Respawn’s mysterious numbers in Harbingers patch notes confound Apex players

Apex Legends has always been seen as the spiritual successor to Respawn Entertainment’s Titanfall series, but left many fans wanting more from the series from the outlands. Seven years after the last mainline installment in the franchise, a vague teaser has the community scratching their heads over Respawn’s upcoming plans.

In the Sept. 14 Harbingers patch notes, a mysterious message was left at the very bottom, concerning an incoming transmission from “Subject: Nessie.” Three series of 10 numbers were included, with no relation to Apex, extra links, or official indication of what they meant or how to decipher them.

Alex “coldjyn” Nicholls, coach for EMEA’s Pro League team JLINGZ Esports, was one of the people to crack the code, connecting the numbers to a date notation, with each series corresponding to a game set in the Titanfall universe.

This cryptic addition to the patch notes has confused both the Apex and Titanfall communities, who believed that a trilogy would never be established after past Respawn developers confirmed that Titanfall 3 was in early development for 10 months, before the studio completely switched all staff and operations to work on Apex Legends instead.

Mohammad Alavi, former narrative lead designer at Respawn, confirmed in past interviews that with the rise of battle royales like PUBG, all Titanfall 3 development was cut, as the studio then secretly worked for six months before shadow dropping Apex to the entire world on Feb. 9, 2019.

With the initial launch explosion of Apex and its continued success in its 18 seasons, many fans resigned themselves to hoping for a Titanfall sequel at some point, as the studio continued to focus their attention on the battle royale and new IPs, much to the dismay of longtime fans.

Despite its 2016 release date, Titanfall 2 continues to attract over 10,000 concurrent players on Steam, with Respawn even updating the game on Sept. 8, 2023, bringing a new game mode, fixes to longstanding DDoS attacks and disconnection problems, and private matches being taken out of beta.

Apex Legends owes its entire existence to the Titanfall universe, with many fans wishing for a return to its core arena shooter form. Respawn’s cryptic acknowledgement of the series is still the most love that the first two games have received in a long time, and may point to a greater focus on the series as a whole in the future.