Last week publishing house Electronic Arts and studio Respawn held a presentation of a major update for the shooter for journalists and bloggers Apex legends, which received the name “Heritage“(Legacy). It’s about the eighth season of the battle royale, which starts on May 4…
Legacy is Respawn’s indirect response to numerous requests from players to return to the franchise Titanfall… The developers have introduced a new character and a completely new mode “Arena“. It is worth dwelling on the latter in more detail.
This is a competitive mode hosted by a cyborg Ash of Titanfall 2… Two teams (three players each) fight in a relatively small arena. The match is divided into several rounds (but not more than nine), and a victory is awarded when one of the teams wins three times by a significant margin.
If a player dies in battle, he will be revived only in the next round. Between fights, characters will be allowed to purchase equipment from a special store, including special abilities of heroes. Scattered around the map are containers with supplies and resources, for which equipment is purchased. Therefore, it is recommended to comb the level in order to have more currency for the purchase of useful gadgets.
As the staff of Respawn said, initially they wanted to create a mode in which 24 players would fight on the map, divided into eight teams, and the characters could be revived. As a result, the desire to achieve balance and a short duration of rounds prevailed.
The GameMAG editors managed to play several matches, after which we had questions about the balance of the characters. For example, when playing for Lobu purchasing the ability to call the terminal to access the black market does not make any sense at all, while other characters can call artillery fire, a trampoline, teleports, and so on.
However, the second ability remains. For the same Loba, this is a bracelet throw for teleportation, which can be used three times per round (you can do more, but you will have to spend resources). This also applies to other heroes.
The cards themselves turned out to be quite large, but nobody canceled the narrowing Ring of Death. The developers tried to preserve the concept when there are points of interest on the location, around which the main battles are fought.
Respawn has prepared several maps for Arena, some of which are made from scratch. Others turned out to be just pieces of battle royale cards. But none of the locations can be called unique, because they are collected from the assets already involved.
As a result, the Arena turned out to be a strange hybrid between Valorant and Rainbow Six: Siege. The only difference was the increased mobility of characters in Apex Legends. The new mode will definitely find its fans, because the players have long complained about the lack of variety.
The second innovation is the character Valkyrie… It’s about the daughter of one of the squad members Apex Predators by nickname Viper (Viper), who died in Titanfall 2. Her distinctive ability is her jetpack, with which she can style D.Va of Overwatch move around the map. The flight radius is limited by the fuel gauge.
The Valkyrie can also smoke enemies out of cover by bombarding a small rectangular piece of ground with 12 rockets. True, the shells do not fall at the same time, which gives opponents the opportunity to run out of the affected area.
Ultimate character is the ability to launch your squad into the air for re-landing. At the same time, all opponents on the ground will be highlighted for the Valkyrie to facilitate navigation.
The third novelty is the bow “Bocek“. On it, you can additionally install a sight and two modifications between which you can switch. The first mode allows you to turn the bow into a kind of shotgun (fires several shells), and the second significantly increases the rate of fire, if you observe the rhythm when pulling the bowstring.
The developers are also showing off the modified map. “Olympus“. According to the plot, a ship crashed onto the object, as a result of which giant roots grew on the location. However, it was not possible to study the updated map, because Respawn again failed the task of organizing press events.
The GameMAG editors managed to play several rounds in the “Arena”, but for other modes there was always a lack of players on the test servers. One of our colleagues, in principle, could not play in any mode, because even to launch the “Arena” it is necessary to gather at least 12 people, although only six are involved in the battle.
Respawn stubbornly ignores uncomfortable questions. For example, the studio says nothing about the nightmare state of Apex Legends on Nintendo Switch… This version is constantly crashing, the voice chat is simply broken, and after the start of the event “War games“the game almost always slows down.
It is not clear why it was impossible to port the mobile version of the battle royale to the Nintendo hybrid console a little later. At the presentation, the developers also did not say anything about the latter.
Summing up, we must admit that “Legacy” turned out to be quite an interesting update, which should spark a surge of interest in Apex Legends. The developers themselves claim that they want to go beyond the Battle Royale genre. However, to announce the development Titanfall 3 they are clearly not ready yet.
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