The Making of Horizon Zero Dawn’s Machines

As we count down to Horizon Zero Dawn’s release on 1st March, Guerrilla Games reflects on the creation of its action RPG, and shares stories about the key beats that shaped its new game. In part two, Game Director Mathijs de Jonge, Art Director Jan-Bart van Beek, Lead Quest Designer David Ford, Combat Designer Troy Mashburn and Managing Director Hermen Hulst talk the making on its already iconic machines, and handpick their personal favorites.

Even the earliest thrilling iconography of Horizon Zero Dawn could be split evenly in two: on one side, there’s red-haired heroine Aloy, bow taut and ready to fight. On the other, the hulking, immediately intriguing design of an animalistic machine.

This mechanized threats, so intrinsic to the world’s ecosystem and its overarching mystery are already iconic. The nimble Watcher of the earlier reveals has become a PlayStation event cosplay mainstay, while the hulking Thunderjaw has been immortalized in the game’s fantastic artwork.

Creating the Concept of the Machines

“We didn’t know how animalistic we should go for the machines,” confesses Horizon Zero Dawn’s director Mathijs de Jonge of the initial design process. “We did crude models and mockups at a very early stage.”

Surprising this may be given the game’s background story being humanity’s regression to a primitive culture and surviving an aggressive, dominant animalistic species, but ‘dinosaur’ wasn’t the immediate creative direction the team went in.

“We did some machines that were more like scorpions,” explains Mathijs, “but we noticed that shooting at it was really problematic… the legs were so thin you barely had any surface to hit.” The game’s director Jan-Bart van Beek (JB) concurred from a visual perspective. “We shied away from these because it gave the game a completely different feel. It’s different shooting alien-looking machines compared to robot dinosaurs, which changes the gameplay. Visually it didn’t work as well either, compared to seeing big robot dinosaurs!”

And with large surface areas and mechanisation key components, it allowed Guerrilla Games to entertain the idea of multi-layered animals with collectable components that could be shot off. Horizon Zero Dawn’s fantastical beasts – and their creator – had found their inspiration, though Mathijs is quick to point out that not one mechanized creature is a parallel of a real world one, extinct or not. “The Watcher in the game,” he uses as away of example. “it’s animalistic but you can’t say exactly what type of animal it is, which was what we were aiming for – it should resemble a combination of animals but not a literal translation of a singular one.”

That said, there was one particular, familiar type that was attempted, but become a creative dead end: rabbit-like metallic animals. Mathijs dismisses them with a laugh. “That looked so weird!”

Bone and Flesh, Steel and Cable

You’ll notice smaller game – geese, boar for example – wandering the wildlands as you explore, which ties into the fiction of tribes’ hunting for fur and meat. But Mathijs touches upon the decision not to include larger flesh-and-blood animals onto the digital reserve, pinpointing its effect on gameplay.

“We initially considered having larger predators animals like mountain lions and bears, but we thought it may get a little strange as they’d get into conflict with the machines and you’d get these weird looking fights between them,” he laughingly remembers.

Besides, Aloy’s got enough to contend with as humans are thrown into the procedurally-generated mix, stories of which both Combat Designer Troy Mashburn and Managing Director Hermen Hulst happily share. The former remembering how a group of people being chased by a machine ran smack into another mechanised pack. An “epic battle” ensued. “It wasn’t scripted to happen, it just happened.”

Similarly Hulst remembers prepping for a machine encounter, only for a humanoid faction to wander into the fray. “All of a sudden I had a much more intense fight than I was planning to have! That sort of thing happens all the time.”

The creators pick their personal favorites from Horizon Zero Dawn’s machines

Troy Mashburn, combat designer: “Shell Walkers have a variety of things you can do to them. They’re fun as you need to plan how to attack them, set traps and maybe disable them piece by piece, or maybe lob some explosive grenades and weaken them.”

David Ford, lead quest designer: “The Scrapper looks like a hyena, has more weak points but not one single critical weak point. That presents a different challenge. They have this scary projectile attack from their mouth and they’re really good at flanking and swarming you, so they can be deadly in groups.”

Mathijs De Jonge, game director: “The Watcher was one of the first machines we built in prototype in animation, about five years ago. It had no AI at the time, just animation, but immediately felt so real.”

JB, art director: “The Thunderjaw – the massive T-rex machine – is a favourite. Also because it was the first one that we did and was our proof of concept; if we could make this work then we could make the game work.”

War Machines: Masters of the Earth

JB coins the term “ancient war machines” as an apt description of Aloy’s fearsome foes. Lead narrative designer John Gonzales calls them “the masters of this Earth.”

“They’re the stars of the show,” Managing Director Hermen says simply. “I like how different the machines are from each other,” touching on the impressive species count – 25 unique kinds – that roam the world you’ll find yourself in. “There’s an entire ecology which feels natural – some behave to try and stick with a herd, so even if you lure one away they still try to have that herd mentality.”

David Ford, lead quest designer, elaborates. “If you’re tactical about where you’re shooting [the machines] you can do a lot more damage. If you’re shooting the sides or the armour plating of a Watcher for example, it will eventually go down, but during that time its buddies can swarm and overwhelm you.” Ford pinpoints the Watcher’s eye as the place to aim for an instant-kill. Yet even knowing a beast’s weak spots doesn’t lessen the thrill of the hunt – be you hunter or hunted. “It’s an incredibly satisfying experience because they never quite get to the point where they’re trivial.”

Hulst echoes a similar sentiment. “Even as an experienced Horizon player, I get a different type of fun toying with four or five Watchers at the same time – whereas at the beginning at the game just one is tough! And sometimes you’ll come across one which has a upgraded with a few skills that they didn’t have at the start of the game, so they develop with you.”

“I like how, as a player, you can learn about [machines] by scanning them and finding their weak spots and behavioural patterns,“ he continues. “There’s so much backstory that’s expressed via gameplay. We really have to switch things up depending on which machines you’re coming across at the time. And the sound team did a great job bringing them to life.”

I can attest to machine ferociousness and iconic sounds. Even combating a single Watcher late into a recent preview event I was surprised at its cunning and respectful of its power. One tail strike knocked Aloy across the glade of the overgrown city ruins I was fighting in and depleted half her health. As I readied to strike back, a sudden high-pitched whine behind instinctively had me roll out of the way. A split-second later another Watcher launched itself at the spot I just vacated. I’d found myself in the middle of a Watcher pack with no recourse but to fight my way out.

JB summed up my feelings from the encounter best. “All the machines need to be awe-inspiring, threatening, overwhelming and overpowering,” a sense of presence that every creature, great and small, carries. “We wanted to portray a sense of majesty – we want you to look at these landscapes and have them take your breath away.”

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Horizon Zero Dawn Out Tuesday, Watch the Launch Trailer

It is my pleasure to be able to share the launch trailer for Guerrilla’s new title, Horizon Zero Dawn. This is easily our most ambitious project that we have taken on.

When we began our journey over five years ago, we wanted to have the creative freedom to imagine something fresh. As soon as we saw the enthusiasm from the team for the concept, and our lead Aloy, we knew we were on the right path.

The result of our voyage is Horizon Zero Dawn – a game set in a lush post-apocalyptic world, in which Machines are the dominant species and mankind is propelled back to the stone ages. It is a game of exploration, not just of the perilous new world but also of Aloy’s identity.

On behalf of the entire team at Guerrilla, I hope you’ll enjoy accompanying Aloy on her journey as much as we have enjoyed creating it for you.

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Ruiner: Walk the Darkest Alleyways of 2091 in Upcoming PS4 Shooter

You were hacked and used as a tool to kill the Boss of Heaven. I broke the hack, but it was a mess. You lost an arm and barely made it out of there. Your brother was kidnapped to make sure you did your job. He’s going to die unless you find him first.

You’ve all been asking for it: Ruiner is coming to PS4 this summer.

Set in 2091, Ruiner will drag you through the darkest, shadiest, deadliest corners of the rapidly growing, brilliant metropolis of Rengkok City. From the shiny corridors of Heaven’s corporate interiors, through the city’s lowest districts — even into the underground imagination farms.

Your brother is there, somewhere, waiting for you to save him.

It won’t be easy. Those who took him know you’re coming. Their hideouts are armed with mines, traps, and sentry guns, and they’re protected by armies of specialized guards and deadly assassins — some human, some machine, some in between. To tear through all that, you’ll need loads of weapons and gadgets. And some skill.

Let’s start with melee. You can stick to your good old pipe, but if you want something more fancy, go for nano katana or electric sword, or one of the heavy, two-handed super-swords. The two modes of fencing have their own advantages and special attacks. The first, light one lets you stun enemies for a second, a lot of time to finish them. The heavy melee whirlwind AOE attack is not only spectacular but deals massive amounts of damage, too!

Then there are more than 20 guns to choose from. Starting with conventional pieces like pistols, SMGs, shotguns, and plasma rifles, all the way up to hi-tech armaments like the singularity gun, orbital cannon, sonic shotgun, lightning cannon, subzero gun, rail gun, and more. Just wait for the enemies to drop them and try for yourself. Some come with bullets that pierce through multiple enemies, stun them, set them ablaze, disintegrate them, or bounce off walls making the whole battlefield look like an insane dance-floor.

Combine that with the lot of the unlockable gadgets and cyber implants and you can see the multitude options for bringing your vengeance to the doorstep of those who did you wrong.

Dash and shield are your best friends. The mix of their offensive and defensive abilities make you one deadly ball of fury. As with any other gadget you obtain later in the game, you can upgrade and develop them, too. With Multidash you can plan out and execute your dash sequence in self-defense or as an offensive move, to chase down your enemies and take their weapons.

Upgraded shields will deflect projectiles, making you an impenetrable, deadly reflector.

Kinetic barriers let you control the battlefield, dividing the space around you, separating you from and slowing down foes and their bullets so you can pick them apart, one by one. Activating the Slow Motion mode, you can almost freeze the scene in time and calculate your options. Overclock mode lets you dive straight into the fire of close combat, making you almost invincible, while Switch Gun gives you more space: why not make your enemies work for you while you think of your next move from a distance. Did I mention grenades? You have those, too.

Each gadget, including your melee weapon, can be upgraded in a number of ways to support and expand developing your play style.

Luckily, you’re not in this alone. You have me, Puppy. Go get them!

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First Hands-on with Mass Effect: Andromeda

Bioware’s shaking things up for Mass Effect: Andromeda, the first PS4 installment in its spacefaring action-RPG series. The game’s setup represents a clean break from the original Mass Effect trilogy, taking place 600 years later in another galaxy as a crew of explorers searches for humanity’s new home.

Despite the shift in time and place, Mass Effect: Andromeda retains all the signature elements that propelled the series to fame. You’ll assemble an all-star team of adventurers; explore exotic locations both beautiful and hostile; pore over rich, detailed fiction; engage in thought-provoking conversation with an ensemble cast of colorful characters.

So what’s new, then? Much to my delight, I found Andromeda’s action to be faster and far more ferocious, with tighter gunplay and more responsive handling. Two new maneuvers — a boost jump (X) and an evasive dash (Circle) — lend a more kinetic feel and allowed me to quickly reposition mid-battle or move in for the kill as the situation dictated. Based on what I played in the first four hours of the game, I’m betting that this combat overhaul will greatly expand the game’s appeal.

Andromeda’s biotics also benefit from a more muscular approach. As series veterans will recall, biotics are superhuman powers that can drag enemies out of cover, unleash energy blasts, and so forth. Bioware has reworked how all the various powers and abilities interact with each other, creating a reworked “combo” system that proved to be one of my favorite additions to Andromeda’s gameplay.

Most offensive abilities are considered either “primers” or “detonators,” and Andromeda’s UI includes a handy graphical icon to help you tell the difference. Deploying a primer skill, then landing a follow-up detonator attack will trigger a combo and inflict more damage on your target.

That means you can grab an enemy with Lift (primer) and follow up with Concussive Shot (detonator) for a huge damage boost. Other interactions can unleash more exotic effects; detonating a Cryo Beam attack can trigger an icy nova effect that chills nearby enemies. Better still, combos can be primed or detonated by either you or your AI squadmates. There’s plenty of room for improvisation!

Some of the new abilities caught my eye, too. On the Biotics side, Lance fires a precise energy shaft that can inflict huge damage on enemy weak points and detonate combos, while Backlash can reflect some incoming attacks if properly timed. New Tech skills include a Flamethrower that can set enemies ablaze, and an Invasion ability that weakens enemies with a swarm of small robots. For Combat skills, the Flak Cannon and Tripmines add an extra offensive punch.

On a related note, Andromeda abandons formal character classes, instead adopting flexible skill “profiles” that empower players to adapt to individual challenges. Given the tighter action and new primer/detonator combos, this seems like a smart move to me.

I noticed a host of subtle gameplay refinements as well. Taking cover is now a smoother, contextual process that doesn’t require a button press. Healing and resupplies seemed to be handled by grabbing pickups located in the environments, versus fiddling in a menu to find that Medi-Gel.

Outside of combat, my experiences with Andromeda demonstrated plenty of promise. With Commander Shepard out of the picture, newcomers Scott and Sarah Ryder make for capable protagonists. A species of brutish tyrants called the Kett appear to serve as the core antagonists, with much of the conflict revolving around an ancient alien relic called the Remnant.

Later in the demo, I took control of the Tempest, Andromeda’s answer to the Normandy, and spent a few minutes bonding with its crew. My highlight was Jaal, a soulful alien with a mysterious past touched by the Kett. I’m betting he’ll quickly become a fan favorite.

True to Mass Effect form, the conversations were freewheeling, philosophical, and deeply fascinating. It’s worth noting that Andromeda replaces the Paragon and Renegade conversation options from prior games with new conversational “tones” — emotional, logical, and so on — that can influence the direction of conversation.

After my chat, I landed on a new planet and explored the Kadara Market, a seedy hive of villainy populated by spies and scoundrels. Then I hopped into an armored Nomad to explore the bleak surface of Kadara, carefully avoiding acid lakes and aggressive, raptor-like creatures.

These Nomad expeditions evoked the best parts of the Mako sequences from the original Mass Effect, but offered up far more environmental variety and interesting emergent combat encounters. At one point, I spotted a skirmish at a small outpost in the distance. I pulled up, jumped out, and helped some local fighters finish off a squad of Outcast Raiders. These scenarios aren’t quite open world, but they feel big, exciting, and brimming with possibility.

On a related note, exploration-minded players will love scanning objects in the environment, a new addition that’s used to solve puzzles, unlock new lore in the Codex, and earn research points for equipment upgrades.

For those wondering how much Andromeda will build on the story of the original Mass Effect trilogy, the answer appears to be: not so much. Since Andromeda is a major departure from the original trilogy, don’t expect to bump into Shepard or the Reapers. A Bioware rep did tell me, however, that eagle-eyed players may uncover a few narrative morsels that relate to that story. You won’t be importing past save files to carry on any narrative choices, either, as it doesn’t fit with the new protagonist and setting.

We also got a peek at the pre-release version of Andromeda running on PS4 Pro, where it will support higher resolutions as well as HDR features. The results were impressive — we’ll have more details to share there soon as we prepare for the game’s launch on March 21.

Have any questions? Let me know in the comments below!

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Ghost Recon Wildlands Open Beta Starts Today, Here’s What You Can Do

Ghost Recon Wildlands gives you the chance to explore a truly massive open world with a team of elite operatives, dismantling the operations of the Santa Blanca drug cartel however you see fit. And starting today, you’ll be able to get a sense for just how big Wildlands is when the open beta gives all PS4 players a free taste of what’s in store.

Running through February 27, the open beta will set you loose in two Bolivian provinces, Itacua and Montuyoc, where you’ll be tasked with finding and neutralizing high-ranking Santa Blanca operatives.

If you were selected to play the closed beta for Ghost Recon Wildlands in early February, you already recognize Itacua as the place where you established ties with the Kataris 26 rebels, traded shots with corrupt Unidad troops, and hunted down La Yuri and El Polito, two lovers who’d turned their medical expertise to interrogation and torture.

They’re back again in the open beta, although they’ll stay dead if you killed them before, as any progress you made in the closed beta will carry over. And there’s plenty more where they came from; the open beta is a hugely expanded experience, with enough total content to fuel around eight hours of gameplay.

What’s New in the Open Beta?

Montuyoc is a mountainous province that includes the popular Bolivian salt flats. Santa Blanca keeps a huge arsenal and trains its best sicarios in this province, so you can expect a stiffer challenge than you faced in Itacua. There’s a new Santa Blanca warlord to chase, and to find him, you’ll need to raid Santa Blanca encampments and strongholds to destroy their weapons, kill their elite instructors, and interrogate cartel officers across five new story missions (in addition to the six already available in Itacua). And if you want to learn more about your target and the Santa Blanca, you’ll be able to find 12 new Kingslayer Files filled with fascinating dirt on your enemies.

As before, you’ll be able to tackle these any way you see fit, customizing your Ghost and their loadout to suit your tactics. If stealth is your thing, you can wait until nightfall and sneak to your objectives, using night vision and silenced weapons to avoid full-blown firefights. You can coordinate with other players to line up synchronized sniper shots, skydive straight to your objectives from a helicopter, or smash through enemy fortifications with powerful military vehicles. Or you can go in solo with a computer-controlled squad, issuing orders and picking off cartel guards at your own pace.

The open beta also adds a fistful of new side missions, including new rebel operations and supply raids, and you can further break from the beaten path to track down new intel drops and earn new weapons, accessories, and skill points for beefing up your Ghost. If you’re truly adventurous, you’ll also be able to tackle the open beta at the hardest difficulty, testing your squad’s mettle against Santa Blanca’s best or seeing how long you can survive solo.

The open beta will be free to all PS4 players (although you’ll need a PS Plus membership to play co-op) and will run from February 23 through February 27. And if it leaves you hungry for more, you won’t have long to wait, as Ghost Recon Wildlands launches on March 7.

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The Hideo Kojima Death Stranding interview: Strands, Decima and Guerrilla Games

It’s been particularly hard to avoid being swept-up in the wave of Death Stranding, ever since Hideo Kojima appeared on stage at last year’s Sony E3 conference and triumphantly declared to the cheering crowd – “I’m back”.

And with a bang, it seemed. The reveal trailer for Death Stranding was one of the most talked-about segments from a busy E3 show, and the follow-up teaser at TGA has resulted in even more questions and rumours circulating around Kojima Productions’ first independent project.

Kojima-san was in Australia for RTX Sydney and we were privileged to have the opportunity to sit down with him during his busy schedule to find out more about the ‘Strands’ gameplay, the reason behind using the Decima Engine, and how development was going on the project.

Has the idea for Death Stranding always been there, or is it something that has blossomed very quickly and developed based on the new collaboration with Sony Interactive Entertainment?

This is a question I get asked a lot. When we started our new studio, I came up with several ideas, but we chose to do Death Stranding because it answered the questions – “What game do I need to make now? What type of game does the market want now? What kind of game can we make? We really wanted to make something that was different. That was out-of-the-box, and Death Stranding was the answer to this.

Sometimes people have an idea from when they were a child, and they’ll turn that into a game when they’re an adult, but I don’t think that’s the way to approach the subject because every day our lives change. Society changes every day, and we need to make something that is topical and something that is in-line with the world that we live in now.

What type of game will Death Stranding be?

You can think of Death Stranding as an action game. Many people play games in the shooting genre and I want to make a game that is very intuitive for them so they can get into the experience very easily, but when they play it for a bit they will realise there is a certain new type of depth to it, something that they might not have seen before.

Can you tell us more about the gameplay?

I can’t really speak on that right now but in a word, it’s an action game – an open world game, with a lot of freedom. You have a lot of freedom of choice to do what you want to do and you can get in vehicles and so on. If you are a fighter, there’s plenty of opportunity for that. If you’re not that type of player, there are other ways to play this game. I can’t really say much more, but it’s an open-world, action game that’s very intuitive to play. Once you get into the world and start to explore more, we’re hoping there’s something there you’ve never seen before.

We have heard about the ‘Strands’ concept that is being introduced for this game, what does this mean, exactly?

Concerning the ‘Strands’, this is my 31st year in the games industry and I’ve been deep in action games across that time. In action games, generally, the player has a gun and plays against enemies in a single player environment – or they take it online and play against other players in a competitive environment. They join in together with guns – [laughs] it’s almost always with guns – to take down a stronger opponent. In this game you can do that but I wanted to go a little deeper beyond that with something that doesn’t focus on a weapon like a gun and that’s what has a connection to the strand concept.

It has also been said that Death Stranding will feature a new type of online play, differing from the traditional. Can you tell us more about this type of gameplay?

Again, this is something that we can’t say a lot about at the moment but if you want to play the game stand-alone, without an online component, that’s perfectly fine. We do have an online component and, again, it’s different as there will be something different versus what most people expect from an online game. A lot of games have a ‘campaign mode’ and once you’re done with that you take it to the online mode. This game is not that kind of structure.

During your studio tour with Mark Cerny, did you have a vision of what you were looking for in a game engine already?

We visited 15 studios around the world with Mark Cerny, and after this we spent another 6 months visiting other studios of people that I know. In total we visited 30 studios looking for the engine. I had a vision for the type of engine that we needed because I knew the type of game that I wanted to create.

So, first, I knew that I wanted to create an open world game, so the engine had to support an open world game structure. As far as the visuals were concerned, I was looking for very photo-realistic presentation, so the engine had to be able to support those types of visuals.

Also, the tool-set had to be easy to use. With some engines, the tools are behind a ‘black-box’ and for our purposes we needed to be able to optimize and edit the tools. These were the conditions we had when looking for the engine. As you know there are some commercially available engines and these are the ones with the ‘black-box’ type structure.

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“They handed over what was basically the crystallisation of their efforts over many years.”

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And what specifically led to the adoption of Guerrilla Games’ Engine?

I visited many studios all around the world, meeting many great people. Guerrilla Games in Amsterdam: their technology was just a league ahead of everywhere else. Even though they have an open world they are able to render very rich scenes with many objects. As you know their upcoming game Horizon Zero Dawn, which is coming out in February, has an artistic sensibility, particularly with regards to the use of color, whereas we’re looking for a very photo-realistic sensibility.

Their engine is built for their purposes, for the game that they wanted to create, and as I said we wanted to create a game that even at the very base levels looks very different from that, so we needed to test it to see how far we could tune their engine to fit our purposes.

Usually when you go to use, buy or borrow an engine, someone will say, “Lend us your name,” or of course ask for payment. We had no contract with Guerrilla Games, but when we met them they suddenly gave us a box, a very pretty box. When we opened the box, there was a USB dongle inside that had the source code for the engine.

Keep in mind we had no contract or anything at this stage, yet still they handed over what was basically the crystallisation of their efforts over many years. They simply said, “Mr. Kojima please use this engine,” and we thought these people are incredible.

There was one condition though, that Kojima Productions doesn’t just use the engine, but that we develop the engine together with Guerrilla Games, that it should be a collaborative effort. So we were really blown away by their stance on this and being so open with the engine and we thought “Wow, these are the people we have to work with.”

How has this collaboration with Guerrilla Games grown since first adopting the engine?

We were looking for a realistic presentation (for TGA), so we had to make changes to the tools and other adjustments to the engine. Over the course of 6 months we passed the code back and forth between Guerrilla Games and Kojima Productions, working off the same code base. At this point our code had completely merged together.

It was different from the engine they originally gave us, so we decided we should give this new engine a name. That’s when we came up with the ‘Decima’ name (derived from Dejima – an artificial island in Japan where The Netherlands and Japan would trade during the Edo period). I really feel that with both of us working on this engine we are accomplishing the work at twice the speed and building something really fantastic.

Norman Reedus and Mads Mikkelsen are working on this project, so can we expect more Hollywood stars to be revealed on the project in the future?

Unfortunately, we can’t really say anything with regards to Death Stranding at the moment, but I feel like this type of method (working with Hollywood stars and actors) in games is going to become the norm in the future. Creating movies and creating games like this, the process is very similar.

Was the part of the protagonist written with Reedus in mind?

When I went independent and I was thinking about my first game in my head, I did see Norman playing this character. The visuals of this character were based on using Norman Reedus as the precedent.

Finally, can you tell us how development is going so far?

As you know, we have a new office in Tokyo and we’re still hiring additional staff to work with us. We’re still running tests on the game, but we have made it to the stage where we have the framework worked out. This year is all about hardcore production and development, so please look forward to the fruits of our labor further down the road.

We certainly will, Kojima-san.

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Titanfall 2: Live Fire Mode Drops February 23, 5 Tips from the Team

Hello PlayStation Pilots! As the team is getting ready to ship out Live Fire, our next free update for Titanfall 2 players, we wanted to check in with some details on this brand-new mode you’ll be playing when it drops on February 23.

Live Fire is a new mode for Titanfall 2 with lightning fast, six-on-six Pilot action. It brings competitive, close quarters combat to the forefront. A round-based mode with no respawns, you have one minute to eliminate the opposing team in order to win the round. You can also win the round if your team is holding the neutral flag when the round timer ends. It’s fast, frantic, and sure to help hone those teamwork and mobility skills. Check out the gameplay trailer:

And that’s just a portion of what else is coming in this update. In addition to Live Fire mode you’ll also get:

• Mixtape Matchmaking: You’ll notice a complete overhaul of the matchmaking menu. Thanks to hard work from the team and feedback from the community, this new feature will allow you to create your own “mixtape” of modes.
• Featured Playlist: Here we will be swapping out new modes each week that we think you should play, and for some of them we’ll reward you with Double XP events for checking them out.
• Live Fire Maps: There will be two maps, Stacks and Meadows, that will support Live Fire mode only. Live Fire will be a limited time mode that will show up on Featured Playlists. We’ll be rotating this with other modes that we want to feature.
• New Patch: There will be a large patch included with this update that will bring a plethora of game changes and fixes among many other things. We will provide patch notes online at release as well as in the Multiplayer menu FAQ.
• New Execution: Inspired by the Stim, Last Hit packs a punch and you’ll see it show up with the rest of the executions in the Pilot customization options.
• New Coliseum Map: Go mano e mano in a brand-new map called Columns that adds a twist to the existing formula.
• New Factions Intros: We’ve added some new dialogue for faction leaders, so enjoy the new pep talk as you drop into that next match.

Now enjoy some wisdom from one of the designers of the mode, Griffin Dean, to get you ready to play when Live Fire launches on February 23.

1. In Live Fire, the decisions you make in the opening seconds of the round are critical, so have a simple plan before you start. “I’ll throw my pulse blade, move left, then cut right towards mid to hit advancing enemies in the side.” If you spend your first 5 seconds planning you’re handing your opponents the time they need to outplay you.
2. Mobility is your best friend. It’s not enough to outgun your foes; you need to outrun your opposition. Rapidly advance by wall running and you’ll catch enemies out of position and unprepared for a fight. Advance and attack decisively. Momentum is key. Don’t give the enemy time to realize they’re in trouble.
3. Don’t pick up the neutral flag simply because it’s there, but don’t let the enemy take it. Carrying the flag makes your position visible to the enemy, so plan accordingly. You can use the flag to force your enemy to attack, lead them into an ambush, or even win the round if you are outnumbered. Remember, picking up the flag early in the round isn’t nearly as important as holding the flag at the end of the round.
4. Secure your flanks and attack where your enemy is weakest. Never leave openings where the enemy can get behind you. If you flank the enemy, you can catch them out of position and engage them on your terms.
5. Play for the good of the team. All that matters is winning that round. You have to think on your feet. An EPG round screaming towards your flag carrier is all that stands between you and victory? Then take one for the team and stand between that EPG round and your flag carrier. Do it for the win, and your team will love you for it.

Live Fire is the first of many updates we have planned for 2017. This, along with all future maps, modes, and weapons we release, will continue to be free for all Titanfall 2 players.

We look forward to seeing the PlayStation Nation on the Frontier in the months ahead!

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