Being a Titanfall spin-off, many players have long hoped and speculated that Respawn Entertainment would eventually get around to adding Titans to Apex Legends, but the developer has spoken up to confirm that it will not be happening. It always seemed like a long shot, but it still stings something fierce to know that the main series' defining feature may never make it to its popular battle royale cousin.
It hurts doubly when considering that Apex Legends' rapid development and continuing support are the culprits behind Titanfall 3's prolonged delay, making the soonest that fans will likely see a Titan in action or control one a next-generation experience at the most optimistic. Respawn and developer EA are still rumored to have a new side Titanfall project that allegedly involves VR. This apparent nail in the coffin for Titans roaming and/or dominating Apex Legends' King's Canyon arena comes after the announcement of a new Legend and an abundance of other new content for the free-to-play title at EA Play 2019.
Reaching out to Respawn for comment amid the excitement of E3 2019, Game Informer got the disappointing news out of the EA studio. Apex Legends executive producer Drew McCoy confirms that Respawn tinkered with the concept of Titans in Apex Legends "for like nine months during development," but says they just "couldn't get it to work well." Explaining the complicated nature of adding behemoth mechs to an squad-based, infantry-focused experience and Respawn's ultimate decision, McCoy clarifies:
"Titans were created back in the day as a power item. As a sense of I am now a badass, don't mess with me. That fantasy fulfillment is destroyed immediately in battle royale once you've balanced them to a point where they don't ruin battle royale. We could never pull enough levers – how you get it, how strong it is, how fast it is, how big it is, what kind of weapons it has, when do you have it – all that kind of stuff. So I think for now, titans are just not a thing. We're no longer considering it."
Admittedly, even we entertained some fairly fanciful notions of things previously rumored to be coming to Respawn's battle royale sensation based on data-mined code, but it's hard to see the omission of Titans from Apex Legends as a (literally) huge missed opportunity. Obviously, McCoy's explanation of why the idea was abandoned during development was brief and surely not representative of the entire attempt to include it. That said, it's no surprise that approaching Titans as an obtainable power weapon of sorts capable of mashing fragile human player characters into gravy didn't work, because that sounds like the absolute worst, most unbalanced way to implement the novel Titanfall mechanic. When Apex Legends was first released, many likely heard it was set in the Titanfall universe and made the rational assumption that it would consist of, or at least feature, purely Titan-on-Titan battle royale action in the vein of Titanfall 2's Last Titan Standing Mode.
Pipe dreams of what could have been (and what maybe, maybe, maybe could still one day be) aside, Titans have sadly been factored out of the Apex Legends equation for the time being. Maybe one day when Titanfall 3 finally brings series fans their sci-fi twitch shooter fix - and if the battle royale craze cements itself as a lasting mode - Respawn will reconsider and deliver to their community that key ingredient that Apex Legends lacks.
Source: Game Informer