Titanfall 2's multiplayer tech test hides big single-player spoilers down deep

Windows PC players digging through Titanfall 2 for spoilers is "a very real problem," executive producer Drew McCoy told Polygon. That’s just one of the main reasons Respawn Entertainment is keeping them out of the game’s multiplayer test, which begins this weekend.

We spoke with Respawn during Gamescom, just after the tech test was announced and preview codes were sent out. The console exclusivity news was met with immediate disapproval from PC players, but McCoy insists that Respawn made the right call by leaving them out of the first beta.

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"People don’t buy it, but it’s legit," he said of the developer’s stated reasons for why the open beta is just for console players. Alongside exposing the game’s single- and multiplayer campaign, Titanfall 2’s test build isn’t optimized for all hardware, and that could present a skewed experience.

The test build was built almost eight weeks ago, he said, and so PC compatibility isn’t where the team expects it to be at launch. But the biggest concern is ensuring that the series’ first ever story mode isn’t completely given away before release.

"Because of the way games are made, we have a lot unfinished content," McCoy told us. "That is very laborious to slice out. The stuff that is legit, like single-player content, it’s intertwined with a lot of multiplayer content.

"We don’t want single-player spoiled," he continued. "It’s genuinely unique, and players would get robbed of some really special moments."

Perhaps that’s hard to believe, considering how light the first Titanfall is when it comes to narrative. Respawn Entertainment has made its commitment to adding a substantive campaign for solo players this time around pretty clear, however.

Even in an early test build, it’s possible that players could dig up things like level names and pieces of programming script that could potentially rob Respawn of its own plans to reveal content. Datamining, while not impossible on consoles, is something that Windows PC players did with Titanfall, detailing a ton of the game’s unlockables before launch. McCoy is adamant about keeping the sequel’s secrets locked down.

"We’ve spent enough time crafting a game that we want to have surprises that we didn’t want to spoil," he said. "All it takes is literally finding a couple words in some files that we missed and that would ruin the large portion of the game."

PC players without a console to test the game on will have to wait until Oct. 28, when Titanfall 2 lands on that platform, as well as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.