Things Only Adults Notice In Apex Legends
Have we ever told you how much we hate getting older?
Not only are we having to do all of that adult stuff our parents used to handle — hi, bills — we're also in this constant fight against our bodies, which suddenly want to fail on us when, for so long, they were so reliable. Oh, and the whole adult thing? It makes it that much more difficult to enjoy our hobbies on a completely superficial level. We have these adult brains now, and they have all sorts of questions.
Gone are the days when we could simply load up a game like Apex Legends, blast away at our foes, and chat with our friends about what movie we'd be going to see over the weekend. Now we're thinking entirely too much about the Loch Ness Monster found on the island. Now we're discussing how Respawn's choice of engine might have kept Apex from being yet another EA flop. Now we're wondering how many times people have Googled "Bangalore" since the game launched.
We wouldn't wish this on anyone. Stay young for as long as you can.
Here are the things only adults notice in Apex Legends.
Octane is a drug addict
One of Apex Legends' first Battle Pass characters was Octane, a daredevil that the game's designers were proud to brand "The Adrenaline Junkie." And it's true — a big part of Octane's game has to do with taking risks. This is the guy, after all, who used a grenade to blow himself over the Gauntlet's finish line in order to get a faster time. But some of Octane's talents can be credited to something else entirely, and we're surprised it isn't talked about more.
Octane is definitely a drug addict.
Just look at his Tactical Ability — his Stim, which requires him to inject himself with some kind of unknown concoction every once in a while in order to keep up his high speeds. The Stim boosts his movement 30% for six seconds, but it also takes away some of his health. He's actively doing harm to himself in order to be faster than everybody else. Replace the "be faster" part with any of the other reasons one might use drugs, and you'd have a textbook case of addiction.
Octane could have inherited a pharma company. Instead, he's shooting up during Apex matches and risking his life. It's a crying shame.
Wraith is the emo girl you went to high school with
Oh yeah, you remember this girl. She was a little too deep for high school, with all of those feelings. But she could also best everyone else in not caring about something, too. Maybe she skipped class and smoked in the bathroom. Maybe she was in class just totally relating to Sylvia Plath. We're convinced that everyone's emo girl from high school was a little bit different, but we're also convinced that a certain Apex Legends character is also that girl in video game form.
Meet Wraith, who will tell you, "There's a thin line between life and death. You'll find me there."
We suppose Wraith has reasons for being the way she is. For many years, Wraith was locked up in a facility for the mentally ill, escaping only after the voices in her head showed her that she had special void powers she could put to use. And outside of that, Wraith really has no idea what her identity is, where she's from, or even how old she is. That would make anyone emo, to be honest.
And it really makes you wonder if that girl from your high school had as bad a life as Wraith.
Pathfinder is a pretty useless future robot
We won't argue that Pathfinder isn't one of the more likable heroes inside Apex Legends. He's the typical goody two-shoes who aims to be as helpful as possible to his teammates and as polite as possible to those he's facing off against — even if his quips to opposing players are secretly the game's most scalding burns. But there's something about Pathfinder we just can't seem to ignore. Looking at him through our adult eyes, we can't help but feel a little bit disappointed in our robot friend.
Because if Pathfinder is the future of robotics, we don't have a whole lot to look forward to.
Seriously, who was saying that the robots were coming to take all of our jobs again? Not true if they're anything like Pathfinder, who counts shooting a rope out of his arm and shooting a longer rope out of his arm as his top skills. Apex Legends did away with the mammoth Titans found in the Titanfall series and gave us a human-sized robot who fights like a human, relies on human weapons to survive, and has lamer abilities than some of the humans do.
We enjoy Pathfinder as a character. He's just not the giant leap in robot technology we were hoping for.
Bloodhound looks like a scarecrow, yet birds love them
Bloodhound is a pretty versatile character inside Apex Legends. They earn the moniker of a "Technological Tracker" because they can track just about anyone and anything. Their Eye of the Allfather shows you where your foes might be hiding, along with other related clues. Their Tracker ability helps you determine the place those enemies might have relocated to. And Bloodhound's Beast of the Hunt turns you into a stalker and a killer, increasing your speed and clearly marking your enemies for certain doom.
But let's be honest — there's only one worthwhile question when it comes to Bloodhound, and it doesn't have anything to do with the character's gender. It's this: how can Bloodhound look like a scarecrow but still have bird friends?
For some reason, Bloodhound is one with nature in a way that some animals can't even achieve. Have you ever seen a lion that hangs out with crows? No? Then why is it that Bloodhound, an expert tracker and killer, isn't the least bit intimidating to these smaller animals?
If you put up a scarecrow in a field and it looked like Bloodhound, it would be highly effective. We just want a better explanation. That's all.
Apex Legends didn't use EA's Frostbite engine and it's a runaway success
Oh, Electronic Arts. You'll never cease to be a punching bag for the gaming community, and the sad truth is, you do it to yourself. No one forced you to buy an exclusive NFL license and lazily sit on it for a decade. No one put a gun to your head and said, "You will take the Star Wars license." And no one outside of the company came in and made every single studio use the Frostbite engine, whether it was good for them or not.
You did that, EA. Which is why it's immensely satisfying to watch Apex Legends soar, knowing full well that Respawn developed that game with an entirely different engine. Perhaps that's why it's doing so well?
We've watched development teams struggle with Frostbite. We've seen the crabwalking characters in Mass Effect: Andromeda. We've endured the host of issues present inside Anthem. Yet Apex Legends is just chugging along, remaining stable, adding new content, and not causing the developers behind it a lot of grief.
Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned here, Electronic Arts. In your hurry to avoid licensing fees from other engines, you actually made it far more difficult for your creators to make good games. Respawn showed you the way out with Apex Legends. Hopefully you'll take it.
The appearance of a Loch Ness Monster raises many questions
The Loch Ness Monster is mostly thought of as a legend. You know — the type of story that might be passed down from generation to generation, told around a campfire as one might tell the story of Bigfoot. We don't have any real photographic evidence of a large creature living in Scotland's Loch Ness, and if you asked most people today, they'd likely say, "No, the Loch Ness Monster does not exist."
But what if you asked the characters inside Apex Legends?
You see, on the game's lone battle royale map, it's entirely possible to spot a Loch Ness monster, just off the shores of the playable space. And while we don't have any idea exactly where these matches are taking place, we know that the place isn't Earth, though Earth is very much a location in Titanfall lore.
So think about it — there are Loch Ness Monsters on other planets in our universe. Does that mean the one on Earth was real all along? And could there potentially be an entire race of Loch Ness Monsters spread out across the far reaches of outer space? Perhaps an entire planet full of Loch Ness Monsters?
We hope Apex Legends dives into this further.
Streamers who play Apex Legends make more than the game's combatants, who are risking life and death
If you played a bloodsport, what would your price be? How much would you want to be paid in order to go out and potentially risk your life against other competitors? How much money would it take to feel okay about being shot constantly? We presume you'd want a handsome reward for all of your troubles, but in terms of what you actually receive for completing a match inside Apex Legends, your character of choice doesn't get a whole lot to be excited about. Just a little bit of currency, some materials (if they're lucky), and experience. Woo-hoo.
Contrast that with the real-life streamers who play Apex Legends — people like Ninja who bank $1 million just for devoting a week to the game — and you can see how grossly unfair the world of Apex truly is, and how totally borked our present reality is, too.
Many of the characters in Apex Legends take part in the games because they have to. Wraith, for instance, is searching for information about her past. Pathfinder is looking for his creator. They're also banking their winnings, but they have to win a lot, because the prizes aren't all that large.
And then you have streamers — the people who are controlling those characters and can't relate in even the tiniest way to their plight. It's just a weird juxtaposition that really sticks out in this particular game.
Search traffic for Mozambique, Bangalore, and Gibraltar must have been wild
Apex Legends has a number of characters with very interesting names. You have Mirage, who has a rather appropriate name due to the fact that he can send out holographic decoys of himself, effectively making you see something that doesn't actually exist. Lifeline is also named rather well for her role — she's a healer, and can patch you up, revive you more quickly, or drop a pod of helpful defensive items.
We really need to have a talk about some of the names used for other characters and guns, though. Because online searches for them likely picked up after Apex Legends released. And all of that increased traffic had to be confusing for the people of Mozambique, Bangalore, and Gibraltar.
Yes, believe it or not, these are all real-world locations. They've had their names borrowed by characters and weapons inside Apex Legends, and now their tourism boards are probably losing their minds. There's Mozambique, a country in Southeast Africa that also shares a name with one of Apex Legends' most controversial guns. There's Bangalore, a large city located in India that happens to also be an offensive character in the game. And there's Gibraltar, the British territory to the south of Spain that is also the name of Apex's big, blocky tank.
Apex Legends managed to include a diverse cast by treating diversity as a totally normal thing
One of the things you notice more and more as an adult gamer is how much — or how little — some video games care about prioritizing diversity. It's awfully easy if you're a white male to find a game that represents your race and gender, and gives you a lead character you can easily connect with. For other people of different backgrounds, however, it's not always that simple.
Which is why Apex Legends deserves some credit. The game managed to pack in a roster full of diverse characters, and it didn't make a big show out of it, either. It just treated diversity as something normal, because that's exactly what it is.
Both Bangalore and Lifeline are Black women. Bloodhound's gender identity is — very purposely — left a mystery. Gibraltar is a gay man, a fact shared rather non-nonchalantly on the character's biography page. Respawn didn't choose to make a big show about its characters in the way Overwatch has, going back to retcon diverse backgrounds in after the fact (guess who's been secretly gay this whole time!). Instead, the characters in Apex Legends just showed up and acted like they belonged. And that's truly refreshing.