et’s start with the big one, a game that has
endured a lengthy saga of players versus
publishers, complete with heroes, villains,
and a rollercoaster of events that left passionate
fans with emotional whiplash. We’re referring to
Titanfall 2, the celebrated sequel to a successful
Xbox One launch title, from developer Respawn
Entertainment and monolithic publisher EA.
Titanfall 2’s release was hotly anticipated, with
fans excited to see the game developing on the
fast-paced action-shooter gameplay of the original
and expanding across to other platforms. The first
game sold over ten million copies in two years, a
respectable sum for a new IP, and the second game
was projected by EA to perform even better.
Early reviews confirmed EA’s suspicions that
they were onto a winner; the game received high
praise for both its stellar single-player campaign—
something that was absent from the multiplayer-
focused original—and variety of online game
modes. However, at first, sales were poor. Despite
being a multiplatform release, Titanfall 2 initially
failed to sell as much as its predecessor, something
that analysts blamed on EA’s decision to launch
the game in a crowded release window, between
Battlefield 1 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.
Despite this underwhelming start, EA claimed to
be happy with Titanfall 2’s retail performance and
review scores, although Respawn Entertainment
head Vince Zampella noted that it could have sold
better. Still, it wasn’t long before the game achieved
a level of cult popularity, with a loyal player base
that remained active enough for Respawn to
continue releasing free content updates throughout
the year following its release. These included a
new cooperative game mode, multiple maps and
weapons, and a massive heap of cosmetic items.
For a while, all seemed well. Titanfall 2’s player
counts weren’t mind-blowing, but the companies
behind it continued to profit from the surprisingly
fair micro-transaction system for cosmetic items.
The game continued to flourish with relatively little
input from Respawn until early 2019 when the
developer released Apex Legends, a battle royale
shooter set in the Titanfall universe.AT THE APEX
Apex Legends was an immediate success, shooting
to the top of the battle royale rankings alongside
titans such as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and
Fortnite. Before the end of its first month, Apex hit a
staggering player count of 50 million and as it grew
in popularity, Titanfall fans became concerned that
their game would be left behind. Respawn quickly
refocused on their new success story, and any
hopes of a Titanfall threequel seemed dashed.
Still, Titanfall 2 held steady with respectable
player counts. It wasn’t hard to find an online match
in any of the popular game modes, and Titanfall
2 ’s offline campaign was an enjoyable experience.
The servers for both games remained online, and
while some spin-offs never saw the light of day
(Titanfall Online, a free-to-play shooter, and mobile
game Titanfall: Frontline were canceled before the
release of Apex Legends), all seemed well.Unfortunately, in mid-2021, things started to
go badly wrong. The servers for Titanfall and
Titanfall 2 came under fire from hackers, who used
a network of compromised systems to conduct
continuous DDoS (distributed denial of service)
attacks across all platforms. This rendered the
multiplayer modes—which were sustaining most
of the remaining player base—largely unplayable.
The first Titanfall game had been under attack for
years, with no patch appearing. Respawn eventually
acknowledged the issues on Twitter, assuring
players that a fix was on its way.
No such fix arrived, however, leaving fans to
speculate that Respawn was finished with the
series. These suspicions were reinforced whenLL
Titanfall 2 is still a cult classic,
despite ongoing network issues.Soldiers’ Soul was the last Saint Seiya
game released, over seven years ago.left behind
40 MAXIMU MPC JUN 2022
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