"Titanfall" vs. "Destiny:" 5 Reasons Each is Awesome

The game developers behind Halo and Modern Warfare are about to go to war, but their battlefield is not some debris-strewn alien landscape or besieged and burning metropolis. Theirs is the video game industry itself.

We've seen it before: Mario vs. Sonic. Guitar Hero vs. Rock Band. Forza vs. Gran Turismo. Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball vs. Rumble Roses. But the rivalry heating up between Respawn's Titanfall and Bungie's Destiny could be the most exciting yet.

Destiny comes from Bungie, the original creator of Halo that gave up the franchise to Microsoft so they could move on to this. Meanwhile Titanfall is the product of Respawn Entertainment, formed by the former leaders of Infinity Ward. Both games promise to bring truly next-gen experiences to the next generation of consoles, but which will ultimately deliver on its promises and come out on top? We can't predict that, but we can tell you five reasons why both Titanfall and Destiny look awesome.

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The philosophy behind Titanfall is thus: take a multiplayer game like the traditional Call of Duty experience and make it as cinematic as possible.

Titanfall has no single-player campaign. It's a multiplayer game, through and through. Respawn Entertainment only has around 65 employees, and they simply don't have the resources to devote to a campaign and great multiplayer. So they decided to scrap the campaign and simply make the multiplayer feel like one.

We've yet to see exactly what that will mean, beyond the large set pieces, dramatic battles, etc. We do know that there's story and lore tying the multiplayer missions together, and it looks like the premise will pay off.

Bungie is taking the opposite approach with Destiny: start with the campaign, then integrate multiplayer so deeply with the single-player game that you won't be able to tell them apart.

Unlike Titanfall, Destiny is not a multiplayer-only game. You can fly solo if that's your M.O. But if you open up your game other players will drop in and out organically, even if you're already playing with friends. You can meet up with some buddies at home base, head out on a mission, and encounter tons of other players like they just happened to be there as well.

That means you get all the epicness of a typical Halo campaign, only more epic, and with other players coming in and out at will. It's not hard to see what makes that great.

Respawn Entertainment founders Jason West and Vince Zampella are very, very good at one thing: making Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games. They may well be good at making Titanfall as well, but that remains to be seen.

What's certain is that they didn't leave all that experience behind when they ditched Infinity Ward and Activision to found Respawn. Titanfall is sure to share a lot with Modern Warfare, but that's not a bad thing.

No, Titanfall gets the benefit of its developers' years of experience, minus all the baggage that comes with the Call of Duty name. They get to start fresh on a foundation that we know is great. That sounds to us like a recipe for awesome.

Likewise, Bungie has more than a decade of experience doing one thing: making great Halo games. Sure, they made other games before that, but let's not pretend that Destiny's origins lies anywhere other than Halo. Unless you want to go as far back as Marathon, which itself served as Halo's main influence, and with which Destiny shares more than a little.

Either way, the fact remains that Destiny is almost guaranteed to feel a hell of a lot like Halo. That may explain why Bungie waited so many months after unveiling the game to actually show us gameplay footage; our guess it that they wanted Destiny to form its own identity in fans' minds before naysayers could start complaining that it looks too much like Halo.

Which is silly, if you ask us; Halo is awesome, and if Destiny is really the evolution of Halo that it looks like, then we're in for a real treat.

This may be the most obvious reason why Titanfall is awesome, but fuck it: it's got mechs.

Don't call them mechs, though; they're "Titans." Respawn insists that Titanfall is not a mech game. That doesn't mean that Mechwarrior fans won't be into it, though. After all, you can call those hulking, bipedal suits of armor whatever you want, but they still look like mechs to us.

Once your own personal Titan is ready, you can call it in from orbit and it'll drop in front of your eyes like the care packages of yore. Inside, you can stomp on enemy infantry (A.I. and player-controlled alike) and duel with other Titans, even pulling enemy soldiers out of their cockpits and hurling them across the battlefield.

Titanfall may have mechs, but who needs metal armor when you've got magic? Bungie has toyed around with plenty of different power and upgrade systems in its past games—just look at the equipment in Halo 3 or the armor abilities in Halo: Reach. But this is the first time they've gone full-on fantasy.

We don't yet know exactly how magic will work in Destiny, but we do know that there are character classes that are full-on warlocks. Sure they'll probably still rely on guns, but we'll be more than happy if we can augment our rockets and shells with the occasional purple fireball.

Some might laugh at the idea of calling the Modern Warfare games "realistic," but nevertheless they were always grounded in the here-and-now. Not so with Titanfall, which takes thing fully into the future. And that should make fans excited.

Black Ops 2 is the closest thing we've seen so far to a futuristic Call of Duty game; some might lump Ghost Recon: Future Soldier in there as well. But take a look at the space ships, mechs, and futuristic guns in any of the latest Titanfall trailers and you'll realize that Titanfall is the sci-fi Call of Duty that we've always wanted.

Bungie has one overall goal in mind with Destiny: to make the experience as seamless, organic, and natural as possible. You won't spend your time navigating through menus to choose "campaign" or "multiplayer." There's no matchmaking system or lobby where you wait around for friends to join your game. If you want to meet up with your friends, you meet up inside the game world itself.

Imagine a game in which you encounter other players as a matter of course, as if they were there all along. When you embark on a mission, the game automatically matches you with like-skilled players, behind the scenes, and inserts them into your game—and you into theirs—without you ever noticing. Until you turn a corner and run headlong into other players simply going about their business, that is. Like World of Warcraft, only not horrible. That's Destiny.

One advantage that Titanfall has over Destiny is the power of Microsoft's cloud. One of the original sources of the Xbox One's woes, the cloud will nevertheless benefit games like Titanfall in real, tangible ways. At least that's what we're told.

With many of the game's processes, from A.I. to scripted level events, being handled remotely by Microsoft servers instead of on one "host" player's console, player-to-player lag may well become a thing of the past. And the limits of the hardware matter less when developers like Respawn have cloud resources to back them up.

What does that translate to? We'll see, but from what they're promising it sounds awesome.

Bungie may not have the cloud available to back up Destiny, but what it does have is the advantage of choice. Titanfall's reliance on Microsoft's new cloud servers makes it an Xbox One, PC and Xbox 360 exclusive. That may not sit well with gamers who are sick of Microsoft's various transgressions, either real or simply perceived.

For many gamers that won't matter; if they want to play Titanfall, they may very well get an Xbox One. But if they're sworn in service to the PlayStation 4 or PS3, then it's going to be Destiny all the way.

Isn't it sort of ironic that the successor to Halo, the original Xbox exclusive, will be multiplatform, while the next Call of Duty, traditionally multiplatform, is now Microsoft-exclusive? The politics of the video game industry never cease to confuse us, but there's one thing that's certain: no matter which game you choose, you're going to have a good time.