Titanfall and Apex Legends – How the Lore Fits Together
It won’t come as news to many Apex Legends fans that the world of Apex exists within the Titanfall universe. Yes, the Respawn Entertainment series of games has within it, nestled away, its breakout success battle royale - and the lore stands true throughout.
The raging and seeming endless war between the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation and the Frontier Militia would be the conflict that dictated the storylines of both Titanfall games. Fast forward around thirty years, and the IMC appear to have been defeated, with the Outlands, a clutch of planets on the fringe of the Frontier, left as the battleground for the Apex Games, where the best warriors fight it out for fame, money and glory.
Let’s take a look at how the Titanfall universe influences almost everything in Apex Legends.
Click to enlargeSetting
Apex Legends features two maps: Kings Canyon and World’s Edge, where all the Apex Games battles take place. As for the physical setting of these maps, Kings Canyon, the first playable map, is set on an island on the planet Solace. This environment will seem familiar to TF fans, not only because a lot of the assets are reused from Titanfall’s Runoff and Titanfall 2’s map Eden.
Kings Canyon is a fringe region of the Frontier known as the Outlands, and after the end of Titanfall 2’s Frontier War, the Apex Games would make its home in the multi-environment lands of Kings Canyon, headed up by Kuben Blisk, the founder of the blood sport.
The Apex Games weren’t always called as such; the IMC soldiers would compete in an early version they nicknamed “Thunderdome”. You can sometimes catch Gibraltar in particular reminiscing about such events in his in-game voice lines.
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World’s Edge was introduced in Season 3 of Apex Legends, where we saw the characters move the fight to a new planet; Talos. This was the result of a sponsorship which was struck up with Hammond Robotics, one of the companies that used to make up the now-defunct IMC. Perhaps not a location in its own right in the Titanfall series, the Respawn devs couldn’t help but plant a TF reference within this planets name. The Terraforming & Automated Life-control Operation System, or "TALOS", is an AI from Titanfall Online, who went rogue in an attempt to destroy humanity while commanding its robot army.
In Apex Legends, Talos is said to have been IMC-controlled, used for mining rare minerals, until an explosion rendered the location useless, and transformed the landscape into the lava-ridden and flash-frozen locations we know today. World’s Edge became the new location for the Apex Games following the Repulsor attack (signalling Crypto’s arrival).
Click to enlargeCharacters
Many of the Apex characters we know and love have ties to the Titanfall world, in one way or another.
Bangalore, for example, is part of a military family where all members served in the IMC Armed Forces. Upon arrival in the Outlands, Bangalore was ambushed, along with her brother Jackson (who has been rumoured to be joining the Apex Legends roster for a long time…) and decided to join the Apex Games for financial gain, in order to return to the IMC home base.
Bangalore isn’t alone in her history of entanglements with the IMC, Wraith has also been involved with the supposedly “evil” military corporation. Wraith, or Subject 61137, woke up in an IMC Detention Facility for the Mentally Ill with no memories, until an alternate dimension version of herself (Voidwalker) came to set her free with the help of her signature ability: portals. Wraith then arrived in Kings Canyon and competes to learn the truth of her past.
The Frontier War is an event that unites and bonds several Legends, including Lifeline. Lifeline left behind her family’s shady history of being war profiteers, to join the Frontier Corps as a combat medic.
Caustic too was part of the Frontier lore, working at a manufacturer of pesticides, until he went mad with his experiments, causing him to become the gas-loving death-obsessed Legend he is today. The Apex Games is a way for Alexander Nox to find new test subjects for his experiments.
Click to enlargeUpcoming Characters
Ash was an antagonist Pilot simulacrum, featuring in Titanfall 2, and thanks to recent leaks during the Broken Ghost Season Quest, it appears Ash could make her way into the Apex universe, further cementing the connection.
Rampart, a recently leaked Apex Legends upcoming character, could very well be another leftover of either the IMC or Frontier Militia, judging from his soldier-like stature and experience as a “base of fire”, as his leaked abilities seem to suggest.
Guns
Many of the weapons in Apex Legends are simply recycled or revamped from the Titanfall series. The G7 Scout, R-301 Carbine, Sentinel, and more exist in both games, and the look and sound are similar, if not identical. Comparing the weapons, some of the “god tier” weapons in Titanfall do not act in quite the same way in the BR Apex Legends, for example – the Mozambique. The Mozambique in Titanfall 2, in particular, had one-tap potential, whereas, in Apex, it’s heavily memed.
Most of the “leaked” weapons, such as the Volt SMG, also come from TF’s pool.
Click to enlargeTitans
Although Apex Legends is a Battle Royale, and hence, PVP, the PVE limited-time events that Respawn have included thus far have been met with great success, leaving fans hungry for more. PVE combat such as the Trials, where your team must fight off bloodthirsty creatures known as Prowlers for high-tier loot, and Loba’s Quest are only fuelling the fire.
Titanfall fans, in particular, had one question: would Titans come to Apex Legends?
Well, they exist in the code, as proven by infamous dataminer That1MiningGuy, and given the amount of lore and history that Apex Legends and the Titanfall series find themselves wrapped up in, only time will tell if Respawn bring out the big guns – or the big mechs.
The Future
Could more lore come to the fore, further connecting the two worlds? For those gamers coming from Titanfall, they would surely love more IMC and Frontier Militia weaponry, characters, and even Titans to come to fruition within the Apex Legends world.
Apex Legends game director Chad Grenier said:
“We understand there’s a desire for us to reference and go back to things we introduced in Titanfall, and we love doing that when it makes sense. But I don’t want to give out too much information. But there are quite a few surprises, and Titanfall fans will be delighted.”
Images via Respawn Entertainment
