2016 has been the year of many firsts for the Titanfall franchise. Titanfall 2 having weapon skins? Titanfall 2 having a campaign? Titanfall 2 having Easter Eggs and secrets? Okay, that last point isn’t really ground-breaking for the franchise but if you were a fan of the secrets from the first game, then the sequel will have plenty to keep you busy. At the very least there are a good number of references to keep the more observant players amused throughout their playtime.
Child’s Drawings and Loch Ness
Remember that Assembly Plant where twisted android Ash decided to experiment with you? It’s one of the coolest levels I’ve ever experienced in a first person shooter but there’s more to the plant than meets the eye. If you do a bit of platforming at one key point during the Into the Abyss mission (much before the assembly of the houses actually becomes more complicated), you’ll find some rocks off to the side. Scale the rocks and reach the top of the structure to discover an unusual Easter egg. It’s essentially a bunch of drawings by a child and some toys. There are also the letters N, C, R and J along with a little heart symbol. We’re not sure about the letters but the stuffed toys remind us of the same toys from Titanfall‘s Demeter and Relic maps that resemble the Loch Ness monster.
Titanfall IMC Grunt
Here’s something that all fans of the original Titanfall should recognize immediately. On the map “Complex” – the semi-industrial setting with tons of indoor geography – if you do enough exploring in one of the rock-laden areas, you’ll find a Grunt. Not just any Grunt though – this is an IMC Grunt from the first Titanfall or at least what’s left of him. Titanfall 2 saw the Grunt designs changed rather drastically from the first game with many theorizing that it was to better differentiate between the IMC and Militia. This is a neat little callback that makes us wonder what this lone Grunt was actually doing in the middle of such a warzone. Luck, maybe?
Release Date
What better way to tease your game then with a release date hidden away somewhere? Of course this strategy works best when the release date is tucked away in, well, some other game that’s out before yours. Regardless, if you explore enough during the campaign in Titanfall 2, a wall with the words “Storage” and “TF2” along with the number “102816” will be seen. TF2 equates to Titanfall 2 while 102816 is essentially the release date, specifically October 28th 2016. Could this be what Respawn meant when it said the release date was locked in a long time ago? If the developer didn’t delay the title because it meant altering one single asset in the game, it would have been hilarious more than anything else.
Ejection Messages
Ejecting in Titanfall 2 is like art – not many know how to do it, much less appreciate it, plenty of people are bad at it and even the masters are constantly improving. Titanfall 2 spices up its ejections with various messages that pop up when you look down at your hands. These include but aren’t limited to:
- “See you on the other side”, which is famous in Jason Bourne films, Battlestar Galactica, you name it.
- “Go get ’em, tiger” referencing Mary Jane Watson’s line from Spider-Man 2.
- “Protocol [03]” which actually references BT-7274’s protocol in the campaign. This is basically “Protect the Pilot.”
- “Make it so”, frequently stated by Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
- “Fly you fool” which we really shouldn’t have to tell you the significance of.
Get to the Choppa Reference
If you haven’t seen the original Predator films, then you need to immediately go and bask in their glory (while skipping the AvP films because you’ll want to bask in acid afterwards). One of Titanfall 2‘s bosses in the campaign Richter calls back to the first Predator film, namely Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch. Not only does Richter sound like and slightly resemble Dutch but he even commands all his forces to “Get to the beacon!” during a mission. This is a callback to the famous quote “Get to the choppa!” by Arnold in Predator. Seriously, the inflection is so spot on that it couldn’t be a coincidence.
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