Fans of the franchise are divided at Respawn’s decision to remove the first Titanfall from digital shops and streaming services, and many are unsure of whether to continue holding out hope for Titanfall 3.
For those of you who missed it, Respawn recently announced through Twitter that they have chosen to stop selling Titanfall from 2014 effective…er…yesterday. Beginning on March 1, 2022, Titanfall will also be taken from subscription services. Although the servers for Titanfall will continue to function for the foreseeable future, this decision effectively ends Titanfall’s seven-year lifespan.
Although the decision to stop selling Titanfall and eventually remove it from streaming services has generated a lot of discussion, Respawn’s brief mention of Titanfall’s “future” is currently the topic of the day.
The fact that Respawn mentions a future for Titanfall beyond those existing properties has given some fans just enough reason to believe that Respawn may finally be working on Titanfall 3, even though there isn’t much concrete information available in that tweet (aside from a soft confirmation that Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends will live on for a while).
While there are definitely various ways to take such information, some fans have provided a little more…cynical interpretation.
The likelihood of a Titanfall 3 sequel has been progressively declining for quite some time now, despite it seems bizarre to imagine that a hazy hint about the game’s future would make fans less optimistic. The success of Apex Legends, a free-to-play battle royale game based on the Titanfall universe, convinced many people that Respawn would never be “allowed” to make another Triple-A Titanfall sequel. Franchise fans initially feared the worst when Titanfall 2 reportedly turned out to be something of a sales disappointment (despite being adored by both critics and fans).
Additionally, members of the Respawn crew have previously denied reports of Titanfall 3 despite their love for making statements like the one above, which essentially means “Hey, you never know.”
While there are occasionally rumours about Titanfall 3 (the game was even mentioned in the most recent Nvidia “leak”), the reality is that every official statement regarding the status of that fictitious game has essentially confirmed that it is neither in active development nor is it in Respawn’s plans for the near future.
You really do start to get the impression that Titanfall is more of a legacy franchise for Respawn at this point than something they feel obligated to return to in a specific way, given the radio silence (or worse) regarding Titanfall 3’s present and future, the fact that Titanfall is being delisted with little to no notice, and the fact that Titanfall 2 fans who have stuck with the game’s multiplayer have long been battling hackers with little assistance from Respawn.
Despite all of that, Respawn has consistently maintained that the Titanfall franchise would continue in some capacity (which is essentially what Apex Legends is in its own way). Halo Infinite could actually help with this, but it’s beginning to feel like the only way we’ll even get a standalone Titanfall 3 multiplayer release is if the winds of the genre start to shift the industry away from the battle royale craze. However, it does seem like Respawn is genuinely interested in repurposing Titanfall’s universe and ideas at some point in the future.
