Without EA intentionally fucking over Respawn as the producer for Titanfall 2 by making it have the worst possible release date, and driving them to bankruptcy, this would have been a major IP.
As it is, we have Apex Legends instead of a Titanfall Series.
I REALLY hate the ongoing narrative that Titanfall 2 was sent to die or whatever.
Titanfall 2 was made by Respawn. Respawn/Infinity Ward/Whatever They Were When They Did Medal Of Honor have been more or less defining mainstream first person shooters for decades at that point.
And there is this idea that Battlefield 1 (and this was well after we had all decided we hated Battlefield) and CoD Infinite Warfare killed it.
The reality is that it always had an uphill battle because Titanfall 1 was MP only and turned a lot of people off. And FPSes had largely become a “multiplayer genre” with the big surprise of 2016 being DOOM which… still mostly needed people to realize it was good after the “weird” trailers.
The funny thing is that if Titanfall 2 had been Titanfall 1… either as pure MP or with TF1 having one of the all time great SP campaigns, it probably would have become the new Call of Duty in the same way that CoD became the new Medal of Honor. But instead it was a poisoned well released at a time when Gamers just weren’t interested in SP shooters.
Similarly, if it had come out a few years later (after people remembered you could tell a story in a shooter), it probalby would have done gangbusters.
But, like with most things, we instead blame EA. Because clearly EA were willing to piss away however much money Titanfall 2 cost to… get a really shitty VR game and make Vince Zampella work on Battlefield?
It was dropped between CoD(which at the time was riding high) and the legendary BF1, which was the WW1 one that was universally acclaimed and revitalized the series.
BF1 followed Hardline which was almost universally mocked, 4 which is largely considered to be where things started going downhill, and 3 which was shit on for not being Bad Company 3 (… I can’t entirely disagree with that). It could just as easily have been a massive flop as a success (also, I personally never noticed the universal acclaim, but I do know it was generally tolerated).
Also, I can’t be arsed to check, but wasn’t the god awful free to play game out around that time as well? like the cartoony ww2 themed one?
If a game is not allowed to even be released in the same quarter as a CoD then… yeah.
Hardline was mocked for being weird mostly, not bad. People always saw it as a stop gap, as DICE didn’t even develop it
BF4 was considered the beginning of the end at launch sure, but by the end of its lifecycle it was pulling huge numbers and great reception. They had basically FIXED things like bad netcode and many more fixes that made it the best battlefield had been yet imo as bf3 lacked grander scale in terms of mechanics and content
Bf3 not being bad company 3 was an issue pre launch, but almost immediately people stopped caring because bf3 is almost universally beloved now for its huge balls and incredible rush map design and more enjoyable vehicles than Bad Company
And finally, it’s not about the quarter… the release date is literally only a week after BF1 and CoD was already pulling in huge fps numbers about a month before. It’s been observed many times before too that people tend not to buy multiple games before Christmas, and often will only have one or two games to choose from for Christmas… which means nobody is taking a risk on Titanfall 2 (both for the reasons you stated, and because of the release window)
Wait, maybe I’m misunderstanding… are you strawmanning me? I don’t think Titanfall 2 losing the numbers game means the entire studio is dead lol, in fact I still think Respawn is one of the greatest development teams available right now and I can’t wait to see their future. EA loves apex too I bet.
The discussion is about the ongoing narrative that EA intentionally killed TF2 by releasing it too close to BF1 and CODIW. I pointed out that BF1 was not the juggernaut people think it is. You talked about how BF4 was a success even though it had a rough start… which is exactly what TF2 had.
I would add that the Titanfall 2 campaign was more “surprisingly good”, with a lot of potential for improvement. IMO, it didn’t reach the level where you were sucked into the setting and wanted to know what happened next to the characters, like say Mass Effect 1. It could have gotten there, if the writing had been stronger, but it didn’t. So I too don’t think it’s EA’s fault.
Without EA intentionally fucking over Respawn as the producer for Titanfall 2 by making it have the worst possible release date, and driving them to bankruptcy, this would have been a major IP.
As it is, we have Apex Legends instead of a Titanfall Series.
I REALLY hate the ongoing narrative that Titanfall 2 was sent to die or whatever.
Titanfall 2 was made by Respawn. Respawn/Infinity Ward/Whatever They Were When They Did Medal Of Honor have been more or less defining mainstream first person shooters for decades at that point.
And there is this idea that Battlefield 1 (and this was well after we had all decided we hated Battlefield) and CoD Infinite Warfare killed it.
The reality is that it always had an uphill battle because Titanfall 1 was MP only and turned a lot of people off. And FPSes had largely become a “multiplayer genre” with the big surprise of 2016 being DOOM which… still mostly needed people to realize it was good after the “weird” trailers.
The funny thing is that if Titanfall 2 had been Titanfall 1… either as pure MP or with TF1 having one of the all time great SP campaigns, it probably would have become the new Call of Duty in the same way that CoD became the new Medal of Honor. But instead it was a poisoned well released at a time when Gamers just weren’t interested in SP shooters.
Similarly, if it had come out a few years later (after people remembered you could tell a story in a shooter), it probalby would have done gangbusters.
But, like with most things, we instead blame EA. Because clearly EA were willing to piss away however much money Titanfall 2 cost to… get a really shitty VR game and make Vince Zampella work on Battlefield?
It was dropped between CoD(which at the time was riding high) and the legendary BF1, which was the WW1 one that was universally acclaimed and revitalized the series.
It never had a chance to do well.
BF1 followed Hardline which was almost universally mocked, 4 which is largely considered to be where things started going downhill, and 3 which was shit on for not being Bad Company 3 (… I can’t entirely disagree with that). It could just as easily have been a massive flop as a success (also, I personally never noticed the universal acclaim, but I do know it was generally tolerated).
Also, I can’t be arsed to check, but wasn’t the god awful free to play game out around that time as well? like the cartoony ww2 themed one?
If a game is not allowed to even be released in the same quarter as a CoD then… yeah.
Hardline was mocked for being weird mostly, not bad. People always saw it as a stop gap, as DICE didn’t even develop it
BF4 was considered the beginning of the end at launch sure, but by the end of its lifecycle it was pulling huge numbers and great reception. They had basically FIXED things like bad netcode and many more fixes that made it the best battlefield had been yet imo as bf3 lacked grander scale in terms of mechanics and content
Bf3 not being bad company 3 was an issue pre launch, but almost immediately people stopped caring because bf3 is almost universally beloved now for its huge balls and incredible rush map design and more enjoyable vehicles than Bad Company
And finally, it’s not about the quarter… the release date is literally only a week after BF1 and CoD was already pulling in huge fps numbers about a month before. It’s been observed many times before too that people tend not to buy multiple games before Christmas, and often will only have one or two games to choose from for Christmas… which means nobody is taking a risk on Titanfall 2 (both for the reasons you stated, and because of the release window)
Wait wait wait wait wait.
Are you telling me that a game like BF4 can launch poorly but end up solid and successful?
Here I was thinking if a game wasn’t the top seller on release day it was forever doomed and would kill a studio.
Wait, maybe I’m misunderstanding… are you strawmanning me? I don’t think Titanfall 2 losing the numbers game means the entire studio is dead lol, in fact I still think Respawn is one of the greatest development teams available right now and I can’t wait to see their future. EA loves apex too I bet.
The discussion is about the ongoing narrative that EA intentionally killed TF2 by releasing it too close to BF1 and CODIW. I pointed out that BF1 was not the juggernaut people think it is. You talked about how BF4 was a success even though it had a rough start… which is exactly what TF2 had.
I would add that the Titanfall 2 campaign was more “surprisingly good”, with a lot of potential for improvement. IMO, it didn’t reach the level where you were sucked into the setting and wanted to know what happened next to the characters, like say Mass Effect 1. It could have gotten there, if the writing had been stronger, but it didn’t. So I too don’t think it’s EA’s fault.