Titanfall 2 AI Mod: A Talking Titan, Voice Orders and Northstar

You are halfway up a wall on Typhon, out of ammo, and your Titan is holding a corridor alone. You shout at it to fall back. It does, and tells you, a little too calmly, that its shields are at 12 percent and it would appreciate cover. In the base game, Titans speak from a script. A Titanfall 2 AI mod lets your Titan answer what you actually say. Neocortex gives your Northstar mod an AI character with a voice, memory and actions, plus on-device voice commands, and Northstar's Squirrel can call our API directly.

Screenshot: Titanfall 2 © Electronic Arts

How is Titanfall 2 modded?

Titanfall 2 modding runs through Northstar, a community client for the PC version that adds a mod loader, custom servers and its own server browser. You need a legal copy of the game on Steam or the EA app. Install Northstar with a mod manager or by hand, launch the game through it, and mods load from R2Northstar/mods.

A mod is a folder with a mod.json file and a mod folder. Scripts are Squirrel files (.nut or .gnut) under mod/scripts/vscripts, and each one is listed in mod.json with a RunOn condition that decides when it compiles: SERVER, CLIENT or UI, combined with SP for the campaign, MP for multiplayer, or a single map such as MAP_sp_boomtown. Finished mods are usually shared on Thunderstore.

{
  "Name": "YourName.TalkingTitan",
  "Description": "An AI Titan that talks back in the campaign",
  "Version": "0.1.0",
  "LoadPriority": 1,
  "ConVars": [
    { "Name": "neocortex_api_key", "DefaultValue": "" }
  ],
  "Scripts": [
    {
      "Path": "talking_titan.nut",
      "RunOn": "SERVER && SP",
      "ServerCallback": { "After": "TalkingTitan_Init" }
    }
  ]
}

The neocortex_api_key ConVar is filled in by each player, never by you. LoadPriority must be 1 or higher for the HTTP types used below.

Can a Titanfall 2 mod call an AI API?

Yes, and this is what sets Titanfall 2 apart from most of our other guides. Northstar added HTTP requests to Squirrel in v1.12, along with EncodeJSON and DecodeJSON. Your script can send the player's line and what is happening in the fight straight to Neocortex:

struct
{
	string sessionId = ""
} file

void function TalkingTitan_Ask( string line, array<string> gameEvents )
{
	array events = []
	foreach ( string e in gameEvents )
		events.append( { priority = 1, content = e } ) // "shields at 12 percent", "pilot is wallrunning"

	table body = {
		characterIds = [ TITAN_CHARACTER_ID ],
		message = line,
		playerId = "pilot-1",
		sessionId = file.sessionId,
		events = events
	}

	HttpRequest request
	request.method = HttpRequestMethod.POST
	request.url = "https://api.neocortex.link/v3/chat"
	request.headers[ "x-api-key" ] <- [ GetConVarString( "neocortex_api_key" ) ]
	request.body = EncodeJSON( body )

	NSHttpRequest( request, TalkingTitan_OnReply )
}

void function TalkingTitan_OnReply( HttpRequestResponse response )
{
	if ( !NSIsSuccessHttpCode( response.statusCode ) )
		return

	table reply = DecodeJSON( response.body )
	file.sessionId = expect string( reply.sessionId )
	// reply.messages[].lines for subtitles, reply.actions for what the Titan does next
}

Requests run in the background and call your function when they finish, so the fight never waits on the network. Keep the returned sessionId and send it with the next line, and the Titan remembers the rest of the mission.

Squirrel cannot play audio it downloads, which is why voice goes through a helper. Northstar blocks requests to localhost by default; the -allowlocalhttp launch option lets your mod reach a helper on the player's own PC.

What can a talking Titan do?

Be your partner in the campaign. Create an original Titan instead of borrowing the game's: VANGUARD-unit HALDEN, a decommissioned training Titan reassigned to a pilot it considers underqualified. Give it a Personality, an Emotion setting and a Knowledge base about the mission, the IMC and its own service record. Your script reports what happens, such as "pilot fell off the map twice", "Titan core ready" or "pilot has been outside the cockpit for 90 seconds", and HALDEN comments in voice, with an emotion tag on every line.

It can also return actions your script runs, such as { "name": "SMOKE" } when its shields drop or { "name": "EMBARK_PROMPT" } when it thinks you should get back in. Keep it as a companion that rides alongside the story, not new dialogue for BT-7274.

A side encounter with a story. Conversation Flows take a longer scene through beats you design and return checkpoint keywords (flowState) your script reacts to. A stranded Militia pilot you find on a cliffside starts out hostile, trades information for a ride, and finally marks a cache on your HUD. Each keyword opens the next part of the encounter.

Screenshot: Titanfall 2 © Electronic Arts

Voice orders for your auto-Titan. When you leave your Titan, it fights on its own and can follow you or guard a spot. Some orders should not wait for a language model: "Titan, follow me", "hold this corridor", "use your core", "smoke and fall back". Neocortex Voice Commands runs on the player's PC, understands natural phrasing and returns the matched command with no cloud round trip, which matters when you are mid-air. You design the command set in the dashboard as actors, actions and objects (actor "Titan", action "guard", object "corridor"), and the player can stack several in one sentence, with push-to-talk or always-on listening, in multiple languages. Your script turns each command into the matching Titan behaviour.

Voice Commands is a licensed SDK: contact us for a Voice Commands license.

An announcer for your own server. A server-side script can send match events to an original announcer character and post its lines to chat: first Titanfall of the round, a pilot on a ten-kill streak, a comeback in the last minute. Between rounds, the same announcer can run a trivia game through the quiz engine (Team plan), with answers typed in chat and scores kept by the API. Run it on a Northstar server you host, and tell players in the server name or description what it does.

What are the rules?

Northstar is a community project, not made or supported by EA or Respawn. It runs Titanfall 2 against its own master server and community servers, separate from official matchmaking.

• Original characters and voices. Give your Titan and announcer original Neocortex voices designed from a text description, or ones you have the rights to, never a clone of a Titanfall voice actor or BT-7274's lines.
• Opt-in only. Keep AI and voice features to the campaign or to a server whose players chose to join it. Never use them to gain an edge over players who did not.
• Free and non-commercial. Share the mod for free, and have each player use their own Neocortex API key.

Build your first talking Titan

1. Install Northstar and check that a sample mod loads in the campaign.
2. Design your Titan in the Neocortex visual editor: personality, what it knows about the mission, voice, and the actions it may return. Test it in the browser for free.
3. Add a Conversation Flow, a quiz or a voice command set if your idea needs one.
4. Write the mod: a mod.json with an SP server script, and NSHttpRequest calls to /v3/chat.
5. Add the voice helper if you want spoken replies or voice orders, and launch with -allowlocalhttp.
6. Keep the API key in a ConVar the player sets, never in the files you publish on Thunderstore.

For the voice side, read on-device voice commands for game mods. For other Source engine games, see our Half-Life 2 AI NPC mod and Portal 2 AI mod guides, or browse every game in our AI NPC and voice command mods index. And if you later want HALDEN in a game of your own, the same Neocortex character works through our Unity integration.

Tool versions and links checked October 2026. Modding tools change often; check each project's page for the latest release.

Frequently Asked Questions