In recent weeks, Respawn Entertainment has been reporting bad news. A few days ago, the EA studio found itself at the center of a controversy regarding the use of AI for future voice performances. The spark came from a LinkedIn post shared by Pascale Chemin, the French actress who voices the character Wraith in Apex Legends. The voice actors of the battle royale were forced to sign an agreement forcing them to give up their voice to train artificial intelligence. The entire French cast has therefore resigned in order to protest against the use of this tool in video games. Unfortunately, players have barely had time to absorb the news before another disappointment awaits them.
Still on LinkedIn, it is now Emilee Evans – until now production coordinator at Respawn – who surprises with her latest announcement. In a post shared on the network on Wednesday (now deleted but preserved by TheGamePost), the developer tells us that a “project in incubation still kept secret” and in production since last year has just been officially canceled. We know little about this game, but everything suggests that it was a multiplayer project probably too risky in the current context of the industry.
A multiplayer Titanfall thrown in the trash?
FPS fans are still waiting for the return of the Titanfall franchise, and this project looked like a spiritual sequel. Des job offers identified in during the year 2024 indicated in black and white that the studio's Incubation team was developing a new multiplayer FPS. For his part, the famous Jeff Grub affirmed that a project sharing the same universe as Titanfall and Apex Legends was in preparation, but that it was not a Titanfall 3.
It is not impossible that EA was then looking to capitalize on the popularity of the battle royale to offer a more classic online shooting experience, and therefore closer to Titanfall. But the repeated failures of productions such as Concord and XDefiant must have certainly cooled the giant of the video game industry. Live service games are doing very badly and studios must certainly think twice before pushing a title of this kind on a weakened market.
In the space of a year, Respawn has abandoned two major projects: its Star Wars game inspired by The Mandalorian, and an FPS that could have expanded the universe of Titanfall. Apex Legends players will at least be able to rejoice at the idea that the studio concentrates its efforts on this already established and approved formula.
0 Comments