The recently canceled Project Titan by Blizzard was, according to reports that have emerged, a truly wild mix of World of Warcraft, The Sims, Team Fortress 2, and Destiny.
The magazine Kotaku, known for quirky news, has now spoken, under the seal of confidentiality, with some Blizzard employees who worked on Titan during its seven-year development period. Titan is the prestige project that Blizzard buried this week.
According to Kotaku, Titan was an extremely ambitious, almost overambitious project consisting of two major parts. In the real world, players would lead normal jobs, could start families, build relationships with other players and NPCs, and advance their business or careers. For this aspect, they also brought in some staff who had worked on The Sims. Blizzard’s goal was to make gameplay in the real world truly dynamic with new AI. Store owners were meant to respond differently to regular customers than to passersby.
In the “Shadow” world, players engaged in deathmatches with others in a shooter style. It was supposed to work like this: a player goes about his job in the light world until he receives a mission call, which he can either pursue or ignore. If he accepts the mission, he would jump into a sort of elevator, change clothes, and off he goes to the shooting. In a presentation, they had seen a chef preparing a dish. He then quickly changed and dove into the adventure, only to return just in time to take the dish out of the oven at the now perfect moment.
Classes and gameplay mechanics in the shooter part were similar to titles like Destiny. There were snipers, Titans (Tanks), and Jumpers who were particularly agile.
The background story of Titans: Earth has survived an alien invasion, and the remaining states are vying for world dominance. Blizzard intended to gradually expand the game and introduce new maps, orienting itself to the geography of our world.
According to Kotaku, the game’s look and aesthetics resembled Team Fortress 2, which was the game the developers mentioned most frequently. One other developer described it as a mix between Starcraft and the Pixar movie “The Incredibles.”
Although the project is now canceled, the team behind it remains largely intact. And even though the name “Titan” is dead, Kotaku suggests it is quite conceivable that ideas and concepts from that wild mix survive, which we will never get to play.
