Trivia / Titanfall 2

• Acclaimed Flop: Although the game received stellar reviews and is considered to be better than the first Titanfall game, it sold less than its predecessor. Many analysts and pundits blame lackluster sales for several factors like competition from Call Of Duty Infinite Warfare and Battlefield 1, fan backlash from first Titanfall game, and mediocre marketing.
• Colbert Bump:
  • Alongside one received due to Respawn's notoriety rising after Apex Legends, the game received two in the span of a few months, with the first being the game being made available for free for PS+ owners during December 2019. It also saw another playerbase bump after EA decided to release many of their titles onto Steam in Jun 2020.
  • It received an additional bump with Season 9 of Apex Legends, which added Valkyrie, the daughter of Titanfall 2 boss Viper. This led to players of both Apex Legends and Titanfall 2 crossing the pond, giving both games a major boost in their player bases.
• Cult Classic: Titanfall 2 is shaping up to be one of the largest cases of this in the 2010s. After a weak launch period, the game has remained alive through word of mouth and several external boosts, with the campaign being praised for its gameplay and story while the multiplayer is often hailed as one of the strongest multiplayer modes of the decade.
• Dueling Works: With Call Of Duty Infinite Warfare - both titles, released within ten days of each other, revolve around an interstellar war between a politically potent group of first-world nations/planets and a less-developed frontier that is attempting to gain independence, similar to the "Alliance Vs. Browncoats" conflict from Firefly. Both franchises are the products of the same minds - Jason West and Vince Zampella built Call of Duty for Infinity Ward before leaving to find Respawn Entertainment. The fact that Titanfall places players on the side of La Résistance, whereas Infinite Warfare takes the perspective of The Federation becomes amusing.
• Meme Acknowledgment: One of the modes eventually added, which gives players three uses of the Grappling-Hook Pistol, is called Attack On Titanfall. This, of course, is based on all the comparisons this game had to Attack on Titan.
• Newbie Boom:
  • The game experienced two at the beginning and end of 2019: The announcement and popularity of Apex Legends brought a lot of interest back into this title, and being given away as a Play Station Plus title in December resulted in tens of thousands of new players trying it for the first time.
  • The game is once more experiencing a resurgence in September 2023, as fixes to matchmaking (which had been plagued by DDOS attacks for years) made Multiplayer viable once more. The 90% Steam sale for the game going on at the time certainly helped, and as of recent edit, the concurrent player base has been in the upper 20,000s, which has been the highest the game had seen since its launch.
• Off-the-Shelf FX: Played with (since the developers clearly have enough budget and time to make do with) - according to Respawn's blog and some interviews, the Titans and Pilots were first designed by scratch-building kitbashing models as the base.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Experienced Titanfall player "FrothyOmen" was sponsored by publishers Electronic Arts to create the "Pilot School" video series for Titanfall 2.
  • After Titanfall 2 player "Gamesager" achieved the fastest time at a promotional event, Respawn Entertainment added his name to the top of the gauntlet leaderboard in the Tutorial Level of the campaign.
• Sleeper Hit: Amusingly, in contrast to the first Titanfall - while the game's popularity isn't stellar (especially when publisher Electronic Arts released the game a week after behemoth title Battlefield 1), it garnered good reception and reviews from both critics and gamers. This was even more so after it was re-released on Steam in 2020, during a new game drought owing to COVID-19, on sale for £8. It shot up in playerbase and popularity, re-igniting its spark.
• The Other Darrin: Sarah Briggs was played by Respawn Entertainment's own community manager, Abbie Heppe, in the first game. While Heppe is still credited as providing motion capture acting for the Sequel, she was replaced by actual voice actor Jolene Anderson.