According to a recent report over at Bloomberg, Respawn Entertainment was quietly working on a single-player Titanfall game – before publisher EA decided to cancel the project. It’s unclear whether the project, codenamed TFL or Titanfall Legends, would have been a numbered sequel to 2016’s Titanfall 2 – more on this later – but its single-player focus certainly implies that it would have followed in the clanking footsteps of its predecessor rather than 2014’s multiplayer-leaning Titanfall.
For the uninitiated, Titanfall took the staples of the modern first-person shooter and added giant, armoured mechs. Cast as pilots, players had the option to move their mechs around the battlefield, taking advantage of their superior firepower and strength, or eject and run around on foot, making them nimbler. A smaller target but also more vulnerable to attack. All of this amounted to some of the most fluid, satisfying movement in any FPS, with other mechanics like wall-running and jet packs adding to the sense of freedom.
The original Titanfall was released in 2014. Credit: EA/Respawn Entertainment.
Titanfall 2 both refined those mechanics and added one of the best single-player campaigns you’ll find in a first-person shooter. The sci-fi plot was lightweight but effective enough – the growing relationship between rookie pilot Jack Cooper and his artificially-intelligent Titan, BT, was its strongest aspect – but the invention in its level design was frequently stunning. Effect and Cause, with its temporal shifts and masterful build-up of tension, is rightly singled out for praise. Still, pretty much the entire game was packed with invention – and opportunities for players to test out their mech’s athletic abilities.
Despite widespread critical acclaim, Titanfall 2 wasn’t a greater success, with sales markedly down compared to its predecessor. As a result, Respawn’s planned third game in the series morphed during its prototyping phase, giving rise to 2019’s Apex Legends – a free-to-play, battle royale shooter only loosely connected to the Titanfall universe.
Underpinned by Respawn’s reliably slick movement, shooting mechanics, and a game balance that made it relatively accessible for newcomers to the fiercely competitive battle royale genre, Apex Legends was and remains a colossal hit for the studio and its publisher. Over half a million players were playing the game at one time in August 2022, while revenue has reportedly surpassed a startling $2 billion.
Apex Legends took the Titanfall universe into battle royale territory – to a hugely lucrative effect. Credit: EA/Respawn Entertainment.
With profits like that, it’s perhaps easy to understand why EA appears to be less interested in Titanfall’s long-term future. Despite sales of more than 10 million copies, the first game wasn’t exactly the Call of Duty-beating cultural behemoth the publisher expected of it. The sequel sold significantly less – around 4 million copies.
Nevertheless, from a business perspective, there would arguably have been a solid reason for keeping Titanfall going. Apex Legends is already three years old, and players’ tastes in multiplayer games change constantly. Live service games may also be profitable but time-consuming and expensive to maintain. Ensuring that the Titanfall series remains diverse, with the online-only Apex Legends joined by a single-player-focused Titanfall 3 and perhaps some other, smaller spin-offs, could have helped ensure its broader appeal.
Instead, EA’s taken the opposite approach. Mobile strategy game Titanfall: Assault was shut down in 2018, less than a month after launch. Spin-off titles Titanfall: Online and Titanfall: Frontline were cancelled during development, and Apex Legends Mobile is scheduled to shut down in May. Respawn’s single-player Titanfall game, headed up by director Mohammad Alavi, was cancelled before it was even announced.
More recent rumours – broken by Jeff Grubb on a Giant Bomb podcast and reported on by Eurogamer – suggest that the project Respawn was working on was a single-player mode within Apex Legends rather than a standalone title and would have reintroduced Titanfall 2’s BT.
Titanfall 2 is still fantastic all these years later. Credit: EA/Respawn Entertainment.
Whatever form the project would have taken, it’s disappointing to think that EA passed on the opportunity to continue the story and mechanics that Titanfall 2 established. The game may have been niche compared to Apex Legends, but it still sold millions of copies – and many more will have caught up with it on, say, PlayStation Plus or Game Pass. It’s difficult to believe that a Titanfall 2 sequel couldn’t have been made to work financially, given the right approach to the size of its development team and budget.
Instead, the project’s cancellation has left a reported 50 developers out of a job, though some will also be given alternative positions within the company, according to Bloomberg. Alavi, the game’s director, left Respawn in 2022.
The studio, unsurprisingly, remains in rude health: Apex Legends continues to evolve, with the sixteenth season scheduled to drop imminently. Star Wars: Fallen Order sequel Jedi Survivor is now due for release in April. But for now, any hope of a Titanfall 3 – or anything approaching it – appear to be dashed. Our advice? If you haven’t played it already, get your hands on a copy of Titanfall 2, and prepare to experience one of the past decade’s greatest – and in some quarters, overlooked – single-player shooters.
