I want to have a relationship with robohomie

Earlier this week I drove up to Bumfuck Nowhere, California (Chatsworth, I guess) to visit Respawn Entertainment and see just what the heck was going on with Titanfall 2's single-player. After two dusty hours of traffic, my battery died from listening to weird horror podcasts.

What I'm saying is, I was more than ready to see some robo-blastin'. A welcome addition to that was some good ol'-fashioned robo-friendin'.

Let me back up for a sec. We started with a small keynote with a few speakers from Respawn explaining what we were about to see. I had to laugh when they accidentally described their game in a demeaning fashion, saying it was "a little unique." To be clear, the speaker wasn't wrong; Titanfall 2's single-player isn't going to re-invent any wheels, but the sleek quick gameplay of the series looks to be translating very well so far.

Respawn heard "loud and clear" that players wanted a campaign, but was also aware that it couldn't just "take the multiplayer and graft it onto single-player." Freedom and mobility would still have to be a huge part of the moment-to-moment action, but it wanted to focus on the theme of the connection between pilot and titan.

Which is all well and good in theory! I was a bit skeptical at this point in the presentation, but the twenty or so minutes we saw of the campaign made me want to give it a whirl on my own.

It began like this: our main character Jack Cooper (voiced by Matthew Mercer, near as I can tell) starts as a rifleman in the militia. Essentially, he's a grunt that wants to be a pilot but isn't allowed to be. However, a higher-up is secretly teaching him how to follow his robo-dreams. The first mission we saw started with escape pods hurtling down from space in a really cool opening sequence. We see the pod going towards the planet and we follow it down, eventually waking up with Jack's ass thoroughly kicked. Final Fantasy-lookin' alien dogs are about to tear him to pieces when his superior, Lastimosa, comes and saves him with the last of his energy.

Lastimosa isn't doing so well (at the whole being alive thing), so Cooper has to take reigns of his Titan, who he refers to as BT. BT can't move yet because his batteries are so low, so it and Cooper establish a comm-link, allowing them to speak while Cooper traverses a scenic planet, wall-jumping and jump-jetting across chasms. Since he's linked to the Titan, he could also use an invisibility module to trick enemies. At this point it reminded me a bit of Crysis, since you could approach semi-open levels however you wanted.

I wasn't expecting the dialogue trees, though: when BT asks questions or tells you where to go, you can press up or down on the d-pad to select a phrase, usually in the direct or snarky categories. This also led to unanticipated humor, such as this little exchange:

Cooper: So how long did you know Lastimosa, BT? BT: Nine-hundred-and-seventy-three Earth days. Cooper: That's a longer relationship than I've ever had. BT: ...Noted.

While that might not be hilarious on the page, the two actors nailed the delivery and elicited a laugh from the crowd. This wasn't rare, either. Later, when BT says that the only way across is a fastball special, Cooper is afraid and asks what the consequences could be. BT calmly lists all of the horrible ways his fleshy friend could die, again earning a laugh. I'm hoping the game keeps up this unexpected lightheartedness.

Back to the gameplay: Crysis really is the best way for me to describe it. Ziplining down into a base, stealthing around, and occasionally getting into gunfights looked like it could be tense as long as Respawn keeps the enemies varied. The sections when you can't access your Titan are either like this, or take the shape of environmental jumping puzzles that looked like they'd be brief and entertaining. A small segment had Cooper using cranes to move platforms around to create a path.

When BT is available though, it's back to being a damage-dealing behemoth. The tough bastards you fight as a human become soda cans to crush when you're in your Titan, and it at least comes off as incredibly cathartic. A later boss battle with a character named Richter (who sounded a whole helluva lot like someone doing an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression) featured a Borderlands-style intro before the two mechs duked it out. It was here that Respawn showed off Cooper and BT's ability to switch Titan kits on the fly, changing over to the Ronin style that focused on sword combat. I'm loving the Pacific Rim cheese here.

I went to Bumfuck hoping for some good mech battles and came away with a smile on my face from the silly jokes the characters kept making. This may sound dissonant, but Titanfall 2's silly charm is what has me so excited for it now. We'll be able to see if the rest of the campaign stacks up on October 28.