Titanfall Fans Mourn as Extraction Shooter Canceled: Is This the End for Titanfall 3?

Fans of the Titanfall series are grappling with the recent news that EA has canceled another incubation project at Respawn Entertainment, alongside laying off a number of employees across its incubation, Apex Legends, Star Wars: Jedi, and EA Experience teams. According to Bloomberg, the canceled project, codenamed R7, was an extraction shooter set within the beloved Titanfall universe. While this wasn't the Titanfall 3 sequel that fans have been eagerly awaiting, the news has still hit hard, especially since it's been nearly a decade since the release of the fan-favorite Titanfall 2.

One devastated fan said, "I just fell to my knees at Walmart," while another simply wrote: "I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE." The sentiment of despair was echoed by another who lamented, "How many more times will this happen before they finally give it up and leave us to our sorrow?"

However, not all fans view the cancellation as a setback. Some believe that an extraction shooter set in the Titanfall universe might have been a risky move that could have jeopardized the franchise's future. A user on Reddit posited, "Best thing that could've happened as far as the continued existence of this franchise is concerned. A Titanfall extraction shooter would probably flop and the c-suite executives would say 'see, the people just don't like Titanfall anymore,' instead of the obvious reason being nobody asked for a Titanfall XTS." Another fan responded, "I’m fine with this one being canceled," followed by, "Extraction shooter lmao. Good riddance." A different fan suggested, "So sick and tired of 'extraction shooters'. They're so formulaic and boring. I don't want to loot a bunch of useless shit and camp in an attic or sit in a bush for 20 minutes or risk getting shot moving through big open fields. Give me quick matches, wallrunning and titans blastin'." Another summarized their feelings succinctly, "Got sad. Read extraction shooter. Was literally okay."

The layoffs at Respawn affected approximately 100 employees, including those in development, publishing, and QA roles on Apex Legends, as well as smaller teams working on the Jedi series and two canceled incubation projects, one of which was reported on back in March, and the other believed to be the extraction shooter in the Titanfall universe. These cuts are part of a series of layoffs at EA over recent years, including restructuring at BioWare, moving developers to other projects and laying off others, eliminating 50 jobs at BioWare in 2023, and an unknown number more at Codemasters. In 2024, a larger restructuring led to 670 workers being laid off company-wide, including around two dozen workers at Respawn.

In 2023, it emerged that Respawn Entertainment had been working on Titanfall 3 "in earnest" for 10 months before deciding to pivot to Apex Legends. Mohammad Alavi, who became the narrative lead designer on Titanfall 3 before its cancellation, shared with The Burnettwork that significant progress had been made on the sequel. He stated, “Titanfall 2 came out, did what it did, and we were like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna make Titanfall 3,’ and we worked on Titanfall 3 for about 10 months, right? In earnest, right? We had new tech for it, we had multiple missions going, we had a first playable, which was on par to be just as good if not better than whatever we had before, right? But I’ll make this clear: incrementally better, it wasn’t revolutionary. And that’s the key thing, right? And we were feeling pretty decent about it, but not the same feeling as Titanfall 2 where we were making something revolutionary, y’know what I mean?”

Alavi explained that the decision to cancel Titanfall 3 stemmed from challenges with the multiplayer experience and the burgeoning popularity of the Battle Royale genre following the release of PUBG in 2017. He noted, “The multiplayer team was having a hell of a time trying to fix the multiplayer, because a lot of people love the multiplayer. People love Titanfall 2 multiplayer. But the people who love Titanfall 2 multiplayer is a very small number of people. And most people play Titanfall 2 multiplayer and think it’s really good, but it’s just too much. It’s cranked up to 11, and they burn out a bit fast. And they’re like, ‘That was a great multiplayer, that’s not something I continually play a year, two years,’ right? So we were trying to fix that. We were trying to fix that from Titanfall 1 to 2, trying to fix it from Titanfall 2 to 3, the multiplayer team was just dying. And then PUBG came out.”

Respawn developers found themselves more engaged with a Battle Royale map using Titanfall 3 classes than with the standard multiplayer modes they were developing. This led to the pivotal decision to abandon Titanfall 3 in favor of creating Apex Legends. Alavi recounted, “And at the time, I had just literally become [the] narrative lead designer on Titanfall 3. I had just pitched the story, the whole game, that me and Manny [Hagopian] had come up with. We made this big presentation and then we went off at break, and came back from break, and we talked about it and we were like, ‘Yeah, we need to pivot. And we need to go make this game.’ We literally canceled Titanfall 3 ourselves ’cause we were like, ‘We can make this game, and it’s going to be Titanfall 2 plus a little bit better, or we can make this thing, which is clearly amazing.’ And don’t get me wrong, I will always miss having another Titanfall. I love that game. Titanfall 2 is my most crowning achievement, but it was the right call. That is a crazy cut. Such a crazy cut that EA didn’t even know about it for another six months until we had a prototype up and running that we could show them!”