“The world thinks we’re making Titanfall 3 and we’re not – this is what we’re making”,- Lead Producer, Drew McCoy. 

As someone who was highly anticipating Titanfall 3, I can’t help but feel upset when I woke up to the news that Respawn Entertainment isn’t just not making Titanfall 3, but they’re releasing a new battle royale game called Apex Legends. [Source]

I don’t really have anything personal against battle royale games, but it is getting a bit irksome that every developer or publisher feels the need to make a battle royale game ever since the huge success of Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite.

Multiplayer just isn’t my cup of tea.

When marketing for the original Titanfall game began, I really didn’t pay much attention to it. It was a first person shooter game similar to the likes of Call of Duty, and when I heard by word of mouth that it barely had a dedicated single player campaign and was more focused on its online multiplayer components, it solidified the fact that there was nothing there for me to get into.

As you can already tell, I don’t like multiplayer games. I’m much more interested in spending my time with memorable single player campaign experiences, especially story driven games that are well written.

You could probably say I’m a little biased as a writer for preferring story driven games, but the self contained and creative experiences in a well structured story driven game is not something that can be replicated in any multiplayer match.

I have several other reasons for why I don’t like multiplayer focused games as well. The first and most essential one being that it requires other persons to be available to play the game, and your experience is dependant on the people you’re playing with. If you get stuck with toxic players, you can be sure that your experience is going to be unfavourable.

And don’t forget that leaving a match midway is pretty frowned upon in the multiplayer community. If you just wanted to play for a certain time and then want to put down the controller but can’t because the match hasn’t concluded yet, multiplayer culture pressures you to keep on going because whether or not your team wins could be dependant on if you decide to leave the match midway.

Now for my more bigger concern: My internet speed outright sucks. My internet in particular is 5 Mbps (that’s bits, not bytes).

It’s decent most of the time for general use, but when someone else in the house starts doing something that requires data to be downloaded (streaming a movie for example), then you can say hello to the world of abysmal internet speeds that will bring your online multiplayer experience to LagsVille.

This is actually the primary reason why I don’t play online games anymore. Not only can it not replace a single player campaign, but it’s just not worth it to bother trying to have a stable match anymore.

 

I’m not afraid to also admit that I SUCK at multiplayer games. Getting absolutely destroyed in a multiplayer match is not fun, even for learning experiences.

I don’t play games for the challenge, but I play them for their immersive gameplay and storytelling experiences. It’s why I played Fire Emblem Awakening on Casual mode despite the elitist Fire Emblem fans telling you permadeath is the best way to play it (and yes, I enjoyed Fire Emblem Awakening the way I played it).

I may still spend a good amount of my time playing a multiplayer game, but that is far and few between. For example, I played Watch Dogs 2 multiplayer religiously because of how much I loved it, but I would be lying if I told you that the majority of my matches were spent lag free and that I didn’t had to worry about players effortlessly sniping me from the Golden Gate bridge.

Standby for Titanfall (2)!

Titanfall 2 was a pretty good game, but it disappointed in some areas I believed the developers should have spent some time on.

Maneuverability in Titanfall 2 is one of my favourite things about it. It’s so much fun to be zipping across the field running and gunning in high tech armour. Wall running was one of those things that was tricky to master, but downright amazing once you learned to get the hang of it. Your character feels light and the combat flows well in the battlefield.

The most important thing Respawn fixed was the exclusion of a single player campaign, which got a lot of well deserved praised. It was an enjoyable experience, not amazing, but worth the playthrough.

Warning: Titanfall 2 spoilers (for the next two paragraphs).

BT, the protagonist’s titan, was such a loveable and fun character, but Jack (the protagonist of Titanfall 2) ultimately felt like a blank character with no real impact on the story other than to just fill in for the events that took place through the story campaign.

There was a weird part of the game that was about time travel, which I was a little mixed on at first, but ultimately loved. It felt out of place in a game primarily about fighting with mechs, but I have to admit it was awesome to be jumping back and forth through time and even changing what happened in the past.

Personally one of the things I’m more annoyed by was the fact that after you beat the game, the only thing you could do was to either play the single player campaign over again, or move on the multiplayer. It didn’t have something like a score attack mode where you can just enjoy piloting a titan and racking up points in your own time.

Warning: This may get me some flak, but I would say one of my biggest problem with Titanfall 2 was the lack of a playable female protagonist in the story campaign.

Yes, they are playable female pilots in the game’s multiplayer, but it wasn’t the same. A lack of a female protagonist really kept me from feeling really immerse in the game, as it felt like I was just playing as a generic military dude. I don’t think I would have had much issue if Jack was a much more expressive and well written character (for example, Booker in Bioshock Infinite).

Respawn gave an excuse for the lack of female characters by saying that the talking mechanic with Jack and BT made it difficult. They stated, “The amount of audio work we would have had to have done to record that really cool new game mechanic … we just couldn’t support it.“, which I personally call into question.

I’m obviously no game developer, but shouldn’t it all have taken was them making an additional character model and changing a few sentence structures spoken by the voice acting cast? Even if it was too much to make the dialogue gender neutral, changing the instances of pronouns in the game should not have been too much of a problem.

Was money/resources an issue? Surely if EA can fund Bioware’s massive Mass Effect series which has a ludicrous amount of characters and dialogue, they can spend a little extra cash to give Respawn enough resources to make the game all that more inclusive.

Now as for the multiplayer aspects of Titanfall 2, they were mostly positive experiences for me and I’ll explain what I mean by that.

 

I didn’t like the deathmatch/PvP aspects of Titanfall 2’s multiplayer, but it is because I don’t like those modes in general (and yes, I suck at those too), so it’s hard for me to enjoy them.

However when I played the game’s co-op horde mode, Frontier Defense, that was where I had my most fun. Helping your teammates fend off AI forces with your titans was spectacular.

Unfortunately there wasn’t much people playing that mode so it was hard to find players when you needed to. And even when I did, my slow internet made sure that the matches were guaranteed to lag at least once.

I didn’t like the microtransactions that was implemented into the online modes. Items were gated behind a paywall, and if you chose to avoid it, you had to try grinding to get any items you want. One of my friends told me it’s an “EA game” so it’s too be expected, but it still shouldn’t feel so grindy to get the items you want. This is why I despised Overwatch’s, in Jim Sterling’s famous words, “just cosmetic” loot boxes.

Now stepping back from the game itself, one of the most dumbest decisions that was done with Titanfall 2 was that it was sandwiched between two major first person shooter game releases, Battlefield 1 and Call of Duty Infinite Warfare. EA made a laughable excuse of Titanfall catering to a different audience, and in the end the game sold undeservingly poor.

My ‘Titanfall 3’ Wishlist.

I just want to say this here quickly: I LOVE THE TITANS/MECHS OF TITANFALL. They’re really badass and taking down enemies with your titan is one of the most exhilarating experiences I’ve felt in a first person game.

Titanfall is one of the closest things you’ll get to playing a phonenemal mecha piloting game. It increased my love for the mecha genre and I was surely ready to spend more time in the Titanfall universe.

With that said, I surely knew what I wanted from Titanfall 3.

First off, I wanted Respawn to bring back another good single player campaign with a well written story, however this time make sure you can customise your character and titan, letting you choose between a male or female protagonist.

Next, I would like there to be a stronger emphasis on the story and the game’s lore.

One of my fan fiction story ideas involved Jack having a daughter who would be the protagonist for the next Titanfall game. It would start off with her training with her father until something goes wrong, like Jack is suddenly kidnapped by a rogue group of titan pilots. The game’s story would then revolve around her trying to save her father. It could even get a little dark and emotional with Jack dying in some significant way.

There should be something like a single player horde or score attack mode. Once I finished Titanfall 2’s single player campaign, all I wanted was to be able to enjoy jumping into my titan whenever I wanted and start wrecking as much things as possible in my own time. I even went as far as to see if there were other games that offered what I was craving with mechs, but came up unsuccessful.

There isn’t much I would change from the game’s online modes other than to crank down on the over monetisation of customisable items for your character and titan.

And that concludes my wishlist. Now all that there was left for me to do was to wait for Titanfall 3 and hope that Respawn would make the game bigger and better than the original. It was quite confirmed that they were working on it anyway, so what could go wrong?

GET READY FOR TIT…I MEAN, APEX LEGENDS!

When Cleanprincegaming talked about the rumours of the next Titanfall game not being a sequel, but instead being a battle royale game, I didn’t think much of it because I still took it as a rumour at the time. And even if it was true, I was still being optimistic that Titanfall 3 could still be in development and this battle royale game was just a stop gap for Respawn Entertainment.

Oh, I was wrong.

Respawn isn’t doing anything of the sort. Apex Legends is where they are investing all of their resources into. Titanfall 3 is no more and Apex Legends is their new thing.

The best part about it? Apex Legends strips the game of everything that would give it a  reason for existing in the Titanfall universe. No titans. No wallrunning. Just core battle royale mechanics with some extras.

Now I’m not saying Apex Legends is a bad game, of course. While I have no intention on playing Apex Legends, it seems like a pretty good game from what I’ve heard and seen, but the fact that another developer/publisher is jumping on the battle royale bandwagon is just frustrating.

Titanfall 3 was one of those games I was highly looking forward to because of the massive potential it had for becoming bigger and better than what it was before. I loved the gameplay of Titanfall 2 and definitely loved piloting my own titan like some kind of Gundam protagonist.

While I’m glad that Respawn came out and were transparent as possible about it, it doesn’t come without disappointing those of us that were looking forward to the next sequel of Titanfall.

Conclusion: Titanfall’s future.

By the time I got home to finish up this article, there was apparently more information that there is going to be another Titanfall game this year, but I don’t think this is going to be what I was hoping for.

Respawn already confirmed that Titanfall 3 isn’t in development, and there’s no way that they can make a quality sequel to Titanfall 2 in less than a year’s time, especially while working a Star Wars game.

At this point, I don’t think it’s reasonable at all to be optimistic that Respawn or EA would change their mind and devote their time to making Titanfall 3. Whether Apex Legends fails or succeeds financially, Titanfall 3 isn’t going to get the attention it deserves.

If Apex Legends fails, it means that EA could kill Respawn and take the Titanfall franchise with them. In that case, the only thing left to do is to hope some other game developer attempts to reclaim that mantle or if EA suddenly turns over a new leaf and decides to give the franchise another chance.

If Apex Legends succeeds or is even moderately successful, then Respawn may spend their time on keeping Apex Legends running and bringing in steady revenue. They would have much less of a reason to put money into investing in a story driven single player Titanfall game since guaranteeing a return on their investment is shaky at best, especially with EA wanting to focus more on money making “live services”.

Dear Respawn,

Titanfall 2 was great, and the potential of Titanfall 3 was just as great or even greater. I’m sorry to hear that you’re not working on Titanfall 3, but here’s to hoping that you’re still aware that they are fans looking forward to the next true sequel of the Titanfall games.

Loading Likes...