"Titanfall 2 is my greatest achievement, but making Apex Heroes was the right decision."
Developed by Rebirth Studios and published by EA, "Titanfall" is an IP that makes FPS game fans uneasy. In particular, "Titanfall 2", released in 2016, did not achieve the desired sales, but the game itself received rave reviews and won a number of fanatical and resentful followers.
It is said that they have a deep grudge because they have not been able to wait for "Titanfall 3" so far. Rebirth only launched the free-to-play battle royale game "Apex Heroes" in 2019, but it has no single-player campaign and no cool Titan mech, but it inherits the world view of "Titanfall", but cannot take over the mantle of "Titanfall".
"Valkyrie" of "Apex Heroes" is the daughter of the enemy "Viper" in "Titanfall 2"
However, the development and maintenance resources of Respawn and EA are tilted towards "Apex Heroes", and the two "Titanfall" old games are poorly maintained, and the multiplayer mode is often bombed, which disappoints players to the extreme.
In 2021, one of Reborn's community coordinators said, "We only have one or two people working for Titanfall because all the rest are busy working on Apex Heroes." ”
In April, Rebirth head Vince Zampella also said in an interview with Barron's that development of Titanfall 3 is possible, but the studio doesn't have any plans to do so at the moment. "There's no point in developing something new if you don't come up with the right idea at the right time." It is clear that this 3 is as far away as the V club game, and it has poured cold water on the players.
Did Rebirth really have the idea of developing Titanfall 3? As early as shortly after the release of "Titanfall 2", there were actually some. At that time, "Titanfall 3" had already been established, and it was silently developed for ten months before it was completely canceled.
And, contrary to what many people think, it was Respawn Studios itself that canceled Titanfall 3 — not the "worst game publisher ever" and "studio killer" and EA.
On June 11, Mohammad Alavi, a former veteran designer at Rebirth Studios, was interviewed online by Youtube channel The Burnettwork. Muhammad is of Iranian descent and worked for 11 years in Rebirth, contributing to the development of two generations of Titanfall.
Mohammed Allawi
Before joining Rebirth in 2010, he worked at Activision's Infinity Wards studio, where he was responsible for Call of Duty's level design. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007), the sniper level "Double Sniper Past" that infiltrated Pripyat, Ukraine, in an auspicious suit, and the controversial airport massacre mission "No Russian Speaking" in Modern Warfare 2 (2009) were the work of Mohammed.
The classic auspicious costume outfit of the protagonist Fang in the "Double Sniper Past" mission
“Remember, no Russian. ”
Mohammed said that a lot of development work on Titanfall 3 has been completed. "Titanfall 2 came out and did what it was supposed to do, and we thought, 'OK, we're going to do Titanfall 3.' And, we worked on Titanfall 3... Ugh, 10 months. We have the technology to develop it, and there are several development tasks underway in the same period. ”
"And we also developed the first playable version, if not better than anything we've made before, at least just as good." But let me be clear: it is gradually getting better, but it is not a revolutionary progress. We felt pretty good, but unlike what it felt like doing Titanfall 2, we were doing something revolutionary. ”
The department in charge of multiplayer modes is also in trouble. "As much as people love Titanfall 2's multiplayer mode, very few do."
"A lot of people think this multiplayer mode is really good after playing it, but there's too much multiplayer can withstand. It was developed to its limits, and players quickly burned out. They were like: 'Titanfall 2 is a great multiplayer game, but it's not something I can play for a year or two in a row. ’”
In 2019, the average number of people online in Titanfall 2 was only 2,000
To ensure that players continued to play, the multiplayer department broke its heart. There was originally a team building event called "Friday Night Battle" inside Rebirth Studio, where they played their own games every Friday night. During that time, only about 10 people were willing to participate in the hacking of the multiplayer mode of "Titanfall 2".
The last straw that crushed the "Titanfall 3" project happened to be a powerful medicine to solve the multiplayer mode: battle royale. In March 2017, PUBG, which landed on Steam in Early Access, quickly led to a wave of battle royale games.
PUBG's all-time high online number is as high as 3.2 million. Source: SteamDB website
The Respawn development team not only experienced PUBG, but also tried to create a battle royale map with the "Titanfall" materials at hand, and the characters that players can use are all classes expected to appear in "Titanfall 3". According to Mohammed, after the map went live inside the studio, the number of people involved in the team building reached 100, and they did not go offline until 9 p.m.
In contrast, "Titanfall 2" is still only played by about 10 people. This momentum began in October 2017 and continued until the Christmas holidays in December.
Before the holidays, Mohammed had just taken up the role of lead narrative designer for Titanfall 3, working with Manny Hagopian, the narrative director of Rebirth, to conceive the story of the entire game and even make an internal demo. But after the holiday, after discussion, they changed their minds together:
Instead of making a slightly better Titanfall 3 than Gen 2, make a battle royale game that will obviously be great. As a result, the development of "Apex Heroes" was officially established, and "Titanfall 3" was stillborn.
The choice to ditch the well-known IP and start over was so crazy that the Rebirth team had to deliberately keep a low profile in case EA got involved. EA didn't know about this for nearly half a year, until Mohammed and others redeveloped and demonstrated a working prototype.
The battle royale mode has become a huge hit within Respawn Studios, perhaps epitomizing the commercial success of Apex Heroes after its release. Whether from a creative or business point of view, the decision to transform is impossible to refuse. As a free-to-play game, Apex Heroes surpassed 100 million players, far more than 10 times the number of Titanfall 2 players.
Mohammed left in January 2022. He was the most directly responsible for the cancellation of Titanfall 3 and a "Class A war criminal", but he also killed a "lack of revolutionary" sequel that protected players' best impressions of the entire Titanfall franchise. "I will always miss another Titanfall. I love the game, Titanfall 2 is my greatest achievement, but making Apex Heroes was the right decision. ”