Apex Legends Season 14 will launch on August 9th and will add Vantage to the battle royale game’s playable roster. Vantage has a long-range combat-oriented skill kit, giving him a specialty with marksman and sniper rifles. However, she doesn’t fit the caricature of being a cunning sniper, as developer Respawn has designed Vantage’s abilities to be loud and noticeable. Don’t expect to pick her up and suddenly be able to silently take out multiple targets in a row without anyone else knowing about her.

For one thing, Vantage’s ultimate ability, Sniper’s Mark, has a pretty strong gauge. The ability has Vantage pull out a custom Sentinel sniper rifle, which features a 3x-6x scope and fires shots that can mark targets. According to Apex Legends lead designer Chris Winder, Vantage’s ultimate has all the hallmarks of every other weapon in the game, like a unique fire sound and on-hit effects, but unlike other weapons, the ultimate The Vantage also has a large indicator that opponents can see, informing them that the legend has drawn his sniper rifle.

“Si un Vantage está apuntando hacia abajo en su ultimate, tiene un láser de orientación que se mostrará en el mundo”, me dijo Winder. “Entonces, si ella te está apuntando, verás que el láser apunta en tu dirección y puedes pensar dos veces qué grandes brechas quieres cruzar o a qué cobertura necesitas llegar”.

El láser aparece en el juego como un largo rayo azul, lo que lo distingue claramente de los láseres de puntería que se agregarán a las pistolas y metralletas cuando se les adjunte el nuevo visor láser de la temporada 14. Esto también evita que Vantage pueda esconderse fácilmente cuando está usando su habilidad máxima: mientras apunta hacia abajo, está creando un camino despejado de regreso a su posición para que los escuadrones enemigos lo vean.

Su habilidad táctica, Reubicación de eco, tampoco le proporcionará un medio para retirarse sigilosamente. La habilidad le permite a Vantage redirigir a su compañero parecido a un murciélago, Echo, a un punto que ella pueda ver y luego usar sus jets de salto para llegar a su posición. “Es muy importante saber cuándo un jugador se lanza o vuela en tu dirección y está a punto de aterrizar sobre tu cabeza o se está moviendo por el campo de batalla, especialmente si es con sus habilidades”, dijo Winder. “Entonces, su táctica tiene una buena cantidad de sonido cuando inicia su lanzamiento y mientras vuela en el aire y tal vez salta dos veces hacia el final. Entonces eso tiene algo de buena carne para que puedas saber que está sucediendo si no está en la pantalla y lo ayuda a ubicar hacia dónde podría estar saltando Vantage”.

Echo también es visible para los enemigos, por lo que un oponente entusiasta podrá identificar hacia dónde salta un Vantage en función de dónde está volando. Sin embargo, no emite mucho sonido, por lo que es mucho más difícil distinguirlo audiblemente en comparación con, por ejemplo, el dron de Crypto.

“Hay una buena distinción ahí, en realidad”, dijo Winder. “Echo no proporciona como el dron de Crypto. El dron en sí mismo es tanto la fuente de [Crypto’s] latest [ability] and also the source of your exploration [passive ability]. So you really need to know when that thing is flying and where it is, you also need to be able to shoot it so you can mitigate the ultimate potential or stop being scanned. For Vantage, Echo doesn’t really do anything directly to enemies. So he’s not really a threat on his own. You can think of Echo as the point that Pathfinder connects the grapple to from him, it’s not really something you can shoot and detach the grapple from him or anything.”

On top of that, Winder added that Echo doesn’t make a lot of noise in an effort to prevent Vantage from using it offensively, flying Echo into the vicinity of other players to screech and flap and just be a nuisance. On that note, as of Season 14, Crypto’s drone is still the most annoying distraction you can fly in an opponent’s face.

It looks like Vantage won’t be too hard to counter either, as she features one of the noticeably bigger character models among female Legends. She will be able to easily spot Vantage from a distance. “From a gameplay standpoint, his silhouette is pretty unique,” Winder said. “She’s as tall as Bangalore, but quite thick; internally, we sometimes say she has the build of a sled.”

While many gamers likely associate sniper characters in hero shooter games with a slimmer or smaller body type (such as Widowmaker from Overwatch or Chamber from Valorant), the Apex Legends team designed Vantage to that it be on the thicker side to better align with your history as someone who has been living off the land and surviving by hunting dangerous prey in harsh climates for your entire life. At 18 years old, he is the youngest legend on the Apex Legends roster, but he has also lived a physically challenging life.

“She has had to survive this life in Pàgos with just her and her mother,” Winder said. “She’s extremely capable in that environment and she’s survived in that environment, so she’s built herself up pretty strong.”

His story has informed more than his appearance – players will get to hear lots of hilarious dialogue between Vantage and the other legends betraying just how socially depressed his upbringing was.

“This is her first time in civilization, she grew up on her own except for her mother in Pàgos,” Apex Legends Senior Writer Kevin Lee told me. “So she’s new to civilization, she’s new to interpersonal dynamics, especially with people who know social cues, manners and rules.”

Lee told me that many of the older legends will take on a more fatherly role when it comes to Vantage, as seen in the Season 14 launch trailer, where Fuse and Horizon embody the energies of a strong, grumpy father and mother. protective, but there will be many other relationships as well. Bloodhound will see Vantage as a fellow hunter and equal, for example. Perhaps most intriguing, however, is the hint that Mad Maggie will take an interest in the young sniper.

“Mad Maggie has some interesting interactions with [Vantage] because Mad Maggie is in jail between games and she knows Vantage’s mom is too,” Lee joked. “And then [Maggie] it’s like, ‘Respect. Your mother is a bitch.

Like I said before, Vantage’s mom is incredibly interesting when it comes to Apex Legends lore. Jailed for a crime she apparently didn’t commit, and which Respawn refuses to tell us about, Vantage’s mother Xenia represents great potential for the Apex Legends story, both in regards to Maggie and Lifeline’s fight against the Syndicate, as well as a potential link to criminal conspiracies on Gaea, the home planet of Rampart, Caustic, and Crypto.

“[Xenia’s crime] It’s definitely something that we have in our back pocket as something that we’re going to explore with Vantage,” Lee said. “There are definitely things that she needs to work out with her mom, because her mom kept a few things from her on the planet, but ultimately she he sees his relationship with his mother as one of the strongest. Echo and her mom are her people, her community.”

Lee continued, “Her mother’s crimes have been kept hidden on purpose. They’re kind of out there, it’s definitely a complicated backstory. It’s not as simple as ‘Her mother did this’ or ‘She crossed the street a hundred thousand times. , so he’s in jail forever. No, it’s something a little more complex and nuanced, depending on who you talk to. [in Apex Legends], you get different details about what she went through. So we’re going to look at that and it’s definitely going to be a huge and important part of future Vantage stories.”

It all sounds interesting to me, and I’m glad the Vantage kit doesn’t sound like something that’s going to break the Apex Legends meta in-match. There’s no clear way of knowing until the entire community gets their hands on it, obviously, but Vantage at least sounds like a legend designed to complement the primarily melee-focused meta with its long-range abilities, it doesn’t exist. outside the.

In addition to the addition of Vantage, Apex Legends Season 14 will also see Skull Town return to Kings Canyon as the new Relic point of interest, and a new safari-themed Battle Pass will be added to the game that features character skins. legendaries for Wraith and Caustic. and legendary weapon skins for Triple-Take.