It’s good to have a buddy, especially if that buddy is a Titan.
Titanfall 2’s official launch trailer is a 100-second buddy montage. It’s up there with the greatest of buddy montages like the Weed Dream from Harold and Kumar.
In the trailer, aspiring pilot, Jack Cooper, and a titan, BT-7274, get down and dirty bonding. They walk together, parkour together, even share a nice campfire together. Most of all, though, they bond by killing bad guys. Lots of bad guys. Shooting, stabbing, burning and of course, blowing ‘em up to smithereens. Yep, good to have s buddy.
The marketing angle for the game is that pilot and titan must act as one in order to accomplish the mission. Like two figure-skaters in sync on every move, man and machine must twirl and axel their way to survival.
But of course, gamers don’t really care about that. What’s new?
First of all, there’s a one-player campaign. Yay!
There are also 6 new Titans:
Ronin: Close combat master, like a Samurai, except ronin’s didn’t have masters, so more like a…ronin.
Scorch: Take a wild guess…? Yes, that’s right, fire specialist.
Legion: Defense and control, like the Roman legions in their tetsuro.
Northstar: Precision attacks, and it can fly!
Ion: Energy weapons.
Tone: Locked-in weapons.
Buddy buddy!
There’s also new tactics and tech. The most interesting is the holo-pilot, which is a holographic image to confuse the bad guys – reminds me of Bruce Lee and the house of mirrors in Enter the Dragon. Remember that? Bruce gets pissed so he starts punching mirrors with his bare fists. Bruce didn’t need a buddy….
But new features are really the icing. The cake, of course, is the buddy bonding. Yes, just me and my Titan. Good times, good times.
Titanfall 2 is out on Windows, PS4 and Xbox One on October 28, 2016.