Titanfall Fans Mourn as Extraction Shooter Canceled: Is This the End for Titanfall 3?

Fans of the Titanfall series were hit with a wave of disappointment upon learning that EA canceled another incubation project at Respawn Entertainment, while also laying off numerous employees across its incubation, Apex Legends, Star Wars: Jedi, and EA Experience teams. According to Bloomberg, the canceled game, codenamed R7, was intended to be an extraction shooter set in the Titanfall universe. Although not the long-awaited Titanfall 3 sequel, the news has left many fans disheartened, especially since Titanfall 2 has been without a direct follow-up for nearly a decade.

"I just fell to my knees at Walmart," said one distraught player, while another simply wrote: "I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE."

"How many more times will this happen before they finally give it up and leave us to our sorrow?" lamented another.

However, not all fans view the cancellation as entirely negative. Some believe that an extraction shooter set in the Titanfall universe could have been a risky move that might have jeopardized the franchise's future.

"Best thing that could've happened as far as the continued existence of this franchise is concerned," posited a Redditor. "A Titanfall extraction shooter would probably flop and the c-suite executives would say 'see, the people just don't like Titanfall anymore,' instead of the obvious reason being nobody asked for a Titanfall XTS."

"I’m fine with this one being canceled," responded another fan, followed by: "Extraction shooter lmao. Good riddance."

"So sick and tired of 'extraction shooters'. They're so formulaic and boring. I don't want to loot a bunch of useless stuff and camp in an attic or sit in a bush for 20 minutes or risk getting shot moving through big open fields. Give me quick matches, wallrunning, and titans blasting," suggested a passionate fan.

"Got sad. Read extraction shooter. Was literally okay," summarized someone else.

The layoffs affected approximately 100 jobs at Respawn, including development, publishing, and QA workers on Apex Legends, as well as smaller teams working on the Jedi project and two canceled incubation projects. One of these projects was reported on in March, and the other is believed to be the aforementioned Titanfall extraction shooter.

These cuts are part of a broader pattern of layoffs at EA. Earlier this year, BioWare underwent a restructuring, with some developers moving to other projects and others being laid off. In 2023, EA eliminated 50 jobs at BioWare and an unknown number more at Codemasters. In 2024, a larger company-wide restructuring led to 670 workers being laid off, including around two dozen at Respawn.

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In 2023, it came to light that Respawn Entertainment had worked on Titanfall 3 "in earnest" for 10 months before deciding to pivot to Apex Legends. Mohammad Alavi, who had become the narrative lead designer on Titanfall 3 before its cancellation, shared insights with The Burnettwork about the development process.

“Titanfall 2 came out, did what it did, and we were like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna make Titanfall 3,’ and we worked on Titanfall 3 for about 10 months, right? In earnest, right?

"We had new tech for it, we had multiple missions going, we had a first playable, which was on par to be just as good if not better than whatever we had before, right? But I’ll make this clear: incrementally better, it wasn’t revolutionary. And that’s the key thing, right?

“And we were feeling pretty decent about it, but not the same feeling as Titanfall 2 where we were making something revolutionary, y’know what I mean?”

Alavi explained that the decision to cancel Titanfall 3 was influenced by challenges faced by the multiplayer team and the rising popularity of the Battle Royale genre following the release of PUBG in 2017.

“The multiplayer team was having a hell of a time trying to fix the multiplayer, because a lot of people love the multiplayer. People love Titanfall 2 multiplayer,” Alavi said.

“But the people who love Titanfall 2 multiplayer is a very small number of people. And most people play Titanfall 2 multiplayer and think it’s really good, but it’s just too much. It’s cranked up to 11, and they burn out a bit fast. And they’re like, ‘That was a great multiplayer, that’s not something I continually play a year, two years,’ right?

“So we were trying to fix that. We were trying to fix that from Titanfall 1 to 2, trying to fix it from Titanfall 2 to 3, the multiplayer team was just dying.

“And then PUBG came out.”

Respawn developers found themselves more engaged with a Battle Royale map using Titanfall 3 classes than with the standard Titanfall multiplayer modes. This led to the realization that they could create something truly exceptional by pivoting to a Battle Royale game.

“And at the time, I had just literally become [the] narrative lead designer on Titanfall 3. I had just pitched the story, the whole game, that me and Manny [Hagopian] had come up with. We made this big presentation and then we went off at break, and came back from break, and we talked about it and we were like, ‘Yeah, we need to pivot. And we need to go make this game.’

“We literally canceled Titanfall 3 ourselves ’cause we were like, ‘We can make this game, and it’s going to be Titanfall 2 plus a little bit better, or we can make this thing, which is clearly amazing.’

“And don’t get me wrong, I will always miss having another Titanfall. I love that game. Titanfall 2 is my most crowning achievement, but it was the right call. That is a crazy cut. Such a crazy cut that EA didn’t even know about it for another six months until we had a prototype up and running that we could show them!”