Rodney Reece, the level designer responsible for Apex Legends next map, Storm Point, discusses the size and verticality of the landscape.
Respawn’s battle royale Apex Legends is close to releasing its 11th season with a new map. Storm Point is the largest map released for Apex Legends, and its designer Rodney Reece has spoken to The Loadout about its design.
Reece explains that he pushed for more verticality because he knew that legends would be coming to the game to exploit the added height. This includes Valkyrie with her jetpack and Ash with her new teleport. However, adding this verticality wouldn’t have worked so well in earlier seasons.
“[Elements] that would have been a little bit more punishing, say in Season two or three, were more viable simply because of the legend makeup [we have now].” Reece told The Loadout. “So we knew early on that this is something we wanted to attack and try to do.”
The three maps currently available in Apex Legends have had a series of redesigns throughout their life cycles. However, they were not designed with these changes in mind. The new map Storm Point was created with the knowledge that updates would come to the layout.
“With Storm Point, since [development on it] actually started a year after Apex came out, we had the benefit of hindsight, knowing that [map updates or reworks] will eventually happen. So [we wanted to] build it in a way where it can naturally grow as opposed to: ‘Oh, this thing blew up and swallowed up this, and this thing replaced it.’ So it’ll be less blowing things up and replacing things [and more] naturally growing things out.”
In other news, Amazon’s Prime Gaming is adding nine free games during November.
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