If you’re enjoying Apex Legends, the surprise launch free-to-play battle royale game from Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment, there is a caveat you should keep in mind. While the developers are working on cross-play so friends on different systems can play with each other, producer Drew McCoy confirmed to Eurogamer that cross-progress, or cross-purchasing on different systems, will not happen. Unfortunately for players that like to migrate from console to PC and back as their situation permits, the studio says that it’s not technically possible due to the way the game was built. This means you will likely want to commit to your platform of choice before spending any real money on in-game cosmetics.
McCoy also explained a couple of the more puzzling aspects of the game. You don’t get a Titan in Apex Legends or any parkour shenanigans, despite the game being part of the “Titanfall universe,” because both systems were just too darned awesome for battle royale.
“The choice to not have those came about because of play-testing against our goals: to have a strategic, learnable, masterable, deep game.”
What about those of us that liked the high learning curve of Titanfall? It may be disappointing that this is what we get instead of a proper Titanfall 3, but there’s slim hope we’ll get something. Vince Zampella, Respawn’s CEO, teased some encouragement, and EA’s Andrew Wilson told investors in the company’s earnings call that Respawn would use Apex legends to “as a ramp point” to deliver a “premium” Titanfall experience later in 2019.
Remember Titanfall’s campaign story? Me neither. There’s was something about blowing up a grounded spaceship, and then something else about blowing up a robot factory. It was a bad story told in the most annoying way possible. Between the 30-second pre-round cinematics and the mid-match HUD transmissions, no one paid any attention to the story of generic group A versus generic group B. How can any story compare with two-story tall mechsuits fighting parkour gunslingers?
Respawn’s lead writer, Jesse Stern, says Titanfall 2 will do better. In an interview with Forbes, Stern says the sequel will feature a single-player campaign. He claims that the universe of Titanfall is compelling enough to inspire a spin-off television show produced by Lionsgate.
“In Titanfall 2 there will be a lot of [scenes] where science meets magic, but keeping it grounded and dirty and human and real.”
We got robots and parkour in the first game. Why not add wizards? Titanfall 2 is rumored to be coming to PlayStation 4 as well as Xbox One and PC.
One of the criticisms some players had for Titanfall at launch was that outside of the standard Attrition game type, there wasn’t much variety to the modes. Here comes another drop pod full of dumb-as-a-stump A.I. grunts! Farm away! While that was true to a certain extent (the PC version’s capture-the-flag mode was so empty of players that it was in danger of outright removal at one point), the support Respawn has shown to adding new gameplay modes has been commendable. With Update 8, they’re adding a long-requested feature: cooperative horde mode! Frontier Defense will allow four players to team up against waves of enemies including new units like Suicide Spectres, Cloak Drones, Mortar Titans, and punch-proof Arc Titans.
Update 8 will also features Deadly Ground, a mode to put your parkour skills to the test. Remember when you were a little kid and you imagined the floor in your living room was flooded with lava? Same here, except replace “lava” with “electric smoke”. Get Jumping!
The black market is coming to Titanfall. The latest update to Respawn’s mechs vs. parkour pilots shooter will add in-game currency that can be spent on rewards like packs of Burn Cards, and insignias for players’ Titans. The Black Market purchases work with credits that are rewarded at the end of matches for performance. Credits can also be obtained by selling Burn Cards back to the market.
Burn Card packs are just like booster packs for your favorite collectible card games. They contain a random assortment of Burn Cards, but players can purchase them in themes that limit the picks to certain categories. Want an amped-up weapon for a round? Buy an Ordnance pack. Want XP enhancers? Pick a Time Boost pack. Now Titanfall players can feel the same pain that Magic: The Gathering fans have known for years.
Titanfall players have voiced concerns that the new currency system is the beginning of a microstransaction system. Ever since the launch of the game, players have been on the lookout for publisher Electronic Arts to push real-world money purchases into the application. The Burn Card feature seems almost tailor-made for microtransactions, after all. Respawn’s David Shaver reiterated the studio’s stance on the issue, to allay those fears.
With the introduction of an in-game currency, some may worry that the next step is that we will let players spend real-world money to get an edge in the game. We have stated several times that Titanfall will not have micro-transactions. Fear not, for we plan to keep that promise – NO MICROTRANSACTIONS! The only way to get Credits is by playing the game!
Players will be able to access the in-game market once they hit level 11. Access remains open even after they regenerate from level 50 and start over at the beginning of the level system. Alternately, players can choose to remain at level 50 and additional XP gained from matches will be converted into market credits.
Titanfall is getting new game modes and Titan customization. Respawn revealed the planned update at the start of E3. The new game modes feature wrinkles on the current 6v6 formula. Marked for Death tasks each team with protecting a randomly picked member while trying to kill the opposing team’s marked person. Wingman LTS is a variant of Last Titan Standing that pairs players up to work in partnership to eliminate the other duos.
Limited Titan customization will also be part of the free update. Players will be able to choose from three different voice packs. “Betty” is the current voice, but “Lisa” and “Jeeves” are new and should offer some variety. Completing challenges will sometimes reward players with decals that can be applied to Titans for visual flair. New Burn Cards will include Titan-specific boosts instead of just ones for pilots.
Titanfall for the Xbox One and PC gets the Expedition map pack DLC today. (Xbox 360 players can get the Expedition DLC in June.) The map pack has three maps. War Games is set in a virtual reality training area with Tron-inspired visuals, Runoff is a map with deep trenches and high walkways that pilots can scurry across, and Swampland features a battlefield with towering trees that should offer attractive routes for parkour fans. Hilariously, there’s a background story to these maps! I’m sure this will resonate with players as much as the game’s campaign plot. It had one, right? Something about manufacturing robots and a crashed space ship?
In the wake of the Battle of Demeter, IMC Expeditionary Forces travel deep into Frontier space to recover from their recent defeat. On an uncharted world, the IMC begin construction of a new fleet operations base, using newly acquired water collection and filtration plants to support the new base. When drainage operations reveal ancient ruins and artifacts of an unknown origin in a nearby swamp, Spyglass activates an archaeological team to investigate the site. To maintain battle readiness at the new base, IMC Pilots use simulation pods to train for anticipated Militia raids, based on lessons learned in Angel City and IMC Airbase Sierra.
The Expedition map pack for Titanfall is available for $9.99, or as part of the Season Pass.
Sorry, Xbox 360 owners. You won’t be enjoying giant mech vs parkour pilots until later than expected. Titanfall is launching two weeks later than originally announced.
Now, I want to update everyone on Titanfall for Xbox 360 in development with Bluepoint Games. I’ve been playing the game a lot, and it is fantastic. But we see a few things that can be made even better, so we’re giving Bluepoint a little more time to do just that and deliver an epic Titanfall experience for Xbox 360 players. Titanfall for Xbox 360 will now be releasing on April 8 in North America, and beginning on April 11 in Europe. The game will feature the same 6v6 gameplay, maps, modes, weapons and Burn Cards as the Xbox One and PC versions of the game.
While the Xbox One and PC versions of Titanfall were made by Respawn, the 360 version is a port being done by Bluepoint Games. The original launch date of Titanfall on the 360 was March 25th.
I’m still really enjoying Titanfall, and I’m pleased that Electronic Arts has provided it a stable and reliable online environment. I just wish they would address one thing.
After the jump, who taught you math? Continue reading →
Titanfall tries to be a lot of things. It tries to be a hardcore action shooter with a lightning fast engine, ironsight weapons, and a focus on map control. It tries to be attractive to casual players with quick respawns, easy bot kills, and Call of Duty-style progression. It tries to emphasize teamwork, but still remain conducive to lone-wolf play. It tries to dole out XP and unlocks quickly, but it also tries to balance between newbies and high-level players. It’s got a lot of balls in the air and it’s easy to think that at any moment, the whole crazy juggling act will come crashing down.
“Here,” Titanfall says. “Have a giant robot tank with a humongous machine gun.” What was I talking about again?
After the jump, will this shooter mech your day? Continue reading →
The launch and subsequent weeks of Battlefield 4 multiplayer have been less than stellar. Glitches, connectivity issues, crashes, and weird exploits have plagued the title on all platforms. Although the most egregious issues have been addressed, the launch was something of a black eye for the franchise. It was bad enough that DICE promised to not work on anything other than fixing the problems. Meanwhile, EA is being sued by two separate firms over the damage the title may have caused to their stocks. In fact, EA’s investors are asking questions about Titanfall. There’s a lot of money riding on this next-gen game, and the money-men don’t want a repeat of Battlefield 4’s rocky performance.
In yesterday’s quarterly earnings call, EA executives tried to put investors’ fears to rest. Patrick Soderlund, EA’s executive vice president of EA Games label, took some time to address Battlefield 4’s issues, the lessons learned, and how EA and Respawn will apply that to Titanfall.
I’ll cover Battlefield 4, and I’ll quickly touch on kind of what happened, what we’ve done and how we’re learning from it? So on the first segment, the what happened part is when Battlefield 4 launched, it was a very complex game, launching on 2 entirely new console platforms, as well as current-gen and PC. We were pushing innovation heavily and we’re delivering 60 frames per second gameplay for 64 players plus the ability to connect via mobile tablet as a commander into the product, coupled those with some very innovative features in the gameplay side. Based on our prelaunch testing, our beta performance, we were confident the game was ready when it was launched. Shortly after launch, however, we began hearing about problems from our player community, and the development team quickly began to address the situation. So what have we done since we encountered the problems is we were fortunate to have an architecture in place that allows us to adjust and update the game rapidly, and that’s actually what we’ve done. We released multiple software updates across all platforms to resolve the primary issues and game stability has significantly increased. To the final point, which is how are we learning from this? The challenge that we’ve faced with Battlefield 4 were different from anything that we’ve seen before with other games. There were different issues that only manifest its scale in the post-launch live environment. We’re taking multiple steps to evaluate what occurred and incorporate those learnings into our development process for future products, so we don’t experience the same problems again. I would close on the fact that Battlefield 4 remains an amazing game with massive innovation, and we’re confident that gamers will be logging on to play for a long time to come.
They have their top men working on it now. Top. Men.
Scammers will exploit any weakness. Games with a tie to your bank account always get their fair share of scams. “Your World of Warcraft account has been closed due to illegal activity. Please click here to give some guy in Singapore all your credit card information!” According to Respawn Entertainment, these digital con-artists will even use gamers’ anticipation of Titanfall to grab data.
To help keep our fans safe from scammers, please note that all sites advertising Beta access are 100% scams.
A quick Google search does bring up a few obvious Titanfall scam sites, which we won’t link to for obvious reasons. In related news, if Tom Chick sends me his credit card information, I will totally get him into the secret beta for Diablo IV.
That’s the morning queue to get into Pax Prime 2013. It’s hot and stifling in this room, and about an hour before they let people into the main hall, the crowd reaches Funk-con 4. Besides smell, the other thing the image doesn’t convey is the audio experience of Mountain Dew and Doritos blasting butt-rock while someone screeches about your chance to win an Xbox One.
Yesterday’s tour of Pax Prime 2013 was a down and dirty look at the Great Northwest’s premiere gaming convention. This time, let’s check out some of the gaming goodness!
This tour of Pax Prime 2013 has been brought to you by Mountain Dew and Doritos after the jump! Continue reading →
