Apex Legends Season 3 launches today. The free-to-play battle royale gets a new Legend (Crypto), map, battle pass, hop-up attachments, and weapon. During a press preview event, we got hands-on time with all the new content, and also spoke to Respawn CEO Vince Zampella and Apex Legends design director Chad Grenier about what can be expected to be added to the battle royale game in the future.
Crypto, a hacker, is one of the more notable additions in Season 3, introducing a brand-new playable character that most likely won't affect the competitive meta too much, but will create new counters for certain Legends. However, the new map, as well as certain buffs and debuffs, will affect how people play.
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Now Playing: Apex Legends: What's Coming In Season 3
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Exploring Apex Legends Season 3's New Map As Crypto
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As a result, Crypto is not ideal for aggressive strategies. Instead, he's best when he's hiding in the corner, using his drone to give his team an eye in the sky that can also aid fallen friends. Without his drone, Crypto has no abilities--even his ultimate requires his drone be out. His ultimate releases an EMP blast that does 50 shield damage to all nearby enemies (and himself if he's caught in the blast) and stuns all characters (including Crypto and his teammates). The EMP also disables traps.
Crypto also, finally, presents a second option for playing as a recon character--meaning Bloodhound will no longer continue to be the only Legend occupying the role. "I don't want to promise more recon Legends. Like, I'm a little hesitant to throw it out there because I don't even know how many characters in the potential pipeline will even make it," Zampella said. "But yes, eventually."
"We're always looking at data from our live game, which is much broader than just pro gamers," Grenier said. "So it's always a delicate balance of balancing characters and what we're adding for the masses versus a few pro players. The competitive scene is also important to us. So I think it's just a balance that we have to have there."
Though we'll need more time testing Crypto's abilities, he seems to provide an excellent counter to the aforementioned trio. His drone can track Wraith and Pathfinder as they try to portal or grapple away, respectively, and his ultimate ability disables both Wattson's tactical and ultimate. Crypto's inability to do much without his drone, however, makes him seem like a poor pick for the fast-paced nature of competitive play. He does, though, pose somewhat of a threat in casual and lower-tiered ranked play, providing an excellent supportive option for someone who isn't good at first-person shooters.
"Every time we launch a new season, we're getting better and better," Zampella said. "We're doing more content but also better quality content. We're starting to get it with the new modes and skins and the Legends are all getting better... It feels really good right now. I think we really feel like we hit our stride and we really know where we're going with Apex. So there's so much in the works right now that is just going to be amazing over the years coming up."
Despite the excitement surrounding all the new content, Zampella wants to ensure that the Apex Legends team at Respawn doesn't devolve into crunch. Respawn is testing what players like about the new content for every season, cutting stuff out of the content roadmap if an early iteration of it didn't land with players. "It's a constant evolution process," Zampella said. "We're getting better at making content, so we can make better quality content faster. And we're hiring up, we're expanding, but we don't want to add a hundred people onto the team right away. We want to do it in a way that keeps the culture at Respawn safe. We want to always work and push as hard as we can, but at the same time, we do want a good life-work balance where this team is happy. And the happier they are, the better content they're going to make. So we're constantly trying to walk that line and balance it and I think we've been doing a pretty good job."
Respawn isn't content with solely succeeding for the remaining lifespan of the current hardware, acknowledging the approach of next-generation consoles. When asked about creating next-gen ports for Microsoft and Sony's next consoles, Zampella said, "I feel like we'd be foolish not to be everywhere." However, he added that he was not allowed to confirm whether the team has already started on the process of a next-generation Apex Legends.
For now, Zampella assures that cross-play is on the current roadmap for Apex Legends. "There's a lot of work to it, though, and cross-play means different things to different people," he added. "Just letting someone on an Xbox One play against someone on a PlayStation 4--that's fairly easy. It's the cross-progression stuff that starts to get messy because then it runs into certain business terms with Sony and Microsoft that you have to weed through. So we would love to see it. I think there's just a lot involved with it before we can get it out there."
"We have dozens of characters that are in the works at any given time," Grenier added. "But we create and kill characters on a weekly basis. So the characters that sort of have legs--not literally, but you know--they rise to the top and go to the next phase of development. And at some point, we have to make a decision on what the next character is going to be and we usually pull from the characters that are sort of at that next phase of development." Zampella was adamant about not revealing exact release date windows, but Grenier did say there are already certain Legends tentatively planned for the next few seasons, with some characters scheduled for release over a year from now.
Granted, these characters could behave very differently once they release. Zampella explained how Respawn always begins with establishing who a character is as a person first--creating their race, gender, culture, personality, and appearance--before making multiple iterations to their gameplay. Almost every Legend in Apex has seen a change in their passive, tactical, and ultimate abilities, but their characters have been long established--typically months before their gameplay is. "There are tweaks maybe along the way, but for the most part that's imagined fairly early on," Zampella said. Grenier added, "Yeah, and sometimes we combine multiple abilities from different characters into one, or maybe there's a tactical that works really well for one character and an ultimate on another. Early in the process we'll maybe mix and match or combine character abilities."
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