***UPDATE***
Sources have revealed that Respawn will officially announce Apex Legends at “12 noon Pacific Time” which translates to 5pm AWST/8pm AEDT:
Titanfall studio Respawn Entertainment will reveal Apex Legends — a battle royale game without mechs, reportedly — at noon PT today. https://t.co/VYox4XP8oR pic.twitter.com/IoBPUmCmkt
— Nick Summers (@nisummers) February 4, 2019
Respawn, the legends behind the Titanfall series, are expected to announce a brand new free-to-play addition to the series as early as this week!
In a tweet by esports insider Rod Breslau, he confirms that his sources have played it and have spoken to him about what we can expect:
Sources who have played and have knowledge of the game confirm to me that Respawn is set to announce and release Apex Legends on Monday Feb 4, a free to play Titanfall Hero Battle Royale game for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) February 2, 2019
Reading through his follow up tweets in the thread he also drops some deeper details:
- It’ll be called APEX LEGENDS
- EA will publish it
- It will be available Monday Feb 4
- It will exist on all platforms except Nintendo Switch
- It will feature 60 players max per server
- Teams will be trio’s (3 units)
- Micro-transactions and lootboxes for cosmetics will be available
BUT… there’s one more item he’s mentioned that has us pretty damn sad…
NO TITANS!
Apex Legends will feature classes/heroes with unique abilities, maximum of 60 players per server, maximum of 3 players per team (trios) to compliment each other. No titans. Just as Titanfall and Titanfall 2, Apex Legends will run on a modified version of Valve’s Source engine.
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) February 2, 2019
Whilst I won’t be getting too far ahead of the curve by shit-canning a Titanfall game that sounds like it should just be called “…fall”, the biggest appeal of Titanfall is being able to call down a hulking metallic rampaging machine of war. I really fell in love with the portrayal of the relationship between a pilot and his mech, particularly in Titanfall 2!
I’d heard rumours that this game was coming and had been already talking about how the Titans would be integrated – would it be an “ulti” charge style with a standard unit of increase over time that could be boosted with kills so you could get multiple Titanfalls, or maybe there’d be batteries that would spawn across the map and you’d have to collect three, or even the possibility of just one Titan for each pilot that’s available after the first 60 seconds in-game… but you only get one.
Then again, sixty Titans in a map would be anarchy!
Anyway I do have a lot of confidence in Respawn, so I’m happy to wait until tomorrow to see how this new game goes and I’ll report back, I’m looking forward to how they make this a unique battle-royale proposition whilst losing their most unique attribute in the process.