Based on various job postings, Respawn’s S.W. game will be developed using UE4 rather than Frostbite, which Visceral were made to use for their cancelled Hennig directed game.
Yeah, Frostbite is EA’s in-house engine. Everything there is going Frostbite. Hell, Madden went Frostbite a year or two ago.
If they are allowed to do their thing, respawn can do some serious shit. They are one of the best game developers in the market right now.
I completely agree. I’m still in love with Titanfall 2’s campaign. Even though the team is comprised of vets behind COD 1 & 2, Modern Warfare, Allied Assault, it had been 9 years since they shipped a single player mode. Such a pleasant surprise. Titanfall 2 has the best-in-class movement system of any shooter, and offers so many completely unexpected, novel ideas which the team executes confidently without ever letting them become familiar or routine. It’s like a Shogo reboot with Valve-level polish. I can’t wait to see what the studio do next.
This is really what I’m hoping as well.
Respawn may be allowed to partially “do their thing” but I guarantee that whatever happens, you won’t see the kind of DLC/in-game purchase options Respawn made in Titanfall 2 under EA now.
First they sandwiched TF2 between Battlefield 1 and other games and gave them less marketing, and once they are desperate enough to sell at a more asequible price, they buy them. I see EA is taking lessons from Bethesda.
Well, I believe that EA released TF2 when they did in order to erode sales of Activision’s COD release.
Seems like the amount of money they’re paying for Respawn now is pretty high though.
I suspected that myself, but reports are that EA had to match a buyout offer from Nexon or lose the opportunity to acquire the studio. So, the sale price wasn’t necessarily depressed at EA’s whim for their benefit.
Oh, and FU Zenimax.
Is the amount they paid less than the $450M mentioned earlier?
Is that low? That seems pretty high given the studio really only has Titanfall as its IP.
I thought it was closer to $400m, but I’m not sure anyone outside the transaction is privy to the full details.
I was just going by the original article there, where it’s $315M and then the $150M bonus.
But even at only $400M, isn’t that still a pretty huge amount of money?
I think its a lot for a 2 game single IP franchise that while is AAA in quality, hasn’t exactly sold all that well.
EA sabotaged it last year putting it so close to the Battlefield 1 release.
But they are also working on a Star Wars game, so who knows, it might be really great.
That makes me think that EA is interested in leveraging the Titanfall IP, which is good news.
Although, in all honesty, Titanfall itself highlighted the fact that this team doesn’t need specific IP to make amazing games. The value comes from their design expertise, rather than simply slapping a logo onto some regurgitated crap.
SO TRUE. They put to shame Battlefield , COD , and Lawbreakers, in terms of getting the feel of FPS combat just right.
Apparently they also announced a new Titanfall game is in the works as part of this announcement, but that somehow got lost in the news of EA buying Respawn. So yay! More Titanfall.
Back when these guys made Infinity Ward, they did the same kind of thing. COD and its subsequent iterations that they had a direct hand in, were all amazing games.
They understand shooters on a level that virtually no one else does. They know what makes a shooter “feel” right, and this reflects itself in the polish you see in a game like TF2. Everything about that game just works. The movement system is ridiculously fluid, the weapons all feel amazing, the single player campaign shines in every possible way, from the characters to the level design.
They are able to introduce new mechanics which expand the genre, which virtually every other company fails at miserably. I used to believe that there was no real way you could combine mech combat with infantry combat, and have it be remotely balanced while preserving the feeling that the mechs were insanely powerful death machines… Folks have been trying to do this for the better part of two decades with Mechwarrior, and they always failed spectacularly. Or hell, battlefield has been fucking up the balance between vehicles and infantry for ages. These guys nailed it on the first freaking try.
Titans in Titanfall are insanely strong. They can one-shot pilots. They are super tough. And yet you CAN bring them down, and it somehow doesn’t feel like you’re turbo screwed if the enemy gets their titan up. This aspect of balance alone is amazing.
The one thing that I hope will be preserved after acquisition by EA, although I fear it won’t be, is the rejection of the modern take on DLC.
TF2’s DLC plan was perfect, not simply because it let everyone get DLC without paying… but because it meant that when you got DLC you could leverage it fully.
The problem with paid DLC in past games was that even if you paid for it, you ended up not necessarily being able to get the full value out of it because you could only play with other folks who had the DLC.
TF2 solved that. When new DLC came out, bam, the whole community had it and it immediately started showing up in normal rotation. I’d pay more than full price for games in the future if they did this, because it’s better… it’s definitely better than buying a “season pass” or whatever.
Hell, in the case of TF2, I bought cosmetic shit from the store, which I never do, just because I felt like Respawn needed to be supported. They DESERVED my money.
It’s EA, you won’t distinguish them 2 games from now.
Then they can just leave and make a new company again.
Don’t get too excited just yet. The official text is that the studio is working on another game “in the Titanfall universe” so it may not be what anyone wants. Besides, Respawn is going to be plenty busy with Star Wars.