Titanfall: Take Down Enemy The Respawn Way

Respawn Entertainment's Vince Zampella, Steve Fukuda, Joel Emslie, Drew McCoy and Abbie Heppe reveal tips for weapon choices, wall-hangs, exploiting grunts, dirty tricks and humilating someone by dropping a titan on them.

Vince Zampella: When playing Titanfall I like to go with 'don't die...kill alot...'

Abbie Heppe: I watch people play all the time, everybody wants to play like they're playing a very linear shooter and they will duck behind things for cover, and then pop out and shoot a guy and then pop back, and you just want to get up on the walls and moving and experimenting with that as soon as possible.

Steve Fukuda: Instead of thinking about slicing the pilot around the corner and trying to see what's around that corner, just think vertical and go over everything. Another key tip for when piloting a titan is to think more in terms of not just charging in and you have to think more in terms of the measure and approach of attacking and protecting yourself.

Abbie Heppe: If someone is rodeoing you which is when they jump on your back and start ripping stuff off your titan, there's all these sort of tactics for getting rid of players on your back. If you jump up and jump kick the guy off - that's very satisfying.

Jessica Chobot: If you're a pilot, is there any specific gun you would recommend in order for a pilot to take down a titan?

Steve Fukuda: If you want to take advantage of the chaos you'd want to take the Archer Heavy Rocket. It's something that locks on from a distance and once you have a lock, it's going to go after the guy.

If you want to get a little more risky about it or you want to move in close to the titan, you can pull out the Sidewinder, and the Sidewinder will allow you to fire a lot of small rockets very quickly at the titan. But, there's travel time so you have to lead substantially.

The closer you get the less you have to lead, but the likelyhood you'll get stepped on or spotted by that titan increases. As a guy running around on the ground, then you probably want to try the Smart Pistol, but first, get a sense of how that works.

Joel Emslie: The smart pistol is a primary pistol that will auto-lock onto targets.

Steve Fukuda: You can try different experiments like running on the walls and locking onto people as you shoot them, or sailing through the air and aiming down at them and locking and shooting - and they all go down. So there's some cool tricks you can play when using the Smart Pistol.

Jessica Chobot: So what's the quickest way to level up?
Joel Emslie: The quickest way to level up in this particular place, is to go after the AI in the environment and when you're doing that you're more visible with a loud gun. So, try to find the quickest way to level up that weapon to a silencer so you can stay off the radar and still go after that AI.

Jessica Chobot: So what's the difference between a grunt and a spectre?
Abbie Heppe: Grunts are sort of military looking guys that you'll see running around a level. I like to use them especially when playing card points to walk in ahead of me, so that whoever's waiting for people to come into the hard point, will shoot them, and then I'll take them out he shoot's him.

Drew McCoy: We do have these human sized robots called spectres and they are AI controlled and they're a step up from the normal grunts.

Abbie Heppe: Spectres have different mobility, they can jump on top of buildings, they're harder to kill and they have more advanced weaponry to take down titans.

Drew McCoy: Spectres move in packs, but since they're robots, they're hackable. With The Data Knife you can slam into the back of their heads and you'll reprogramme them so they will then fight for you. One of the things that's kind of an advanced move that we don't teach too much is what we call the Wall-Hang. As a pilot, when you're wall running you can hold the left trigger and slam your knife into the wall and you'll hang there. So it's really to good to run into a room if someone's chasing you, jump up above the door you just came through, hang down and reign death down upon the guy after you.

Abbie Heppe: If you're hurting for health and you all of a sudden find yourself in a room of spectres - it might not very well for you...Especially if you get melee'd by the AI.

Jessica Chobot: Is it more of an insult than the injury itself?
Abbie Heppe: It's pretty humiliating, the only thing more humiliating, is when someone drops a titan on you.

Jessica Chobot: You can do that? How detailed can you get with that drop because I though it was just a drop in general.
There is a pretty decent amount of control you have over a drop, it's where you're looking on the ground and where you're looking where you want to do it. So it is a thing you do on purpose. It's definately a tactic to be used.

Abbie Heppe: So you can lure people in by standing there and shooting and hoping they walk over to get and then land a titan on them! Sometime's it happens by accident. Or if you see a big titan fight going down in the middle of the street, you might run over to where that's happening and try to call your titan down on top of it. So yeah, there's some dirty tricks you can play.

Jessica Chobot: So that's got to be an achievement?
Abbie Heppe: It's about the most satisfying thing you can do in the game.

Titanfall is available now exclusively for Xbox One® and PC.