A close analysis of Titanfall 2's level Effect and Cause

Titanfall 2 is just supposed to be a military shooter about giant robots, right? Well that’s what we thought too, until we played the game a couple weeks ago, and were greeted with one of possibly the greatest prompts in video game history: [REDACTED SPOILER!].

Effect and Cause, the level that hosts [REDACTED SPOILER!] and its associated level design, is an interesting sample of what Titanfall 2 does really well. It mixes up some of the core mechanics that were found in the first Titanfall, slowly onboards the player to a [REDACTED SPOILER!], and then doesn’t hesitate in dropping the player into utter science fiction weirdness. 

So today, we sat down and played Effect and CAuse to analyze its design step by step. 

As seen above, we spent much of our replay discussing how much the game closely resembles [REDACTED SPOILER!], in that it’s one of many tightly contained levels built around a set of playful interactions that don’t dramatically affect [REDACTED SPOILER!]. We also took the opportunity to point out some of the key level design moments that developers can clearly analyze and learn from when working on their own levels. 

It was a great chat (with some lovely commentators!) so be sure to give the whole thing a watch if you’re a fan of [REDACTED SPOILER!]. Also be sure to subscribe to our Twitch channel for more regular [REDACTED SPOILER!] commentary and developer interviews.