Interview with Steve Fukuda of Respawn Entertainment

I had the chance to ask Steve Fukuda, Titanfall‘s lead designer, a couple questions during a group Skype interview that took place during the Xbox One Titanfall launch party for the game on Monday, March 10th.

Steve Fukuda, a game developer, was formerly a part of Infinity Ward who has now made the jump to Respawn Entertainment and has been working as the lead designer on their new game Titanfall, an Xbox exclusive.

It was a roundtable Skype interview that I had attended with four fellow journalists that were all eager to jump in. There were many questions, including when we might see the first DLC for Titanfall. To that question, Fukuda was evasive and let us know that he couldn’t release any of that information yet. He explained the Burn Cards a little more in depth; that they wanted a system where players couldn’t just “camp out” and wait for a reward to become available.

We were curious to note how much Smartglass would play into Titanfall‘s gaming experience in the near future or in any DLCs. Fukuda replied, “We’ve got an app in the works but I can’t give any details about it right now. We are monitoring it closely though.”

Fukuda also spoke to some gamers criticisms that they didn’t feel that everyone should be given a Titan right off the bat (like that wouldn’t create some uneven playing ground at all…) telling us that, “At first we started with players being in the Titans, and then if you lost your Titan you would have to restart. Then, we started the game where players started out on foot. The whole idea of bringing the Titans in over a selected period of time for everyone was making sure that players had the chance to feel more powerful and not feel left out of all the fun.”

When we asked what really set Titanfall apart from every other FPS on the market, the reply was obvious, but we were looking for something a little more in depth – maybe something we hadn’t seen in the beta that may surprise us in a match. Many people are comparing Titanfall to Call of Duty (but with robots), so we were looking for information that would make the casual FPS gamer want to pick up the game instead of think it’s just a reimagining of games past. We wanted information such as frame rates or possible destructible environments in the future. “You could only achieve level fourteen in the beta. The full build brings you much higher, to level fifty. Between levels fourteen and fifty there are a tremendous amount of things to unlock and different combinations to work with, as well as tactics and strategies that develop.”

But, one of the most important questions of the night, asked by a fellow journalist happened to be about the possibilities of a campaign mode in the future to accompany the multiplayer. “At this time we don’t have any plans for that. The whole topic about the experience comes up from time to time but at this time, no.”

Is a campaign mode really desired among gamers who favour a multiplayer environment, though? Most campaign modes aren’t known to be incredibly popular amongst those who would rather spend their time exploring maps using online services like Xbox Live with their friends. I’m more of a campaign mode player though and I feel that while perhaps it’s not Respawn’s focus right now, maybe it could be in the future as a small DLC for example.

There are fifteen maps to choose from in Titanfall, and Fukuda expressed that he thought gamers would likely find a lot of entertainment in the map titled, “Boneyard”.

“I suspect the most popular will be Boneyard because it has a great deal of novelty behind it. It’s a map that got a lot of reaction during the early stages of testing and players were the most excited to go there.”

So while we didn’t get any additional details on DLCs or what exactly the SmartGlass app will entail, it has our attention enough to be paying close attention to Titanfall for a long time to come. Thank you to Steve Fukuda for the interview and thank you to the Xbox Canada team for the event!