Every fall, EA and Activision face off in what has become one of the biggest video game franchise rivalries of all time: Battlefield vs Call of Duty. These two franchises are headliners of their respective companies, each releasing a new iteration every year to keep their massive userbases engaged. Generally, the games have a pretty wide overlap in terms of audience, but in 2016, the two diverged by the largest amount since 2009 when Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was released. This year, Activision’s new Call of Duty was taking the fight to the future with more emphasis on sci-fi, whereas EA’s Battlefield was bringing players back further than they ever had by focusing on World War One battles. EA knew they were taking a big risk not competing directly against Activision with their Battlefield title, but felt safe doing so because they had a secret weapon in the works to fight the new Call of Duty game on their own turf: Respawn Entertainment’s Titanfall 2.

Made by many of the same talented developers that created the breakout Call of Duty 4 hit for Activision many years before, the first Titanfall release in early 2014 was well received, but some major flaws led to players quickly moving on to other games. Undeterred by Titanfall 1’s quick rise and fall, Respawn immediately set about fixing each and every criticism levied against its debut title, from the lack of a single-player campaign to the paltry set of content in multiplayer. Two and a half years of hard work later, Titanfall 2 was ready, and it this time it was going toe-to-toe against the new Call of Duty title released that year. Early reviews indicated Titanfall 2 would be a massive hit with Game of the Year potential, receiving incredible ratings from almost every news outlet that played it. All signs seemed to point towards a game that would sell well and keep players entertained for many months, maybe even years. With its release date set one week after Battlefield One and one week before Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, the Titanfall franchise was entering the ring to duke it out with the big boys, for better or worse.

Mid way through October, Battlefield 1 released to incredible hype, blowing away sales targets and setting a new standard for the franchise. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare came out two weeks later with less than stellar reviews, but admirable numbers for the new sub-franchise. Titanfall 2? You wouldn’t be blamed for being unsure if it had even come out at all. Despite releasing on two additional platforms compared to its predecessor, third party analysts calculated Titanfall 2 was selling at barely a quarter of the rate of Titanfall 1. Just two months after release, the state of Titanfall 2 can only be described as a disaster. It has a mere fraction of the daily players its competitors enjoy, and looks to be going nowhere fast.

So what went wrong? Many fans of the game point fingers at EA, saying they set up Titanfall 2 to fail by releasing it sandwiched between Battlefield and Call of Duty. Still others say that Respawn didn’t do enough to improve and innovate in the sequel, releasing two years late what should have been in the original. As commentators throw blame around, it tends to boil down to revisionist history -- if Titanfall 2 had sold 20 million copies and been leading the market, people would be praising EA and Respawn for their remarkable business savvy, not condemning their plan of attack. To get to the bottom of this missed opportunity, a closer look at Titanfall 2 is required. I’ll explore the innovation, design, and marketing of the game to try and decipher how one of the most critically and fan acclaimed AAA games of 2016 ended up going unnoticed by just about everybody.

Hardcore At Heart

Playing Titanfall 2 is like driving a Ferrari along a mountainside -- it’s fast, exhilarating, and you can end your life with the slightest misstep. Like any military first-person-shooter, you control a super soldier who is tasked with defeating his enemies at all costs. The characters in Titanfall, called Pilots, bring plenty of neat sci-fi tricks with them to battle. For one, they have booster packs that allow them to double jump, run quickly along walls, and fall from any distance without taking damage, making the movement in Titanfall fast and fluid. In addition, Pilots have tactical abilities available to them, such as the ability to cloak and become temporarily invisible to their opponents or track enemy movements with sonar. These abilities are extremely powerful, especially relative to those available in similar games, and Titanfall encourages you to use them early and often to create massive swings in the flow of a match.

But by far the most important tool a Pilot has available to them is the ability to summon and command a mighty Titan. Titans are towering war robots that Pilots can jump into and control (hence their name of Pilots), and they can flip any battle on its head in a matter of seconds. There is no better feeling then jumping into your own personal weapon of mass destruction and crushing your puny foes beneath your feet, and Titanfall leverages this emotion well. Every match, whether in single or multiplayer, is packed with over-the-top action, bringing together a never-ending stream of cinematic explosions, gunfire, and melee takedowns. It’s clear that Respawn didn’t want one or two moments to stand out, they wanted the every single second to leave their players asking for more.

There are always a dozen things happening at once during a match of Titanfall 2, making the battles feel frenetic and action-packed.

Even though Titanfall 2 has a single player campaign, the meat of the game is in its multiplayer offerings. There are many different game types the player can participate in, though each boils down to the same objective -- kill the other team before they kill you. Outside of the game, there are no timers or premium currencies in the multiplayer modes, as would be expected in a $60 console game. There are, however, thousands of items to unlock, from guns to titans, and you can earn all of them for free just by playing. As you play, you’ll level up your Pilot, and once you hit max level, you have the option of “regenerating” your account, and starting over from level one with special rewards. It’s super easy to jump into a match -- just press play and you’ll be automatically match-made into one of the dozen or so game modes. Respawn also made it simple to play with your friends: simply invite them all to a party, and within a minute you’ll be taking on the world together.

There are tens of thousands of possible character setups, and hundreds of customization options for each piece of weapons and armor.

These factors make Titanfall 2 simple, but fun. Even when you’re dying a lot (as I do when I play), the times where you leap onto the back of a Titan and rip its battery out causing it to self-destruct, or just barely make the jump into an escape ship before it warps away, are moments that stick with you. Plus, after almost every single match you’re unlocking some new sticker, perk, or gadget to test out, giving a great sense of progression as your power through level after level. Of the 30-40 people I’ve personally talked to about the game while playing, every single one of them has had nothing but good things to say about the multiplayer action. Titanfall 2 may not be built for the faint of heart, but from the get-go it seems like it’s worth the price of admission.

A Battle For Players

It fits the mold, sure, but maybe a little too well. In fact, the more you play it, the more Titanfall 2 feels like a game that was developed to be the most stereotypical military first-person shooter possible, perhaps so as to capture players attention in a way Battlefield has struggled to in recent years. Titanfall 2 has a very clear audience: the mighty Male 18-24 block of young adults. This group is known for having a decent budget and time to burn, and they are fanatics about the games that they love. Because this audience is a very lucrative opportunity, it’s no surprise that many other games also target it aggressively. And no games franchise has been more successful at dominating this segment than the Call of Duty franchise, the undisputed king of the first-person shooter market.

Respawn knew this of course -- they even started the trend in the first place -- so when they made their original Titanfall game, they understood that they couldn’t rest on their laurels if they hoped to have a prayer of competing for the same players as Call of Duty. This led to them introducing several interesting innovations for the genre, such as shipping with no single-player campaign and adding layers of asymmetric gameplay. Despite their efforts, they ultimately fell short, with their target audience almost universally rejecting these new ideas. But was the design the problem, or was it the execution?

Based on the massive levels and over-the-top effects, you can tell that Titanfall 2’s single-player campaign was an immense undertaking. Unfortunately, the effort ends up being little more than a blip on the radar for most players as they jump into multiplayer as soon as possible.

In 2014 it would be difficult to argue in favor of Respawn’s novel design choices -- after all, few if any console games had successfully garnered massive player support without at least a minor single-player mode. But in 2016, Blizzard kicked the door down and showed the console world what those on PC had known for years: if the multiplayer is good enough, that’s all you need to succeed. Their fast-paced first-person-shooter Overwatch became a global hit from the day it was released, despite its lack of a solo campaign, in large part because everybody was having too much fun in the multiplayer to care about it missing.

While it’s true that Overwatch and Titanfall 2 are not targeting exactly the same set of players Overwatch stands out as proof that a AAA console title doesn’t need single player to be worth its players’ money. The fact that Titanfall 2 has an ultimately unrewarding single-player element included indicates that Respawn and EA missed this memo, choosing the safe route with their added features instead of continuing to innovate. Instead of emphasizing what made Titanfall 1 stand out from Call of Duty, they went the opposite direction with Titanfall 2 and retread the same path players were already getting elsewhere. Some of their original vision stuck around, but at the end of the day, Titanfall 2 is nearly indistinguishable from its counterpart at Activision.

Overwatch became an overnight success due to its engrossing multiplayer and unique style. Instead of a single-player campaign, Overwatch tells its characters’ stories through a series of free animated videos and comics, which double as promotional materials.

The end result of this strategy is that, as a player looking to spend my time and money, I don’t really see any reason to play both Titanfall 2 and Call of Duty. Since feature sets and gameplay are mostly the same, it becomes less a process of comparing gameplay and more a decision of experience where Activision (10 CoD games) wins every time over Respawn (2 Titanfall games). Even if I try both, I will probably be more receptive to the title made by a company I trust, since I know I can rely on Activision to keep the game fresh and interesting more so Respawn could.

Over and over again, EA and Respawn played it safe with Titanfall 2 instead of trusting the process and nailing the execution, and only managed to scratch the surface of what their audience really desired. The results in terms of sales numbers speak for themselves, and they’re not pretty. As of now, Titanfall 2 has sold less than 20% of the copies that Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare has, and that gap is likely to grow with every passing day and new iteration in the two franchises. Innovation and differentiation in any crowded market is key, and if you try to go toe-to-toe against a competitor without bringing much new to the table, you’re going to lose that fight before you even get started.

All Flair and No Substance

It’s very easy to say that Titanfall 2 didn’t hit the right notes with its target audience, but what exactly was it that its players wanted? After all, there were countless reviews bemoaning the lack of single player and other features in Titanfall 1, all of which were added to Titanfall 2, so what did EA and Respawn miss? The answer to that is simple to describe and yet mind-numbingly complex, and cuts much deeper than feature set or visuals ever could.

It’s one word: depth.

In order to create a game which retains players for a long time, it must be deep enough that players can never truly master it and contain a variety of strategies and mechanics which provide players with a constant challenge. Once they are no longer challenged by a game, a player will likely move on to a new game to get a new set of trials to master. The game can be single- or multi-player, and can be any genre imaginable, but it must have depth, or it will not keep players interested for long. And it is with its depth that Titanfall 2 unfortunately falls short in many painful ways.

One of Titanfall 2’s most pressing issues is the very low skill ceiling that Respawn created in building and balancing their core multiplayer. Although there are a bunch of different guns available, almost all of the handle and perform virtually the same in the end. The abilities, though different in result, are so extraordinarily powerful that they do not leave much room for the player to optimize and strategize with their play. And the easy-to-master Titans unleash far too much destruction to ever go without, removing what could be a unique gameplay decision of whether to drop your titan now, or wait for a better opportunity.

When you come face-to-face with an opposing Titan, prepare to run or be crushed underfoot. There are so many ways for a Titan to slay a Pilot that instead of it being an interesting cat-and-mouse game, it usually ends up in a predictable death for the Pilot.

Notice that depth does not mean difficulty or even have to be an in-game measure. Some games prioritize and succeed in designing depth through their meta-game (Hearthstone is a great example of this). If Titanfall 2 were alone in the market, these issues would likely have only a minor impact on retention and sales, but several competing games out now offer much more compelling depth than Titanfall 2, making the faults all the more glaring. Some examples of titles which excel at providing depth to players are:

Battlefield 1

In Battlefield 1, there are a dizzying array of loadouts available to use and vehicles that can be commandeered. When and how the different tools that a player has available to them are used can drastically change how they perform in a given match. On top of this, many strategies have a massive learning curve, whether it’s flying a biplane or being a perfect medic. A player could easily spend months trying to perfect their craft and still be learning, giving players a rewarding and immersive experience to come back to again and again.

Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare

In the most recent Call Of Duty title, the quantity and variation of decisions the player can make are far reaching and vital. Everything from your class, weapon, and scorestreaks (abilities which you can trigger after collecting a certain number of points without dying) can vastly change the way you play. On top of this, the score streaks and super abilities make the battles very dynamic, with a large amount of skill required to get full use out of your tactics. And since new strategies being introduced with each new iteration, Call Of Duty players know every year they are going to get a fresh challenge, keeping them hooked.

Overwatch

Bilzzard’s tour de force Overwatch leveraged a proven strategy practiced by many MOBA games of having a wide variety of characters to play as, and letting only one player per team use a specific character in any given match. Although this lowers the total number of possible team combinations, it allows the game design to make each character unique and powerful in their own way, as well as add multiple layers of depth to the way each character is played. These factors lead to a game which is consistently rewarding, no matter whether it is the first time or thousandth time you’re playing a character, as you always have something new to improve on or learn depending on your teammates, the map, and dozens of other elements.

This isn’t to say that Titanfall 2 has no learning curve or strategy -- it absolutely does, especially with the fluidity of movement. However, the depth that it does have is not as expansive or rewarding as it could be, often sacrificing important elements in the name of accessibility or balance. A few years ago, before its competitors’ innovations, the depth available may have been enough to please players, but now expectations have been raised well beyond what Titanfall 2 has to offer, and the game suffers mightily because of its shallow design.

The Invisible Release

Even with these issues, Titanfall 2 is still a blast to pick up and play, so you would expect it to at least have had a huge release before tapering off due to players looking for a new challenge. After all, a big marketing push can make just about any game go viral, especially around the holiday season. However, due to past history and a massive underestimation of the market, Titanfall 2 had one of the most tragic launches of a AAA game in 2016, squandering any chance it had at redeeming itself.

The origins of this launch go all the way back to 2013, when the Xbox One was announced with a new IP called Titanfall as one of its flagship titles. The game promised a brand new first-person shooter experience with some of the most advanced graphics and gameplay systems around, and would be available exclusively on the Xbox One when it launched in early 2014. It featured prominently in Microsoft’s advertisements for their new console during the Christmas holidays, and got its own EA-funded marketing near its launch a few months later.

Come launch time, Titanfall 1 did sell very well, to the tune of about 9 million copies, but the Xbox One console was struggling to gain market share, unable to keep up with the Playstation 4 that was quickly outpacing it in units sold. Soon after the release of Titanfall 1, EA started planning their console release schedule for the next couple of years, and they decided that they needed Titanfall 2 to help compete against Call Of Duty in 2016. The release date was set, and Respawn knew they needed to deliver big this time around.

Another exclusive launch would Respawn no good -- the game needed to come out on both PS4 and Xbox One, and some tough decisions needed to be made. Microsoft needed a big game to push for the holidays of 2016, and the other big EA title, Battlefield One, was the one they wanted. Sony, on the other hand, was out of the question -- they were sponsoring Call of Duty heavily from advertisements to esports, and wanted nothing to do with the new Titanfall game. This left EA and Respawn at a crossroads -- either foot the bill for all of Titanfall 2’s marketing and potentially dilute the success of Battlefield One, or do no promotions at all and hope for word of mouth to carry the game. They chose the latter option, and Titanfall 2 simply never could support itself as they’d hoped.

Titanfall 2 received little to no mention in the many months leading up to its release, online, on TV, or even at game conventions like E3. Even as the perfect reviews piled up, hardly any mention of it could be found anywhere. It all came to a head in a recent EA investors call, where they barely mentioned it in their earnings report and, when asked for a status update, gave a vague response about the game growing over time. However, due to some recent 50%-off sales, it is clear that Titanfall 2 has dropped off the map just as quickly as its predecessor, and it’s back to the drawing board for EA and Respawn with this franchise.

Conclusion

Titanfall 2 is a fascinating case of a AAA game release, a title which on the surface seemed like it would be a surefire success, and yet ended up as one of the year’s most disappointing failures. And crucially, it wasn’t a single misstep which led to its downfall. It all started with a lack of trust in the process that had started with Titanfall 1, which led to no exciting innovations in the sequel to differentiate it from competitors. Then, a series of poor decisions and misunderstanding the direction of the market drained the Titanfall 2 of its depth. And finally came its infamous release, which led to it never even getting off the ground to compete against its rivals. All these factors together crushed Titanfall 2, a game which had so much promise but simply couldn’t overcome its fatal flaws.

Personally, I hope that this is not the end for Respawn, and that they get another chance to try and innovate as they did with Titanfall 1. Given the right circumstance and support, a potential Titanfall 3 could be one of the biggest turnarounds in video game history, and I would be first in line to see if it lived up to its potential.