Apex Legends nearly had Titans and wall-running

EA’s Future of FPS livestream saw Respawn’s Chad Grenier, the game director of Apex Legends, discuss the origins of the game as well as their plans going forward. While he was pretty tight-lipped about the latter, he did mention a few things that didn’t quite make it into the game that we know and love.

As well as revealing the fate of Apex Legends Arenas ranked mode during the interview, Grenier also sheds some light on Titanfall mechanics that didn’t make the cut to the final game. “We had a lot of the Titanfall 2 mechanics in the game, like the Titans and wall-running,” he tells host Stella Chung. The fan-favourite mechanics just didn’t work in a battle royale format, as Grenier explains.

Read more: Apex Legends Pariah release date, abilities, and leaks

Apex Legends nearly had Titans and wall-running

He says that the wall-running made it too difficult to predict where opponents would emerge from and keeping two feet firmly on the ground made things fairer when it comes to firefights. Nobody tell Valkyrie...

As for Titans, they simply couldn’t be balanced well in a battle royale. It’s gutting, but completely understandable – can you imagine trying to fight a Titan with Mirage, whose main ability is creating holograms of himself? It’s hardly Titan-killing kit, and even if you picked the top Legends from our Apex Legends tier list, you’d have a hard time taking one down.

Nevertheless, it’s difficult news to swallow. For now, we’ll just have to play Titanfall 2 for our wall-running fix. That or just get climbing with Revenant.

Grenier also teased the next legend, managing to do so without revealing anything at all. We expect the next addition to Apex Legends, Pariah, to make less of a splash than Valkyrie, but you never do know.

Grenier finished with some thoughts about running a live service game, saying, “it’s a lot harder than we thought.” All things considered, Apex Legends is a game that is growing, both in players and viewers on streaming platforms such as Twitch. While Titans and wall-running would be great fun, Apex Legends Season 10 will be just fine without them.