In a recent interview with MinnMax Show, former Respawn Executive Producer Drew McCoy talked about the development process of the first Titanfall game and Electronic Art’s reaction to greenlighting it. One of the biggest things was the campaign mode being cut which was one of the biggest complaints among gamers and critics alike.
McCoy stated:
The relationship was actually really solid like they weren’t trying to get in. When you’re part of a bigger organization there’s this sense of open-ness, which I saw a lot once we got purchased by EA and I was more with them. So they’re used to being able to reach out to people’s other studios and get a morsel, and so to have me as a producer on an independent studio title, big deal they’re keeping themselves separate that’s fine. EA always actually had a lot of faith of what we were doing on all three of the games we worked on for them. It was more just it came out of left field, you know, which I think EA got a little used to, like Titanfall 1, y’know, Final Hours that Geoff Keighley did showing off the single-player prototyping we did. I vividly remember a milestone review with our producer at EA when I was like “Oh, yeah by the way single-player’s cut,” and they were, “What?!? That’s not what we expected.” And so I got used to these kinds of hard conversations where we have to lay out why we’re making these choices and then they can see the results of it. Titanfall 2 development was awesome — wild and crazy and lots of twists and turns and so I think through those processes EA got the point “Okay Respawn is insane but the results are worth it,” and so they kind of just put up with it, even though you know it’s maybe a little bit uncomfortable for them bu it was ultimately they let us do what we wanted to do.
