Weaponized: Designing the Weapons of Titanfall

For many hardcore fans, a shooter is only as good as its weapons. Even the very best shooter would suffer if its weapons felt like nothing more than glorified pellet guns, which is precisely why every FPS developer has at least one weapons guru on staff to make sure everything looks, feels, and fires correctly. The upcoming blockbuster “Titanfall” is no different, and we were ecstatic to find that each weapon feels unique, well-balanced and, more importantly, powerful when it’s in capable hands.

We had a chance to sit down with Ryan Lastimosa, Senior Artist at Respawn Entertainment and self-proclaimed Digital Armorer, to talk about everything from his design process to his favorite weapon in “Titanfall.” When you’re done, be sure to check out more of this week’s great “Titanfall” features and videos at the end of this story.

Xbox Wire: So how does the weapon design process start?

Ryan Lastimosa: The process begins by figuring out what the tool is going to be. We need to determine whether it’s going to be a broadsword or a scalpel. From there, we look at the type of silhouette that the weapon is going to give and the shapes that are going to go into the model. The goal we want is for people to pick up the weapon and say, “Oh, this is a CQB weapon” or “This is a sniper rifle” or “This is an assault rifle.” The same thing goes for the Titan weapons. They have to have a very specific shape to convey the message of what kind of damage it’s going to do.

So, we’ll figure out the silhouette and determine what shapes go into the view model (that’s the first-person view), then we’ll start adding little details here and there to figure out just how the weapon is going to be used in the world of “Titanfall.” We’ll go into the mechanics of the weapon to sort out how it’s going to load, what kind of rounds it fires, if it ejects brass, if it doesn’t eject brass because it’s an energy weapon, and so on. Then I’ll go in and figure out the actual mechanics of the weapon and the inner working parts of the weapon. At that point, we’ll have a good idea of how it looks and feels in combat.

We get the model built and it goes to animation, and they do an awesome job of making the weapon moving and figuring out how the Pilot or Titan will fire and reload the weapon. The design will go in and tweak, you know, how much it will kill you.

Xbox Wire: As a weapon designer, where do you take inspiration from?

Ryan Lastimosa: Well, I’m a shooter myself, I own a few firearms. I’ve been into martial arts and weapons and firearms and combat since I was a kid. I take a lot of inspiration from current trends in firearms. Like, the most popular trend is in the direction the M4 platform and the AK …read more