E3 2016: 10 Things We Learned From Titanfall 2's Single Player Trailer

5. Melee Combat Is Getting An Upgrade

Titanfall 2
Respawn

Remember the days when melee combat in FPS's amounted to little more than a thumbstick click and a brief knife animation? Yeah, seems almost infantile compared to what we get today, doesn't it?

Of course, the aforementioned ninja-mech robots of death all seem fairly adept in dispatching their enemies with a combination of swords, guns and fisticuffs, but we also saw some fairly intricate melee combat come from the actual human pilots themselves.

They can't be anything other than predetermined animations that are context-sensitive, which is unfortunate to a degree. However, these moves do look to be impacted by environmental factors, with one moment in the trailer depicting a soldier throwing another off a railing. Again, this could all be derivative of the linear and scripted action of Call of Duty, but it shouldn't be wishful thinking to hope that these moves are acts provoked by the player in game.

After all, it was the same case in the original Titanfall's multiplayer component, so any upgrade on that is a great improvement.

In this post: 
Titanfall 2
 
Posted On: 
Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.