A singleplayer Apex Legends shooter is in development at Respawn

Multiple new job listings have revealed that Respawn Entertainment is in the early stages of development on a new singleplayer shooter based on Apex Legends.

The job listings are for positions in something called the Apex Universe FPS Incubation Project. Details are understandably scarce, but a couple of the listings for artists describe the game as "a brand new Respawn singleplayer adventure."

Respawn has a lot going on these days and so there's potential for confusion, but this game appears to be unrelated to previously revealed projects: Along with the Apex Universe FPS Incubation Project, Respawn is also looking for people to join a separate New Game Incubation Team, as well as a Star Wars FPS Team—which, for the record, is different from its Star Wars Jedi: Survivor team.

There's a lot of storytelling potential in Apex Legends, which features a remarkable depth and breadth of characters—more than you might expect from a battle royale with no story mode. But some fans are hoping that the Apex moniker is a bit of a misdirect: Apex Legends is set in the Respawn's Titanfall universe, and there's a glimmer of faint, reluctant hope that this is actually Titanfall 3, and that Respawn is simply trying to avoid stoking the hype fires too early. Apex is also a more immediately recognizable brand than Titanfall, although I'm not sure how much consideration that particular factor would be given to job listings.

Of course, some fans noticed the slight but significant change in verbiage:

I suspect redittor No_Librarian_4016 has the best bead on the situation at this very early stage. "No you would have been hyped for a few months and then extremely angry when it wasn’t Titanfall 3," they wrote in response to someone complaining about the use of Apex instead of Titanfall. "Don’t pretend people won’t be mad no matter what."

Words to live by.