Titanfall 2

The rise and Titanic fall of the live-service game that wasn't

- LUKE KEMP

Today's triple-A game industry is so in thrall to the live-service model that we have become accustomed to central play mechanics changing after launch, limited-time events staged to ensure that you remain engaged, and digital stores placed front and centre, pushing constantly updated carousels of premium cosmetics. The transition to this way of doing business was so swift that few games exist that straddle the divide between the old and the new. One rare example is Respawn's Titanfall 2.

It's not clear how profits from live-service successes trickle down directly to low-level employees, but it's easy to imagine the process happening slowly. A wrangling over bonuses, in fact, indirectly birthed the original Titanfall. In 2010, Vince Zampella and Jason West were fired from Infinity Ward shortly after the release of the hugely successful Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, for "breach of contract and insubordination". Many members of the team followed them out of the door in support, partly due to the claim that Activision was withholding Modern Warfare 2 royalties until work on Modern Warfare 3 was complete. Thus, Respawn Entertainment was born.

With the inevitable suits and counter-suits that followed, it was probably inevitable that Respawn's debut project would want to avoid any accusations of lifting concepts from Call Of Duty. With its futuristic setting, wallrunning and towering 'Titan' mechs, Titanfall delivered on that front. What the game did not have was a release on a PlayStation console - or a traditional campaign mode.

In a parallel universe, Titanfall 2 leaned heavily into the always-online nature of the first game, and joined Dead By Daylight and