Respawn reveal why Titans & wall-running are never coming to Apex Legends
Apex Legends was a hit with a ton of Titanfall fans since it was made from the same studio, but players noticed that two iconic elements of the past title didn’t make it to the battle royale.
Developers Respawn Entertainment took a hard look into the Titans and wall-running features that were key in their original games’ popularity and saw that the didn’t transfer well into the larger scope of Apex.
As players know, Apex has a concise albeit growing cast of Legends featured in the game. Each of them has their own unique abilities and passives that contributes to an overall squad’s dynamic and combat potential.
It seems like Respawn were happy with how these characters played off each other, given that people make proper use of their unique kits.
While commercially Titanfall fell to the wayside, it’s breakthrough gameplay design and unique FPS combat resonated with players for a long time to come.The importance of this balancing act, however, might have been disrupted by the inclusion of Titans and the popular wall-running elements of Titanfall.
“We tried for months and months to make Titans work in BR, but they’re the antithesis of what we were trying to accomplish,” executive produce Drew McCoy told gamesindustry.biz.
Players can easily relate this to Fortnite’s controversial BRUTE mechs. While the concept was novel when first released, it wasn’t long before they started heavily influencing the BR.
This led to a standoff between the Epic Games devs who wanted to stick with their experiment, and an irate player-base that wasn’t having fun with the mech’s inclusion.
Epic GamesSpeaking on wall-running, there were too many factors distorting “the legibility of combat” when a fight breaks out in the Apex Games.
“What happens when you can wall-run and double-jump all the time is the legibility of combat just goes to zero,” the dev said. “You can never predict where someone’s going to be, or how many squads are coming around the corner, because they can go up, they can go underneath, they can go around.”
While Octane and Pathfinder certainly have the capability of these unpredictable movements, players can at least account for them as soon as they see those Legends in an opposing squad.
Players can at least account for Pathfinders and Octane’s unpredictable movements when they are spotted in the Apex Games.If all players in the lobby had access to that kind of free movement, it could create a hectic environment within the Apex Games sphere.
Even though Titans and wall-running would be an exciting concept to include into an LTM or in-game event, the devs ultimately found enough obvious pitfalls when looking to integrate it into the larger formula of the game and decided it just wasn’t worth it.