‘Titanfall’ Studio Explains Why Their Battle Royale Game ‘Apex Legends’ Doesn’t Have Titans

After a pretty hefty leak earlier, Respawn’s battle royale game set in the Titanfall universe, Apex Legends, is now available though don’t expect some of the features we know and love from the base Titanfall game to be included. Wall running, double jumping, and even titans are missing — but for good reason.

First and foremost, this is not Titanfall 3 which is a big reason why aesthetically the game is very different than the titles in the main franchise. Respawn’s executive producer Drew McCoy recently sat down with the folks over at PC Gamer to talk about the key differences fans will see in the new free-to-play title from the studio.

“A lot of the stuff [from Titanfall] that was brought over was brought over purposefully. Our goals are really to make a masterable, learnable, deep game with a lot of strategy,” the producer told the site. “When we first started making it, to be completely honest, we had double-jumping and wall running. We had triple-jumping for awhile. We had Titans in tons of different forms. For us, we don’t restrict ourselves when we’re early on in a project about what ‘has’ to be there.”

He added, “So even though we were like, yeah, this is probably going to be the Titanfall universe, we didn’t put any hard requirements on what had to be there. While prototyping and playing and iterating, things stay or they go as a result of whether or not they’re achieving our goals. Things like wall running and double-jumping, they actually really hurt the strategic and learnable aspects of combat. Because a player can get anywhere almost immediately. So there’s no thought process like ‘okay, I saw someone run around that building, now I know they’re going to be in one of two places.’ No—with double-jumping and wall running, they can be anywhere.”

This is also why they chose 3-person squads, to make it less chaotic and more of a learning experience when developing a combat style in the world of battle royale. He furthered this explaination by talking a bit about how it relates to Titanfall 2’s multiplayer:

“I love Titanfall and Titanfall 2, I’m incredibly proud of especially Titanfall 2, but that’s a very common Titanfall feeling in multiplayer: ‘Oh, someone was 300 feet in the air and they just snipered me in the head as they were flying over. They’re having a great time and I’m just like, ‘I guess I shouldn’t be under people who are flying.’ There was really a lack of learnability to those mechanics from a combat standpoint. So that’s where a lot of this stuff came from, was trying to make a game that felt learnable and strategic.”

As for the game itself, Apex Legends is now available as a free-to-play title for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Thoughts on the latest battle royale game to join the fray? Join in on the conversation in the comment section below, or hit me up over on Twitter @DirtyEffinHippy!