Apex Legends Season 21 is true across the nook, kicking off subsequent week. The new season introduces the primary main map replace to Broken Moon, reintroduces Solos mode, and in addition provides a brand-new playable legend, Alter. The mischievous, tiefling-looking character hails from a never-before-seen actuality within the Titanfall multiverse and has a capability package centered round strolling by way of virtually any wall within the game–not a simple feat to determine.”Your instincts are good,” Alter designer Ian Holstead advised me after I requested how onerous it was to place a playable hero who might stroll by way of partitions right into a 20-team battle royale, all of whom might function an Alter. “It wasn’t the easiest problem to solve and we did have to develop quite a bit of tech to do it. And some of it is a little bit unconventional–it honestly was pretty cool tech development, but it was something that I was concerned about from a technical standpoint.”
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They continued: “We also developed a lot of tools to help us test this–log issues, automated testing, stuff like that–because I knew that we were going to have problems all the way up until [the Season 21] launch and even after the launch because there’s just so many players and our maps are huge. If we were developing [Alter] from the start of Apex, we probably would change how we design our maps. But we don’t have that option when we have all these maps that are already out and so we have to make [her] ability [kit] fit to what we have. And so it was technically challenging, but I do think the results were worth it. I hope people will be really pleasantly surprised by how reliably it does work–people will find that you can go through pretty much anything and you can get really creative with how you place your portals.”Falling into the Skirmisher class, Alter is constructed round motion and hit-and-run techniques. Her passive capacity, Gift from the Rift, permits her to loot deathboxes from a distance, whereas her tactical capacity, Void Passage, opens two-way pathways in partitions, flooring, and ceilings. Her final trick, Void Nexus, locations a tool within the atmosphere that she and her allies, even whereas downed, can teleport again to by way of one-way portals if wanted. Though that final capacity attracts parallels to Ash’s present final capacity and Revenant’s previous final capacity, there’s presently nobody in Apex Legends who can do something akin to what Alter can.Alter excels at getting by way of enemy defenses.”We like to explore legends that bring something new and interesting to the match,” Holstead stated. “I would say with [new] legends, especially these days, we’re not so much filling holes or fixing problems–I’d say the legend reworks might fit a little bit more into that category. If we’re not really happy with how a legend is delivering on fantasy or gameplay or whatever. But I think that we look at new and interesting avenues we haven’t explored [with new legends]. And so breaching and creating portals and stuff like this was definitely something we hadn’t explored yet and it sounded super cool. And so we tried it and it was super cool.””I can speak to that from a narrative standpoint as well,” Alter narrative designer Jaclyn Seto added. “We have sort of a similar approach. When the design team comes to us with a prototype to work on, we’re always looking for what is the space that this legend can occupy without treading on the others. We really wanted to make a villainous character because we hadn’t had one for quite a while. And so, we were thinking, ‘What villains do we have and what spaces do they occupy?’ We have Revenant, we have Ash, we have Mad Maggie and they occupy very specific spaces for the villains. Alter is more of a fun-loving villain, which we didn’t really have yet. And so that’s kind of where we went with her and I think we definitely managed to find a space for her.”Wraith has some competitors within the universe-hopping division.Though she’s prescribed as Apex Legends’ newest villain, Alter would not have as dastardly a playstyle because the baddies who’ve come earlier than her. All of the villains–from Caustic and Revenant, to Ash and Mad Maggie–had skills after they launched that might severely mess up an opposing staff (and three of them nonetheless do–the one exception is Season 4’s Revenant, who bought a brand new package in Season 18). That’s probably not the case with Alter. Though trailers market her as this dastardly Nightcrawler-like character who can teleport enemies into harmful conditions, that is not how she performs in apply. First and foremost, Alter is designed to help her teammates’ capacity to get round every map. She’s not a trapper who can trick or drive enemies by way of portals to drag them by way of the ground into an ambush. So she’s a nasty man, however she’s a useful dangerous man.”If you put [Alter’s portal] right below an enemy, it won’t shoot them through,” Holstead clarified. “You can’t kidnap them. We had that in the game for quite a while and it was very funny, but not necessarily the most fair. If you put a portal under your teammate’s feet, however, then it will pull them through, so you can still have a little bit of fun there.”Alter cannot immediately act as soon as she goes by way of a wall, both. For a short second after going by way of her portal, you enter phase–a stage of invulnerability the place folks can see you and you’ll see them, giving each side an opportunity to react. If you’ve got performed on the Olympus map and used the Phase Runner, you are already aware of how this works.Alter idolizes Horizon, which places her at odds with Ash.”It gives the Alter player a chance to understand their surroundings because teleporting into a space you cannot see can be very disorientating,” Holstead stated. “So when you go through Alter’s portal and you’re in phase, the enemies will actually be highlighted if you have line of sight. You won’t see them through walls or anything, but it helps you go, ‘Oh, there they are.’ Because the void is very washed out, it could be hard to spot people. Likewise, when you come through, there will be lots of big sparkly effects and [another team] should know exactly where you are. And so you’re not going to be able to just pop through and [party-kill] them.They continued: “Early on, once we did not have that, we did really see folks taking part in it nearly like they might play a [Gibraltar] dome the place they might poke by way of the portal, do one shot and poke again. It was fascinating, but it surely wasn’t essentially the gameplay we actually needed to go for. And it made the battle a little bit chaotic. So this [grace period] additionally simply slows down the tempo at which you’ll portal. You cannot return by way of the portal if you’re nonetheless in part. And so by extension, you’ll be able to solely shuttle every method, each two-ish seconds. So it slows down the tempo of that complete encounter and offers the enemies a possibility to react to you and a second to kind of determine the place you might be and the place the targets are.”From the start, Alter was designed to appear otherworldly, like she’s from another reality.Even with these checks and balances in place to limit her, Alter still has a potentially very strong kit, one built around an avenue of movement previously unexplored: solid walls. Doors and open windows have always been potential sources of danger or ingress for squads but the walls, floors, and ceilings of buildings and caves have remained stalwart shields to all manner of invasion–Alter’s addition makes that no longer the case.In that way, Alter feels akin to Season 9’s Valkyrie, a playable legend built around the simple concept of making a character who can fly, creating pathways over pitfalls and through the air that previously were impossible or extremely difficult to navigate and subsequently could be ignored. I distinctly remember how the Apex Legends team described one of the main catalysts for making Valkyrie was to create a legend who could fly because flying is fun. So as I spoke to Holstead and Seto and listened to them regularly reiterate how Alter’s ability to walk through walls is just really fun, I felt a sense of déjà vu–I had almost the exact same conversations about Valkyrie ahead of Season 9.Alter is yet another villain in Apex Legends’ roster, joining the likes of Caustic, Revenant, Mad Maggie, and Ash.And in the same way Valkyrie finally added a person of Japanese descent to Apex Legends, Alter is the first playable character of Chinese descent to be added to the game, speaking to the other legends in both English and Cantonese. Though Alter’s backstory is purposely being kept ambiguous for now, her relationship to her culture shines through in her characterization.”I used to be really play-testing the opposite day and one of many issues that made me actually enthusiastic about it’s since you actually cannot keep away from the Cantonese voice strains,” Seto told me. “You’ll positively hear her converse Cantonese while you’re taking part in her, so that actually comes by way of. With [her] skins–we positively drew on a few of her tradition for a few of that. You’ll see that with, I feel, at the least one among her legendary skins.”She added: “We did contemplate numerous different issues, too, like animations. That was a little bit bit tougher simply because Alter shouldn’t be probably the most respectful individual and numerous issues that you simply do in Chinese tradition are to point out indicators of respect. So it was onerous to try this with the animations, however we did discover extra alternatives to showcase her tradition with issues like her holo sprays and banners. So you will see that as effectively. And, like I stated, her voice strains. We bought a voice actor who additionally speaks Cantonese, so I used to be actually enthusiastic about that. That’s Crystal Yu. I actually listened to so many auditions earlier than we discovered her, however I feel she makes the right Alter.”I love that Alter looks like a sci-fi take on a tiefling.Of course, I couldn’t leave my conversation with Holstead and Seto without asking about Alter’s design. Alter has a mechanical tail, wears boots that resemble cloven hooves, has eyes with black sclera, wears gloves that look like claws, and has body modifications on her forehead that emulate horns. She looks like a sci-fi take on a tiefling, which warms my D&D-loving heart.”We positively drew from these inspirations when designing her,” Seto said. “Essentially, earlier than the design, we had determined that we needed to create the villainous character and so we already had the persona down pat earlier than we even went into the visuals on that. But as a result of the concept was that we have been going to make her a kind of devious trickster and if you hear that, it form of comes with some visible concepts already–like what you have been saying, devils and tieflings and issues like that. I feel our idea artist, Xiao Young, drew from these inspirations when arising with [Alter] as a result of we knew she was going to be this villainous character. Obviously, you’ll be able to’t have a villainous character if she would not look villainous.”She continued: “One of the issues we additionally needed to ensure was simply seen was that she’s clearly from a unique dimension. And I feel in case you have a look at her, she seems so totally different from the opposite characters that you may inform that she’s not from this Apex world.”We’ll have to wait for the start of Season 21 to learn more about Alter and her mysterious past, as well as how much she alters (heh) Apex Legends’ meta. Trailers have already teased she has an admiration for Horizon, and in my conversations with the Apex Legends team, Seto told me that puts Alter “on rocky floor” with Ash given the simulacrum’s rivalry with Horizon. Alter also “actually likes” Mad Maggie and “actually would not like” Newcastle, that means we’re possible in for some spicy new narrative developments when Season 21 hits.