Have Some Legs
These days, shooter campaigns are fairly short. Some only clock in at barely 5 hours, and it’s rare for one to hit 8 or more. This is fine on a case by case basis–multiple games are guilty of stretching themselves out too long, but it’s also disappointing when a game is using marketing that clearly shows single player footage and has big name voices attached to it, and is over in the blink of an eye. With games these days being $60, that’s just downright criminal.
Titanfall 2’s campaign doesn’t need to be The Witcher 3 levels of long, as arduous as that sounds, but it should still be a decent length. Not too short to feel like a pointless slog, but also long enough to be something worth talking about. At the very least, it shouldn’t feel like it’s just taking the player through a series of bot matches that just happen to have some writing of debatable quality attached to it.
What could help is if the sequel took the two campaign concept from the original and made them into actual stories. If you played Transformers: War for Cybertron, you’ll remember that the game had separate campaigns for the Autobots and Decepticons, described by the developers at the time as stories of “hope and power”, respectively. The IMC campaign could be about rising to power years before the war begins, while the Militia campaign can be about their origins and gaining Titans of their own. With enough missions, it could be a gripping story fit to deliver some thrills and give nuance to this battle.
