Attack on Titan 3: The Final Preview

Key Preview Takeaways:

• This isn’t a straight retelling of the anime, but it does follow the same overall storyline.
• The designers aim to include something in combat for more advanced/experienced players too.
• The moments in-between big battles are some of my favorites so far.

I must confess something before I get this preview started: I bowed out of Attack on Titan early. After the first season, actually. I didn’t think it was terrible or anything. I was there for the human drama. Little people swinging around like Spider-Man and dealing with their trauma while playing a game of David and Goliath against big, scary Titans. But when those little dudes started being able to become Titans, well… it just wasn’t for me. But after spending some time with Attack on Titan 3 and speaking to producer Hideo Suzuki, I’m tempted to give it another go… at least as a video game.

Attack on Titan 3 may come with a number, but it isn’t a direct sequel in the truest sense of the word. It’s more of a retelling. Part of that, Suzuki told me, was because it’s been seven years since Attack on Titan 2: Final Battle. “Right after the previous game, we already had started talking about the sequel, but at the time the anime series was still ongoing. So we were like, ‘What kind of concept should [the next one] be?’ And we did think about just covering the new parts of the anime series, but as a game or as a one product, we didn’t think it was quite enough. So we were like, ‘Okay, one series is coming to an end, so why don’t we just cover the story from beginning to the end and just kind of follow that storyline?’”

But Attack on Titan 3 isn’t just a straight retelling. You’ll be strapping on your ODM gear as an original character, but your backstory is interesting. After your squad is wiped out on your first mission as a squad leader, your character – I named mine John Titan, not knowing I could later choose their gender – is too traumatized (and afraid of fighting Titans) to continue. But since they also happen to be a great engineer and a generational talent with ODM gear, they’re kept on to fix things and train new recruits. It’s an interesting role to step into; games rarely ask you to embody deeply traumatized people who are so badly mentally broken that they have to step away from what they were great at.

Suzuki, however, told me that decision was intentional. “The reason that we had that kind of story in the beginning is we needed to establish that the Titans are the humans’ enemy. So the character goes to battle, he experiences the loss and trauma and then goes back with a stronger determination to fight Titans from then on. This time, the character is set up as a senior to Eren and other characters. And I mean, although he is a senior or more veteran trooper, if he’s so strong from the beginning, there won’t be much story to tell. So we have to have some kind of setback in the beginning for him to go through and it’s that incident in the beginning. And then he’s going to kind of play the role of Eren and others’ mentor, but then they will work together and then they recover from the trauma and grow after.”

After playing with the character creator, I’m assigned to the 104th cadets, where I’ll be instructing Eren Jaeger, Armin Arlett, and Mikasa Ackerman, among others. My job, along with another hard-assed instructor named Keith, is to mold these kids into proper soldiers. But we have to break them first. You have to prepare the clay before you can shape it. But these recruits aren’t just blank slates. Like the show (and manga) it’s based on, Attack on Titan’s characters are their own people, sometimes to a fault. As soon as the initiation ceremony is over, Eren Jaeger bombards me with questions about why there aren’t more scouting missions and why we aren’t retaking the walls, and I’m forced to watch as my character relives their own shame. It’s a neat moment.

But I have to get to know these kids, too. Attack on Titan is probably most famous for its high-flying human vs. Titan battles or its knock down, drag out Titan-on-Titan brawls, but it’s a human story at heart, and building relationships with the other characters is a core part of Attack on Titan 3.

“There are many ways that the player can build a friendship with anime characters, and one of them is giving gifts to them,” Suzuki tells me later. “A second one is to eat together in a mess hall, and also they can invite those characters into their room and have conversations. So by pleasing the other characters, they can build rapport, a better friendship, and then it will affect the combat… These comrades that you build friendships with, you can invite them or you can take them onto these exterior missions or exterior scouts. And outside of the wall, you of course have battles against Titans and the player and those characters can work together to carry out special skills. We call these Buddy Arts… So the better relationship you have with these other characters… the better that your exterior missions or scouts are going to get.”

First, though, I have to whip them into fighting shape, and that means learning how to use the ODM gear. Grappling to rocks and trees before flinging yourself to the next place is a blast, and it feels like you have a lot of control over every aspect of movement. There are several features that are new to the series, like the ability to anchor yourself to buildings or trees, precisely control your altitude, or even slide under arches. When I asked him about redesigning the ODM gear, Suzuki told me that they wanted to make sure they were keeping pace with how games had evolved since Attack on Titan 2, but also offer something for more advanced players. “I think in the previous game, it was pretty playable for people who are not advanced game players, but in this one we wanted to have those advanced players to play better, battle better, and have a more sense of achievement when they defeat the Titans.

Attack on Titan 3 Screenshots

“But improving the ODM wasn’t enough,” Suzuki told me. The Titans have to improve with it because the team at Omega Force wanted those fights to feel suitably meaningful and epic. “In the previous game, the range of [ODM] control that you had was pretty narrow, and at the same time it was kind of simpler and easy for all players across the board. And this one, the base is still simple… but this time you had more control over a lot of the actions that you take and then you can really narrow down your tactics accordingly… but then that wasn’t enough. If ODM only gets better, then the Titans are not going to be as threatening to the players. So we had to evolve the Titans as well. So their systems, for example, their algorithm and battle patterns, we definitely improved those too. And so they’re still threatening Titans and they’re big obstacles [for] the humans.”

I finally get my first crack at one after I jump to a later point in the story. I have to cleave through some human enemies, but they’re not too terrible, and it helps me get a feel for actual combat before taking on a Titan: the War Hammer Titan, to be exact, and it’s a bear of a fight. Unlike the Titan I fought earlier on in the game’s tutorial, I can’t damage it directly. Instead, I have to wear it down by filling up its Break Gauge before I can go in for the kill. Fighting efficiently means dodging and parrying attacks while getting my own licks in, but it’s more of a battle of patience than anything else. I’m like a mosquito fighting an elephant; I gotta take it down a bite at a time, and it’ll take them a lot less effort to squash me than it would for me to cause him meaningful harm.

Thankfully, I have the tools. I just have to manage them. Healing Tonics top me off when he smacks me around, new blades replace old ones when they dull and no longer make a dent, and Combat Arts deal more damage when I do enough damage to earn them. By far the coolest ones, though, are the Buddy Arts, which are flashy as hell. I feel slick every time I pull one off. Even with them, though, the fight is a matter of endurance. I almost make it, but I falter at the end. Not bad for a mosquito.

What I played of Attack on Titan 3’s battles felt memorable, but what stuck with me after my demo ended was all the time I spent out of combat with the other characters of this world.“

What I played of Attack on Titan 3’s battles felt memorable, but what stuck with me after my demo ended was all the time I spent out of combat with the other characters of this world. It makes the fights against the Titans hit harder than it would if they were happening all the time. “That was very much intentional,” Suzuki told me when I asked him about it. “This IP can be all battles. I mean, no one’s going to complain about that, but because the anime characters are so attractive, they have so much depth. So to show their daily lives will probably make the fans happy… In manga and anime too, there are a lot of comical moments and events. So there’s [a] tension-and-release kind of relationship. I think that makes the game more enjoyable.”

Suzuki told me that he hopes introducing a new character will help old fans see the story in a different way and introduce new players to Attack on Titan, but Attack on Titan 3 doesn’t just recreate the anime. There’s plenty of new stuff for them to discover, too. “We do have some original content as well, so we have a lot of sub stories and events. And we don’t really say this out loud in interviews and stuff, but… we actually put so many of these sub-stories and events in this particular title and we work very closely with Kodansha, the IP holder. And so I want the players to enjoy every single bit of that.”

Suzuki also let drop one more detail for fans to look forward to as we wrapped up: “We’ve already announced that the opening anime sequence will be produced by Mappa. They’re the creator of the anime. And this I have not said anywhere yet, but I watched the work in progress version of the opening movie and the quality is just phenomenal. So I really want the players to look forward to that.”

Based on my time with it, Attack on Titan 3 is juggling a lot of plates, and its ambition to do something new with the franchise is pretty laudable. Will it make me an Attack on Titan guy? Who knows? But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious to put on my ODM gear one more time and help my character complete their quest for redemption. You can’t hide from the worst moments of your life, but you can choose how you face them, and who you face them with. Either way, you’ve got to learn to live with them, and fight your demons (and Titans) head on.

While you’re here, check out these recent previews of other big upcoming games we’ve checked out recently!

Will Borger is an IGN freelancer. You can find him on Bluesky @edgarallanbro.