Titanfall 3 was in development for ten months at Respawn before it was morphed into Apex Legends and scrapped. That’s right, we were so much closer to getting a sequel to one of the best FPS games ever made than we realize, as Titanfall 2’s follow-up was well underway before the success of games like PUBG saw the team change direction.
I can’t catch a break. It seems that every few months I’ve got to write about the death of Titanfall 3, and every single extra detail devastates me even more. This time it’s former Titanfall and Call of Duty designer Mohammad Alavi, who appeared on The BURNETTWORK YouTube channel to talk about cut missions in those games.
Strap in for this, it’s a big one.
“Titanfall 2 came out, did what it did, and we were like ‘okay we’re going to make Titanfall 3,’” Alavi begins. “We worked on Titanfall 3 for ten months in earnest. We had the tech for it, and multiple missions going. But I’ll make this clear, it was incrementally better, it wasn’t revolutionary.
Alavi adds that while development was progressing well, the team at Respawn didn’t feel it was making something as important or revolutionary as Titanfall 2.
“The multiplayer team was having a hell of a time trying to fix the multiplayer, because a lot of people loved Titanfall 2 multiplayer, but the people who loved Titanfall 2 multiplayer is a very small number of people,” Alavi continues. “It’s cranked up to 11 and they burn out of it fast. We were trying to fix that [with Titanfall 3].”
“Then PUBG came out,” Alavi adds. This led the team at Respawn to make their own battle royale map with Titanfall 3 classes, and suddenly company-wide interest in the game was renewed.
“We came back from break and we talked about it, and we were like ‘we need to pivot,’” Alavi continues. “We literally canceled Titanfall 3 ourselves because were like ‘we can make this game and it’ll be Titanfall 2 plus a little bit better, or we can make this thing which is clearly amazing.’”
This is absolutely devastating to hear for many of us I’m sure. We already knew that the Titanfall talent is being tapped for an entirely new FPS game, so Titanfall 3 is absolutely never happening, but this is just upsetting.
“I will always miss having another Titanfall, Titanfall 2 is my crowning achievement,” Alavi says. “But it was the right call.” I’m sure anyone looking at the success of Apex Legends, which is the game that the Titanfall 3 battle royale mode became, would absolutely agree, but this might be the saddest thing I’ve had to write in a long time.
Apparently, EA didn’t even know Titanfall 3 was cut for another six months, with Alavi saying they kept it quiet until they had an Apex Legends prototype they could show to the publisher.
If this gut-punch of a story has you craving some great online action, we’ve got a list of the best multiplayer games you can play on PC right now, alongside some great battle royale games too.