A new Bloomberg report says Electronic Arts has cancelled development of a new game based on the Apex Legends and Titanfall series that was in development at Respawn Entertainment.
The report, which cites three sources, says the cancelled project was a singleplayer game codenamed Titanfall Legends and set in the shared Apex/Titanfall universe. It was reportedly being directed by Mohammad Alavi, until his departure from the studio in 2022.
That would presumably be the project Alavi teased on Twitter in July 2021. "We're developing a brand new singleplayer adventure from Respawn Entertainment," he said at the time. "We're a small, but ambitious team with a history of dreaming big and making splashes."
Alavi's LinkedIn page indicates the same thing, saying he was "creative director on a brand new singleplayer adventure from Respawn Entertainment" prior to this departure. Before that, he'd spent 10 years at Respawn as narrative design lead and design director on Apex Legends, and nearly seven years before that as a senior designer on Titanfall.
That history naturally fuelled speculation (or hope) the new game was Titanfall 3, but unfortunately speculation is all it added up to: Alavi never revealed the nature of the project he was working on, and Respawn hasn't given Titanfall fans anything more to hold on to than 'never say never' platitudes.
But job listings at Respawn from 2022 seemed to point in a different direction. The openings were for something called the Apex Universe FPS Incubation Project, described as "a brand new Respawn singleplayer adventure." Apex Legends was built out of the Titanfall setting, and naturally some diehard fans held on to hope that Respawn was trying to camouflage a new Titanfall game in the works. But there was no overlooking the fact that this new project was meant to take place in the "Apex universe," seen by many as a meaningful change in verbiage.
The Bloomberg report says there were roughly 50 people working on the game when it was shut down. EA will attempt to move some of them to other positions at the company, but those who cannot be placed elsewhere will be laid off.
Whatever this game was, it's not the only Respawn project to take a bump: EA also announced yesterday that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has been delayed until April 28, in order to "achieve the level of polish our fans deserve." Development of the mobile versions of Apex Legends and Battlefield has also been halted.
