At a recent preview event for the upcoming First Person Shooter Titanfall which is developed by Respawn Entertainment, lead by ex-Infinity Ward head Vince Zampella, the studio CEO spoke with Adam Sessler about why the newly formed studio stuck with the military shooter and how it changed it for the better, hopefully.
Zampella noted that he really likes the type of game military shooters are and that “nothing is inherently wrong with them.” He goes on “we have done this for a long time and as Respawn now, for me it was, I wanna do something a little different. Let’s change it up, obviously you know, we won’t make a puzzle game…we have a core competency within our team that we wanna really capture, but at the same time it was, what can we do to expand the bounds. Make it familiar, yet something that people will look at and say ‘okay, this is fun, this is natural, it’s fun – it takes it to another level and it’s engaging’. That’s what it was about.”
Respawn brainstormed a lot of ideas as a team which ultimately led to the studio coming up with the idea of the titans that then allowed the team to play off these huge mechs against smaller pilots. The level design then called for making smaller areas for pilots only and larger spaces for the titans to battle it out.
One, if not the, main characteristic about Titanfall is the way the game feels when players pick up the controller, says Zampella. A neat anecdote about Respawn’s logo is that it is a braille ‘R’ which was incorporated to represent how important the feeling during gameplay is to the studio.
Later in the interview Zampella explains what makes Titanfall so cool, “Watching two giant titans fight is just cool, so you know that helps a lot, but we also put those elements, there is ships flying in, there is the AI running around, and it’s a more engaging, believable world.”
One of the most intriguing comments about Titanfall was the gameplay loop, “That gameplay loop tends to be a little bit longer, it’s not, you know, spawn – die, spawn – die, spawn – die, it’s…it tends to be a little bit longer, it feels more engaging, it feels more fun even for lower level players.”
It is clear that Zampella and his team wanted to push the genre to the next level after their somewhat unfriendly departure from Activision a few years ago.
If you want to see the full interview head over to this link.
