's not 'I shot first so you're dead', it's knowing the environment, knowing how to flank - we looked at a lot of old games for that."
Bringing meaning to multiplayer
In many ways Titanfall is more conventional, but it still evolves the standard FPS recipe in interesting ways. Developer Respawn Entertainment calls its main mode 'campaign multiplayer' – groups of players compete against each other through a linear series of missions, all bookended by story cut-scenes explaining the context of the combat. As a participant, you can save your progress at any point and come back to the campaign whenever you like, so it works just like Single player. And when matches begin, each environment is filled with AI troopers, who join in the combat but also provide little choreographed set-pieces within the action, perhaps hiding out in hidden locations or attacking very specific enemy targets. So again, it feels like a Campaign – just one with human allies and enemies.
It's all about the refreshing new cadences that come out during combat. While playing as a ground soldier, or pilot, the game's double jump and wall-running features allow you to traverse the map as a totally three-dimensional environment, sprinting along the sides of buildings, leaping onto rooftops and along catwalks or straight through windows. There's a real sense of freedom, of kinetic possibility, that contrasts massively with the familiar sprint and cover rhythm of the military shooters.
And then, at fixed time points in each match, you get to call in a titan mech, which drops onto the map with a whooshing crash, then waits for your command. You get in, and the combat completely changes – now it's about attrition and pummeling force. You're swatting pilots like flies, you're pounding in to explosive battles with other 'bots – like the tank fights in Battlefield, but with swarms of exotic missiles and defense measures. The cockpit feel is nice too, with visible instrumentation, and the fact you're looking through an HUD screen not glass, so everything distorts when you get hit by fire. Then, when the damage reaches critical, you can eject and join the action again as a foot soldier, bringing these vast new action beats to the experience.
Changing classes
Both titles also make slight changes to familiar customisation and loud-out options. Destiny allows three main weapons: a primary assault option, a secondary CQB option and a third 'heavy' slot for weapons that do ridiculous amounts of damage. Furthermore, as players progress then can pick up new modifications for their arsenal, so that each gun becomes a sort of narrative instrument. "We're giving players almost endless options for customisation," says Dague. "Every weapon we put in their hands will tell a story about where they've been and the sorts of activities they've engaged in, and every weapon is customisable. The arsenal for this game is bigger than anything we've ever put into the hands of the player."
Meanwhile in Titanfall, players start each match by selecting a character class for their pilot (currently Assault, Tactical and CQB) and their Titan. These come in three flavours. The main battle titan is equipped with an XO-16 battle rifle and defensive vortex blocker that acts as a shield against enemy fire; the heavy weapons titan gets a 40mm cannon and electrical smoke to hide in; and the high explosive titan boasts a rocket launcher that fires multiple spirally projectiles that'll pummel other mechs into robot heaven. Mixing and matching pilots and titans should provide an intriguing little twist, allowing players to build diverse roles for themselves, taking on stealthy roles as pilots, but transmogrifying into apocalyptic denizens of fiery death when in the titan
Not a war, a revolution
What we see in both titles is a sense that the next generation is going to be about interplay and integration. It's not so much a battle between them as it is a battle between them and the past. In the future they predict, single-player will merge with co-op and competitive action; story will merge with multiplayer – but it's all through choice. Players don't have to do any of this, the traditional demarcations survive if you want: Titanfall comes with a whole bunch of traditional drop in and might death match modes. But the seamless interconnection between campaign and online universes hinted at a few years ago by Demons Souls(a big influence on Titanfall according to McCoy), is going to really change things.
And what the new consoles will bring, with their more robust online infrastructures and vast cloud-based server networks, is the idea of persistence, of individual stories and adventures converging. Shooters will never be the same again because with the lines blurred and the rules shifted, whole new formats, new possibilities, open up. "It should be seamless and serendipitous," says Dague, on how players meet in Destiny. "It will be like some of the great fantasy tales where different heroes cross paths and come together to share a leg of the adventure before they splinter off in their own directions again. That's the mood we're trying too cultivate."
"The thing that we're most excited about is when our community gets hold of this game and adds to it what we feel will be the most important ingredient, which is the character they make. At that point we lose complete and total control of our creation - it becomes theirs, they start doing things in this world that we never imagined. We'll get to learn about what we've created through watching the end user. And we are alwayswatching..."
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