The Battlefield franchise has practically made its reputation on the ever-present Conquest game mode, which will surely be present in this year's new Battlefield. Conquest is very conducive to the open-ended gameplay the series strives for. Giving players a spawn point, a handful of objectives, and letting them have at it creates the opportunity for the signature "Battlefield moments" to happen organically. There have been many other game modes throughout the Battlefield series, including fan-favorite Rush, but one successfully expanded upon the Conquest blueprint: Battlefield 2142's Titan game mode.
Released way back in 2006, before Battlefield was burdened by live service mechanics, 2142 depicts a science-fiction conflict during a new Ice Age. Much of Earth has frozen, becoming uninhabitable, and two military superpowers wage war over the remaining land and resources. Players took up arms for either the European Union (EU) or the Pan Asian Coalition (PAC), and used futuristic weaponry and vehicles, like armored mechs and helicopters powered by hover turbines instead of rotors.
The most sci-fi vehicle of all was the Titan, a massive airship with sturdy shields and robust armaments. A team's Titan was the mobile deployment center, carrying vehicles and drop pods to deliver players to the battle raging below. It was also the object of Battlefield's Titan game mode, since destroying the other team's Titan would end the match.
Battlefield 2142's Titan Mode as an Evolution of Conquest
Conquest is the classic Battlefield experience, where players fight over control points to drain the other team's pool of reinforcement tickets. The first phase of Titan mode plays out much the same way, except control points have been turned into missile silos. Captured silos periodically launch a barrage of missiles at the opposing Titan, weakening its shields. The more silos controlled, the faster the shields will go down.
Once the shields had been destroyed, the second phase of the game began. Silos would still launch missiles and damage the Titan itself, but Battlefield players would have to board the enemy Titan and destroy its reactor core to ensure a swift victory. This final part of the game was similar to the space battles in the classic Star Wars Battlefront 2 - it divided the game into strategically separate fronts. A new battle would form on the exposed Titan, but the silos still had to be captured and protected, lest the enemy team use them to destroy the friendly Titan's shields and sneak in a quick victory.
Traditional Conquest is all well and good, but watching the numbers at the top of the screen tick down to zero is not nearly as exciting as infiltrating a massive airship after systematically destroying its defenses, fighting tooth-and-nail in close quarters to destroy four reactor core consoles in order to open the door and attack the core itself. It adds another layer to Conquest so the game has clear win state, instead of the nebulously tracked reinforcements falling to zero.
Easter egg-riddled Battlefield 4 tried to reimagine the Titan game mode as Carrier Assault in its Naval Strike expansion, but it fell flat as a tacked-on mode only available in one of four DLC packs. Battlefield 4 even brought back 2142's hover tanks in its final DLC, Final Stand, leading many players to believe it was a tease for an upcoming 2142 sequel. Alas, Battlefield hasn't returned to the frozen future it created in 2006, and with Battlefield 6 returning to present day, the Titan game mode will continue fading into obscurity.