I’m a little bit late to the party, but this whole thing took everyone by complete surprise, so I’m going to do a little bit of a recap here. Here goes.
About two weeks ago we published a short article about the presumed new Titanfall in the making by Respawn. That news was since then invalidated by Respawn announcing Apex Legends, a free-to-play hero shooter/battle royale title and following that announcement with an almost immediate release of the game.
And much like Overwatch before it, Apex Legends seems to be a collection of left-over ideas that worked well in a small package. It’s actually quite good, at least for what it is. It doesn’t have the staple of Titanfall, that being giant, shiny, metal men falling from the sky, but gameplay-wise it’s very solid, the characters have personalities and it manages to marry two genres into a fun little ship. It’s a game that EA seems strangely unwilling to capitalize on, given how good it is.
Respawn then went on to deny that they are working on a new Titanfall. And THEN Andrew Willson of EA denied that by stating that we can expect a “premium” Titanfall experience this year. Which suggests that Respawn is still working on a game, likely using what wasn’t released in the form of Apex Legends, which would be a full-priced title.
It’s an odd situation, to be sure. Many speculate it’s at least to some degree caused by internal chaos inside EA. With the hopes of Anthem being the golden goose the company promoted heavily, Apex Legends may have fallen by the waysides. Which is a shame, because like I said, it’s a pretty good game in its own right.
Either way, I guess this means we can actually still look forward to a full-on Titanfall game? Important to note is that ‘premium’ does not mean ‘PC & console’, so it could be a mobile game for all we know. But I remain hopeful, I would certainly not want another Overwatch situation where an otherwise great game is hamstrung by the amount of content that had to be scrapped and that content is never released.
I don’t know how possible it would be for EA to shift its gears and focus on Apex Legends more now, but I think they should do it. There’s potential here I’d hate to see squandered.