Titanfall did not have any single player campaign- so it’s a bit of a surprise to see the single player campaign for Titanfall 2 be pushed so heavily. And yet, in an interview with Resero, Matthew McCandlish, Single Player Lead Designer at Respawn, stressed that the single player campaign gave Respawn the best chance they had had to explore and flesh out the individual gameplay elements of the Titanfall universe.
‘The missions in Titanfall 2, unlike the multiplayer, which has a lot of different things going on at once, with pilots, the Titans, and A.I., the missions in single player take an element, and really drill down on that element, giving it its own time to breathe. And that creates this sense of variety from mission to mission, that you’re not always going to get in a series of single player campaign levels. So some levels may focus on the mobility aspect, some might be more focused on combat or titan combat. And even beyond that, there’s different ways we can cast those elements in a different light, based on what tools we give the player, or what kind of environment we put them in, and what kinds of experiences we want to create,” he said.
It sounds about right- and indeed, that is the reason that, ultimately, single player campaigns continue to remain important, and far more challenging for game developers, than multiplayer only games- they truly ask the developer to flesh out each aspect of each gameplay element that they put in their game. Titanfall 2 is due to release on Xbox One, PS4, and PC later this month.