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Titanfall: Expedition – Swampland

by Stephen Dunne on May 9, 2014

Chris Dionne, level designer for Titanfall, has written a blog about some upcoming DLC for the massive FPS game. Swampland is an upcoming map for DLC for the game and it seems to be a very unique map, at that. When in it’s prototype stages, Swampland was a flat level with yellow fog and towering redwoods. Now, it looks incredible, with a lot to do in, while maintaining it’s original charm. Chris says:

In summer of 2011 Titanfall was embryonic; Pilots could spam explosions with a trigger pull, Titans spawned and respawned and fire teams roamed the maps getting trampled on. In the midst of this, a multiplayer map was born out of the simple message “Make an MP level in a swamp”. After years of twists and turns and false starts, DLC ended up being the perfect time to revisit “Swampland”.

Chris said that revisiting the level after the game had been complete was the best time to do so. He wanted a different experience while also keeping the level close to it’s roots. With that in mind, he kept with the nature theme and its intersection with technology. During the playtesting he noticed that the trees, which can be seen with Pilots acting like ninjas, from tree-to-tree, were not the main focus of it all:

I shifted the dense forest section to the center of the map, and kept three main structures as anchor points around the perimeter. This encouraged Pilots and Titans to pass through the woods as they moved from building to building. The final design push then focused on small changes to enhance those interactions – adjusting sight lines, making interiors more interesting to fight over, encouraging flow, and so on.