“Initiating Drop Sequence”
You are a militia soldier: One of thousands, fighting for inches of land on this war-torn and derelict planet you call home. Fighting for freedom - or so you thought; but that notion has passed long ago. Now it’s just war, and the battlefield rages endlessly.
You open your eyes. An AI controlled robot, scrapped together from ten kinds of damaged metal, makes a grand sweeping gesture toward the ground below, as though this were an every day normal occurrence for the machine, just another directive. As your eyes adjust to the city in ruins, you hover above it in a massive dropshop.
In the pipe. Five by five.
It’s time to fight. In a burst of speed and adrenaline you sprint toward the exit of the dropship, landing down hard in Angel City in a flurry of bullets and misplaced anger. Who knows why we’re fighting anymore? It doesn’t matter.
You gingerly draw your weapon. An
A battle rages in the street. Avoiding the chaos, you hit it into full gear and sprint toward the nearest building. An Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation grunt stares you straight in the face. Before you can even react, he fires off a burst and hits you square in the chest.
Your vision begins to fog, damage seeping into every pour of your skin. You recover and dash for the nearest piece of cover, a turned-over table which may have once been used by a family or a company. It doesn’t matter anymore. Two more IMC Grunts enter the room, locked and loaded and ready to eliminate the treat. You’re ready for them. You fire off burst after burst at the three IMC grunts, dispatching them without hesitation. All in a day’s work.
Running purely on adrenaline and force-of-will, you pull yourself from behind the turned-over table and run out on to the streets, a battle raging before you.
“Titan inbound in two minutes,” a dispatcher calmly reminds you through your headset. You’re not just a soldier, after all. You’re a pilot. And in the Titan Wars, everyone gets to be king.
A squad of Militia grunts pass you by on the streets, reinforcing a nearby position. In the chaos, a split-second reaction may have had you unload on them. But you’re calm, collected and ready for battle.
The squad engages an IMC position and start pushing through, slaughtering several IMC grunts. They seem to be handling themselves, you reason, but pop of a few rounds of your Carbine in support. As the milita soldiers start gaining ground, a light of concentrated fire whizzes by them. They crumple as though they were hit by a giant with a poleaxe.
An IMC pilot stares you down, jumping toward you in a burst of flurry; he’s the one responsible for the wholesale slaughter. You initiate your own jetpack and tactically retreat, sending out bursts of Carbine fire at your opponent.
With jetpack running, you zip behind an alleyway for cover. The IMC pilot blindly follows you, consumed by the thrill of the hunt, oblivious to the world around him. Just in time, you let off burst after burst of your Carbine, sending a hail of bullets cascading through the IMC pilot’s armor as he rounds the corner.
He drops and you calmly reload your weapon, as though you had just swatted a fly.
“Titan inbound in one minute.”
Milita command has taken notice of you. You proved yourself out there and they want to prioritize your Titan delivery. Just one more minute in this God-forsaken hell and you’ll be in a Titan of your own. You smile to yourself and continue through the wreckage.
More milita grunts stream by. You let them pass. An IMC Spectre engages them, another mechanized foot-soldier in this sea of cybernetics. The metal warrior unloads on the milita grunts, engaging in a protracted firefight directly in the street.
You bob and weave like a great boxer; through the fire, thumbing the device in your pocket, approaching the Spectre at lightning speeds. You close the distance, lifting the device out of your pocket.
If the Spectre had a mouth, it would probably be hanging open in disbelief. You jam the device directly into the Spectre, hacking its systems. The IMC programming fries, and a new one, milita-friendly, is uploaded.
The Spectre struggles and then stops, filled with new purpose. Under your control, the hulking machine re-enters the battlefield on the opposite side, now killing in your name.
“Titan inbound in thirty seconds.”
Almost ready. You breathe a sigh of relief. No reason to expose yourself any longer, or so you think.
Just as your Spectre enters the fray, an IMC pilot call downs a Titan, like a meteor that rains from the heavens. Your AI-controlled Spectre is crushed on impact, scattering reprocessed metal into the winds. Just another senseless casualty of war.
You watch, paralyzed in fear, as the IMC pilot enters his Titan - the first one called into the battle raging across Angel City. Paralyzed in fear, you watch as he enters into his Titan, unlatching the pilot door and entering, like a man filled with the sole purpose of exacting carnage upon this plane.
“Titan inbound in fifteen seconds. Stand by for impact.”
The dispatcher’s words ring in your ears. Soon you’ll have a Titan of your own, ready to take on this metal behemoth that had just landed. But now is not that time.
The IMC Titan rears its metal-encased head at you, and you react with the instincts of a man born into fear. Chaingun fire lights up the ground around you as you sprint like your life depends on it, jetpacking and running up the wall of a nearby building to further enhance your agility.
A nearby rocket crashes into the IMC Titan. Another pilot has your back. That could have been the end of you, chewed up and spit out like all of this never happened. Like all of this was meaningless.
Distracted, the IMC Titan shifts its attention, pouring its own barrage of missiles out at the offending target. You use the opportunity to duck behind a nearby alcove of buildings.
“Titan ready for launch.”
As soon as it’s ready you call it in. The dispatcher acknowledges your request. ETA is 4 seconds.
As you wait for your own Titan, an IMC Pilot runs toward you, having noticed your hiding spot. You laugh to yourself as he makes his way toward you, consumed by the rage and adrenaline and conflict. He doesn’t even notice the marker he is walking across.
Your own Titan drops from the sky, plummeting at record speeds. The IMC pilot is crushed as he vapidly fires off a few round toward you. Several hit, but it doesn’t matter. You’ll recover in no time.
You rush toward your Titan, climbing over the mangled body of the IMC pilot. It doesn’t matter. He’s just another statistic. Just another casualty of this pointless war.
You climb into your Titan, unhooking the pilot’s hatch deftly as you prepare to climb into your rightful seat. You take a brief second pause to marvel at your Titan, it’s rust-coated metal likely taken from ten different sources. A great piece of craftsmanship for a militia.
This is what you were born to do. You’ve done it a thousand times before.
You climb into the seat and are greeted by a familiar voice.
“AI Offline. Pilot engaged.”
After several seconds of adjusting, your HUD lights up. You see the world for what it is. Small, inconsequential, and ready for your taking.
You stride forward confidently in your Titan. You’ve been trained for this. It’s what you were born to do. You adjust your 40mm cannon to the firing mode, ready to take the world by storm.
Several IMC grunts rush toward your Titan, seemingly without thinking. You laugh and dash toward them. They’re not even worth your ammo. They scatter, like a host of gazelles as you crush one underfoot, reveling in your superiority for a brief moment before an IMC Titan.
It’s sleek white design reminds you of the giant robots you read about as a kid in comic books and magazines. You consider this for a brief moment as you engage the systems to your 40mm cannon.
Like an old wrestling match, you’re ready to rumble.
The IMC Titan’s chaingun wracks off your armor, pinging this way and that. You close the distance, firing off slug after slug out of your cannon, sending chunks of metal flying off the IMC Titan on to the battlefield.
You’ve got this. This is what you were born to do.
Unexpectedly, your targeting computer lights up.
“Pilot locked”
A missile careens off your armor, dislodging your shields from their rightful place. There’s nothing you can do. Seeing the oppirtunity, the IMC Titan fires round after round of its Chaingun at you, further closing the distance between you.
Your systems begin to light on fire. These Titan’s weren’t built for speed or comfort, the offensive weaponry much outclassing the defensive systems. You retreat, hoping that the shield system will recover.
No such luck. The IMC Titan winds up a punch. You desperately fire a barrage of missiles at the Titan, but it continues, to no avail. The punch connects, crushing the metal of the cockpit and sending you careening backwards.
You keep your footing, but barely. The system goes critical. Your Titan is doomed. Fires ignite every which way, and there’s no point in trying to put them out. The IMC Titan is on to you. Only one way out now.
And that way is up.
You engage the nuclear core to self-destruct, and then slam down on the eject button. Might as well go out with a bang.
Instantly, the ejector couplings engage, and you’re thrown up into the air unceremoniously. You engage your cloaking systems and watch the explosion from mid-air as the core goes nuclear. The IMC Titan and it’s pilot are incinerated without missing a beat.
You smile as you see the carnage you’ve unleashed below. One less IMC bastard to walk the planet.
You land on top of a nearby building, redrawing your Carbine the moment you land. You look down the iron sights and pick off several IMC grunts that seem to be running around aimlessly in the chaos. You bring order to their lives by ending them, you justify. Far better than being a part of this senseless war.
Lost down the barrel of your Carbine, you continue to do what you do best. An IMC Pilot notices you, perched on the roof of the building, but you don’t suspect a thing, completely engrossed in your Angel of Death routine.
With deft precision, two hands reach at your neck, spinning you about for a brief moment. Like a hacked Spectre, you struggle, and then stop. Your head swims, your vision goes dark. And then the crack as your neck snaps and your body goes limp, your corpse dumped unceremoniously off the roof of the building like a penny thrown from great heights.
But you weren’t just spare change. You were a human life, with a human cost. You may not have felt it, but the destruction left in your wake was real, tangible, and mortally affected not just your adversaries, but your allies.
No matter. Just another pilot lost in the Titan Wars. An identical pilot immediately takes your place. But it’s too late. It’s time to fall back. Angel City is lost.
Evac in 30 seconds. Your allies run toward the point that the dispatcher specified, but several IMC Titan’s come to meet them. There’s no hope for them. No point in watching this senseless violence.
This is what your first match of Titanfall is like. Explosive, invigorating, and a breath of fresh air into a world increasingly populated by military shooters. This is science fiction at its best — without the big, bloated worlds and back-stories, but carved in conflict, and draped in the veneer of intimacy; it’s a real, visceral experience with parallels to our own world and our own sense of right and wrong. And that’s what makes Titanfall so compelling.
Daniel Horowitz
@horowitzcentral
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