Project Titan

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

The exact details of how Titan would have played are not fully known, but Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan, who served on the Titan development team and later became the director for Overwatch, identified that the game 'was a class-based MMO.' Players would have selected a character from several classes, which granted them initial abilities. As they progressed, they would gain points to spend on a skill tree for that character. Kaplan said that, near the point of Titan's cancellation, the variety of skills led to overpowered combinations, describing the result as 'very cluttered and confused.' Shortly after the cancellation announcement, Kotaku ran an article describing the game as 'a massive multiplayer PC game in which players could both maintain non-combat professions and shoot their way through death-matches on a sci-fi version of Earth.' According to the article, sourced by anonymous employees, the game would take place on a near-future Earth where the player would take on a 'mundane job' during the day while fighting enemies at night.

In Their Own Story

By 2009, serious doubts about Titan's viability emerged within the team. Jeff Kaplan came to believe Titan was almost impossible to realize in its existing form. In 2010, Kaplan approached Blizzard's leadership with a proposal to shut the game down. However, Blizzard did not cancel the project at that time, and development continued until Titan was finally canceled in 2013. In early 2013, Blizzard held an internal meeting with Team 4, announcing Titan was being rebooted at the request of Blizzard's management team. Seventy percent of the team was transferred to other projects, a few were laid off, while a small core team led by Metzen and Jeff Kaplan remained to determine if anything could be salvaged. On September 23, 2014, Morhaime revealed in an interview with Polygon that production of Titan had been cancelled. The cancellation was estimated to have cost US$80 million over seven years. In a 2019 interview, Morhaime stated Titan was cancelled because the company failed to control the scope of the game, describing it as essentially two games developed in parallel, which created development pipeline problems.

Reader's Guide

Titan was never released, so there is no gameplay to experience. However, its legacy lives on in Overwatch (2016), which was crafted by about forty members of the Titan project using the developed assets. For those interested in the project's history, key figures include Jeff Kaplan (who served on the Titan development team and later became Overwatch's director), Rob Pardo, and Chris Metzen. The setting was established to be in the 2070s, taking an optimistic view of the future. The world was envisioned to include areas inspired by the western coastline of California, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and locations in between, and also other locations like London and Cairo. The game's cancellation was publicly announced in September 2014, though internally it had been canceled in May 2013.

Did You Know?

• About forty members of the Titan project used the developed assets to craft Overwatch (2016).
• Blizzard has never officially confirmed a specific dollar amount for Titan's development cost, though the project was reportedly expensive.
• Seventy percent of the Titan team was transferred to other projects when the game was rebooted in 2013.