[jwplayer cgdaanpd]It looks like Apex Legends isn’t going anywhere; Respawn developers Chad Grenier and Jason McCord have revealed Legends and map changes for the next seven seasons, all the way up to Season 12 in 2022, are already being tested.
Respawn has never kept it much of a secret they’ve always planned for Apex Legends to go long. Back in April, design director Jason McCord revealed seasons 6, 7, and 8 were already in development, even as Season 5 and its feisty heroine Loba were just appearing on the horizon.
The Apex Legends timeline has been stretched even further, however; it looks like the battle royale already has Legends and changes mapped out all the way up to Season 12, according to McCord and game director Chad Grenier.
The pair, who spoke to GamesRadar soon after the release of the mega-sized Lost Treasures event patch last week, there’s already more than half a dozen new Legends that are lined up to join the roster by the time Season 12 arrives.
There are also a few map changes that will come to Apex Legends in the next few years. A totally new arena could also be on the way. Grenier and McCord admitted they “can’t really talk about those details just yet” though.
“We always have a ton of exciting stuff in the works,” Grenier explained. “We do internal playtests every day. We’re testing new legends, map changes, and content all the way up to and including Season 12 right now. There’s a lot of really cool stuff in the works.”
One part of that is the Legend-focused storyline that continues to grow in Apex with every passing update. Respawn has already delivered a riveting narrative in the Broken Ghost quest series. They’re planning to do even more too, Grenier revealed, and are already hard at work trying to figure out “where to go next.”
“For seasons one through three, we were writing new stories and content really close to the end [of the patch being shipped], right before they launched,” he said.
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Once the first year of Apex ended, Grenier said, the devs could flex their wings a little more when it came to telling character-driven stories. Now the writing room has even begun bringing in elements of Respawn’s old franchise, Titanfall.
“In seasons four and five, players started to see that we had a little more time to plan out something. Now we’re just getting better at it,” the battle royale’s director added. He said he couldn’t reveal where the story is headed “just yet” though.
Respawn’s head devs were relatively quiet on where the storyline is going, but an in-game easter egg may have already tipped us off to what’s coming next. After finishing the latest Broken Ghost quest, players were given a reward branded with a single, faded word: “Ash.”
This could mean Apex Legends players are building the old Titanfall 2 villain as part of the ongoing story. We may even see her return in some capacity as soon as Season 6. Whether she’ll be playable is another question entirely.
If this is the way that Respawn is weaving a story into their ever-growing battle royale world, then long may it continue. Seven more seasons of this may take Apex to new heights, both for its characters, and its expanded universe.
Right now, it’s a great time to be a battle royale fan. Captain America just debuted in Fortnite, Ubisoft has burst onto the scene with Hyper Scape, and Apex looks set for updates until February 2022, at least. The BR future is bright!