The developers at Respawn Entertainment are back with more details about Titanfall‘s first DLC, Expedition. The pack will contain three new maps: War Games, in which you battle across a glitched-out simulation of the game’s various areas (presumably within WOPR‘s harried mainframe); Runoff, which throws titans and pilots into a tight, multi-leveled, industrial space; and, most recently detailed, Swampland, which is full of mist and towering redwoods to disrupt sight-lines and provide a new type of vertical mobility for nimble pilots (just watch out for crocodiles).
You can see all three maps in action in this new gameplay trailer:
The developer diaries for these maps have provided a fascinating window into Titanfall‘s design process. Each entry has shared something different about the ideas behind the maps and the processes through which they were refined, like this comparative heat map to show where the most wall running was happening, or this video showing the evolution of Swamplandia from clean shapes in space to the atmospheric final product.
Designer Chris “Soupy” Dionne describes how developing DLC “becomes one of the most exciting times to work on a map. It’s a chance to build the playground around toys, rather than around imagined and constantly shifting ideas.”
Game design is such an iterative process, that often the most interesting uses of a given mechanic only become clear after playing around with it for a while.So much of what makes Titanfall special is its focus on mobility, and each of these new maps smartly seeks to provide new ways to take advantage of the game’s movement mechanics in a way that really makes them sing.
Expedition will be the first of three planned DLC packs for Titanfall, costing $9.99 individually, or $24.99 as part of a season pass. It will be available for Xbox One and PC in May and for Xbox 360 in June.
