With Apex Legends being revealed this week, it seemed that the free-to-play battle royale game was the project that was taking up a lot of Respawn’s time, leading to some suggestions that Titanfall 3 isn’t in development at all. But EA has recently alluded to a new Titanfall game that’s set to arrive later this year. Before you get your hopes up though, it’s important to remember that “new” doesn’t mean a full-blown sequel, unfortunately.
Speaking during the Q3 financial report, EA’s CEO Andrew Wilson explained that Apex Legends wouldn’t mean no Titanfall-themed game for Respawn this year. He said “Respawn also plans to launch a premium game this year that is a new twist on the Titanfall universe,” before promising more details in the “months ahead.”
There isn’t much else to go on from what Wilson said, other than this project will “deliver a truly creative take on what Titanfall is in a premium context later on in the year.” Two words from what Wilson said really stand out for this new project, those being “twist,” and “take,” descriptions which would suggest that we won’t be seeing a mainline sequel to the Titanfall series. And that does beg the question, what will we see then?
Respawn has already dove into the mobile arena with their strategy game Titanfall: Assault, and it seems unlikely that it’s an area Respawn want to expand in.
Instead, a possible reach further into this “Outlands” era of the Titanfall universe could appear in some form, possibly in a single player adventure based on the characters in Apex Legends. It’s something that Apex Legends executive producer, Drew McCoy, recently spoke about in an interview with Eurogamer, saying that “what’s really exciting is to think of it more in a grey area: what does the Wild West of the Titanfall universe look like?” And with a fairly charismatic bunch at their disposal in the battle royale game, and an apparent interest in moving beyond the “pretty binary,” plot of the main Titanfall series, it’d make sense that Respawn is keen to delve into this entertaining wider world a little deeper.
We’re can’t be entirely sure what Respawn will pull out of its hat later this year, though it sounds like it won’t be a Titanfall 3, unfortunately.
