Titanfall 2 single-player trailer features lots of wall-running

Respawn recently released a trailer showcasing Titanfall 2’s single-player campaign. Formatted as a video documentary, the featured Respawn developers promise to deliver great variety in gameplay through the franchise’s first single-player component. What was shown was environmental puzzles, explosive Titan battles, and a lot of wall-running.

Selling the game’s campaign on its “sheer variety” in gameplay, Respawn’s trailer showed off some of the game’s environmental puzzles, which so far seem to be heavily based on wall-running. One puzzle in particular has the player take control of cranes to arrange large wall panels so that they may wall-run across large gaps between platforms. Other puzzle mechanics — like rotating platforms, gravity wells, and way more wall-running — can be seen throughout the trailer.

The single-player campaign will also feature “big set-piece moments” and “epic combat spaces,” which were demonstrated with a shot of a player wall-running from one massive airship to another. However, the game will also have “low-key moments” of “progressing through the [game’s] environment and exploring, using your pilot mobility,” i.e. wall-running through environments of conveniently flat-walled valleys and forests. You can even use your Titan buddy BT to explore areas by splitting up, letting him venture down the less wall-runny areas while you satiate your lust for frolicking between parallel natural formations.

No game franchise has a narrative quite like Titanfall’s. Though the story of a boy and his friend robot is a familiar plot dynamic, the actual story of how Titanfall 2’s single-player campaign came to be is quite an anomaly. We’ve seen games stripped of their multiplayer, great single-player games with half-baked multiplayer slapped on — I can’t recall any game franchise ever adding a story-driven component in response to demands from the multiplayer audience. It’ll be interesting to see if Respawn can adapt their PvP-based systems to a story-driven single-player experience.

Titanfall 2 comes out October 28 on Xbox One, PS4 and PC.