Plugin Views (includes and ob_start)

I’m creating my first plugin and I’d like to setup some simple view templates for my front end.

Currently I’m trying something like:

$title = 'Title';

// Start a buffer
ob_start();
// Include your template
include('template.php');

// Get the buffer into a variable
$return = ob_get_contents();

// End the buffer
ob_end_clean();

This gets the template just fine, but my $title variable does not carry over into the include like usual. This code works fine outside of the constructs of WP. Any idea what might be causing it?