Meet Octane, Apex Legends’ newest hero

Respawn’s phenomenally successful free-to-play shooter, Apex Legends, has revealed the details of its first Battle Pass. The first season is called Wild Frontier, and it is bringing a new playable character to unlock. Wild Frontier brings many new customisation options, as well as new objectives based around learning Apex Legends’ game mechanics.

The new unlockable character, Octane, is the biggest new update to the game. Octane, real name Octavio Silva, was a bored wealthy heir to a pharmaceuticals empire who entertained himself by becoming an adrenaline junkie and participating in death-defying stunts. After blowing off his legs by propelling himself across a finish line with a grenade, he acquired a set of robot legs and joined the Apex Games in pursuit of the ultimate thrill.

Mechanically, Octane is all about risk and reward; he can spend some health to get a 6 second speed boost, which is counteracted by a passive ability that recovers health when not in combat. Octane players are encouraged to zip about the battlefield with his speed boost, and duck out of combat to recover. His Ultimate ability spawns a jump pad that other players can use, similar to Pathfinder’s Zipline and Wraith’s Portal.

The Battle Pass is designed less to reward players who are master Apex Legends players already, and more to help players learn and experiment with the game mechanics. On the game’s website,  the developers discuss their philosophy regarding their first Battle Pass.

“Our first Battle Pass is all about letting you continue to learn and experiment with the core Apex Legends experience while earning awesome loot at the same time. You’ll notice the first version isn’t built around a complex quest system where you need to do a 720 backflip off of Watchtower Artemis and get two Wingman headshots before hitting the ground. While we think there’s really cool design space in quests and challenges for future Battle Passes, we wanted the initial version to allow our players to just play and learn the game.”

In addition, there has been a focus on value, where “first-time spenders can get a strong base of weapon and character cosmetics to fill out their initial collection at a deep discount”.  Players can use the Apex Coins they earn towards the next Battle Pass.

Overall, it seems that Respawn is using this Battle Pass as a way of gauging how consumers react to changes to Apex Legends, and what players want from future updates.  How Octane and the Battle Pass will be received overall by the fans will remain to be seen, but it certainly sounds like Respawn have lots of exciting plans for Apex Legends’ future.