In Titan, You Would Have Held a Mundane Day-Job on a Sci-Fi Earth

Steven Bogos

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Jan 17, 2013
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In Titan, You Would Have Held a Mundane Day-Job on a Sci-Fi Earth


A whole bunch of details regarding Blizzard's cancelled MMO Titan have leaked out.

The big gaming news of the week was that Blizzard announced it's long-in-development "secret" MMO project, Titan, few anonymous tipsters [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/137608-Blizzard-Cancels-Titan-MMO-After-Seven-Years], no doubt dismayed that their baby was canned, from leaking some details on what exactly Titan could have been.

Apparently, in Titan, the player character would have lived in a future, sci-fi Earth, held down a mundane job by day (IE: butcher, engineer - even office worker) and then fought aliens secretly by night, like some kind of space-age Clark Kent. But here's the crazy thing: the night battles were completely optional - if you wanted to, you could spend the entire game simply working at your non-combat profession.

Another source revealed that players would have been able to select from the Reaper, Jumper, Titan, Ranger, and Juggernaut classes, each with its own special abilities and items. Jumpers, for example, would have been agile scouts with a teleport ability and the ability to quickly leap in and out of combat. Titans were tanks, while Rangers were stealthy snipers with a cloak ability.

As for the story, Titan would have taken place on a near-future Earth that had just fought off an alien invasion. Players would join one of three factions waging a cold war over control of the planet, and zones planned for the game ranged from the west coast of the United States to Europe, South America, and even Australia.

Most of the sources who commented on the game's artstyle drew comparisons to Team Fortress 2 and Pixar.

It certainly sounds like a very interesting concept, and it's a real shame that we never got to see anything materialize out of this. Hopefully, Blizzard takes some of these concepts and applies them to its other titles.

Source: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/heres-what-blizzards-titan-actually-was-1638632121]

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Candidus

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Dec 17, 2009
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Honestly, sounds kind of shit. I'm not disappointed to hear that they killed it off.

Perhaps now they'll consider rekindling SC: Ghost's green light?
 

RicoADF

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Jun 2, 2009
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Something tells me they axed it for Destiny, after all Activision wouldn't want to have 2 products competing for the same customers.
 

VanQ

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Oct 23, 2009
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Honestly, it sounds like something that I wouldn't play. I suppose I'd have to see gameplay to really know if I'd enjoy it or not. But the concept doesn't wow me.
 

Rutskarn

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Feb 20, 2010
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Shit, I guess I'm the guy who says that sounds really interesting.

The most fun I had in World of Warcraft was as a traveling mechanical squirrel salesman. MMOs are very bad at delivering the kind of responsive, kinetic combat I enjoy and very good at delivering a sense of shared community and reactive commerce. A game that demanded less of the former to progress and offered more opportunities concerning the latter would have gotten my attention.
 

Protocol95

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May 19, 2010
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That does sound like it could've been really interesting. I was intrigued by this until I read "fight aliens secretly by night", but even then it still did sound like a neat change of pace. But without more details that's pretty much everything meaningful I can say about it.
 

Varis

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Feb 24, 2012
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This makes me think of Secret World, and thinking of Secret World makes me retch. I'm rather happy that they didn't decide to proceed with it.
 

Davroth

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Apr 27, 2011
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Makes me think of the Persona series for some reason. XD

No wonder it got cancelled.. I can't imagine the amount of work that would have gone into that.
 

kat-pottz

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Jan 25, 2011
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Why a game in which all you do is accomplish mundane tasks? Who would play such a thing!

 

alj

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Nov 20, 2009
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Varis said:
This makes me think of Secret World, and thinking of Secret World makes me retch.
How dare you sir the secret world is one of the finest MMOs ever created, it just lacks end game content. Its not perfect quite a few of the things like augments are very big grind but its a joy to play, the 5 man nightmare instances are changeling and fun, i also love the combat. I would love to see what they could have done with that money blizzard wasted !
 

MrBaskerville

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Mar 15, 2011
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No wonder they couldn't find a way to make it fun... But i guess most rpgs are about performing mundane tasks, when you get to the core of it all. But a game where you work in boring jobs? Defineately not something i would want to play, unless they wanted to pay me...:p
 

Kenjitsuka

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"Jumpers, for example, would be agile scouts with a teleport ability and the ability to quickly leap in and out of combat. Titans were tanks, while Rangers were stealthy snipers with a cloak ability."

Ghasp!!!! So much innovation, I can no longer draw breath!!!
Talk about clichéd... :\
 

laggyteabag

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If this is what Titan would have really been like, then I am glad that Blizzard took it out back like Old Yeller. The game just sounds like The Secret World crossed with Firefall, and neither of those games look remotely interesting. I hope that if Blizzard does revisit making another MMO, they don't touch this with a 10-foot barge pole.
 

Max_imus

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Jul 8, 2010
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Well, there's definitely something to be said for having optional, non-combat focused content in your MMO. I am currently raiding on heroic difficulties (well who doesn't it's been a year) in WoW, and would absolutely love to have something else to do, apart from PvP (bleh) and farming mounts or achievements or Poké-er... I mean Pet battles, yeah, Pet battles, that's it.
So maybe now that Titan's got canned, some ideas may be brought over to WoW?

Well, one can hope, right?
 

Grumman

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Sep 11, 2008
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Good riddance.

I note that while the fighting aliens aspect is specified as being optional, the grinding monotony of working life is not. If you're going to give civilian life so much importance, at least make it a setting where this is interesting. A sci-fi frontier town like in Fallout, for example, or an interstellar sandbox of massive cartels like in Eve.
 

OldNewNewOld

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Mar 2, 2011
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The premise about the jobs reminds me a of The Elder Tales from the anime and light novel Log Horizon. And honestly, I would love to play a MMO game that would allow the players to open up a shop, play as a traveling merchant, cook, blacksmith without having to grind.
The problem with WoW and all other MMO's is the auction house. It makes it impossible to play the game as a merchant because in the end, all you do is put it on the auction house and it's over. I wish the auction house never happened and player would be able to open shops and gain exp. from buying selling. That way crafter would probably sell their stuff in bulk to merchants which would in turn sell it to adventurers and it would would the other way around, adventurers sell their looted raw materials in bulk to merchants, those in turn sell it to crafters which will make new, better items and the circle would go on. It would make huge crafting oriented guilds possible, merchant guilds and adventurer guilds.

Of course, there would a lot of work in balancing all out to even make it remotely possible. But I think it would be worth it because in the end, a MMO is like a second life... not the game Second Life. That one is shit.