this video has a followup now, because there was a lot of discussion on this one: th-cam.com/video/fKxymp3NkvA/w-d-xo.html it addresses stuff like Bangalore and Newcastle's alleged pilot training, so go watch that if you're curious! have a good one :>
to reinforce the super soldier idea, in even the first titanfall game, the grunts even state that the pilots who had cloak had it surgically attached to their spine for it to work.
@geroni211 In the campaign, the cloak only lasts for a few seconds. Meanwhile, in the multiplayer, the cloak lasts 4 times longer. That could explain why Jack's cloak is less efficient, it's not attached to his spine, only his kit
One thing I absolutely despise about how the pilots are represented in Gridiron is the fact that when you first see the pilot, they are literally just taking a casual stroll through the battlefield holding a data-knife. A KNIFE. Plus walking through a field like that would get you killed so fast in multiplayer titanfall games, and even in the campaign in some cases.
@@alexanderstanfield5845 i dont think he would be dong that i think he would be running and wall running from cove to cover trying to find a tactical advantage like how all cgi trailers has shown
You are missing the easy answer, the hidden gaming chair price stat. The money spent on gaming chairs by Bangalore mains alone easy outmatches a pilots salary. It's no wonder he got tooled.
Also the reason the payday gang was so powerful but then became weak. PDTH: starting off not a lot of cash, only get regenerating armor. Payday 2: peak money= peak power/ weapons. They could even afford the comically large golden spoon from hell. Payday 3: lost all their money, now they are budget John Wicks with breakable ballistic linings. Conclusion? The payday gang are a cult that gains their power through sheer wealth.
@@lilboy7613Lol, I died multiple times to random sections, but somehow managed to first-try every boss on master mode. I was honestly shocked I didn’t die once. Viper’s fight was by far the hardest, though, and I was near death every second
So: Pilots canonically pulp grunts in one punch Grunts canonically pulp pilots in one punch Robots pulp grunts and pilots in one punch Is there anyone who doesn't do arm day every day?
To answer the prompt first: I think it depends on the pilot. Remember that a lot of these guys don't get Titans, they get one the various models of light/scout equivalents. Also remember that the named pilots in Titanfall 2 are either antagonists from a mercenary company highly dependent on branding, or are literally the best either side has to offer. I also don't think its unfair to have a grunt kill a pilot. That isn't bad writing, that's war. Equipment fails, soldiers get sloppy, people make mistakes when they are tired, angry and deprived of sleep. Most importantly, bullets and rockets are pretty effective regardless of who they're fired at. Without incorporating actual magic, no weapon is truly invincible against chance and error. Two additional points. 1. Every military needs its equivalent of grunts. Multiple superpowers in the real world have learned this the hard way while trying to enforce their will; it is not cost-effective or even viable to use your biggest guns against every problem. In the case of Titanfall, on a mechanical level grunts are mostly there to act as cannon-fodder and a mild threat, but on a narrative level they're the backbone. The pilots are the hammer, the infantry/conventional mechanized units are the anvil. And they do that job well because they are infinitely cheaper, far more numerous, and significantly more flexible than pilots in utility. You aren't going to send Jack Cooper to guard a research lab; that's a waste of his time and your resources. You would however send a couple platoons of grunts with a few mechanized units as support. If something like a pilot or a titan shows up, those infantry are not and should not be expected to do more than buy time until reinforcements arrives. And if they get lucky and do manage to kill or capture a pilot, fantastic. For real world references, there is an estimate that it costs the US army between 50 and 75 thousand dollars to train and arm a recruit. It costs them around 10 million for a single Abrams tank. 2. Any blanket measurement of power will be flawed because it will never cover all relevant factors. If you put two fighters in a ring, and one is faster, stronger, and tougher than the other, they have an edge but not sure victory. Consider that the metric doesn't cover morale, distraction, fair play, terrain, mental health, exhaustion, desire to win or a hundred other tiny things summarized as "luck." When magic or literal divine intervention is involved, all bets are off. Statistically yes, there are characters and factions that should logically dominate, but that doesn't mean they should always win. It just means that when they do lose, there should be some kind of satisfying reason presented well. One last thought. There aren't a lot of games that seriously tie their narratives into game play, mostly because that's hard to do and restricts a lot of options for both. Instead most games rely on a specific suspension of disbelief to both tell a grounded story and have gameplay that isn't made frustrating with overly realistic elements. They use their narration and gameplay to garnish each other, but do no strictly bind them together. I don't this is a failure of writing or game design, but it is a difficult balance to walk and can be screwed up as evidenced in some examples above. TL:DR Stormtroopers deserve better.
One of people at respawn (ToonCraft) actually addressed the pilot losing to Bangalore and Co. being the Pilot was very overconfident/arrogant. While personally I do agree that overconfidence/arrogance is a killer, it was not conveyed enough in the video to the viewer what the pilot was thinking and why he lost.
to be fair, the people who know how strong pilots are should also be the people that are acutely aware of how stupidly arrogant IMC pilots are. Like 3 titans will be bearing down on BT and Cooper while talking mad trash only to get flame cored into nonexistence. Militia pilots are the efficient, deadly killers. IMC pilots are not.
i think one important thing to note is the speed of which all the ghosts ran the Titanfall 2 gauntlet, commander brigs for example runs it like a grunt and is one of the lesser ghosts, despite being the leader of the SRS. perhaps the pilot the legends fought was like brigs and not the best pilot but somehow through luck and plot armour managed to rank up to commander
in all fairness, commander briggs might not be the most mobile pilot but she obviously shows herself as a very capable leader and fighter in trial by fire, and she might've just not had a jumpkit for her gauntlet run.
This is a good point, and I think that being a commander doesn’t necessarily equate to having good combat skill as much as ability to lead. Where Brigs might not be the most skilled pilot, she could be the best leader which landed her that role and I think the same may be said for the pilot from Gridiron.
11:21 Yes, I think the Titanfall canon should be prioritized, since it was a story ABOUT pilots, whereas Apex is just Respawn trying to make legends appear cool for the sake of marketing and hype. Apex Legends’ cinematic videos (in the absence of a narrative campaign) never were about representing pilots.
@@shepardpolskaapex definitely has priority considering the boatloads of cash it's made. They even call it the apex universe now so it's definitely not just a spinoff anymore.
@@thegreatgoobert5847 I do agree that they might try to make the main part of the story like you said they call it apex universe it doesn’t change the fact that titan fall came first and apex is going off the titanfall lore so apex is spin-off of titanfall
Starting with the first question, I do honestly think that the Titanfall games take priority over Apex in regards to lore and power scaling, mainly because Apex's priority has clearly been setting up cool skins to use even if they aren't even close to lore accurate (I know this is a cope, but that's just how I look at it). Pilots are 100% supposed to be kings of the battlefield, and Apex has kinda done them dirty over the years with their retcons. Not really an argument for it, yeah, but I mean I'm putting in equal effort as EA Execs do care for the lore. And as for the second question, it's implied near the beginning of the game that Anderson has been training Cooper for a little while before the game actually starts (Tutorial Mission Logbook, "Aboard the James McAllan, my Pilot training *continues*-), while I don't believe there's an exact timeframe for how training goes, I imagine it starts with physical conditioning, then augmentation, then Pilot equipment training, then Titan training. We play as Cooper during the Pilot equipment training, and would've hypothetically done the Titan training if it wasn't interrupted. What does all of this mean? Cooper isn't just some random Rifleman grunt who is suddenly able to master these tools, he's had time beforehand to get a grasp on these things. As for the one weak point, Cooper being able to pilot BT in the first mission and beat a Northstar is indeed questionable. Counterpoint, I think what Respawn had in mind was that the player would just barely scrape by the fight, which would represent equally Cooper barely winning out. Almost every playthough that uses the game's recommended difficulty you get after doing the gauntlet ends up like that, and it would make at least a little more narrative sense. Not exactly fullproof, but I am almost certain that's what the devs had in mind.
I agree. As for winning the titan battle, I give a lot of the credit to BT. They set up a neural link, so BT can somewhat influence what Cooper does, and also, BT is a more advanced Titan.
I think something else to note is how innately skilled Cooper would have had to be in the first place to be trained by Lastimosa, let alone even SEE a sim pod. Factually speaking, the Militia had less resources, and so they had to choose their pilots very sparingly, whereas IMC can pump out new Titans and Pilots like it's another day at work.
Minor little thing here. Which type of Spartan? Spartan II, III, or IV? Because I'd put pilots on around a Spartan IV consider how weak they are compared to IIIs and IIs along with a pilot's ability to use more than 1 ability (holo nova, inner pieces, phase rewind, etc).
@@NineballRaven I'd say pilots still aren't quite at the level of a IV. IVs have lesser genetic augments compared to IIs and IIIs, but GEN2 Mjolnir supposedly brings them up to the level of a II or III in older armor.
I'd say they're less powerful than all Spartans. Thier energy shield makes them twice as durible as a pilot. While pilots are more mobile than a spartan that doesn't matter as much. Try face tanking an A wall spitfire guy but you can't go around his shield.
@@NineballRaven To add on what the other guy said about spartans being better, they not only have shields but extremely durable armor under that, coupled with aguments that make them very quick, very strong, and their reaction time is unmatched. even the best pilot would get rolled by the worst spartan 4
I do share the annoyance of inconsistent power scaling but mostly in superhero media. I give it a pass in war stories, particularly Titanfall in this case, because it emphasizes the point that no matter how skilled someone may be, people are fragile and it usually takes 1-2 well placed shots or 1 good stab to take someone down. Life of a soldier is fleeting. Pilots brush with death in every fight as they take down dozens of grunts but there's always just a matter of time until they get overconfident and slip up or just do one fatal mistake.
I would only like to change one thing you stated. They do not brush death, they shoulder check it with a grin. Let's be honest, one pilot fighting as many grunts as you take in campaign, or a standard attrition round is not laughing number or even just canonically. That's A LOT of lead flying at a you at any one time. And while the grunts are clearly made to be laughably ineffective for gameplay reasons realistically even a half-baked soldier would get a lot more shots where they wanted it. But, that's all I wanted to add.
@@p5ychojoe138 I agree. If grunts were realistic, they'd be able to hit moving targets like pilots even at their highest speeds. Pilots wouldn't stand a chance with their ridiculously aggressive and risky combat methods; they'd have to be more tactical. I'm sure they would be almost as dominant as they are if they were more tactical, but for gameplay purposes, pilots become immune to almost anything grunts can do when moving at any speed faster than running, which is fair enough.
@@holynder3181 I'm actually not so sure about this; The vast majority of shots miss in a normal war, where most targets that a rifleman shoots at will likely be moving at either a predictable speed and direction, or at a relatively slow pace. you can set up someone in a gun range and teach them to shoot at those sorts of targets without too much issue. Pilots on the other hand, are rarely going to give you more than one or 2 chances to shoot them, and have ability to move at erratic speeds and directions. You could absolutely train your general forces to be a credible threat to pilots, but the investment doesn't seem worth it; I doubt that the skills required are something that can be learned without enough training time to give your logistics department an aneurism. The main reason why grunts like Jack and Anita are able to stand out is because pilots hold immense sway in the forces they are a part of; if a pilot takes interest in a soldier, and vouches that the training investment will be worth it, than the odds are that the request will be granted; the chance at a new pilot is too valuable to pass up and keeping your pilots happy is important as they are hard to replace.
Important not to underestimate the value of sheer speed when applied intelligently. I’m sure a grunt could shoot a pilot if they were looking the right way and knew where the pilot was coming from, but that’s rarely how an intelligent or competent pilot would engage them. The power of the jump kit is that a pilot could come from anywhere at any time, and has the tools to accurately choose the best way to do it. One of the most powerful is the personal sensor suite they get - highlighting opponents’ rough position through walls is a busted ability, even excluding something like a pulse blade. If something zips round a corner to your left two stories up and dumps a magazine of automatic fire into your squad with superhuman precision you won’t get a chance to shoot back, even if one of you has been tasked to watch more or less the right direction. It makes sense that grunts would be a bigger threat to pilots than we experience in game with that in mind - because the pilot is a terrifying force but if they fuck up their chance of running into bullets is non-zero. They have to use every tool, maximise surprise and be meticulously smart about who and how they engage people. They’re a terrifying force, but if they get it wrong they die.
Tactics against pilots would likely be area fire, don't aim at the pilot. Shoot a wall of lead and the pilot won't have free space to dodge. Not 100% effective, but more cost effective than training.
The continuity between Titanfall and Apex would be so cool if they just committed to it a little harder and more faithfully- Instead it just reminds me that there's no Titanfall 3
I always assumed that IMC pilots post-demeter were much worse, due to the loss of reinforcement and the increasing number of defectors (if Graves and Mcallan are anything to go off of), the IMC just started putting a Jumpkit on anyone that could get in a titan. It makes sense as to why you kinda cut through so many IMC titans in the campaign (I know Jack was trained by the best of the best and he has a Vanguard class, but c'mon), as well as why the important jobs were outsourced to the Apex Predators. The problems even extends to Frontier Defence where they're just throwing auto titans at you. Back on topic, I just imagined commander gets-clowned-on was basically a result of the IMC going "wow, you're good at this, you're a pilot". It also makes me feel like Bangalore and Newcastle would've absolutely been made pilots if they'd stuck with the IMC (correct me if I'm wrong, but didnt one or both of them ACTUALLY have a bit of pilot training?).
Also worth noting that, since the Militia did not have a steady supply of titans, their qualifications for pilots are much higher than the IMC. You wouldn't want some kid who can barely drive take your car into a race, would you?
this makes the most sense to me, it seems like the baseline to be a pilot for the IMC was much lower than for the militia so i can clearly see how theyd just be chucking anyone they can into mass produced titans to throw at the problem until it goes away. Also in titanfall 2 the imc is cut off from their supply lines, so they might have already thrown away many of their skilled pilots and once the war is over theyd probably be handing out jump kits to whatever decorated soldier they could to act more as a symbol than a proper, fully fledged pilot. It might also be why bangalore and jackson were able to become/almost become pilots.
Moy Parra (of Titian Toons) definitely understood the pilot power problem, despite making the in game Bangalore animation from that cinematic. The first animation test was going to show just how hard it was for Bangalore to beat a pilot, but had to be replaced b/c she didn’t look cool enough.
I think one important thing, which you touched on a little, is the fact that playing a game gives the audience a massively different perspective on how characters exist as opposed to how those characters would actually behave. In a Titanfall 2 match, you'll see an effective Pilot *always* moving; if you're not in a Titan, you're vulnerable, and if you're vulnerable, you're already dead. Even in firefight scenarios, Pilots will be constantly shifting side-to-side, sprinting around and leaping footfall fields in seconds. They don't just wall-run, they practically fly. Grunts, on the other hand, are soldiers with field equipment and firearms. They move in groups, seek cover, and take their time scanning their environment. This makes them very easy to kill when the player's Pilot never gets tired, never gets disoriented, never runs out of ammo, and can literally suckerpunch fully-grown human beings to death without breaking every single bone in that hand. Pilots *are* staggeringly impressive, and even borderline terrifying, but the games are unreliable windows into how they exist in real-space. Should Scryer have won that two-on-one? Yeah, probably, but it's not nearly as implausible as many people are claiming it to be.
really good video! i think this is the first time someones actually made an accurate distinction as to why gameplay =/= lore to answer your pilot question, I mentally headcanon pilots as sort of a master chief in halo 1 type of thing, where theyre not *literally* gods but whenever a grunt sees a pilot fighting along side them they know they have a much better chance of beating whatever they're fighting, sort of like the actual definition of "super soldier" without the in game grunt to pilot kill ratio
It actually became a lot easier to become a pilot between the events of titanfall 1 and 2. In the first game, pilots have a ton of cybernetics and implants, while by the time the second game takes place, both sides were hurting for pilots, and due to limited resource and advancements in technology, pilots became less super solider than they used to be. For instance, Cloak pilots during TF|1 had thousands of cloak implants imbedded all across their skin, while in TF|2, cloak was simply projected from their helmet. Also, that 98% failure rate was for IMC training during the events of the first game, it's unknown exactly how much the passing rate increased by the second game. So a pilot trained and augmented towards the beginning of the war is likely to be a lot more powerful than a pilot trained towards the end. Of course, any pilot would sweep the floor against any of the apex legends. This is why Ash becoming a legend is so stupid. She was one of the most deadly pilots on the frontier, and after being beaten by jack and bt, she was rebuilt to still be a deadly pilot, presumably more so. All this being said, it is clear that the current writers at respawn don't have any respect for the established lore of the titanfall universe, as they have retconned so much of the universe I initially fell in love with, even stuff they didn't have any need to retcon. I'd be willing to bet that I know more about titanfall lore published before Apex legends came out than anyone on respawn's lore/writing team, and that makes myself, and many other titanfall fans, really sad.
It's also worth noting that Militia pilots had to be more skilled than your average IMC pilot. I don't know if it's in the lore anywhere or not, but when you have a limited resource in war (Titans) you only want the most capable people utilizing the equipment, or risk losing it. Even if it's not in the lore, it's generally just a general war thing, and I think that it would apply in this situation.
Okay so can explain why pilots being on the same level as legends is a bad thing cause I’ll be honest I’ve been a Titanfall fan since day 1 but bro why do y’all expect slightly super soldiers who’s real power comes from a 3 story robot and high tech equipment to not be equal or even slightly lesser to people with fucking super powers/ the same equipment ? Like half the legends just outright have improved pilot tech, super powers better than the pilots version of it, or better tech than pilots like okay yes legends like octane and life getting stomped makes sense but like valk,loba,rev,ash,ballistic,catalyst,path,wraith or even mirage these all people running around with outdated pilot gear on top of having better equipment than a pilot valk wears a fucking Titan, loba just teleports no phase bullshit and wraith has a permanent phase. Watson and caustic fall in that yeah they’d get there asses kicked bet definitely have better equipment than whatever octane and the stim pilots are cracked out on
@@KalicoKal because a pilot takes a minute max to kill a reaper with underpowered gear compared to 6 goddamn Legends who had trouble doing it in that time as a minimum. Pilots, in terms of reaction time, combat capability, and all are literally designed and train to be superior to any other, without the titan. Plus one is written worse than the other so :/
@@titan1umtitan okay now as stated in the video a random dipshit grunt with a free trial robot is the best pilot…a random fucker with super powers not being bare minimum on the same level but maybe not as skilled is still more believable than that, and again that same random ass grunt is the one fighting a fucking reaper and all he got was some nano bots? By that logic juice every legend with whatever they gave cooper and they are automatically above every pilot. We also can’t forget gameplay is a factor even guns that are the exact same in apex don’t function the same we have a charge rifle on the floor like it’s not already better than a Kraber in the first place it’s for titans for fucks sake yet can’t down a meth addict, you gotta take off the rosé colored glasses and stop buying the marketing hype pilots are battle field gods if your a normal dude and unfortunately most of the legends aren’t Normal dudes they have the pilot equipment before the training and probably have better understanding of there abilities given the lack of choice they have except mirage that mans got two pilot ability’s and the humor for it thanks to his fam like top 10 pilots are probably dusting 90% of the legends sure but not some no name rando when it took as far as anyone’s concerned a no name grunt with a quick injection of plot, can solo an entire army with a team of experienced top tier pilots standing in his way? This makes every pilot weak as shit far weaker than a random pilot getting high diffed by a brother sister duo that later went on to fight other pilots and people with super powers because they got good training and team work
I will happily treat SpeedRunner Jack Cooper as canon. My boy was slidehop-airstrafe-bunnyhopping when he was still a Grunt. That said, the way Pilots are talked about in-lore and in-dialogue (especially in Titanfall 1) definitely suggest that Pilots in general are *incredible killing machines* that are worthy of awe. "Is that a Pilot? Bet I could run on walls if I had one of those jump packs!" 'Can it. They're on a whole 'nother level. Just /watch/!" One of my favorite bits from Titanfall 1 was a story from the Grunts detailing a Grunt putting a /drop/ of the stim the Stim Pilots use in his coffee and being unable to sleep for weeks.
I'm not sure how true it is but I've heard that the Grunts in Titanfall 1 were actually a lot more dangerous than their TF2 counterparts, allegedly due to their more aggressive AI. Narratively, since the TF2 multiplayer is chronologically last in the 3 TF timeframes (TF1 -> TF2 Campaign -> TF2 MP), this could signify declining standards of recruitment and deployment for common foot soldiers throughout the Frontier Wars. This attrition may have also carried over to pilots as well; with Titans being the closest thing either side would likely to armor/tanks, demand for pilots might have seen some pilots slip through qualifications at lower standards.
@@lynny_lynn4325 I honestly wish TF|2 grunts used AT weapons too. Because, why wouldn't they? It's just a rocket launcher. Also it would have made them actually pose some threat instead of just being there to get +1 score while stepping on them.
I think it would have been easier for IMC, but the restrictions for Militia would have gone up, the less titans that you have, the more skilled person you want in that seat to ensure that you don't lose another resource. A very common tactic for smaller rebel forces
My gut says the canon depiction of a character should reflect on the narrative and thematic role they are meant to serve, and not just what works best scene by scene. Stormtroopers are the perfect example because the entire setting makes no sense if the probably hundreds of showcases of their incompetence are meant to reflect their actual presence. I think the issue comes when you have a series that lasts so long it changes directions. Despite ostensibly being in the exact same setting Andor and Rebels might as well be different universes given the threat the Empire poses in both works, and at that point we have to throw up our hands and say their power scaling just needs to be consistent in their own stories. So as much as I like the power fantasy of pilots being gods on the battlefield if Apex has decided otherwise I think it's okay as long as they commit to and show it.
i don't think the multiplayer modes should really be used to see the canon strengths of characters. in titanfall 2's campaign grunts are a lot more of a threat and legends in apex are a lot more powerful in cinematics than they are in-game.
i always thought of pilots like comandos, they are one man army, they are efficient with any weapon and they have that little extra that makes them hard to kill, jack copper was a prodigy and though he was just a rifleman Lastimosa sought a skillfull pilot in him, jack slapped every apex predator because they were alone and he was learning fast to survive, BT played an important rol on that, being an experimental Vanguard class jack had a pretty fair chance against moddified classes of the apex predators's titans, below them i picture the common pilots, the ones that die in the field most likely, the ones that jack kills in the campain, they are above every grunt and machine in the battlefield but they are not so badass as the prodigies, you can see it like in the multiplayer matches, there is always people that struggle to get even 100 score in attrition, and there is the pilot who never dies and gets 40 pilot kills, 6 titan kills, 26 AI kills and 286 attrition points.
On the topic of the end-video question, I think it's sort of a mixed bag. Using the very sloppy evidence of Frontier Defense, a standard mercenary pilot is considerably above the bar compared to your Joe Schmoe pilots in organizations like the IMC. In pretty much every PvE scenario where the player is against an AI piloted titan, the player will always come out on top with very little exception, primarily due to the overwhelming odds. Even though this is really iffy, I think it is a good display of the difference between Frontier Militia and mercenary pilots compared to IMC pilots. If someone is a pilot in the Militia which has a very limited amount of resources, they probably are going to be held to a higher bar than a pilot in the IMC due to their abundance of resources prior to Gridiron. Personally, I think Scryer was definitely a cut below the pilots we think about when we think on classic Titanfall pilots. While he does have high-end equipment, and according to the cinematic, a potentially modified and upgraded jumpkit, his sloppiness associated with ranking could be attributed to the panic incited in the IMC following Gridiron as a giant chunk of their high level military is destroyed. This also could explain the absence of his titan in the cinematic- the IMC isn't getting consistent resupplies anymore, so they can't make as many titans as they were. TL;DR: Most Milita/mercenary pilots probably should be held to significantly higher expectations compared to most IMC pilots.
Seeing this comment brought me much happiness. I'm surprised not many people are talking about the standard Militia pilots are set to due to the limited resources.
One thing you have to remember about Cooper is that he had BT. BT only ever lost a four on one fight against the apex predators and even then he was about to kill sloane and body blisk. BT is an advanced AI unlike the other titans and was able to guide cooper along the whole time. Obviously cooper has plot armor talent and luck, but the vanguard class Titan with an advanced AI is the real edge against your randy IMC pilot. Also it seems heavily implied that the militia just has higher quality pilots anyway.
Judging from dialogue from grunts in Titanfall 1 (and having a master mode difficulty run under my belt lol) Grunts are probably more effective than they actually appear in game, but, that still doesn’t change the fact pilots probably kill scores of grunts from getting the jump on them using their movement capabilities fairly often, especially on active battlefields where people will often have their attention focused on the threat ahead
Grunts seem to have a wide skill spectrum, much like player pilots. Some grunts will lose count of their kills and brag about how easy it was to kill a pilot if they manage to down one. Other grunts will probably be one of the guys who get wiped by cooler grunts.
I think no matter how big the skill gap is, a real fight will always have blindspots that you can't prepare for and high confidence and make those blind spots much bigger. So a grunt killing a pilot is completely possible without it messing with the power scale. However, i do think almost every time in games when they cinematic and gameplay don't match up. It's just incompetency. It's one of the reasons i grew to hate metal gear solid. Also the new god of wars. I hate that disconnect.
I think the only reason cooper doesn't get bodied in the Campaign is because he doesn't face any pilots mano a mano. Lastimosa chose Cooper above every other Grunt in the Militia, so it can be assumed he's probably already above par amongst his peers. Additionally (no source, I just vaguely remember it being the case), Cooper had been trained in simulation for a year or two by lastimosa, and considering the biOS text we see from the Jump Kit calibrating to Cooper in the beginning of the campaign we can assume it's probably doing most of the work (as for which Gauntlet time is canon, no idea, could be any, with the higher ons possibly showing Cooper is a prodigy, or just figured out Grenade Boosting which was apparently made Canon in Apex which is the one good thing that came out of that slag heep) But we can use this to explain away why Cooper can tear through legions of Grunts, and that just boosts the power level of what even Rookie Pilots can achieve, even without any of the special non-sense aside from natural skill and practice. Now: Cooper never faces a pilot on the ground, only ever in Titan on Titan combat. We know cooper never had Titan training, so he should be at a disadvantage, until you think about it this way: Titans are just really big Infantry Units. While yes they have a completely different anatomy to humans, with a digitigrade leg structure, no actual "head", and jet boosters, the idea remains the same "Shoot bad man, use cover to not get shot by bad man" It can also be assumed that BT could be assisting Jack in some way. Whenever operating on his own, BT is seen with a left handed preference when wielding his weapons, even if it might be disadvantageous (the XO-16 has its box on the left side), so it's possible his AI has developed its own fighting style, and is capable of adapting to specific situations (BT grabbing and throwing Prowlers and grunts when acting solo, and teaching himself how to do a thumbsup after seeing Cooper do it) so he could be operating the majority of the time and just reacting to Cooper's tactical decisions, at least early in their relationship, and we even see BT Acting against Cooper's wishes in order to maintain Protocol 3 (Blood and Rust not risking blind firing, refusing to leave Cooper while holding the Ark, and the one mission that definitely is not making me cry extremely manly tears right now), so he definitely has notable independence and adjustable programming. There's also the fact we see BT and Lastimosa standing up to the Apex Predators 3 on 1, disabling Slone, and briefly battling Blisk before Ash comes up from behind and rips out two of BT's Batteries (some fucking how). After that they're all faced one on one. To me this only points out the absolute god tier abilities that even basic Pilots have, and only reinforces my hate for the Tumblr OC Donut Steel casual cry baby fest that for some unknowable reason still makes bank on cosmetics alone despite the fact the gameplay is a boring repetitive sweat fest for the last almost half a decade that is Minimum Ordinaries... Wait I meant Apex Legends Wait I should've been in bed an hour ago
The grenade boost in apex is still kind of lame anyway, because they seem to have made the character have prosthetic legs, remembered that the gauntlet takes place in a simulation, and then explained the discrepancy by saying that there's a real world version of the gauntlet out there for god knows why.
@@adt4864 iirc the dude who did it made his own version of the gauntlet specific to do the Grenade boost in the real world, resulting in the robo-leg man we know and loath But yea, apex is dumb
About the neuro-link with Titans, it's only on Vanguard-Class Titans (Note: Monarch is a reverse engineered Vanguard), while for the streamlined ones, they use Pilot Uplink According to the lore
I feel if a pilot is in his element and has all available resources available 1 could take on all legends at once no thought about it. Even without their titan the only way they could possibly lose is from 2 things that were said in the starting cutscene. "Overwhelming odds or an equal"
Also Anita and Jackson were competing on getting their first pilot certification and Jackson gotten his, but idk why he wasn’t decked in pilot gear yet in short
The IMC had a literal program where only the best survive in Titanfall 1. Maybe they stopped that program because they don't have as many pilot candidates by the time apex legends is set in.
Due to its surge of popularity I been playing a lot of Titanfall 2 and I honestly think that pilots are cool as shot and would love to be able to play Apex. Anyways I think the pilot power-level boils down to their ability to stave off hubris, after all if all you do is smell your own farts there will be one day where you cannot smell any farts.
because i completely forgot to mention this in the video, alongside the two videos that i actually remembered to mention, the one on writing in fantasy ( th-cam.com/video/MtPpE_k2yKQ/w-d-xo.html ) will also be a part of this new series too. have a good one!
I do think that an important note for Titanfall 2 is that BT is canonically a stupidly overpowered titan, so its not just Jack's ability not making any sense. Not that that is enough to justify everything but at least its not as egregious
the secret in my mind as to why a pilot can kill scores of grunts in titan fall but one seemingly got killed by 2 grunts in apex lore, is momentum. Pilots equipment and training allows them to keep up the momentum to out play their grunt counter parts, even in titanfall 2 if you just walk around and try fight grunts like in a traditional shooter you'll have some problems from time to time. But if you use your momentum to fling yourself around the grunts they become trivial. That's why i think bangalore and newcastle managed to kill that pilot, cause he didn't use his main and major advantage over them, that being speed and the ability to keep it and use it to the pilots advantage in combat. Also it doesn't help that apex likes to mess with preastablished stuff like gimping the specters and that reaper
But both Bangalore and Newcastle got punched, therefore they should both be dead, because both the single and multiplayer of Titanfall show that grunts get one punched by pilots.
@@sneakyjay358That has always seemed like flimsy reasoning to me. Grunts get one hit by melee because it's fun, and having to hit a grunt with your fists 2 or 3 times would've made melee absolutely worthless. It's just game balancing, not "omg pilots so stronk they kill a man with one punch"
6:39 In Titanfall 2, the IMC is said to believe Titans and Pilots as replaceable. The militia believed in the link between a single titan and a single pilot.
I really like the idea that it's mostly skill that makes pilots so good (since it transletes into the mp and the skill ceiling of the game). Which would also explain some of the differences in power level of the pilots we see. Maybe scryer got his position largely due to social standing?
First of all, great video. Love me some Titanfall lore content, it's a very underappreciated universe with a lot of cool ideas. On pilots: The only thingg that distinguish pilots from grunts are their enhancements and gear - it's all very hard to produce and is only given to certified pilots (e.g. their jump kit, bonuses and class kits). Cooper was, as you said, just a guy who was noticed by an experienced pilot and given blitz on-the-side training. All that followed was him getting his hands onto primo pilot gear and going through gordon freeman-style personal hell for the next few days. Grunts from apex killing a pilot is, of course, absolutely absurd. Look no further than the average TF2 match - grunts are hilariously weak fodder compared to the absolute gods that are pilots. But war is about more than just killing the opposition, which is why grunts, specters and other units apart from pilots and titans exist. In short: a pilot is an extremely competent grunt, who has been personally trained until he reached the prestigious 2%, and was given top-of-the-line pilot equipment. Any person, if given a jump kit, any pilot class kit, and A TITAN, could wipe out the opposition. The point is that in order to get all those nice things, you first have to prove you're strong and agile enough.
For cooper, one thing we don’t seem to talk about is that he might not be fully controlling BT. having a giant articulating mech suit with its own AI system wouldn’t make sense if it would be largely totally controlled by their pilot, and if you look at the way BT fights by himself and when Lastimosa is piloting him, they are very similar in behaviour. BT plays a massive part in the story gameplay wise as well and is shown to be totally capable without manual drive.
Something you got wrong at 1:30 , the Spartans from Halo are not trained from birth, they were kidnapped as young children in secret, then trained, and even then Only the Spartan 2s and 3s, the Spartan 1s and 4s are recruited as full grown adults, often from other branches of the UNSC military, chiefly other Spec-ops groups like ODSTs. The Spartan 1s were even rotated back to their original branches after the program failed, SGT Avery Johnson, MasterChief's Marine buddy from Halo 1, 2, and 3, is actually a former Spartan 1, which helps to explain how he kicks so much ass.
I feel since they have survived a couple drops (Anita and Jackson) which most don't survive their first they can be on par with a IMC remnant pilot. (Also, the smart pistol doesn't attack what it thinks as friendlies)
The way I've come to terms with this issue throughout all media is that videogames, tv shows, books, movies, etc. are approximations of the fantasy setting. In the same way that we can make historical drama that is based on real events but is changed for dramatic effect, I consider non-fiction to essentially be a representation of the "real" thing but changed for dramatic effect. For example, the 300 Spartans' last stand at Thermopylae was real, but the 300 Spartans were only part of the contingent of 7,000 Greeks who took part in that battle. Popular portrayals of the event generally only show the 300 Spartans themselves. Maybe the "real" version of Jack Cooper had a lot more help in his quest and Titanfall 2's campaign is just a dramatization of the "actual event." Using this head-canon-esque approach allows me to reconcile the difference in power levels of the same characters across different medida.
From the perspective of a random person on the internet without any form of writing certification, I think that Titanfall 2 was written pretty well and is consistent with what it has shown us. As mentioned, anyone who is good enough can be a pilot, and they can come from anywhere at any time. Cooper was a grunt who was recognized by Lastimosa for some reason or another and was given special treatment and side training. Bangalore was said to be the top of her class in bootcamp, with her brother getting his titan before they graduated, meaning they were both on their way to being recognized as pilots by the IMC. It looks as though pilots aren't necessarily super soldiers, but really skilled soldiers who have shown above average abilities when compared to other soldiers. The mechanical augments and abilities that pilots have seem to be personal equipment and tools used whenever, as we don't see a uniform set of equipment between all the pilots of the militia or IMC. Also, not all pilots have mechanical and biological enhancements, as some of them use grapple and pulse blades instead of phase shift and stim. In the cinematic trailer for Titanfall 2, Cooper says pilots are "Fast and agile. Graceful yet devastating. Perceptive, resourceful, and relentless." I don't believe that what leaders are looking for is an overwhelming freak of nature with godlike strength and agility, because we don’t see that in this universe. Pilots aren't bulletproof, they can't go toe to toe with a titan, and even prowlers give them trouble in hand-to-hand combat. They are looking for highly skilled soldiers who aren't meant to overpower their enemies, they are supposed to outmaneuver and outplay them. In the cinematic, Cooper then says, "The pilot sees the world differently. Sheer walls become flanking routes. Pilots fight differently; experienced in deception and maneuverable... even overwhelming odds shift in their favor." What separates pilots from the rest of the grunts is the way they see the battlefield. They use different strategies and experiment with different equipment to even the odds. We can even see this in every aspect of the game through grunts and specters. Grunts always rely on the same strategies, they all think the same, they all act the same. They can be seen traveling in groups towards their objective, sometimes taking cover, other times running out in the open. While we know that they are coded to do that in the game files, we can see how they are all represented by the code to be of one mind. They all share the same code, the same brain. The pilot, on the other hand, is not. Except for certain NPCS, pilots are directly controlled by players and therefore represent the player, which thinks differently in order to win the game. Even compared to other pilots, they think differently from one another, as people in the real world don’t think the same way. 10 pilots/players can look at the same map and come up with at least 20 strategies and routes to take to gain an advantage, while 10 groups of grunts/NPCS will more likely than not follow the same algorithms and routes. The player won't run out of cover and mindlessly walk down the open areas of the game if they are aiming to win, they use walls for speed and to reach other areas of the map, they use grenades to draw out enemies and destroy large groups. They use their tacticals to not just overpower, but to maneuver and play around their enemies. They even slide and retreat to avoid death. That's the main difference between grunts and pilots. That is what separated pilots from the fodder. We should also talk about the legends, as they can all be grouped in the same power level despite only some of them actually being pilots in the canon. When talking about the power scaling totem pole, pilots are around the third tier, only below titans. But how do legends fit into this? Some are on the same level as pilots, considering that they are pilots. But these “pilots” can be defeated and taken out with relative ease by the other legends who are not “pilots.” How does that work? The best explanation is that legends think differently than grunts and use different strategies and tactics that are different from grunts and other legends and pilots. When Bangalore and Newcastle fought that IMC pilot, Bangalore wasn’t fighting like grunts would, she was strategizing, using everything she knew to survive, and using new tactics that we never see in any other grunt. While it seems like bad writing or just a way to make things interesting, we see her dismantle the enemy pilot multiple times to prolong the fight. Shooting his gun out of his hand and using his knife to disable his jump-jet and raise the odds for her victory. We also see her adapt to the enemy's cloak, looking at the smoke displacement and shimmer effect and reacting accordingly. Even when faced with overwhelming technology, Bangalore didn’t use brute force and power, she used her brain and tactics. When looking at Newcastle, we know he wasn’t really ready to be certified as a pilot, but we know he was ready for titan combat, which is reflected in how he tried to use titan strategies of overpowering the enemy rather than pilot strategies, which is why almost every clip of him fighting the pilot is him eating the dirt. We can kind of see this with every legend, each having some certain playstyle that works for them and almost a dozen different ways to use their abilities, but all of them never using the same strategy. They flank their enemies, they fly across the battlefield, they give heavy suppressive fire, and they work as a team. They would all make excellent pilots despite not all of them having some overpowered abilities. Look at me go I'm a pro yapper!
In the first game, the pilot training map labels it as having a 98% fatality rate, and considering many of the grunts talk about experiences in the training, the fail rate may as well be 98% of the 2% that survive
I think Jack Cooper could have been a newbie pilot who just completed their final test but didn't have the chance to connected to a titan yet since they are always in high demand. It would have made his feats more believable since he already "graduated" and might just be a prodigy. It's still a bit far fetched but would be more believeable than him being a grunt before, it would make him the one out of a million instead of the one out of a trillion.
Very glad the algorithm served me this, because I think it's a very important conversation! Great video! I especially liked how you read that Pilot dialogue in the fan comic. So, I'm absolutely inclined to think that Pilots are "godly monsters on the battlefield." As for the Gridiron short, even as an avid IMC hater, I still want to advocate (wink) for Pilots, so I want to think about how they could have better portrayed the fight between the Williams Twins and Commander Scryer. And to be honest, after rewatching the short, I think the best course of action may have just been to give Scryer more dialogue. Someone else in these comments has already mentioned one of the justifications given by (I think) Moy Parra, that Scryer was simply too arrogant and overconfident in his abilities. Pilots are godly monsters, yes, but they're also VERY good soldiers-- disciplined and, importantly, focused. We already see that Respawn made the choice to have Scryer start to gloat and taunt the Williams duo after he cloaks, but I would have let this last longer, or even intersperse more dialogue with the many voice actor-y action grunts in the short. Show his overconfidence, then have Anita maybe take advantage of that while he's distracted with Jackson?
In my headcanon it alway was //Pilots are VERY good but still within human limits, they just use tech/implants/whateverthefuck combine with training on how tf arcstars work that it makes them killing machines// and since they are still human they are prone to emotions like "lemme style on dem grunts with my big knife like a thug" and then get absolutely demolished. Oh and another great vid
From what I can gather. They are gods on the battlefield (pilots). They are somewhat enhanced, and they can deliver a good punch (although I think the one hit punch is just to make it so executions are harder to land). But all of this god-like power comes from rigorous training. Another thing with Jack is that I assumed he was quick to pick up how to be a pilot. As for the one-hit ko, that's just a gameplay mechanic in my mind. What should happen is an execution from any side of a pilot pretty much.
I think it's a fun theory to consider that Jack Cooper is an extremely generic name. Almost too generic... as though it was a fake name. This is absolutely a crackpot theory, but it's possible that Jack Cooper is a new identity with fake memories given to an amnesiac pilot(Cooper is revealed to have suffered memory loss during the Fracture Operation). If Cooper was previously a competent pilot, it makes Lastimosa's special treatment of Cooper and Cooper's incredible pilot instincts make much more sense, as opposed to some grunt with barely any jumpkit experience taking on the most dangerous mercenaries in the galaxy. Even if Cooper isn't a fake identity(which it probably isn't), it seems more reasonable that his talent and special treatment by Lastimosa are because of his previous capability as a pilot. Cooper seems unaware of the SRS division of the Miltia as a whole, even though he is literally mentored by a member of the SRS. He might just have severe memory loss, but kept his muscle memory of a pilot. EDIT: not to mention cooper managed to drop 3 reapers, which were experimental(but obviously operational) ANTI-TITAN robots. cooper took them out with relatively low-caliber ballistics and maybe a few explosives. this man is cracked
Or it could be like in the multiplayer how you can "regenerate," maybe he's an experiment/early version of that. Like Lastimosa really didn't have much of a reason to save cooper, unless he's a part of a highly confidential experiment with an extremely decorated Militia/IMC pilot.
Yes, Jack Cooper was meant to wipe the floor with the apex predators gang as he was something special. This is in the sense that he can learn things incredibly fast with almost no prior training. Its left to speculation whether Jack has a form of photographic memory or not but something is definitely going on here. Theres even confirmation of many extensive years in training as a past imc pilot in the first game before his memory is wiped as a result of the malitia kidnapping him, Anderson reevaluating his mind and deploying him against the imc as the malitias now greatest asset. Perhaps even BT was in on it but were really not sure. Hes most definitely also got some form of nanite basted healing factor amd enhanced strength and durability going on here as it is most definitely confirmed by devs that gameplay mechanics such as one punching spectres with his meat fists are canonical to Jacks and most pilots actual physical capabilities.
From what I understand from the lore the TF2 multiplayer is describing the power levels the best. You have pilots that are just godly masters of the battlefield and the then just people trying to give them some trouble usually dying in the process. Jack Cooper is a combination of lucky and talented in my opinion. He is thought by one of the best pilots and is being guided by BT who is also very knowledgeable. He is also a special model titan so that gives him an advantage as well.
It’s also canon in titanfall 2 that pilots do have enhancements like Nanites that allow for them to heal and reinforce parts of their body to withstand their traversal. Imo, gridiron is not canon because a pilot would mop them (homie had a literal smart pistol 🤦) using a smart pistol, jack cooper tolerably massacred an entire army with one of those in the campaign
If you're calling Cooper some random dude at the right place, you're skipping over how he was trained by a pilot captain, he wasn't some random guy, he was someone a pre existing pilot chose and was training.
I think some grunt dialogue in titanfall 1 has grunts talk about trying to get pilot certification, so the strongest of grunts are probably approaching the weakest of pilota except the grunts probably lack all the fancy augments.
the point about the IMC pilot "throwing away the morally gray nature of titanfall" is kinda moot, the IMC in titnafall 1 used civilians as target practice for spectres and in 2 built a doomsday weapon to blow up a planet. I don't think the morality of the overall factions was really ever in question. like sure, there's good people on both sides, but IMC is definitely the more morally abhorrent group in their actions and disregard for human life. its not out of the question that an IMC commander would attempt to level a settlement of deserters, as Blisk did the same thing in titanfall 1 on colony. just my 2 cent
I'm so glad you mentioned clone trooper power scaling, because that's one of my biggest pet peeves with Star Wars. I always thought that since clones were based on one of the galaxy's deadliest soldiers and trained for their entire lives to beyond Delta Force levels of pipe hitting, and were in many ways the successors to the feared Mandalorian supercommandos, they'd be, you know, scary. But then in TV shows, games and movies, despite some named clones having good characterization, they just die all the time, same as stormtroopers. That's why the Republic Commando novels will always be some of my favorite Star Wars media. Karen Traviss seems to respect the deadliness of clones more than any other Star Wars writer. Even if the story is no longer canon.
Correct me If I'm wrong but I believe that Newcastle was Pilot certified and Bangalore was nearing the ending of her pilot training before the war ended. So I always took the Gridiron cinematic as a series of unlikely but not impossible outcomes
Enjoyed the video. The 2% cert rate is with one highly elite training facility by the IMC. The multiplayer pilots are mercenaries who are hired, like Armored Core. To answer the QOTDs: I think Pilots are godly on the field. Cooper would likely beat the Multiplayer pilots, though not without difficulties. I don't see the mercs on the same level as the generic, mass-produced IMC pilots or titans as in the campaign, but they're not Cooper level. Here's my opinion on the totem pole: Grunt or Spectre > Reaper > Specialist > Legend > Pilot > Auto Titan > Enhanced Auto Titan > Piloted Titan > Auto Vanguard > Piloted Vanguard
I always thought it wasn't Jack Cooper that was great but Jack Cooper and BT were great together. The right pilot got the right Titan, like a 1 in a million perfect matchup.
You have to acknowledge that Bangalore is not supposed to be your average Grunt, but an extraordinarily disciplined and trained soldier. It was legit that she shot Skryer's smart pistol out of his hand mid flight - she hit the range a lot
I don't follow titan fall what so ever. but this video brought up a lot of really interesting points about character design, gameplay vs story, and a lot of other really interesting talking points. Really great vid.
@@cassius_scrungoman it’s referred to as an arc star by the apex characters because they’ve never been exposed to a gravity star so they think “oh what’s the one type of throwing star I know that glows blue.”I was also as I said being unreasonable tho so
Cooper, I feel, is a circumstance of being uncontested by other trained pilots, while having just enough training, along with a titan to survive the campaign
Cooper was up against apex predators, some of the best pilots in the Titanfall universe he was not uncontested. He happened to be extremely lucky or talented, probably both.
@@goose1925 i should specify on foot, because, I do believe that titans do act as a level to the battlefield, as despite the skill required in piloting them, they require a different skillset to effectively use, so while unlikely that he could become as proficient as trained mercenaries within the span of a day or two, it would at least give him an edge, in addition to having a Titan equivalent to pre-demator designs, against the more limited titans in use by the apex predators
To be fair, power scaling is dumb. The animators weren't thinking about what was going to be the most lore accurate, they want it to be cool. At the end of the day, what decides power scaling is whoever the fuck the writer wants to win. And in that means, no amount of Pilots and Titans are going to beat a snail if the snail is the main character.
I think Pilots should be terrifying supersoldiers, like the one Bloodhound gets shot by while 'Trespassing'. There's always a super easy way for Respawn to fix this massive inconsistency between the cinematic and litterally the entirety of Titanfall lore. They can simply mention in the next cinematic or lore drop how Scryer was a Commander who fell off by relying too much on his soldiers. Maybe he got rusty after not keeping up with his training or using his neural link with his titan in many years.
The mention of Karen Traviss understanding this stuff with Star Wars is kinda funny, given her work with the Halo series where she portrays Spartans as emotional wrecks who with a full strength punch can barely manage to injure an elderly woman
I think the power scaling issue isn’t as black and white as it was represented at first. I think it’s a valid point that pilots are inconsistently represented, but also I think that it makes more sense to view the pilots’ skill as more variable, like yes they all had to receive a strict certification but Cooper and the Apex pilots are clearly far more skilled than the IMC’s, and that is reflected decently well in-game since they serve as boss fights rather than mid-level enemies, and some of them (Viper) are actually really challenging. I don’t think that pilots really are incredibly far more skilled than the average soldier. The real advantage IMO is the titans and equipment that pilots are granted access to, and that tech isn’t really accessible enough to give that to everyone. Especially for Cooper, who is granted BT, one of the most advanced titans to ever be created. Also, the point about the siblings being able to take down a pilot, it’s not that far fetched to me. Both of them during the Apex Games (and all the other legends, for that matter) are definitely meant to be equal to or more skilled than the average pilot (not quite equal to Coop or Blisk tho), so if that IMC pilot from the short came down all confident thinking he could bully some weaklings, Im not surprised that he lost the fight since he clearly wasn’t prepared to fight someone with skills that can rival his, even if he has a material advantage.
In Titanfall 1, it was stated that they had some cybernetic augmentations but one guy said they aren't super soldiers so then titanfall 2 made pilots super soldier again by showing instead of telling.
oh yeah pilots are easily super soldiers but even pilots have an extremely broad range of power with the unnamed NPC titans showing an low end of the curve. and arguably the high end of multiplayer performance reflecting the top end
We can see named pilot ghosts in the gauntlet level and they're supposed to be the best in the SRS. We also see Briggs and the 6-4 fight, but they're game mechanically invulnerable so I don't think that's a workable reference point.
Lore wise I think the order is MRVN Pathfinder Apex predators, Jack cooper Titans Pilots, Legends(legends are the best of the best bloodsport contestants at the time of the game multiple former pilots have become legends) Specters, reapers Grunts, prowlers Regular bloodsport contestants Ticks Echo, hack, DOC, Newty Those creepy spider things from stormpoint Pilot from the gridiron cinematic
I think one way to reconcile the pilot power-inconsistency is to differentiate pilots. Gridiron is obviously bullshit, but given what Jack Cooper, Blisk and other evidently powerful pilots are capable of, it makes sense to me that even with the stupid low admission rate, there basically a big ass skill curve. You have your Coopers and they are just far far better at BEING pilots than a Scryer, or the pilots of the remnant fleet, or me when I play. This dosen't fix things entirely, and the disparity may still be a little big, but it would help to explain the inconsistencies.
the worst part is, the pilot Bangalore killed was using an auto pistol. for reference those are the pistols that not only aim for you, but curve bullets to headshot. it even fires however many rounds it needs to kill what it can see.
Personally, I much prefer pilots to be considered superhuman on the battlefield. They are what happens when a Green beret and a navy seal do a fusion dance and get put in a 3 story suit of weaponized power armor. While it is unrealistic in universe for Jack Cooper to pull off all the shit he did with little to no formal training, I'm willing to excuse it for one of the best FPS campaigns ever made. As for the canonical strength of a pilot, I'd say that a G100 player is probably about the same skill as a real pilot, given the numbers. I've seen losing teams brought back from the brink of defeat by a single G100, and I think 2000+ hours of titanfall multiplayer is at least somewhat reflective of the training a pilot would have to go through
i think the campaign is a more accurate description of a grunt, and while I don't think jack cooper can be considered an average pilot, you gotta consider that most of the pilots you fight in the campaign have weaker, more mass produced titans and have pilots trained en masse to fight a war. There's a huge difference between your average pilot and any named pilot in titanfall, both due to differences in skill but also equipment and training/experience for the same reason grunts exist at all. Even if you put a rifleman in a titan, they will still easily take out hordes of specters and grunts with probably relative ease (unless the neural-link is the most complicated and difficult part of being a pilot, which honestly would explain a lot)
The way I saw it was just that the pilot in the cinematic was really overconfident in their ability, and ended up just messing around. Why else would you just cloak and try to stab a dude instead of using the cloak to get a little bit of distance and shoot them! They don’t know where you are! Fantastic video though, I’m looking forward to the continuation of this series!
Also important to note that in the modern military, higher ranking commanders arent the ones on the ground doing the actual fighting. Him being a commander could be to show how out of practice in the field vs a pilot who is actively serving on the front lines could be. Like the line from taken "when you sit behind a desk you forget things. Like the weight of a gun thats loaded and one that isnt" (proceeds to get shot by someone who worked in the field their entire career). But in this scene, he was cocky. He assumed they werent a threat simply because he was a pilot tho he may have not actually seen combat in years up until this point, AND his arrogance lead him to going down and do the job himself because he perceived them to be so far beneith him, rather than ordering someone whos job it is to do stuff like that. All things in combat are parishable skills. Marksmen ship, speed, fundamentals, hell just being in shape enough to do the job errodes. And on another note about jack being as strong as he is. in human history there are people who just wildly excel at war. Theyre a awesome phenomenon. Most medal of honor recipients in fact were lower enlisted soldiers. The old saying "Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”. I think its fair to say jack might have just been that one warrior. He took to being a pilot extreamly well. He was simply "about that life". It makes sense. He wanted it so bad he was getting private training sessions from a full blown combat pilot who took an interest in him. Shit like that doesnt happen in combat arms jobs in the military unless they actually see something in you.
Bangalore and Jackson are above the average grunt. Bangalore was a sergeant and Jackson was an actual pilot in gridiron as confirmed by Moy. The duo was portrayed equally against scryer so it’s more like a seasoned pilot vs 2 baby Pilots.
PS on cyberenchancements for pilot- there is a theory that they are augmented inside, just outside their neural link to the titan. They are a definetly more durrable than a standard soldier- even in campaign Jack can one shot-punch a Specter, a robotic soldier (also all pilots never take fall damage, tho that might be partially due to their jump packs) Still- most of pilot's battlefield strengths come from rigorous training, not from the shiny parts put inside of them.
for the ending question, i think pilots are supposed to be the pinnacle of combat personnel, and jack cooper was in training by one of the most seasoned veterans in the entire militia, Lastimosa was a war hero from the titan wars (tf1 time period), and he was actively part of the vanguard development so we can infer that jacks cannon performance in tf2 can be attributed to 1) Lastimosa's training, 2) being specifically trained with a vanguard in mind, and 3) natural talent (theres got to be a reason why Lastimosa chose jack specifically to train). we can also infer that the reason why lastimosa lost in the start of bt-7274 was 1)he is far from his prime, 2)he was up against the best mercs there are, 3) it was a systemic jumping. if lastimosa was in a 1v1 versus each member of the predators he probably would have won. since titans have to link to their pilots we can also infer that BT has been helping Jack throughout their journey, as BT could fill in the gaps for jack, and we know he can work seperate from jack even when jack is piloting him since he takes jack out of his cockpit and throws him away from the ark, and remembering that BT is one of the most honored vanguards in the militia as in blood and rust the militia titans immediately recognize BT, we can again infer that BT would have a lot of combat data and experience which he can use to help jack.
Jack cooper is a bit of an extreme but I think pilots generally are a super solider force to be reckoned with. One thing you didn’t mention however is Lieutenant Anderson who was sent to the test site with likely little backup, infiltrated a miniature fold weapon, and then either died to a grunt on a railing or running away from them where we find his body across the room. Seems like a weird but good to mention case thoroughly imbedded in the lore.
People are forget frontier defense mode. When 4 pilots fight a army of more than 300grunts, specters (specialy mortar ones) and God damn a lot of titans.
I think the reason the stormtroopers missed all their shots on the Death Star was because they were told to miss. They wanted to track the rebels back to their planet so they could destroy it with the Death Star.
My head-canon is that Apex is just a TV show they show to people to get them more confident that a regular ass person can fight effectively so they more likely to get scooped up to get put out on the frontlines, where they will likely die by the hundreds to a single pilot. Yes I am coping
Making Stormtroopers paper tigers is a good choice in my mind, because in the end all reactionaries are. They chest beat about how powerful they are, but are eventually humiliated at the hands of guerrilla fighters.
"Are they supersoldiers or just very good soldiers?" I think both, or in the middle if you want. They get upgrades, but not as hardcore as in Halo or a Space Marine in WH40K
to be fair, i think the thing with gridiron is A) just a bad representation of what pilots were originally described as, and B) Anita at least was already described to be incredibly skilled for a grunt
I view the Titanfall "power scaling" to be comparable to Army PFC(out of basic with a few operations)vs Army Ranger. One is trained to be a soldier that fights and follows orders, the other is trained to be the scariest MF on the battlefield.
Well Cooper was a grunt, just like Bangalore and Newcastle. I also heard that they both were in training to become pilots. Plus that Pilot was arrogant anf didn't even lock on eith his smart pistol
i personally subscribe to the theory (that's semi-backed up due to file names) that when cooper was downed by the titan and pulled to the side by lastimosa, he was injected with the cybernetic enhancements given to pilots (the name for the model itself is quite literally super serum or something similar iirc) which is why his power scales drastically past that point and is able to link with bt (something that would require neural enhancements, which means he had to be given them at some point - likely right in front of us with the injector. not to mention links are unique to vanguards, meaning that only vanguard pilots and milta faction leaders would really have access to the enhancements needed) something i think lost a lot in discussion of pilots in general is titanfall 1 grunt dialogue. there is a lot (and i mean a Lot) of lore to be had from them. from them you generally get that there is some form of pilot hierarchy. while all pilots are to be respected if you want to live, not all pilots are created equal. there's the lower, middle, and high tier pilots. lower tiers don't have titans, and are mainly used for operations that lack the use for them. middle tiers are the multiplayer pilots, of which their power scales drastically due to having the biggest margin and due to their flexibility are known to jump between factions often in their nature of being "cheap" (in comparison to high tier pilots) contract hires. high tiers are what most think of when thinking of The pilot. highest ranking in their faction, with a titan enhanced and modified to their specific liking - something only these elites are allowed to do (which is why the apex predators have impossible abilities (viper's infinite flight, slone's phase shifting ion - these are all modifications that require a lot of money and after demeter making titan customization near impossible, it says a lot about those pilots on the battlefield)) so given the questions my take is: - pilots start out as just pretty good soldiers, but the best of the best become godly monsters. "beware of an old man in a profession where men usually die young" - i do think the gameplay in the campaign is canon, to an extent. i view it similar to how i view titanfall 1's story mode; the gameplay itself it slightly dramatized for the sake of rule of cool - however if written out properly, it'd look vastly different. titanfall 2's story with titanfall 1's approach would be a much darker and heavier story but they wanted to take the star wars route for easier appeal after the first game's criticisms, which was the right call
![Fantasy Should Have Flintlock Firearms | Alliterated Articulacy™ [cc]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/5n9kHXXyoa4/mqdefault.jpg)
this video has a followup now, because there was a lot of discussion on this one: th-cam.com/video/fKxymp3NkvA/w-d-xo.html
it addresses stuff like Bangalore and Newcastle's alleged pilot training, so go watch that if you're curious!
have a good one :>
to reinforce the super soldier idea, in even the first titanfall game, the grunts even state that the pilots who had cloak had it surgically attached to their spine for it to work.
TF2 kind of does away with that idea with Jack Cooper having a kit that includes cloak I guess
@geroni211 In the campaign, the cloak only lasts for a few seconds. Meanwhile, in the multiplayer, the cloak lasts 4 times longer. That could explain why Jack's cloak is less efficient, it's not attached to his spine, only his kit
@@SaDystopia374That also explains why Mirage's cloak only works in specific situations.
Remember burn cards? One of them was Prosthetic legs, I think it gave you permanent stim
One thing I absolutely despise about how the pilots are represented in Gridiron is the fact that when you first see the pilot, they are literally just taking a casual stroll through the battlefield holding a data-knife. A KNIFE. Plus walking through a field like that would get you killed so fast in multiplayer titanfall games, and even in the campaign in some cases.
Bro was probably some grunt that decided to wear pilot army
In reality he would be jumping and crouch sliding like a spaz.
@@alexanderstanfield5845slide hopping and wall kicking all the way to Kansas
@@alexanderstanfield5845 i dont think he would be dong that i think he would be running and wall running from cove to cover trying to find a tactical advantage like how all cgi trailers has shown
@@yokai1235mate they joking
You are missing the easy answer, the hidden gaming chair price stat. The money spent on gaming chairs by Bangalore mains alone easy outmatches a pilots salary. It's no wonder he got tooled.
fuck
Also the reason the payday gang was so powerful but then became weak. PDTH: starting off not a lot of cash, only get regenerating armor. Payday 2: peak money= peak power/ weapons. They could even afford the comically large golden spoon from hell. Payday 3: lost all their money, now they are budget John Wicks with breakable ballistic linings.
Conclusion? The payday gang are a cult that gains their power through sheer wealth.
@@cassius_scrungomanCan’t believe you never thought of this. Maybe you need a gaming chair to sit down and think about this for a bit.
I think master difficulty is lore accurate. Jack made it through the whole thing without a grunt ever being able to land a melee on him
After my master play through viper’s sound effect of his flight core has engrained into my memory
@@lilboy7613Yeah, I played it on Master difficulty first and Viper and the sludge place where the worst ever
@@lilboy7613Lol, I died multiple times to random sections, but somehow managed to first-try every boss on master mode. I was honestly shocked I didn’t die once. Viper’s fight was by far the hardest, though, and I was near death every second
So:
Pilots canonically pulp grunts in one punch
Grunts canonically pulp pilots in one punch
Robots pulp grunts and pilots in one punch
Is there anyone who doesn't do arm day every day?
@@odinlindeberg4624MRVNs
To answer the prompt first: I think it depends on the pilot. Remember that a lot of these guys don't get Titans, they get one the various models of light/scout equivalents. Also remember that the named pilots in Titanfall 2 are either antagonists from a mercenary company highly dependent on branding, or are literally the best either side has to offer. I also don't think its unfair to have a grunt kill a pilot. That isn't bad writing, that's war. Equipment fails, soldiers get sloppy, people make mistakes when they are tired, angry and deprived of sleep. Most importantly, bullets and rockets are pretty effective regardless of who they're fired at. Without incorporating actual magic, no weapon is truly invincible against chance and error.
Two additional points.
1. Every military needs its equivalent of grunts. Multiple superpowers in the real world have learned this the hard way while trying to enforce their will; it is not cost-effective or even viable to use your biggest guns against every problem. In the case of Titanfall, on a mechanical level grunts are mostly there to act as cannon-fodder and a mild threat, but on a narrative level they're the backbone. The pilots are the hammer, the infantry/conventional mechanized units are the anvil. And they do that job well because they are infinitely cheaper, far more numerous, and significantly more flexible than pilots in utility. You aren't going to send Jack Cooper to guard a research lab; that's a waste of his time and your resources. You would however send a couple platoons of grunts with a few mechanized units as support. If something like a pilot or a titan shows up, those infantry are not and should not be expected to do more than buy time until reinforcements arrives. And if they get lucky and do manage to kill or capture a pilot, fantastic. For real world references, there is an estimate that it costs the US army between 50 and 75 thousand dollars to train and arm a recruit. It costs them around 10 million for a single Abrams tank.
2. Any blanket measurement of power will be flawed because it will never cover all relevant factors. If you put two fighters in a ring, and one is faster, stronger, and tougher than the other, they have an edge but not sure victory. Consider that the metric doesn't cover morale, distraction, fair play, terrain, mental health, exhaustion, desire to win or a hundred other tiny things summarized as "luck." When magic or literal divine intervention is involved, all bets are off. Statistically yes, there are characters and factions that should logically dominate, but that doesn't mean they should always win. It just means that when they do lose, there should be some kind of satisfying reason presented well.
One last thought. There aren't a lot of games that seriously tie their narratives into game play, mostly because that's hard to do and restricts a lot of options for both. Instead most games rely on a specific suspension of disbelief to both tell a grounded story and have gameplay that isn't made frustrating with overly realistic elements. They use their narration and gameplay to garnish each other, but do no strictly bind them together. I don't this is a failure of writing or game design, but it is a difficult balance to walk and can be screwed up as evidenced in some examples above.
TL:DR Stormtroopers deserve better.
Timothy Zahn did a great job of explaining EU stormtroopers in the book Allegiance. How we strayed so far from that is simply bad writing.
good shit
Bro, make a youtube channel! This is the kind of gaming essay people like to listen
also does the difficulty represent what is most likely to happen? also nice
True till someone whiffs on 2 grunts with a smart pistol :/
One of people at respawn (ToonCraft) actually addressed the pilot losing to Bangalore and Co. being the Pilot was very overconfident/arrogant. While personally I do agree that overconfidence/arrogance is a killer, it was not conveyed enough in the video to the viewer what the pilot was thinking and why he lost.
to be fair, the people who know how strong pilots are should also be the people that are acutely aware of how stupidly arrogant IMC pilots are. Like 3 titans will be bearing down on BT and Cooper while talking mad trash only to get flame cored into nonexistence. Militia pilots are the efficient, deadly killers. IMC pilots are not.
His punch would have vaporized their lungs, I don't know how they won in hand to hand
He was bound to get his Pilot certification revoked, honestly Bangalore did that guy a favor.
He lost. at point blank. _with a smart pistol_
...then again, I killed a dood like that, so who knows.
Pilots can kill grunts or even pilots with one fist punch. He had to be VERY arrogant to die there.
i think one important thing to note is the speed of which all the ghosts ran the Titanfall 2 gauntlet, commander brigs for example runs it like a grunt and is one of the lesser ghosts, despite being the leader of the SRS. perhaps the pilot the legends fought was like brigs and not the best pilot but somehow through luck and plot armour managed to rank up to commander
in all fairness, commander briggs might not be the most mobile pilot but she obviously shows herself as a very capable leader and fighter in trial by fire, and she might've just not had a jumpkit for her gauntlet run.
@@chairuptopit’s a simulation, even Cooper had a kit. Perhaps Briggs’ prowess comes from her Titan combat and leadership, not her foot soldier skills
This is a good point, and I think that being a commander doesn’t necessarily equate to having good combat skill as much as ability to lead. Where Brigs might not be the most skilled pilot, she could be the best leader which landed her that role and I think the same may be said for the pilot from Gridiron.
i was going to say this because there are definitely some mid pilots as seen in the gauntlet and some of the pilots of imc titians are'nt very good.
it's very possible the IMC commander was a better leader than a combatant, even special forces need officer types
11:21 Yes, I think the Titanfall canon should be prioritized, since it was a story ABOUT pilots, whereas Apex is just Respawn trying to make legends appear cool for the sake of marketing and hype. Apex Legends’ cinematic videos (in the absence of a narrative campaign) never were about representing pilots.
It's not only that but Apex is a spinoff game, because of that it has lower priority then the main games.
@@shepardpolskaapex definitely has priority considering the boatloads of cash it's made. They even call it the apex universe now so it's definitely not just a spinoff anymore.
@@thegreatgoobert5847 I do agree that they might try to make the main part of the story like you said they call it apex universe it doesn’t change the fact that titan fall came first and apex is going off the titanfall lore so apex is spin-off of titanfall
Starting with the first question, I do honestly think that the Titanfall games take priority over Apex in regards to lore and power scaling, mainly because Apex's priority has clearly been setting up cool skins to use even if they aren't even close to lore accurate (I know this is a cope, but that's just how I look at it). Pilots are 100% supposed to be kings of the battlefield, and Apex has kinda done them dirty over the years with their retcons. Not really an argument for it, yeah, but I mean I'm putting in equal effort as EA Execs do care for the lore.
And as for the second question, it's implied near the beginning of the game that Anderson has been training Cooper for a little while before the game actually starts (Tutorial Mission Logbook, "Aboard the James McAllan, my Pilot training *continues*-), while I don't believe there's an exact timeframe for how training goes, I imagine it starts with physical conditioning, then augmentation, then Pilot equipment training, then Titan training. We play as Cooper during the Pilot equipment training, and would've hypothetically done the Titan training if it wasn't interrupted. What does all of this mean? Cooper isn't just some random Rifleman grunt who is suddenly able to master these tools, he's had time beforehand to get a grasp on these things.
As for the one weak point, Cooper being able to pilot BT in the first mission and beat a Northstar is indeed questionable. Counterpoint, I think what Respawn had in mind was that the player would just barely scrape by the fight, which would represent equally Cooper barely winning out. Almost every playthough that uses the game's recommended difficulty you get after doing the gauntlet ends up like that, and it would make at least a little more narrative sense. Not exactly fullproof, but I am almost certain that's what the devs had in mind.
I agree. As for winning the titan battle, I give a lot of the credit to BT. They set up a neural link, so BT can somewhat influence what Cooper does, and also, BT is a more advanced Titan.
I think something else to note is how innately skilled Cooper would have had to be in the first place to be trained by Lastimosa, let alone even SEE a sim pod. Factually speaking, the Militia had less resources, and so they had to choose their pilots very sparingly, whereas IMC can pump out new Titans and Pilots like it's another day at work.
I think your average pilot is somewhere in the middle of odst and spartan. Fragile but extremely skilled with a few augments.
Minor little thing here. Which type of Spartan? Spartan II, III, or IV? Because I'd put pilots on around a Spartan IV consider how weak they are compared to IIIs and IIs along with a pilot's ability to use more than 1 ability (holo nova, inner pieces, phase rewind, etc).
@@NineballRaven I'd say pilots still aren't quite at the level of a IV. IVs have lesser genetic augments compared to IIs and IIIs, but GEN2 Mjolnir supposedly brings them up to the level of a II or III in older armor.
I'd say they're less powerful than all Spartans. Thier energy shield makes them twice as durible as a pilot. While pilots are more mobile than a spartan that doesn't matter as much. Try face tanking an A wall spitfire guy but you can't go around his shield.
@@macnifontoff6948idk I’m pretty sure they have nano bots inside of em that make ‘em super strong fast and a crazy healing factor
@@NineballRaven To add on what the other guy said about spartans being better, they not only have shields but extremely durable armor under that, coupled with aguments that make them very quick, very strong, and their reaction time is unmatched. even the best pilot would get rolled by the worst spartan 4
I do share the annoyance of inconsistent power scaling but mostly in superhero media. I give it a pass in war stories, particularly Titanfall in this case, because it emphasizes the point that no matter how skilled someone may be, people are fragile and it usually takes 1-2 well placed shots or 1 good stab to take someone down. Life of a soldier is fleeting. Pilots brush with death in every fight as they take down dozens of grunts but there's always just a matter of time until they get overconfident and slip up or just do one fatal mistake.
I would only like to change one thing you stated. They do not brush death, they shoulder check it with a grin. Let's be honest, one pilot fighting as many grunts as you take in campaign, or a standard attrition round is not laughing number or even just canonically. That's A LOT of lead flying at a you at any one time. And while the grunts are clearly made to be laughably ineffective for gameplay reasons realistically even a half-baked soldier would get a lot more shots where they wanted it. But, that's all I wanted to add.
@@p5ychojoe138 I agree. If grunts were realistic, they'd be able to hit moving targets like pilots even at their highest speeds. Pilots wouldn't stand a chance with their ridiculously aggressive and risky combat methods; they'd have to be more tactical. I'm sure they would be almost as dominant as they are if they were more tactical, but for gameplay purposes, pilots become immune to almost anything grunts can do when moving at any speed faster than running, which is fair enough.
@@holynder3181 I'm actually not so sure about this; The vast majority of shots miss in a normal war, where most targets that a rifleman shoots at will likely be moving at either a predictable speed and direction, or at a relatively slow pace. you can set up someone in a gun range and teach them to shoot at those sorts of targets without too much issue. Pilots on the other hand, are rarely going to give you more than one or 2 chances to shoot them, and have ability to move at erratic speeds and directions. You could absolutely train your general forces to be a credible threat to pilots, but the investment doesn't seem worth it; I doubt that the skills required are something that can be learned without enough training time to give your logistics department an aneurism.
The main reason why grunts like Jack and Anita are able to stand out is because pilots hold immense sway in the forces they are a part of; if a pilot takes interest in a soldier, and vouches that the training investment will be worth it, than the odds are that the request will be granted; the chance at a new pilot is too valuable to pass up and keeping your pilots happy is important as they are hard to replace.
Important not to underestimate the value of sheer speed when applied intelligently. I’m sure a grunt could shoot a pilot if they were looking the right way and knew where the pilot was coming from, but that’s rarely how an intelligent or competent pilot would engage them. The power of the jump kit is that a pilot could come from anywhere at any time, and has the tools to accurately choose the best way to do it. One of the most powerful is the personal sensor suite they get - highlighting opponents’ rough position through walls is a busted ability, even excluding something like a pulse blade. If something zips round a corner to your left two stories up and dumps a magazine of automatic fire into your squad with superhuman precision you won’t get a chance to shoot back, even if one of you has been tasked to watch more or less the right direction.
It makes sense that grunts would be a bigger threat to pilots than we experience in game with that in mind - because the pilot is a terrifying force but if they fuck up their chance of running into bullets is non-zero. They have to use every tool, maximise surprise and be meticulously smart about who and how they engage people. They’re a terrifying force, but if they get it wrong they die.
Tactics against pilots would likely be area fire, don't aim at the pilot. Shoot a wall of lead and the pilot won't have free space to dodge. Not 100% effective, but more cost effective than training.
The continuity between Titanfall and Apex would be so cool if they just committed to it a little harder and more faithfully- Instead it just reminds me that there's no Titanfall 3
not for long pal
Spoken like someone who hasn't been observing the Titanfall threads or took their anti-hopium pills.
At this point I say good riddance, better to die a hero.
I always assumed that IMC pilots post-demeter were much worse, due to the loss of reinforcement and the increasing number of defectors (if Graves and Mcallan are anything to go off of), the IMC just started putting a Jumpkit on anyone that could get in a titan. It makes sense as to why you kinda cut through so many IMC titans in the campaign (I know Jack was trained by the best of the best and he has a Vanguard class, but c'mon), as well as why the important jobs were outsourced to the Apex Predators. The problems even extends to Frontier Defence where they're just throwing auto titans at you. Back on topic, I just imagined commander gets-clowned-on was basically a result of the IMC going "wow, you're good at this, you're a pilot". It also makes me feel like Bangalore and Newcastle would've absolutely been made pilots if they'd stuck with the IMC (correct me if I'm wrong, but didnt one or both of them ACTUALLY have a bit of pilot training?).
Both have Pilot training, though Jackson was actually Combat Certified and owned a Titan
Also worth noting that, since the Militia did not have a steady supply of titans, their qualifications for pilots are much higher than the IMC. You wouldn't want some kid who can barely drive take your car into a race, would you?
this makes the most sense to me, it seems like the baseline to be a pilot for the IMC was much lower than for the militia so i can clearly see how theyd just be chucking anyone they can into mass produced titans to throw at the problem until it goes away. Also in titanfall 2 the imc is cut off from their supply lines, so they might have already thrown away many of their skilled pilots and once the war is over theyd probably be handing out jump kits to whatever decorated soldier they could to act more as a symbol than a proper, fully fledged pilot. It might also be why bangalore and jackson were able to become/almost become pilots.
Moy Parra (of Titian Toons) definitely understood the pilot power problem, despite making the in game Bangalore animation from that cinematic. The first animation test was going to show just how hard it was for Bangalore to beat a pilot, but had to be replaced b/c she didn’t look cool enough.
I think one important thing, which you touched on a little, is the fact that playing a game gives the audience a massively different perspective on how characters exist as opposed to how those characters would actually behave.
In a Titanfall 2 match, you'll see an effective Pilot *always* moving; if you're not in a Titan, you're vulnerable, and if you're vulnerable, you're already dead. Even in firefight scenarios, Pilots will be constantly shifting side-to-side, sprinting around and leaping footfall fields in seconds. They don't just wall-run, they practically fly.
Grunts, on the other hand, are soldiers with field equipment and firearms. They move in groups, seek cover, and take their time scanning their environment. This makes them very easy to kill when the player's Pilot never gets tired, never gets disoriented, never runs out of ammo, and can literally suckerpunch fully-grown human beings to death without breaking every single bone in that hand.
Pilots *are* staggeringly impressive, and even borderline terrifying, but the games are unreliable windows into how they exist in real-space. Should Scryer have won that two-on-one? Yeah, probably, but it's not nearly as implausible as many people are claiming it to be.
really good video! i think this is the first time someones actually made an accurate distinction as to why gameplay =/= lore
to answer your pilot question, I mentally headcanon pilots as sort of a master chief in halo 1 type of thing, where theyre not *literally* gods but whenever a grunt sees a pilot fighting along side them they know they have a much better chance of beating whatever they're fighting, sort of like the actual definition of "super soldier" without the in game grunt to pilot kill ratio
It actually became a lot easier to become a pilot between the events of titanfall 1 and 2. In the first game, pilots have a ton of cybernetics and implants, while by the time the second game takes place, both sides were hurting for pilots, and due to limited resource and advancements in technology, pilots became less super solider than they used to be. For instance, Cloak pilots during TF|1 had thousands of cloak implants imbedded all across their skin, while in TF|2, cloak was simply projected from their helmet. Also, that 98% failure rate was for IMC training during the events of the first game, it's unknown exactly how much the passing rate increased by the second game. So a pilot trained and augmented towards the beginning of the war is likely to be a lot more powerful than a pilot trained towards the end. Of course, any pilot would sweep the floor against any of the apex legends. This is why Ash becoming a legend is so stupid. She was one of the most deadly pilots on the frontier, and after being beaten by jack and bt, she was rebuilt to still be a deadly pilot, presumably more so.
All this being said, it is clear that the current writers at respawn don't have any respect for the established lore of the titanfall universe, as they have retconned so much of the universe I initially fell in love with, even stuff they didn't have any need to retcon. I'd be willing to bet that I know more about titanfall lore published before Apex legends came out than anyone on respawn's lore/writing team, and that makes myself, and many other titanfall fans, really sad.
It's also worth noting that Militia pilots had to be more skilled than your average IMC pilot. I don't know if it's in the lore anywhere or not, but when you have a limited resource in war (Titans) you only want the most capable people utilizing the equipment, or risk losing it. Even if it's not in the lore, it's generally just a general war thing, and I think that it would apply in this situation.
Okay so can explain why pilots being on the same level as legends is a bad thing cause I’ll be honest I’ve been a Titanfall fan since day 1 but bro why do y’all expect slightly super soldiers who’s real power comes from a 3 story robot and high tech equipment to not be equal or even slightly lesser to people with fucking super powers/ the same equipment ? Like half the legends just outright have improved pilot tech, super powers better than the pilots version of it, or better tech than pilots like okay yes legends like octane and life getting stomped makes sense but like valk,loba,rev,ash,ballistic,catalyst,path,wraith or even mirage these all people running around with outdated pilot gear on top of having better equipment than a pilot valk wears a fucking Titan, loba just teleports no phase bullshit and wraith has a permanent phase. Watson and caustic fall in that yeah they’d get there asses kicked bet definitely have better equipment than whatever octane and the stim pilots are cracked out on
@@KalicoKal because a pilot takes a minute max to kill a reaper with underpowered gear compared to 6 goddamn Legends who had trouble doing it in that time as a minimum. Pilots, in terms of reaction time, combat capability, and all are literally designed and train to be superior to any other, without the titan. Plus one is written worse than the other so :/
@@titan1umtitan okay now as stated in the video a random dipshit grunt with a free trial robot is the best pilot…a random fucker with super powers not being bare minimum on the same level but maybe not as skilled is still more believable than that, and again that same random ass grunt is the one fighting a fucking reaper and all he got was some nano bots? By that logic juice every legend with whatever they gave cooper and they are automatically above every pilot. We also can’t forget gameplay is a factor even guns that are the exact same in apex don’t function the same we have a charge rifle on the floor like it’s not already better than a Kraber in the first place it’s for titans for fucks sake yet can’t down a meth addict, you gotta take off the rosé colored glasses and stop buying the marketing hype pilots are battle field gods if your a normal dude and unfortunately most of the legends aren’t Normal dudes they have the pilot equipment before the training and probably have better understanding of there abilities given the lack of choice they have except mirage that mans got two pilot ability’s and the humor for it thanks to his fam like top 10 pilots are probably dusting 90% of the legends sure but not some no name rando when it took as far as anyone’s concerned a no name grunt with a quick injection of plot, can solo an entire army with a team of experienced top tier pilots standing in his way? This makes every pilot weak as shit far weaker than a random pilot getting high diffed by a brother sister duo that later went on to fight other pilots and people with super powers because they got good training and team work
@@KalicoKal "slightly super soldiers" what a cope
I will happily treat SpeedRunner Jack Cooper as canon. My boy was slidehop-airstrafe-bunnyhopping when he was still a Grunt.
That said, the way Pilots are talked about in-lore and in-dialogue (especially in Titanfall 1) definitely suggest that Pilots in general are *incredible killing machines* that are worthy of awe. "Is that a Pilot? Bet I could run on walls if I had one of those jump packs!" 'Can it. They're on a whole 'nother level. Just /watch/!"
One of my favorite bits from Titanfall 1 was a story from the Grunts detailing a Grunt putting a /drop/ of the stim the Stim Pilots use in his coffee and being unable to sleep for weeks.
I'm not sure how true it is but I've heard that the Grunts in Titanfall 1 were actually a lot more dangerous than their TF2 counterparts, allegedly due to their more aggressive AI. Narratively, since the TF2 multiplayer is chronologically last in the 3 TF timeframes (TF1 -> TF2 Campaign -> TF2 MP), this could signify declining standards of recruitment and deployment for common foot soldiers throughout the Frontier Wars. This attrition may have also carried over to pilots as well; with Titans being the closest thing either side would likely to armor/tanks, demand for pilots might have seen some pilots slip through qualifications at lower standards.
TF1 grunts would pull out an archer on your ass
TF2 just drop to their knees
Shockingly TF2 Grunts can be deadly with AT weapons
I learned this the hard way in a modded Frontier Defense server
@@lynny_lynn4325 I honestly wish TF|2 grunts used AT weapons too. Because, why wouldn't they? It's just a rocket launcher.
Also it would have made them actually pose some threat instead of just being there to get +1 score while stepping on them.
I think it would have been easier for IMC, but the restrictions for Militia would have gone up, the less titans that you have, the more skilled person you want in that seat to ensure that you don't lose another resource. A very common tactic for smaller rebel forces
@@justyouraveragem4a136it’s not modded. In hard difficulty and above grunts use ANTI TITAN weapons
My gut says the canon depiction of a character should reflect on the narrative and thematic role they are meant to serve, and not just what works best scene by scene. Stormtroopers are the perfect example because the entire setting makes no sense if the probably hundreds of showcases of their incompetence are meant to reflect their actual presence. I think the issue comes when you have a series that lasts so long it changes directions. Despite ostensibly being in the exact same setting Andor and Rebels might as well be different universes given the threat the Empire poses in both works, and at that point we have to throw up our hands and say their power scaling just needs to be consistent in their own stories. So as much as I like the power fantasy of pilots being gods on the battlefield if Apex has decided otherwise I think it's okay as long as they commit to and show it.
i don't think the multiplayer modes should really be used to see the canon strengths of characters. in titanfall 2's campaign grunts are a lot more of a threat and legends in apex are a lot more powerful in cinematics than they are in-game.
i always thought of pilots like comandos, they are one man army, they are efficient with any weapon and they have that little extra that makes them hard to kill, jack copper was a prodigy and though he was just a rifleman Lastimosa sought a skillfull pilot in him, jack slapped every apex predator because they were alone and he was learning fast to survive, BT played an important rol on that, being an experimental Vanguard class jack had a pretty fair chance against moddified classes of the apex predators's titans, below them i picture the common pilots, the ones that die in the field most likely, the ones that jack kills in the campain, they are above every grunt and machine in the battlefield but they are not so badass as the prodigies, you can see it like in the multiplayer matches, there is always people that struggle to get even 100 score in attrition, and there is the pilot who never dies and gets 40 pilot kills, 6 titan kills, 26 AI kills and 286 attrition points.
On the topic of the end-video question, I think it's sort of a mixed bag.
Using the very sloppy evidence of Frontier Defense, a standard mercenary pilot is considerably above the bar compared to your Joe Schmoe pilots in organizations like the IMC. In pretty much every PvE scenario where the player is against an AI piloted titan, the player will always come out on top with very little exception, primarily due to the overwhelming odds.
Even though this is really iffy, I think it is a good display of the difference between Frontier Militia and mercenary pilots compared to IMC pilots. If someone is a pilot in the Militia which has a very limited amount of resources, they probably are going to be held to a higher bar than a pilot in the IMC due to their abundance of resources prior to Gridiron.
Personally, I think Scryer was definitely a cut below the pilots we think about when we think on classic Titanfall pilots. While he does have high-end equipment, and according to the cinematic, a potentially modified and upgraded jumpkit, his sloppiness associated with ranking could be attributed to the panic incited in the IMC following Gridiron as a giant chunk of their high level military is destroyed. This also could explain the absence of his titan in the cinematic- the IMC isn't getting consistent resupplies anymore, so they can't make as many titans as they were.
TL;DR: Most Milita/mercenary pilots probably should be held to significantly higher expectations compared to most IMC pilots.
Seeing this comment brought me much happiness. I'm surprised not many people are talking about the standard Militia pilots are set to due to the limited resources.
One thing you have to remember about Cooper is that he had BT.
BT only ever lost a four on one fight against the apex predators and even then he was about to kill sloane and body blisk.
BT is an advanced AI unlike the other titans and was able to guide cooper along the whole time. Obviously cooper has plot armor talent and luck, but the vanguard class Titan with an advanced AI is the real edge against your randy IMC pilot.
Also it seems heavily implied that the militia just has higher quality pilots anyway.
Judging from dialogue from grunts in Titanfall 1 (and having a master mode difficulty run under my belt lol) Grunts are probably more effective than they actually appear in game, but, that still doesn’t change the fact pilots probably kill scores of grunts from getting the jump on them using their movement capabilities fairly often, especially on active battlefields where people will often have their attention focused on the threat ahead
Grunts seem to have a wide skill spectrum, much like player pilots. Some grunts will lose count of their kills and brag about how easy it was to kill a pilot if they manage to down one.
Other grunts will probably be one of the guys who get wiped by cooler grunts.
I think no matter how big the skill gap is, a real fight will always have blindspots that you can't prepare for and high confidence and make those blind spots much bigger. So a grunt killing a pilot is completely possible without it messing with the power scale.
However, i do think almost every time in games when they cinematic and gameplay don't match up. It's just incompetency. It's one of the reasons i grew to hate metal gear solid. Also the new god of wars. I hate that disconnect.
It’s not just a skill gap. A single punch from a pilot should turn their ribs into powder.
@@cjbladesworth8049 They are just build different XD
I think the only reason cooper doesn't get bodied in the Campaign is because he doesn't face any pilots mano a mano. Lastimosa chose Cooper above every other Grunt in the Militia, so it can be assumed he's probably already above par amongst his peers. Additionally (no source, I just vaguely remember it being the case), Cooper had been trained in simulation for a year or two by lastimosa, and considering the biOS text we see from the Jump Kit calibrating to Cooper in the beginning of the campaign we can assume it's probably doing most of the work
(as for which Gauntlet time is canon, no idea, could be any, with the higher ons possibly showing Cooper is a prodigy, or just figured out Grenade Boosting which was apparently made Canon in Apex which is the one good thing that came out of that slag heep)
But we can use this to explain away why Cooper can tear through legions of Grunts, and that just boosts the power level of what even Rookie Pilots can achieve, even without any of the special non-sense aside from natural skill and practice.
Now: Cooper never faces a pilot on the ground, only ever in Titan on Titan combat. We know cooper never had Titan training, so he should be at a disadvantage, until you think about it this way: Titans are just really big Infantry Units.
While yes they have a completely different anatomy to humans, with a digitigrade leg structure, no actual "head", and jet boosters, the idea remains the same "Shoot bad man, use cover to not get shot by bad man" It can also be assumed that BT could be assisting Jack in some way. Whenever operating on his own, BT is seen with a left handed preference when wielding his weapons, even if it might be disadvantageous (the XO-16 has its box on the left side), so it's possible his AI has developed its own fighting style, and is capable of adapting to specific situations (BT grabbing and throwing Prowlers and grunts when acting solo, and teaching himself how to do a thumbsup after seeing Cooper do it) so he could be operating the majority of the time and just reacting to Cooper's tactical decisions, at least early in their relationship, and we even see BT Acting against Cooper's wishes in order to maintain Protocol 3 (Blood and Rust not risking blind firing, refusing to leave Cooper while holding the Ark, and the one mission that definitely is not making me cry extremely manly tears right now), so he definitely has notable independence and adjustable programming.
There's also the fact we see BT and Lastimosa standing up to the Apex Predators 3 on 1, disabling Slone, and briefly battling Blisk before Ash comes up from behind and rips out two of BT's Batteries (some fucking how). After that they're all faced one on one.
To me this only points out the absolute god tier abilities that even basic Pilots have, and only reinforces my hate for the Tumblr OC Donut Steel casual cry baby fest that for some unknowable reason still makes bank on cosmetics alone despite the fact the gameplay is a boring repetitive sweat fest for the last almost half a decade that is Minimum Ordinaries... Wait I meant Apex Legends
Wait I should've been in bed an hour ago
The grenade boost in apex is still kind of lame anyway, because they seem to have made the character have prosthetic legs, remembered that the gauntlet takes place in a simulation, and then explained the discrepancy by saying that there's a real world version of the gauntlet out there for god knows why.
@@adt4864 iirc the dude who did it made his own version of the gauntlet specific to do the Grenade boost in the real world, resulting in the robo-leg man we know and loath
But yea, apex is dumb
About the neuro-link with Titans, it's only on Vanguard-Class Titans (Note: Monarch is a reverse engineered Vanguard), while for the streamlined ones, they use Pilot Uplink
According to the lore
I feel if a pilot is in his element and has all available resources available 1 could take on all legends at once no thought about it. Even without their titan the only way they could possibly lose is from 2 things that were said in the starting cutscene. "Overwhelming odds or an equal"
Is it not unreasonable to assume two of the best grunts could beat the worst pilot if they get lucky? Perhaps not all grunts/pilots are created equal.
That's basically what happened to Jack Cooper, right?
@@ajh3461Jack was already getting trained to be a Pilot tho he started off as a grunt on the ground
Also Anita and Jackson were competing on getting their first pilot certification and Jackson gotten his, but idk why he wasn’t decked in pilot gear yet in short
The IMC had a literal program where only the best survive in Titanfall 1. Maybe they stopped that program because they don't have as many pilot candidates by the time apex legends is set in.
i mean, when only 1 in 50 people that train to be pilots actually become them, the 'worst pilot' is still leagues beyond any grunt
Due to its surge of popularity I been playing a lot of Titanfall 2 and I honestly think that pilots are cool as shot and would love to be able to play Apex. Anyways I think the pilot power-level boils down to their ability to stave off hubris, after all if all you do is smell your own farts there will be one day where you cannot smell any farts.
because i completely forgot to mention this in the video, alongside the two videos that i actually remembered to mention, the one on writing in fantasy ( th-cam.com/video/MtPpE_k2yKQ/w-d-xo.html ) will also be a part of this new series too.
have a good one!
I do think that an important note for Titanfall 2 is that BT is canonically a stupidly overpowered titan, so its not just Jack's ability not making any sense. Not that that is enough to justify everything but at least its not as egregious
the secret in my mind as to why a pilot can kill scores of grunts in titan fall but one seemingly got killed by 2 grunts in apex lore, is momentum. Pilots equipment and training allows them to keep up the momentum to out play their grunt counter parts, even in titanfall 2 if you just walk around and try fight grunts like in a traditional shooter you'll have some problems from time to time. But if you use your momentum to fling yourself around the grunts they become trivial. That's why i think bangalore and newcastle managed to kill that pilot, cause he didn't use his main and major advantage over them, that being speed and the ability to keep it and use it to the pilots advantage in combat. Also it doesn't help that apex likes to mess with preastablished stuff like gimping the specters and that reaper
But both Bangalore and Newcastle got punched, therefore they should both be dead, because both the single and multiplayer of Titanfall show that grunts get one punched by pilots.
@@sneakyjay358 i always found the punching argument kinda baseless, i could say that grunts onepunch you in master and thats that
@@Valzip But you can still one punch grunts on any difficulty as well. So your argument of it being baseless, is kinda bs.
@@sneakyjay358That has always seemed like flimsy reasoning to me. Grunts get one hit by melee because it's fun, and having to hit a grunt with your fists 2 or 3 times would've made melee absolutely worthless. It's just game balancing, not "omg pilots so stronk they kill a man with one punch"
6:39 In Titanfall 2, the IMC is said to believe Titans and Pilots as replaceable. The militia believed in the link between a single titan and a single pilot.
I really like the idea that it's mostly skill that makes pilots so good (since it transletes into the mp and the skill ceiling of the game). Which would also explain some of the differences in power level of the pilots we see. Maybe scryer got his position largely due to social standing?
First of all, great video. Love me some Titanfall lore content, it's a very underappreciated universe with a lot of cool ideas.
On pilots: The only thingg that distinguish pilots from grunts are their enhancements and gear - it's all very hard to produce and is only given to certified pilots (e.g. their jump kit, bonuses and class kits). Cooper was, as you said, just a guy who was noticed by an experienced pilot and given blitz on-the-side training. All that followed was him getting his hands onto primo pilot gear and going through gordon freeman-style personal hell for the next few days.
Grunts from apex killing a pilot is, of course, absolutely absurd. Look no further than the average TF2 match - grunts are hilariously weak fodder compared to the absolute gods that are pilots. But war is about more than just killing the opposition, which is why grunts, specters and other units apart from pilots and titans exist.
In short: a pilot is an extremely competent grunt, who has been personally trained until he reached the prestigious 2%, and was given top-of-the-line pilot equipment. Any person, if given a jump kit, any pilot class kit, and A TITAN, could wipe out the opposition. The point is that in order to get all those nice things, you first have to prove you're strong and agile enough.
For cooper, one thing we don’t seem to talk about is that he might not be fully controlling BT. having a giant articulating mech suit with its own AI system wouldn’t make sense if it would be largely totally controlled by their pilot, and if you look at the way BT fights by himself and when Lastimosa is piloting him, they are very similar in behaviour. BT plays a massive part in the story gameplay wise as well and is shown to be totally capable without manual drive.
Something you got wrong at 1:30 , the Spartans from Halo are not trained from birth, they were kidnapped as young children in secret, then trained, and even then Only the Spartan 2s and 3s, the Spartan 1s and 4s are recruited as full grown adults, often from other branches of the UNSC military, chiefly other Spec-ops groups like ODSTs. The Spartan 1s were even rotated back to their original branches after the program failed, SGT Avery Johnson, MasterChief's Marine buddy from Halo 1, 2, and 3, is actually a former Spartan 1, which helps to explain how he kicks so much ass.
I feel since they have survived a couple drops (Anita and Jackson) which most don't survive their first they can be on par with a IMC remnant pilot. (Also, the smart pistol doesn't attack what it thinks as friendlies)
The way I've come to terms with this issue throughout all media is that videogames, tv shows, books, movies, etc. are approximations of the fantasy setting. In the same way that we can make historical drama that is based on real events but is changed for dramatic effect, I consider non-fiction to essentially be a representation of the "real" thing but changed for dramatic effect. For example, the 300 Spartans' last stand at Thermopylae was real, but the 300 Spartans were only part of the contingent of 7,000 Greeks who took part in that battle. Popular portrayals of the event generally only show the 300 Spartans themselves. Maybe the "real" version of Jack Cooper had a lot more help in his quest and Titanfall 2's campaign is just a dramatization of the "actual event." Using this head-canon-esque approach allows me to reconcile the difference in power levels of the same characters across different medida.
From the perspective of a random person on the internet without any form of writing certification, I think that Titanfall 2 was written pretty well and is consistent with what it has shown us. As mentioned, anyone who is good enough can be a pilot, and they can come from anywhere at any time. Cooper was a grunt who was recognized by Lastimosa for some reason or another and was given special treatment and side training. Bangalore was said to be the top of her class in bootcamp, with her brother getting his titan before they graduated, meaning they were both on their way to being recognized as pilots by the IMC. It looks as though pilots aren't necessarily super soldiers, but really skilled soldiers who have shown above average abilities when compared to other soldiers. The mechanical augments and abilities that pilots have seem to be personal equipment and tools used whenever, as we don't see a uniform set of equipment between all the pilots of the militia or IMC. Also, not all pilots have mechanical and biological enhancements, as some of them use grapple and pulse blades instead of phase shift and stim. In the cinematic trailer for Titanfall 2, Cooper says pilots are "Fast and agile. Graceful yet devastating. Perceptive, resourceful, and relentless." I don't believe that what leaders are looking for is an overwhelming freak of nature with godlike strength and agility, because we don’t see that in this universe. Pilots aren't bulletproof, they can't go toe to toe with a titan, and even prowlers give them trouble in hand-to-hand combat. They are looking for highly skilled soldiers who aren't meant to overpower their enemies, they are supposed to outmaneuver and outplay them. In the cinematic, Cooper then says, "The pilot sees the world differently. Sheer walls become flanking routes. Pilots fight differently; experienced in deception and maneuverable... even overwhelming odds shift in their favor." What separates pilots from the rest of the grunts is the way they see the battlefield. They use different strategies and experiment with different equipment to even the odds. We can even see this in every aspect of the game through grunts and specters. Grunts always rely on the same strategies, they all think the same, they all act the same. They can be seen traveling in groups towards their objective, sometimes taking cover, other times running out in the open. While we know that they are coded to do that in the game files, we can see how they are all represented by the code to be of one mind. They all share the same code, the same brain. The pilot, on the other hand, is not. Except for certain NPCS, pilots are directly controlled by players and therefore represent the player, which thinks differently in order to win the game. Even compared to other pilots, they think differently from one another, as people in the real world don’t think the same way. 10 pilots/players can look at the same map and come up with at least 20 strategies and routes to take to gain an advantage, while 10 groups of grunts/NPCS will more likely than not follow the same algorithms and routes. The player won't run out of cover and mindlessly walk down the open areas of the game if they are aiming to win, they use walls for speed and to reach other areas of the map, they use grenades to draw out enemies and destroy large groups. They use their tacticals to not just overpower, but to maneuver and play around their enemies. They even slide and retreat to avoid death. That's the main difference between grunts and pilots. That is what separated pilots from the fodder. We should also talk about the legends, as they can all be grouped in the same power level despite only some of them actually being pilots in the canon. When talking about the power scaling totem pole, pilots are around the third tier, only below titans. But how do legends fit into this? Some are on the same level as pilots, considering that they are pilots. But these “pilots” can be defeated and taken out with relative ease by the other legends who are not “pilots.” How does that work? The best explanation is that legends think differently than grunts and use different strategies and tactics that are different from grunts and other legends and pilots. When Bangalore and Newcastle fought that IMC pilot, Bangalore wasn’t fighting like grunts would, she was strategizing, using everything she knew to survive, and using new tactics that we never see in any other grunt. While it seems like bad writing or just a way to make things interesting, we see her dismantle the enemy pilot multiple times to prolong the fight. Shooting his gun out of his hand and using his knife to disable his jump-jet and raise the odds for her victory. We also see her adapt to the enemy's cloak, looking at the smoke displacement and shimmer effect and reacting accordingly. Even when faced with overwhelming technology, Bangalore didn’t use brute force and power, she used her brain and tactics. When looking at Newcastle, we know he wasn’t really ready to be certified as a pilot, but we know he was ready for titan combat, which is reflected in how he tried to use titan strategies of overpowering the enemy rather than pilot strategies, which is why almost every clip of him fighting the pilot is him eating the dirt. We can kind of see this with every legend, each having some certain playstyle that works for them and almost a dozen different ways to use their abilities, but all of them never using the same strategy. They flank their enemies, they fly across the battlefield, they give heavy suppressive fire, and they work as a team. They would all make excellent pilots despite not all of them having some overpowered abilities. Look at me go I'm a pro yapper!
In the first game, the pilot training map labels it as having a 98% fatality rate, and considering many of the grunts talk about experiences in the training, the fail rate may as well be 98% of the 2% that survive
I think Jack Cooper could have been a newbie pilot who just completed their final test but didn't have the chance to connected to a titan yet since they are always in high demand. It would have made his feats more believable since he already "graduated" and might just be a prodigy. It's still a bit far fetched but would be more believeable than him being a grunt before, it would make him the one out of a million instead of the one out of a trillion.
Very glad the algorithm served me this, because I think it's a very important conversation! Great video! I especially liked how you read that Pilot dialogue in the fan comic.
So, I'm absolutely inclined to think that Pilots are "godly monsters on the battlefield." As for the Gridiron short, even as an avid IMC hater, I still want to advocate (wink) for Pilots, so I want to think about how they could have better portrayed the fight between the Williams Twins and Commander Scryer. And to be honest, after rewatching the short, I think the best course of action may have just been to give Scryer more dialogue. Someone else in these comments has already mentioned one of the justifications given by (I think) Moy Parra, that Scryer was simply too arrogant and overconfident in his abilities. Pilots are godly monsters, yes, but they're also VERY good soldiers-- disciplined and, importantly, focused. We already see that Respawn made the choice to have Scryer start to gloat and taunt the Williams duo after he cloaks, but I would have let this last longer, or even intersperse more dialogue with the many voice actor-y action grunts in the short. Show his overconfidence, then have Anita maybe take advantage of that while he's distracted with Jackson?
In my headcanon it alway was //Pilots are VERY good but still within human limits, they just use tech/implants/whateverthefuck combine with training on how tf arcstars work that it makes them killing machines// and since they are still human they are prone to emotions like "lemme style on dem grunts with my big knife like a thug" and then get absolutely demolished.
Oh and another great vid
"within human limits" who wants to tell this guy about Regeneration and Simulacrums
From what I can gather. They are gods on the battlefield (pilots). They are somewhat enhanced, and they can deliver a good punch (although I think the one hit punch is just to make it so executions are harder to land). But all of this god-like power comes from rigorous training. Another thing with Jack is that I assumed he was quick to pick up how to be a pilot.
As for the one-hit ko, that's just a gameplay mechanic in my mind. What should happen is an execution from any side of a pilot pretty much.
I think it's a fun theory to consider that Jack Cooper is an extremely generic name. Almost too generic... as though it was a fake name. This is absolutely a crackpot theory, but it's possible that Jack Cooper is a new identity with fake memories given to an amnesiac pilot(Cooper is revealed to have suffered memory loss during the Fracture Operation). If Cooper was previously a competent pilot, it makes Lastimosa's special treatment of Cooper and Cooper's incredible pilot instincts make much more sense, as opposed to some grunt with barely any jumpkit experience taking on the most dangerous mercenaries in the galaxy. Even if Cooper isn't a fake identity(which it probably isn't), it seems more reasonable that his talent and special treatment by Lastimosa are because of his previous capability as a pilot. Cooper seems unaware of the SRS division of the Miltia as a whole, even though he is literally mentored by a member of the SRS. He might just have severe memory loss, but kept his muscle memory of a pilot.
EDIT: not to mention cooper managed to drop 3 reapers, which were experimental(but obviously operational) ANTI-TITAN robots. cooper took them out with relatively low-caliber ballistics and maybe a few explosives. this man is cracked
He is a top IMC piolet who had his memory wiped to be made to work for the militia? :]
@@raisgamesnz325 the only competent IMC pilot ever seen
Or it could be like in the multiplayer how you can "regenerate," maybe he's an experiment/early version of that. Like Lastimosa really didn't have much of a reason to save cooper, unless he's a part of a highly confidential experiment with an extremely decorated Militia/IMC pilot.
Well, not that competent, he got captured xD@@chairuptop
Not going to lie the whole “Jack Cooper being an ex-IMC pilot” theory kinda sucks, but that’s just my opinion
Yes, Jack Cooper was meant to wipe the floor with the apex predators gang as he was something special. This is in the sense that he can learn things incredibly fast with almost no prior training. Its left to speculation whether Jack has a form of photographic memory or not but something is definitely going on here. Theres even confirmation of many extensive years in training as a past imc pilot in the first game before his memory is wiped as a result of the malitia kidnapping him, Anderson reevaluating his mind and deploying him against the imc as the malitias now greatest asset. Perhaps even BT was in on it but were really not sure. Hes most definitely also got some form of nanite basted healing factor amd enhanced strength and durability going on here as it is most definitely confirmed by devs that gameplay mechanics such as one punching spectres with his meat fists are canonical to Jacks and most pilots actual physical capabilities.
I feel that cooper was VERY lucky and his victory was mostly circumstantial but multiplayer is a more realistic look on a war zone
From what I understand from the lore the TF2 multiplayer is describing the power levels the best. You have pilots that are just godly masters of the battlefield and the then just people trying to give them some trouble usually dying in the process. Jack Cooper is a combination of lucky and talented in my opinion. He is thought by one of the best pilots and is being guided by BT who is also very knowledgeable. He is also a special model titan so that gives him an advantage as well.
It’s also canon in titanfall 2 that pilots do have enhancements like Nanites that allow for them to heal and reinforce parts of their body to withstand their traversal. Imo, gridiron is not canon because a pilot would mop them (homie had a literal smart pistol 🤦) using a smart pistol, jack cooper tolerably massacred an entire army with one of those in the campaign
if Bangalore and her bro are imc...then that means the smart pistol lockon didnt happen as...their allys as far as gun goes
If you're calling Cooper some random dude at the right place, you're skipping over how he was trained by a pilot captain, he wasn't some random guy, he was someone a pre existing pilot chose and was training.
I think some grunt dialogue in titanfall 1 has grunts talk about trying to get pilot certification, so the strongest of grunts are probably approaching the weakest of pilota except the grunts probably lack all the fancy augments.
the point about the IMC pilot "throwing away the morally gray nature of titanfall" is kinda moot, the IMC in titnafall 1 used civilians as target practice for spectres and in 2 built a doomsday weapon to blow up a planet. I don't think the morality of the overall factions was really ever in question. like sure, there's good people on both sides, but IMC is definitely the more morally abhorrent group in their actions and disregard for human life. its not out of the question that an IMC commander would attempt to level a settlement of deserters, as Blisk did the same thing in titanfall 1 on colony. just my 2 cent
I'm so glad you mentioned clone trooper power scaling, because that's one of my biggest pet peeves with Star Wars. I always thought that since clones were based on one of the galaxy's deadliest soldiers and trained for their entire lives to beyond Delta Force levels of pipe hitting, and were in many ways the successors to the feared Mandalorian supercommandos, they'd be, you know, scary. But then in TV shows, games and movies, despite some named clones having good characterization, they just die all the time, same as stormtroopers.
That's why the Republic Commando novels will always be some of my favorite Star Wars media. Karen Traviss seems to respect the deadliness of clones more than any other Star Wars writer. Even if the story is no longer canon.
Correct me If I'm wrong but I believe that Newcastle was Pilot certified and Bangalore was nearing the ending of her pilot training before the war ended. So I always took the Gridiron cinematic as a series of unlikely but not impossible outcomes
The worst bit is he missed with a smart pistol
"Out of all the things i've seen on the battlefields of the frontier, the pilot is the the true dominant force"
-Rifleman Jack Cooper
I love how the pilot in the comic calls the Apex Games paintball
Enjoyed the video. The 2% cert rate is with one highly elite training facility by the IMC. The multiplayer pilots are mercenaries who are hired, like Armored Core. To answer the QOTDs:
I think Pilots are godly on the field. Cooper would likely beat the Multiplayer pilots, though not without difficulties. I don't see the mercs on the same level as the generic, mass-produced IMC pilots or titans as in the campaign, but they're not Cooper level.
Here's my opinion on the totem pole:
Grunt or Spectre > Reaper > Specialist > Legend > Pilot > Auto Titan > Enhanced Auto Titan > Piloted Titan > Auto Vanguard > Piloted Vanguard
I always thought it wasn't Jack Cooper that was great but Jack Cooper and BT were great together.
The right pilot got the right Titan, like a 1 in a million perfect matchup.
You have to acknowledge that Bangalore is not supposed to be your average Grunt, but an extraordinarily disciplined and trained soldier. It was legit that she shot Skryer's smart pistol out of his hand mid flight - she hit the range a lot
Apex takes place a lot after tf2 so it is safe to assume that the pilot in the gridiron trailer just isn’t as good as tf2 pilots were
I think the best answer the question would be somewhere in between and that jack cooper is just different
I don't follow titan fall what so ever. but this video brought up a lot of really interesting points about character design, gameplay vs story, and a lot of other really interesting talking points. Really great vid.
thank you! :>
5:23 “arc star” this makes me unreasonably mad
that's what it's called in the comic
@@cassius_scrungoman it’s referred to as an arc star by the apex characters because they’ve never been exposed to a gravity star so they think “oh what’s the one type of throwing star I know that glows blue.”I was also as I said being unreasonable tho so
Dude the very first sentence had me foaming at the mouth
what is this comic called it looks cool to read
Cooper, I feel, is a circumstance of being uncontested by other trained pilots, while having just enough training, along with a titan to survive the campaign
Cooper was up against apex predators, some of the best pilots in the Titanfall universe he was not uncontested. He happened to be extremely lucky or talented, probably both.
@@goose1925 i should specify on foot, because, I do believe that titans do act as a level to the battlefield, as despite the skill required in piloting them, they require a different skillset to effectively use, so while unlikely that he could become as proficient as trained mercenaries within the span of a day or two, it would at least give him an edge, in addition to having a Titan equivalent to pre-demator designs, against the more limited titans in use by the apex predators
Are we counting the Specialists as pilots?
@@ajh3461 No because they never wall run or use any abilities
@@ajh3461 no those are just simulacrum individuals
Problem here is you can’t make grunts not comedically useless without making them really fucking annoying in multiplayer
To be fair, power scaling is dumb. The animators weren't thinking about what was going to be the most lore accurate, they want it to be cool.
At the end of the day, what decides power scaling is whoever the fuck the writer wants to win. And in that means, no amount of Pilots and Titans are going to beat a snail if the snail is the main character.
I think Pilots should be terrifying supersoldiers, like the one Bloodhound gets shot by while 'Trespassing'. There's always a super easy way for Respawn to fix this massive inconsistency between the cinematic and litterally the entirety of Titanfall lore. They can simply mention in the next cinematic or lore drop how Scryer was a Commander who fell off by relying too much on his soldiers. Maybe he got rusty after not keeping up with his training or using his neural link with his titan in many years.
The mention of Karen Traviss understanding this stuff with Star Wars is kinda funny, given her work with the Halo series where she portrays Spartans as emotional wrecks who with a full strength punch can barely manage to injure an elderly woman
I think the power scaling issue isn’t as black and white as it was represented at first. I think it’s a valid point that pilots are inconsistently represented, but also I think that it makes more sense to view the pilots’ skill as more variable, like yes they all had to receive a strict certification but Cooper and the Apex pilots are clearly far more skilled than the IMC’s, and that is reflected decently well in-game since they serve as boss fights rather than mid-level enemies, and some of them (Viper) are actually really challenging. I don’t think that pilots really are incredibly far more skilled than the average soldier. The real advantage IMO is the titans and equipment that pilots are granted access to, and that tech isn’t really accessible enough to give that to everyone. Especially for Cooper, who is granted BT, one of the most advanced titans to ever be created.
Also, the point about the siblings being able to take down a pilot, it’s not that far fetched to me. Both of them during the Apex Games (and all the other legends, for that matter) are definitely meant to be equal to or more skilled than the average pilot (not quite equal to Coop or Blisk tho), so if that IMC pilot from the short came down all confident thinking he could bully some weaklings, Im not surprised that he lost the fight since he clearly wasn’t prepared to fight someone with skills that can rival his, even if he has a material advantage.
Very cool video! I’m brand new to this channel but I like the deep analysis stuff so I’m definitely checking out more since I’m a big fat sci-fi nerd
In Titanfall 1, it was stated that they had some cybernetic augmentations but one guy said they aren't super soldiers so then titanfall 2 made pilots super soldier again by showing instead of telling.
oh yeah pilots are easily super soldiers but even pilots have an extremely broad range of power with the unnamed NPC titans showing an low end of the curve. and arguably the high end of multiplayer performance reflecting the top end
We can see named pilot ghosts in the gauntlet level and they're supposed to be the best in the SRS. We also see Briggs and the 6-4 fight, but they're game mechanically invulnerable so I don't think that's a workable reference point.
Lore wise I think the order is
MRVN
Pathfinder
Apex predators, Jack cooper
Titans
Pilots, Legends(legends are the best of the best bloodsport contestants at the time of the game multiple former pilots have become legends)
Specters, reapers
Grunts, prowlers
Regular bloodsport contestants
Ticks
Echo, hack, DOC, Newty
Those creepy spider things from stormpoint
Pilot from the gridiron cinematic
4:18 I am pretty sure I read somewhere that they both went through pilot training, I might be wrong but it can't hurt to doublecheck
I think one way to reconcile the pilot power-inconsistency is to differentiate pilots. Gridiron is obviously bullshit, but given what Jack Cooper, Blisk and other evidently powerful pilots are capable of, it makes sense to me that even with the stupid low admission rate, there basically a big ass skill curve. You have your Coopers and they are just far far better at BEING pilots than a Scryer, or the pilots of the remnant fleet, or me when I play. This dosen't fix things entirely, and the disparity may still be a little big, but it would help to explain the inconsistencies.
the worst part is, the pilot Bangalore killed was using an auto pistol. for reference those are the pistols that not only aim for you, but curve bullets to headshot. it even fires however many rounds it needs to kill what it can see.
Personally, I much prefer pilots to be considered superhuman on the battlefield. They are what happens when a Green beret and a navy seal do a fusion dance and get put in a 3 story suit of weaponized power armor. While it is unrealistic in universe for Jack Cooper to pull off all the shit he did with little to no formal training, I'm willing to excuse it for one of the best FPS campaigns ever made.
As for the canonical strength of a pilot, I'd say that a G100 player is probably about the same skill as a real pilot, given the numbers. I've seen losing teams brought back from the brink of defeat by a single G100, and I think 2000+ hours of titanfall multiplayer is at least somewhat reflective of the training a pilot would have to go through
i think the campaign is a more accurate description of a grunt, and while I don't think jack cooper can be considered an average pilot, you gotta consider that most of the pilots you fight in the campaign have weaker, more mass produced titans and have pilots trained en masse to fight a war. There's a huge difference between your average pilot and any named pilot in titanfall, both due to differences in skill but also equipment and training/experience for the same reason grunts exist at all. Even if you put a rifleman in a titan, they will still easily take out hordes of specters and grunts with probably relative ease (unless the neural-link is the most complicated and difficult part of being a pilot, which honestly would explain a lot)
The way I saw it was just that the pilot in the cinematic was really overconfident in their ability, and ended up just messing around. Why else would you just cloak and try to stab a dude instead of using the cloak to get a little bit of distance and shoot them! They don’t know where you are!
Fantastic video though, I’m looking forward to the continuation of this series!
That animated short just feels like them spitting in the faces of Titanfall fans
Also important to note that in the modern military, higher ranking commanders arent the ones on the ground doing the actual fighting. Him being a commander could be to show how out of practice in the field vs a pilot who is actively serving on the front lines could be. Like the line from taken "when you sit behind a desk you forget things. Like the weight of a gun thats loaded and one that isnt" (proceeds to get shot by someone who worked in the field their entire career). But in this scene, he was cocky. He assumed they werent a threat simply because he was a pilot tho he may have not actually seen combat in years up until this point, AND his arrogance lead him to going down and do the job himself because he perceived them to be so far beneith him, rather than ordering someone whos job it is to do stuff like that. All things in combat are parishable skills. Marksmen ship, speed, fundamentals, hell just being in shape enough to do the job errodes.
And on another note about jack being as strong as he is. in human history there are people who just wildly excel at war. Theyre a awesome phenomenon. Most medal of honor recipients in fact were lower enlisted soldiers. The old saying "Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”. I think its fair to say jack might have just been that one warrior. He took to being a pilot extreamly well. He was simply "about that life". It makes sense. He wanted it so bad he was getting private training sessions from a full blown combat pilot who took an interest in him. Shit like that doesnt happen in combat arms jobs in the military unless they actually see something in you.
Bangalore and Jackson are above the average grunt. Bangalore was a sergeant and Jackson was an actual pilot in gridiron as confirmed by Moy. The duo was portrayed equally against scryer so it’s more like a seasoned pilot vs 2 baby Pilots.
PS on cyberenchancements for pilot- there is a theory that they are augmented inside, just outside their neural link to the titan. They are a definetly more durrable than a standard soldier- even in campaign Jack can one shot-punch a Specter, a robotic soldier (also all pilots never take fall damage, tho that might be partially due to their jump packs)
Still- most of pilot's battlefield strengths come from rigorous training, not from the shiny parts put inside of them.
for the ending question, i think pilots are supposed to be the pinnacle of combat personnel, and jack cooper was in training by one of the most seasoned veterans in the entire militia, Lastimosa was a war hero from the titan wars (tf1 time period), and he was actively part of the vanguard development so we can infer that jacks cannon performance in tf2 can be attributed to 1) Lastimosa's training, 2) being specifically trained with a vanguard in mind, and 3) natural talent (theres got to be a reason why Lastimosa chose jack specifically to train). we can also infer that the reason why lastimosa lost in the start of bt-7274 was 1)he is far from his prime, 2)he was up against the best mercs there are, 3) it was a systemic jumping. if lastimosa was in a 1v1 versus each member of the predators he probably would have won. since titans have to link to their pilots we can also infer that BT has been helping Jack throughout their journey, as BT could fill in the gaps for jack, and we know he can work seperate from jack even when jack is piloting him since he takes jack out of his cockpit and throws him away from the ark, and remembering that BT is one of the most honored vanguards in the militia as in blood and rust the militia titans immediately recognize BT, we can again infer that BT would have a lot of combat data and experience which he can use to help jack.
Jack cooper is a bit of an extreme but I think pilots generally are a super solider force to be reckoned with. One thing you didn’t mention however is Lieutenant Anderson who was sent to the test site with likely little backup, infiltrated a miniature fold weapon, and then either died to a grunt on a railing or running away from them where we find his body across the room. Seems like a weird but good to mention case thoroughly imbedded in the lore.
People are forget frontier defense mode. When 4 pilots fight a army of more than 300grunts, specters (specialy mortar ones) and God damn a lot of titans.
I think the reason the stormtroopers missed all their shots on the Death Star was because they were told to miss. They wanted to track the rebels back to their planet so they could destroy it with the Death Star.
My head-canon is that Apex is just a TV show they show to people to get them more confident that a regular ass person can fight effectively so they more likely to get scooped up to get put out on the frontlines, where they will likely die by the hundreds to a single pilot.
Yes I am coping
i think it's more in the cute scene he is extremely cocky to a fault, cockiness destroys training and perhaps that's why he lost
Making Stormtroopers paper tigers is a good choice in my mind, because in the end all reactionaries are. They chest beat about how powerful they are, but are eventually humiliated at the hands of guerrilla fighters.
"Are they supersoldiers or just very good soldiers?"
I think both, or in the middle if you want.
They get upgrades, but not as hardcore as in Halo or a Space Marine in WH40K
to be fair, i think the thing with gridiron is A) just a bad representation of what pilots were originally described as, and B) Anita at least was already described to be incredibly skilled for a grunt
I view the Titanfall "power scaling" to be comparable to Army PFC(out of basic with a few operations)vs Army Ranger. One is trained to be a soldier that fights and follows orders, the other is trained to be the scariest MF on the battlefield.
Well Cooper was a grunt, just like Bangalore and Newcastle. I also heard that they both were in training to become pilots.
Plus that Pilot was arrogant anf didn't even lock on eith his smart pistol
just gonna mention that the television show "andor" portrays stormtroopers as quite menacing
What about ash, ash was a pilot during the war and now she plays in the apex games.
And yes in some trailers she gets defeated by other legends
That’s what I’m saying I was waiting for him to talk about Ash and she still in the Apex games💀
i personally subscribe to the theory (that's semi-backed up due to file names) that when cooper was downed by the titan and pulled to the side by lastimosa, he was injected with the cybernetic enhancements given to pilots (the name for the model itself is quite literally super serum or something similar iirc) which is why his power scales drastically past that point and is able to link with bt (something that would require neural enhancements, which means he had to be given them at some point - likely right in front of us with the injector. not to mention links are unique to vanguards, meaning that only vanguard pilots and milta faction leaders would really have access to the enhancements needed)
something i think lost a lot in discussion of pilots in general is titanfall 1 grunt dialogue. there is a lot (and i mean a Lot) of lore to be had from them. from them you generally get that there is some form of pilot hierarchy. while all pilots are to be respected if you want to live, not all pilots are created equal.
there's the lower, middle, and high tier pilots. lower tiers don't have titans, and are mainly used for operations that lack the use for them.
middle tiers are the multiplayer pilots, of which their power scales drastically due to having the biggest margin and due to their flexibility are known to jump between factions often in their nature of being "cheap" (in comparison to high tier pilots) contract hires.
high tiers are what most think of when thinking of The pilot. highest ranking in their faction, with a titan enhanced and modified to their specific liking - something only these elites are allowed to do (which is why the apex predators have impossible abilities (viper's infinite flight, slone's phase shifting ion - these are all modifications that require a lot of money and after demeter making titan customization near impossible, it says a lot about those pilots on the battlefield))
so given the questions my take is:
- pilots start out as just pretty good soldiers, but the best of the best become godly monsters. "beware of an old man in a profession where men usually die young"
- i do think the gameplay in the campaign is canon, to an extent. i view it similar to how i view titanfall 1's story mode; the gameplay itself it slightly dramatized for the sake of rule of cool - however if written out properly, it'd look vastly different. titanfall 2's story with titanfall 1's approach would be a much darker and heavier story but they wanted to take the star wars route for easier appeal after the first game's criticisms, which was the right call