Respawn Came Up With Apex Legends Development On Its Own, EA Had No Hand In It

Apex Legends development has apparently been entirely Respawn Entertainment's idea, rather than EA forcing a battle royale out of a recent acquisition.

You might have noticed yesterday that Respawn Entertainment, the creators of the Titanfall series, released a new game. While it was technically a Titanfall game, it was actually a hero shooter and battle royale title called Apex Legends. Apex Legends development was apparently all Respawn’s idea, however, rather than being attached to EA.

While Apex Legends is a free to play game with only cosmetic lootboxes, many players, especially Titanfall fans, are wary of it, mainly because it takes away everything special from Titanfall. There are no grunts to add scale to the battles, no enhanced mobility options (say goodbye to wall-running), and most galling of all, no Titans.

Instead, players are given a collection of the titular Legends, various characters that you can kit out and jump into the game with. This has come after months of rumors saying that Respawn was working on Titanfall 3, which was actually looked forward to after Titanfall 2 was given an awful release date between Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, and Battlefield 1, causing its critically acclaimed campaign and multiplayer to get lost in the shooter scrum.

A move that disregards fan hopes as much as this would ordinarily be thought of as an EA move, since Respawn Entertainment was acquired by EA in 2017. Considering everything they’ve done with games like Anthem, Mass Effect Andromeda, Visceral Studios, and more, you would expect EA to be behind the Apex Legends development, but executive producer Drew McCoy said that it was entirely Respawn’s decision.

He would then go on to explain that the reason that they took out things like wall-running and Titans was done in the interest of fairness, though that might not be good enough for players who would have enjoyed a fully Titanfall-like battle royale game.

While it may not be exactly what we want in a Titanfall battle royale game, Apex Legends development may be able to hopefully tide us over between now and the actual third Titanfall game, if one ever comes out. You can play the game for free on the Xbox One, Playstation 4, and PC.

Hunter is senior news writer at SegmentNext.com. He is a long time fan of strategy, RPG, and tabletop games. When he is not playing games, he likes to write about them.