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Apex Legends Season 7’s vehicles lets us make noxious deathtrapsNew map? Delightful. New character? I love her. New vehicle? A recipe for disaster
New map? Delightful. New character? I love her. New vehicle? A recipe for disaster
A lush city in the sky, a time-travelling Scottish scientist and vehicles you can turn into gassy death machines. These headline the cool new additions coming toApex Legends' seventh season, Ascension, and I got to play it ahead of Wednesday’s launch.
There’s a lot I like about this season. The new map, Olympus, is gorgeous and interesting to traverse. This is largely thanks to the vehicle, the Trident, which isn’t particularly deadly but is certainly versatile. Then there’s Horizon - the brand new Legend who is my new favourite mum (sorry real mum).
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Watch on YouTube
“Our universe has this sci-fi setting that lets us do a lot of unique things,” design director, Jason McCord tells me. “The universe is challenging in a good way where, like Star Wars, it’s a place where you feel like it could be real, if you stretched far enough.”
My main gripe with the map is actually that it felt a little too big to navigate. It’s very clear it’s designed with vehicles in mind, and when you’re running around on foot it seems like everything is just so spread out. This would be OK if there were more Tridents dotted around, but I didn’t come face to face with that many during my time with it.
It reminds me a lot of Mass Effect’s Citadel.
The devs say that this will be the only map the Trident is available on, because it’s designed to help players feel more confident in exploring the open space on Olympus. Unlike the jump towers on Kings Canyon and World’s Edge, having a vehicle allows you to more quickly traverse the area. It’s a lot more interesting to use, too.
You can have three players on it at any one time (a driver, and two people hanging off the sides), but you can’t have enemy squads hop on at the same time as you. This is nice. It means there’s no grappling for control, though it does kinda take away some of the pressure. The only way for an enemy to get you off your Trident is to shoot you down, which is effective, usually, unless you just drive away.
“I think at first glance, players will get in there and drive around, and do the sort of first obvious things, like loot a place longer because they know they can get to the ring quickly,” McCord says. “But then they’ll find cool routes to dodge other teams, and then they’ll find the jumps, and all the combos you can have with Legends' abilities. It’ll be like being in an action movie.”
When a Trident is shot at, each player currently on it will take a percentage of the damage. Unless you’re getting shot directly while riding it, then you get to take all that lovely damage yourself.
Triumphantly charging into battle on these machines will be Horizon, the upcoming Legend. She’s a delightful Scottish scientist looking for a way to travel back in time to see her son (just watch the heart-wrenching lore vid for yourself), and for some reason that means she’s getting involved in the Apex games.
“She’s one of our nicest, probably most wholesome, lovable characters,” McCord tells me. And yes, I 100% agree. It wasn’t always that way, though. I’m told that initially she was written as some sort of evil Lex Luthor-esque character, with fire-based abilities to boot. As Apex’s story changed, however, she was shifted into the lovable altruistic lady we see here.
A badass mum.
All this good stuff, and I haven’t even gotten around to mentioning the new Club system. It works similarly to Destiny or GTA V’s clans, letting players create their own communities within the game itself. Then, updates to the battle pass challenges mean we’ll finally be able to see our daily challenges during matches. And best of all: the R99 is being freed from its care package jail, and being left on the ground once again for all to find.
I fell out of love with Apex for a little while, partially because it all just felt a bit stale - the maps are all brown and samey. While I have some reservations about the new map, I can’t deny how refreshing it was to explore and woosh around in a makeshift tank. It actually feels a little weird how excited I am for just another update to a battle royale game. But this one is big and new and different - I think we’re in for a real treat.
Apex LegendsSeason 7, Ascension, launches on Wednesday the 4th of November. Keep an eye onthe websitefor more details.
