No ‘Anthem,’ ‘Titanfall’ Revivals With EA Now Fully Risk-Averse

If Activision Blizzard is indeed acquired by Microsoft, that will leave EA as the biggest third party publisher left on the market, even if that one day for about six hours everyone thought Amazon was buying them.

Today, there was a prompt going around Twitter about the dead games or series that people would like to see resurrected. Gearbox’s Battleborn was used as the main example (ehhh) but I saw two games coming up more than others, including the one I chose, Anthem. The other, of course, is Titanfall, both from EA, purveyor of broken dreams.

Anthem was the looter shooter from BioWare meant to compete in the age of Destiny. It was unfinished at launch and went through many rounds of reworks before it was ultimately shut down before a grand 2.0 overall revamp. But by the end it had really figured out gameplay and even its loot.

Titanfall lasted two games, but while its lore persists into Apex Legends, the battle royale, there’s little indication the series will ever get a fully new installment. The best we get is Respawn saying “maybe we might think about hoping to do that someday!”

These games will not be revived, sequels will not be fashioned for them anytime remotely soon, if ever. Probably not ever. Why? All you have to do is look at EA’s upcoming slate of games to understand. At this point, EA has become almost entirely risk-averse, sticking to past series that have name ID and now tapping into some of the biggest entertainment IPs on the market, namely Star Wars and Marvel.

Let’s take a look:

The Dead Space Remake – A remake of a popular game from 2008. A sure thing if handled well. It was.
Star Wars: Jedi Survivor – A sequel to a hit game from Respawn.
Dragon Age 4 – Troubled production, sure, but the fourth game in a previously popular franchise.
New Mass Effect – A “recovery” effort after Andromeda and where a lot of the old Anthem team ended up.
Need For Speed – They will keep making these forever.
EA Motive’s Iron Man Game – Heading into Marvel territory with the company who worked on the Dead Space remake. Before that they were working on, you guessed it, a Star Wars game.
Respawn’s Star Wars FPS – Respawn is doing another, non-Jedi Star Wars game where this time it will be an FPS inspired by Dark Forces.
Star Wars Strategy Game – More Star Wars. A blend of action and strategy from former XCOM devs.
EA Sports Games – I mean, what needs to be said.
New Battlefield – They are destined to return to this franchise at some point, which would be the tenth game in the series.
New Black Panther Game – This was just announced, the second upcoming Marvel IP they have in the works, this time from a new studio, Cliffhanger, made up of Mordor, Halo and God of War vets.
Apex Legends – As you can see, the only somewhat new IP on this list so far, this was somewhat of an accidental hit they debuted and could have never predicted, at least judging by its totally surprise, no-marketing launch. And now all Respawn’s multiplayer ambitions are poured into this instead of Titanfall, while the rest of Respawn has multiple single player projects in the works any given time (recently, both being Star Wars).
Wild Hearts – Okay, here it is, the one, new IP, original game with a decent looking budget that recently arrived without too much fanfare. from Koei Tecmo and Dynasty Warriors doing a version of Monster Hunter in feudal Japan. It got decent enough reviews but did not exactly make an oversized impact.

As you can see, there’s just no room to circle back to “failed” series like Anthem or Titanfall even if they just needed a bit more time, a bit more resources to really shine. And it feels like the days of trying big swings like that are over at EA, now with an endless string of Star Wars and Marvel games coming and returns to safer series that once upon a time were those kind of big swings. Times have changed.

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