Titanfall might be the most successful shooter to launch on next-generation consoles, but the development team at Respawn did play around with a few other genres early on. OXM recently spoke to community manager Abbie Heppe about the survival horror elements in the second mission of the game’s “campaign,” and she pointed to the team’s decision to test different gameplay hooks as the reason for this unique section.
“It's funny that you mention that, and I think you'll see it if you look at our art book,” Heppe said in reference to the more chilling moments in the game. “There was some early stuff being kicked around that was… I think we do expand into other genres and things like MOBAs, even though it's a shooter, but there were definitely some elements that the design team played with that had to do with [survival horror].
“I'm a big survival horror fan, so I don't totally disagree with you. Some of that comes from very early ideas that people were looking at that made it through to the final game.”
The final product is most easily identifiable as a shooter – and a well-received one at that. But it sounds like Respawn was at least willing to experiment with its AAA release.
