Kelvin Tran
The new Battle Royale video game Apex Legends has been released and is free to play right now on PC, Playstation 4, and Xbox One. It was launched through a live stream on Twitch today with Vince Zampella, CEO of Respawn Entertainment, and Drew McCoy, Executive Producer of Respawn.
The live stream started at 8 a.m. PST, but to the chagrin of the viewers who tuned in, the actual game reveal turned out to be at 12 p.m. PST. Early bird viewers who were eagerly waiting were treated to four hours of teasers.
Respawn Entertainment is an American video game development studio that creators of Titanfall and Titanfall 2
At noon, the stream started with the cinematic reveal trailer of the game, followed by an appearance by Zampella and McCoy.
“As you can see, there is a lot to Apex Legends. We have been killing ourselves to make the most innovative Battle Royal game you have ever seen,” said McCoy.
Apex Legends is a class-based FPS Battle Royal played in squads of three, players will be able to choose from an initial roster of eight “Legends” to play as, with more planned in the future.
“The characters, we call them Legends because we knew very strongly that we didn’t want generic, soldier, characters,” said McCoy.
The game takes place after the events of Titan Fall 2, in a new location of the galaxy called the “The Outlands”. One unique feature of Apex Legends is the ability to revive your teammates even after they have died.
“The big surprise is going to be respawning. We couldn’t make a Battle Royal that doesn’t have respawning, it just doesn’t make sense,” said Paul Messerly, Animation Director of Respawn Entertainment.
There is no mention of microtransactions, but the stream showed there will be multiple seasons of content, including a Battle Pass.
“Being free to play, to us, it’s also really important that it doesn’t mean pay to win. All of the spending in our game is very fair, it’s for cosmetics for characters only,” said McCoy
“We’re going to come out with seasons, we’re going to be having new legends, we’re going to have new weapons. We’re going to be balancing the game based on data that we’re receiving, on the fly, from all of your matches. We plan on years and years of support,” he said.
Zampella said this is just the beginning, and they have a lot more planned in the coming weeks and months.