Respawn Entertainment worked on Titanfall 3 “in earnest” for ten months before ditching it for Apex Legends, a former developer has revealed.
Mohammad Alavi, who became narrative lead designer on Titanfall 3 before it was cut, told The Burnettwork that much work on the sequel had been done.
“Titanfall 2 came out, did what it did, and we were like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna make Titanfall 3,’ and we worked on Titanfall 3 for about ten months, right? In earnest, right?
“We had new tech for it, we had multiple missions going, we had a first playable, which was on par to be just as good if not better than whatever we had before, right? But I’ll make this clear: incrementally better, it wasn’t revolutionary. And that’s the key thing, right?
“And we were feeling pretty decent about it, but not the same feeling as Titanfall 2 where we were making something revolutionary, y’know what I mean?”
So, what happened? According to Alavi, it was a combination of the multiplayer team having issues making an experience that didn’t burn players out quickly, and the explosion of the Battle Royale genre with the release of PUBG in 2017.
“The multiplayer team was having a hell of a time trying to fix the multiplayer, because a lot of people love the multiplayer. People love Titanfall 2 multiplayer,” Alavi said.
“But the people who love Titanfall 2 multiplayer is a very small number of people. And most people play Titanfall 2 multiplayer and think it’s really good, but it’s just too much. It’s cranked up to 11, and they burn out a bit fast. And they’re like, ‘That was a great multiplayer, that’s not something I continually play a year, two years,’ right?
“So we were trying to fix that. We were trying to fix that from Titanfall 1 to 2, trying to fix it from Titanfall 2 to 3, the multiplayer team was just dying.
“And then PUBG came out.”
Respawn developers were seemingly more interested in playing a Battle Royale map with Titanfall 3 classes the team had put together, than any of the standard Titanfall multiplayer modes they were working on. This prompted a realisation: ditch Titanfall 3, which may or may not have ended up a better game than its predecessor, to create a Battle Royale that was wonderful.
“And at the time, I had just literally become [the] narrative lead designer on Titanfall 3. I had just pitched the story, the whole game, that me and Manny [Hagopian] had come up with. We made this big presentation and then we went off at break, and came back from break, and we talked about it and we were like, ‘Yeah, we need to pivot. And we need to go make this game.’
“We literally canceled Titanfall 3 ourselves ’cause we were like, ‘We can make this game, and it’s going to be Titanfall 2 plus a little bit better, or we can make this thing, which is clearly amazing.’
“And don’t get me wrong, I will always miss having another Titanfall. I love that game. Titanfall 2 is my most crowning achievement, but it was the right call. That is a crazy cut. Such a crazy cut that EA didn’t even know about it for another six months until we had a prototype up and running that we could show them!”
I will always miss having another Titanfall… but it was the right call.
Titanfall fans have called for a third game in the series ever since Titanfall 2 launched in 2016, but it has so far failed to materialise.
Respawn CEO Vince Zampella said he would love to make another Titanfall game in April but confirmed there aren’t any plans for the studio to make it at the moment.
“It has to be the right thing,” Zampella said. “It’s such a beloved franchise for the fans and also for us. If it is not the right moment in time, the right idea, then it just doesn’t make sense.”
This reiteration came nearly three months after EA reportedly cancelled a secret single-player Titanfall game codenamed Titanfall Legends, which was set in the same universe as Titanfall and Apex Legends. This cancellation came after the mobile versions of Apex Legends and Battlefield were shut down.
In September 2021, Titanfall’s community coordinator Jason Garza said it was unlikely Respawn would develop Titanfall 3, as it was focusing on improving Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends, the latter of which had quickly grown in popularity ever since it shadow-dropped two years prior. Titanfall 2 fell short of its projected sales but still managed to gain a cult following.
Respawn also shifted its focus to Star Wars following the success of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, with its sequel, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, launching on April 28. Director Stig Asmussen has said he wants to make Cal Kestis’s story a trilogy.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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