In 2016 Respawn Entertainment released second game in the Titanfall series and with it came a great campaign with greatly designed levels and fun combat, one of those maps was the famous mission known as Effect and Cause. It is the fifth mission the player comes across when playing the game and it shows just how much creativity the designers at respawn had while making the game.

 

First let’s bring everyone up to speed with the game itself. Titanfall 2 is an FPS sci-fi shooter where the player controls a soldier who can run, slide, double jump, run along walls as well as use different abilities such as grappling hooks, making holograms of themselves, making themselves partially invisible and more. When they need to, they can also call down titans to fight with turning the game from a fast-paced shooter to more of a slow-paced MechWarrior type of game.

 

Once the player has made their way to the level Effect and Cause, they have become greatly used to all the wall sliding, double jumping and mech combat of the game so the developers had to come up with something new to challenge the player and they did not hold back, the main mechanic that this mission focuses on a time divergent in the area that makes the player jump back and forth in time.

 

The level starts of in an abandoned research lab and once there the player notices that they are seemingly randomly teleported back and forth between the past and the precent. After finding the soldier that they were looking to recon dead with his body stuck in the ceiling, the player is tasked with continuing his mission and find out what they were reassuring at the facility. Eventually the player finds the other half of the soldier’s body which lets them pick up the special wrist gauntlet that allows them to choose when to jump in time.

 

The level and game designers used the time jumping mechanic to such a great extent and you can really see that were creative in how the player will use it. In the beginning the player has no control over when they jump so the designers can make the player understand that in the past, technology such as doors and lasers works and the facility is whole, while in the present the facility is broken down and, in some places, even on fire. Once the player gets control of when they jump they are shown a hallway that is ablaze whoever the character uses the device to show the player that in the past it is safe to go, and then jumps back. This shows the player that they can now control when they change and if they missed it before it makes sure that they know that the level changes when the jump.

 

Towards the end of the level the designers start to combine the wall running and platforming aspect of the movement system with the time jumping even more. The area that the player finds themselves in seem to be some sort of construction where in the past robots were making these glass panels where some are just frames, whereas in the present those frames are done and the ones that were there in the past have now broken down. What is so great about this is that in both timelines the platforms that the player has to jump to has an outline, so the player always knows where to jump no matter what time they are in, yet it doesn’t break the immersion of it just being an indicator for the player.

 

The creativity of the designers doesn’t just stop at changing times to get through the level. In both points in time there are enemies, in the present there are animals that have taken over the abandoned facility as theirs and in the past there are security bots, so in most combats the player can fight in one of them, jump over to the other to reposition and reload and then jump back to fight. But in the later parts of the level the player must fight on both sides, making them have to juggle two fights at the same time. This is so greatly made in my opinion because you take away one of the players greatest powers to force them to think on their feet and really consider the design of the arena. A small touch that adds a lot to the experience when playing the level as well is that once the player has killed a soldier in the past, when they jump into the future the body of the soldier is still there but now an overgrown skeleton instead.

 

This level shows the attention to detail of the designers and what can happen when you take an idea and expand it to its fullest while also combining it with what has already been established to build something greater than what came before. The designers also did a great job of introducing the concept for the level to the player using both the narrative as well as gameplay to make what could have been a confusing concept feel easily understandable.