Apex Legends Escape Preview: New Legend Ash and the Game’s Largest Map

That approach is seen more within Storm Point’s most notable feature, the new Gravity Cannon that flings players practically from one end of the game’s largest map to the other. The cannon, level designer Rodney Reece told Polygon, adapts to the ways players had been using. Apex legends‘redeploy balloons to knock over your opponents. Not necessarily to weaken or stifle a tactical goal, he said, but to enhance the intentions of developers dating back to Apex legends‘ original design.

“We always intended these to be methods of leaving the ring behind,” Reece said, “but players started using them as a tactical advantage. So we thought, how can we get this original design intent through a different method? “

Hence, the Gravity Cannon, which is a tour from point A to B, as opposed to the balloon, in which players climb onto a floating platform and then glide into an area of ​​their choice. To incentivize the Gravity Cannon, Reece said, the developers allowed players to use all of their weapons and tactical abilities in case their flight trajectory outstripped their opponents. On another map, a redistribution balloon can allow players to choose a landing location, broadly speaking, but they can’t do anything else while gliding down.

“It had to be more than just binary,” Reece explained. “From the beginning, we knew we wanted to give you your skills when you are traversing the air. We started to realize that we can place them to help you escape the ring, but we can actually place them in areas where you can’t land, but you can interact with it. “

Reece set the example of Bangalore by spotting a skirmish and dropping his last Rolling Thunder – literally an airstrike – when it passes overhead. “What that does is, one, it’s a great feeling what you did; but it also allows [Respawn designers] to create an approach that helps the other team understand where their enemy is coming from, rather than a redeployment balloon where you are in full control and can land on any rooftop you want. “

Building a Battle Royale map without redistributing balloons “was a sensitive issue,” admitted Reece. But Respawn’s designers grew confident that they could do this without upsetting the balance of the game as new Legends were introduced, with abilities better suited for a map with a lot of verticality but no slip points. One of them is Valkyrie, who joined the game in season 9, which concluded on August 3. And the other, of course, is Ash, the legend who joins the game on November 2.

“We knew both Legends could present this,” he said. “Sometimes you can see in the trailers where, like, [Ash is] under an area and she can use her [Phase Breach] ultimate to get to that, those were done in concert with each other. It’s like, okay, we’ll make sure everyone can get to these places, but we can be a little bolder to essentially get into the legend’s goal. “

Ash, a character from Titanfall 2 who was revealed as a playable Legend last week, is also well suited to Storm Point with his passive ability Marked for Death. With it, your map will highlight the locations where the Legends were recently killed, highlighting where the action is, basically. Marked For Death can send a useful ping when Ash flies over the Gravity Cannon, alerting the player to a fight that might otherwise get lost under the jungle canopy.

To the extent that his abilities complement Storm Point, leading Ash to Apex legends In a way that both honors her narrative story and makes her compelling on the screening screen was a challenge, said lead writer Ashley Reed (and the character’s namesake, actually). On Titan’s Fall 2“You really don’t have an idea of ​​her, internally, as a character,” Reed said. “All you see is from the outside looking in. People will know that she is very cruel and very manipulative, she likes to play with her victims.”

“But we also had to look, okay, if we take her to AppendixAs a legend, we need her to look inward, we need to see who she is as a character, ”Reed said,“ and be an empathetic person, someone you would really want to play, without being so fundamentally different from who she is now. ”Ash is a mock pilot, with personalities at war within his cybernetic mind, Reed said lorehounds who pay attention to each part of the dialogue should be satisfied with what they hear during battles with Ash.

In the trailer trailers, Ash is shown to be very powerful, able to play with his victims before dispatching them. Balancing a character with that kind of physical expression was a delicate job too, especially after last season’s new Legend, Seer, came out of the oven quite overpowered.

“We usually try to cast characters on the strong side,” said Legend designer Devin Weise, “because we know we can always come back and balance them later. But I think we realized [Seer] it was a bit rough there. “The release of Ash along with a new map, Weise said, means the developers are trying to balance two big variables that the community hasn’t tested. But it also means that both a map and the character could develop in concert with each other, for the first time, and Ash and Storm Point developed that way.

“[Ash is] very confident, but your weakness may be overconfidence, right? Weise reasoned. “If you try to use his ultimate to teleport to an enemy, or teleport and push enemies, you might find, ‘Oh shit, the whole team is here, now they’ll shoot me in the face.’ Ash’s tactical ability, Arc Tether, can also present problems if used too confidently or indiscriminately; Sure, it restrains an enemy by tying it to one spot, but they can still use their weapons, and their aim is not slowed either. “That’s what we tried to do, make sure Ash felt that his abilities were powerful and interesting, but also, the enemies had a chance to counter them,” Weise said.

Apex Legends: Escape launches November 2 on all platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Playstation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, iOS, and Android. The new season will also see a new Battle Pass, with new skins for Mirage, Gibraltar, and Wraith among the 100 tiered unlock levels. Ranked play will take place at Storm Point from November 2 to December 21, and World’s Edge from December 21 to February 8, 2022.