I’m officially over caring aboutTitanfall 3. It’s not because of anything that the existing Titanfall games have done, nothing to do with my opinion of them changing, and not because of any comments, allegations, or meltdowns by any senior figures attached to it. I just don’t want to get hurt any more. It’s not me, it’s definitely you. This week we found out that it was in some form of development for ten months before being scrapped, and this is officially the end of the line.
Titanfall 3 seems like a no brainer to me, but I don’t have to manage the bottom line. The fact is the first game didn’t leave much of a mark and was lucky to get a sequel, which was then mismarketed and sent out to die betweenBattlefieldandCall of Dutyon the release calendar. Looking purely at the spreadsheets, there’s not much call for Titanfall 3. But the game’s not played on paper, and out here in the real world Titanfall has developed a cult following.
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There are some major contenders to the throne, but in terms of the overall gameplay feel and level design, Titanfall 2 is the best first-person shooter out there. The campaign has one of the best shooter levels I’ve ever played, with Effect & Cause merging narrative with time travel with environmental puzzles with traversal, all of which comes together with, most impressively, no sense that the game is trying too hard. Titanfall’s use of a traditional shooter framework while adding fresh twists on classic mechanics is exactly what the genre needs.
Unfortunately what sells well is not fresh twists on old mechanics inside inventive story campaigns, but online deathmatches. This was not Titanfall’s forte. The first game was all multiplayer lobbies, with the ambition of doubling up as a coherent campaign. But the fact you played in a random order, certain maps having canon victories that didn’t line up with the nature of online play, and a general confusion over which side was which and what that meant for the narrative itself made it impossible to care.
The second game’s multiplayer was separate, but was solid at best, and again we come back to that just not being good enough if you’re going head to head with Battlefield and Call of Duty. Titanfall is known as the big robot game, but ironically this is the weakest aspect of the game - blowing up robots and jet-packing out of them is fun, but the game was always stronger when you were running around on your own two feet.
Over the years we’ve heard rumours of Titanfall 3, a buzz reignited when there were crossovers withApex Legends, some developer or executive mentioning in an interview that they’d be interested, but nothing concrete emerged. So here I am signing off. I no longer care.
I’vewritten about this need for self-induced closure before. I don’t really care aboutDays Gone, but I know some of you cherish it in the way I go to bat for Titanfall 2. Various figures connected to Days Gone have spoken about a sequel (often in unproductive ways, like telling fans if they didn’t pay “full ******* price” at launch then it’s their fault the sequel was cancelled), but the more they speak about it, the further away it gets. Sometimes a clean break is for the best.
My tune will quickly change if we get a trailer at any of the many, many, many gaming showcases the world gives us, but for now, I don’t care. No leaks, no rumours, no predictions shall prick up my ears. I love you, Titanfall 3, but I need someone willing to commit.
