Summary
Respawn is back to the normal cadence of seasonal content inApex Legendsafter the Legend overhaul last time around, which added skill trees and evo changes to the entire roster. InApex Legends Season 21, new Legend Alter enters the fray,Broken Moongets a sorely-needed overhaul, and Solos mode gets its first outing since Season 2.
We chatted with the developers atRespawnto find out why they’ve brought the oft-requested game mode back, whether Broken Moon can be a competitive map worthy of the ALGS, and how many of Alter’s stories are actually true.
Apex Legends Alter Abilities
Alter is the first villainous Legend we’ve seen in the game sinceRevenantway back in Season 4, and her dimension-hopping is already proving to be contentious within the existing roster of characters. It’s clear from the teasers that there’s something going on between her and Horizon, presumably involving the latter’s long-lost son. Jaclyn Seto, Alter’s narrative lead, explains that this “will come to the surface soon enough,” and that if you pay attention to each character’s motives, you might work out exactly what’s going to happen. Theorycrafters, get to work.
Alter is Apex’s first character of Chinese descent, speaks Cantonese in the trailer, and has some inspiration from Seto’s personal experiences.
In-game, Alter seems just as mischievous as in the lore. In her announcement trailer, she steals the stories of other Legends and passes them off as her own, and she almost does a similar thing on the battlefield. Her tactical ability creates portals through walls like Wraith. Her ultimate is a rework of Revenant’s old Totem. And her passive takes broadly from Loba.
Passive: Gift from the Rift –Alter can see death boxes through walls and take one item from them, except for armour.
Tactical: Void Passage –Shoot breaching portals through walls, ceilings, and doors, which remain open for 15 seconds and can be passed through in both directions by allies and enemies alike.
Ultimate: Void Nexus –Place a device in the world that you can teleport back to, even when knocked. If you use it, enemies can follow you for a short period.
Alter’s abilities are a really interesting mix, and will undoubtedly give her a lot of utility on the battlefield. Her most exciting, however, is Void Passage, which creates rifts through walls and buildings. This can open up new ways of attacking entrenched enemies and offers new rotations around the map – although the portal can only travel 20m through solid objects.
Apex Legends Alter Concept Art
Alter’s designer, Ian Holstead, describes her as almost an anti-Wraith. “People always joke that doors are Wraith’s enemy,” he laughs. “That’s really the opposite for Alter, Alter [couldn’t] care less about a door. She’s really about making her own doors, and how you use that is up to you.”
Holstead let me know that if you launch a portal to the ceiling, a little zipline-esque rope will drop down to allow you to assail vertically.
This utility in both fights and rotations will make Alter an interesting Legend for sure, while tricking enemies with her Ultimate and stealing a cheeky Kraber from a death box will never not be handy. It also helps that Respawn likes to ‘design for impact’ and make new additions to the game a little bit overpowered to win players over.
“If we launch a Legend that’s underpowered at launch then it’s like we haven’t even put an update into the game,” Holstead explains. “So we do want to have the Legend be a little bit on the strong side when we launch to give people a chance to learn them, understand how they’re powerful, and shake up the meta.”
Apex Legends Season 21 New Map: Broken Moon Is Competitive Now
Broken Moon is the map in most need of an update, and it’s finally getting its due. The destruction has been focused on the centre of the map, but tendrils of change forage further afield too.
Promenade is completely gone, replaced with a giant crater and a new suite of buildings at its centre, called Quarantine Zone. The largest pyramid seems to be a similar structure to that at Echo HQ on Storm Point, and the whole area is intended to offer a less hellish experience than its predecessor.
The name comes from the giant shield generator that bubbles above the POI. This is, from a lore perspective, to keep out the aliens that have been hatching from eggs on the moon’s surface. Whether this means we’ll see some PvE encounters on the map remains to be seen, but replacing Storm Point’s spiders with miniature Xenomorphs would be a win in my book.
Elsewhere, the number of POIs on the map has been increased from 18 to 20, allowing each team a separate dropspot if they so wish. This seems like a pipedream in pubs or ranked, so I wonder if the design team has one eye on the ALGS with this decision. However, lead level designer Steve Young says that, despite the map being “much more competitively viable”, it requires community feedback before any chance of it being implemented into the esports scene. Pro players are notoriously averse to change, so it may be a tall order getting another map added to proceedings.
Some POIs have been reinforced with ferrofluid, the stuff Catalyst uses to build her walls, and others have apparently been swapped around, but it’s currently unclear what that will look like. Either way, players will have an all-new experience when jumping into Broken Moon in Season 21.
Apex Legends Season 21: Solos Returns
Speaking of all-new experiences, Season 21 will be the first time that many Apex Legends players have ever encountered Solos. Respawn had sworn off the game mode since Season 2 back in 2018, but it’s back with a bang.
There’s plenty of influence from past game modes in the new look Solos, though. If you get killed during the first four rounds, you can use a Respawn Token to revive yourself,Three Strikes-style. If you don’t need it, it’s converted to Evo to buff your shield. The mode, which is replacing Duos for the first six weeks of Season 21, also uses the fully-kitted weapons we saw trialled in Straight Shot.
The final innovation is a visual marker to tell you if enemies are within a 50m radius of your position. The notification box doesn’t signal where they are, it just lets you know that someone is near. Hopefully this does away with any potentialrattingin the mode, and provides an alternative to your teammates covering your angles.
Apex Legends Season 21 Balance Changes
Finally, we come to the balance changes in Apex Legends Season 21. The Care Package weapons will be rotated, with the Wingman dropping to ground loot (and losing the option to take an extended magazine) and the Devotion replacing it, which might be just as scary. The Longbow has been buffed significantly, partially to counteract the fact that the Skullpiercer hop-up has been removed.
The biggest change in Season 21, however, is that the Digital Threat optic has been removed completely. Hopefully this will escort the ‘can’t see sh*t meta’ out the door. As for Legends, Crypto, Newcastle, and Catalyst are all on the receiving end of buffs, and Bloodhound, Caustic, and Ballistic have also “changed”, although we didn’t get any more information on how those changes will manifest. Ash mains can also rejoice that her tactical shuriken can now be fired in her off-hand while shooting her weapon.
It feels good to be back in the normal cycle of Apex Legends updates, and with Solos, a new map, and a new Legend to get to grips with, there’s a lot to take in. With all these changes coming in Season 21, I can’t wait to jump in and see just how the game has been Altered.
Next:“Opposites Attract”: How NiceWigg And Greek Made Competitive Apex Legends Fun Again
