Whenever I continue to hear about the conversations of “Titanfall” and the issue of restrictive movement I’ve seen in various games, I constantly feel like we need a reminder as to why we need restriction.
This article is, as always, derived from Bungie’s “Marathon” and their closed alpha after I constantly talk about and interact with ideas concerning it due to how it’s taken over the past couple of days for me. The topic, however, comes a bit more from the feedback given on places like Twitter in which I would prefer not to link specific people as my words would be more negative than I’d like to direct at them. It comes from the idea that movement in “Marathon” is too stiff or restrictive, something echoed as an issue in the alpha by a crowd of feedback. In the effort of discussing this, I’m reminded of various other aspects of this conversation about movement that always comes back to “Titanfall 2.”
Considering my article is going to focus on it, I feel obligated to explain the beloved shooter. Titanfall 2 was Respawn Entertainment’s star shooter, a fast paced first person game with a fan favorite single player story as well as multiplayer love that still has almost 2k active players even as we approach a 9th year since release. A major draw was the game’s smooth movement and gunplay which is known as doubling as a parkour simulator—wall running and jumping, sliding, grapple hooks, and freedom all contributed to the adrenaline pounding action. It was a powerful compliment to their Titans—massive powerful mechs that were called in to fight in which combat became even more chaotic.
Titanfall 2 is in perpetual conversation when referring to shooter games, especially in the genre of sci-fi or high action shooters. No game captures the magic that Titanfall 2 did, even with the introduction of additional movement in games like “Halo: Infinite.” Respawn Entertainment still has yet to announce a “Titanfall 3,” even if there’s leaks to suggest it might be on the way. Instead, we received “Apex Legends” which is considered one of the more movement heavy battle royales currently on the market. Respawn Entertainment did a lot of good work with this game to make it appealing to fans of their previous game, but it came with some drawbacks to their vision.
“Tap-Strafing” is an unintended feature present in Apex Legends that created a way to change mid-air movement with rapid jump inputs that allow you to move unpredictably. This is, as noted previously, unintentional. Apex Legends recently attempted to add a buffer system that would nerf or remove this, but as of January 10th, 2025 the change was reverted due to negative feedback. The world of Apex Legends may not have been designed around the abilities of this considering the lack of counterplay and inaccessibility, but it appears that for now it is here to stay. Why then, you might ask, did I note previously that it was a drawback to their vision? Well, here’s the kicker. This wasn’t the first time they tried to remove the feature. In 2021, Respawn Entertainment attempted to remove tap-strafing citing the same reasons I highlighted above. As was repeated earlier this year, that change was reverted and tap-strafing stayed in the game until current time.
The point of highlighting these issues is that the opinions of an audience or playerbase can directly contrast with that of the developers, something that asks the question of what can truly be the correct course of action for a game. While the developers have control of the game at the end of the day, their goals to please the audience are their priority and the opinions of that audience must influence their decisions to a point. This comes with the nuance that gamers have a biased perspective—for one, the audience of the top players for Apex Legends are retired Titanfall 2 players who yearn for the movement and freedom given. The wants for this movement are independent of the battle royale genre and are instead for the familiarity of that freedom of movement. The developers are intending to make a battle royale game in which the movement is fluid and accessible as well as allowing for a consistent experience in which position changes are met with counterplay, but their choice in order to keep veteran players causes a compromise on this vision.
This article ends here because with my limited experience in Respawn’s games don’t allow me a personal connection to debate on which choice is more valuable for the overall health of the game, but it does give me a way to explain the reasoning that games don’t all become another Titanfall 2 with free movement. The restrictions that Respawn Entertainment placed onto Apex Legends show that with their entry into a new genre they wanted to apply more control in order to allow for more accessible gameplay to new players. They also wanted to ground players more in order to design abilities around this counterplay that don’t just rely on aim skill. Losing part of this vision via their compromise is obviously going to change the way in which players interact with their game, but the effects of this are not inherently positive or negative. We watch as things like this occur from the outside in many games, but we truly don’t know how we might feel until it affects us directly.
If only there was a way that I could explain it through a lens I truly understood.
And yes, that is a segue into tomorrow’s article.