Apex Anniversary

Over on the official Apex Legends Youtube channel and on the official Apex Blog, the team at Respawn gave fans a taste of what’s to come for Season 4. In case you didn’t know Apex Legends was surprise dropped on February 4th of 2019 to much critical and commercial acclaim.  Within a few weeks the game was downloaded over 50 million times.  While the hype for the game has certainly died down over the past year, there still remains a dedicated following thanks to the great gameplay, good communication from the developers and a slow drip of content that changes the meta every season.  

Over the course of the past year, Apex Legends has released five premium characters including Mirage, Caustic, Octane, Wattson and Crypto. These characters come in addition to new weapons that the game has introduced new weapons including  the Lstar and the Charge Rifle along side a new map for the start of season 3 and map changes for the start of season 2.  All of these major changes are all working alongside smaller changes including Legend tweaks, weapon adjustments and overall game fixes to try and make the game as balanced as possible. A large question will be what major changes will be made to the existing weapons for season 4. For season 3 we saw the introduction of the double taps and anvil receivers that replaced the skull piercer rounds and the disrupters. All of these hop ups have shaped the meta and it will be fun to be part of the new meta for assimilation. 

Upon the brink of the anniversary of the game respawn has teased us with a new legend, Forge who is said to be a close quarters brawler with an MMA background who wants to take on the next challenge being Apex Legends. Following many data miners including that1mining guy and Ilootgames it was looking like the legend that was going to be revealed was going to be revenant who was more of a stealth character with resurrection abilities. Continuing on some of the more mining details it would seem that revenant wouldn’t be far behind and possibly could be launched at the same time. 

This would line up with a big milestone for the game to be reaching its first anniversary and releasing two brand new legends would spark interest in the part of the community that may not be as engaged in the game as much as they once were. 

As for the concrete details that Respawn treated fans to those include the new legend, the new weapon and a new season called assimilation. The new season begins on February 4th and will most likely go until May 5 based on the dates for the ranked leagues. The main attractions for the new season will include a brand new bolt action sniper rifle called the sentinel, at least one new legend called forge, a new battle pass, a rework to the worlds edge map and a slight rework to how ranked play will be. 

Turning attention to the changes coming to ranked, one major concern was how they were going to curb the cheating that was taking place in season 3 with people closing the application to avoid any point loss. They will be limiting the amount of times your account can receive loss forgiveness when you disconnect, which seems like a step in the right direction but not the complete answer needed. You will also only be able to play with friends who are within one ranked level as you once you reach platinum. Scoring and cost per match will remain unchanged but they will be making some minor adjustments to assist credits by extending the time of your last damage from 5s to 7.5s. Using a healing ability will also not wipe any assist credit as it currently does now. 

Ranked this season will also be divided into two splits which will encourage you to keep playing ranked throughout the whole during. The interesting addition along with splitting the ranked into two separate competitions a that the second part of the split will be taking place on King’s Canyon.  

These changes along with another division should hopefully keep Apex Legends Ranked series going in the right direction. As for the game itself, although the current season has seemingly overstayed it’s welcome due to its length, the upcoming assimilation will hopefully introduce enough new content to keep the masses happy. There is still much more that we don’t know according to Respawn but over the next few weeks, fans can expect to be drip fed a steady flow of small hints and reveals leading up to one big reveal a few days prior. 

Dying Light 2 Delayed 

It’s a curious question to ask if a lot of games are getting delayed due to the arrival of next gen and studios wanting to make sure the game is optimized for the future consoles as well. Unfortunately, this week, you can add another casualty to the list and that game is Techlands Dying Light 2. I was a big fan of the first game when it was released back in January of 2015. It surprised me with its combination of smooth parkour gameplay, combat and story. The day/night cycle added a element of tension and made simple tasks very uneasy.  The co op system in the game was very enjoyable as it worked seamlessly and made playing with friends a blast to complete missions together. The release window for the original was perfect as early in the year, lower budget titles can get a chance to breathe.

Building upon the good foundation, Techland has been touting just how many different ways there are to experience the game and that every decision ripples outward. This has been said many times before from many other developers but based on what we had seen up until now of the game there was potential for this to be accurate. Dying light 2 was scheduled for release this spring but for a title of this caliber to not have a concrete release date this close to spring, something was off.  The Techland CEO posted an official comment to the studios social media and website explaining the usual reasons for the delay. 

“We were initially aiming for a Spring 2020 release with Dying Light 2, but unfortunately we need more development time to fulfill our vision. We will have more details to share in the coming months, and will get back to you as soon as we have more information. We apologize for this unwelcome news. Our priority is to deliver an experience that lives up to our own high standards and to the expectations of you, our fans”

The unfortunate part of this delay as opposed to many from the past few weeks  is that dying light 2 has been postponed indefinitely without any firm date or even season. This is developed by Techland, but unlike the first game which was published by Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment, Dying Light 2 is published by Square Enix which could be part of the reason for the delay. Square Enix just delayed The Avengers and Final Fantasy 7 remake last week and with the addition of  Dying Light 2 it seems like too much of a coincidence. FF7 only got a small delay for a little over a month so there is no concern there but the other two games the Square delayed make you wonder if they were just not at a place where they needed to be gameplay wise or is it just a business decision to push it closer to the release of the next generation of consoles to try to capitalize on the power of the new systems which could lead to more the sales if done properly. 

My hope is that it’s just a business decision and that the game is at the stage that Techland wanted it to be at because building upon what the first game did and making everything about it better sounds like the key to success for Dying Light 2. However, bigger worlds, better graphics, greater move set and a branching story line that has consequences demands multiple play throughs are very lofty goals and hard expectations to meet. I also hope that Dying Light as a series has enough of a following to survive being released towards the end of the year when usually all of the biggest games come out. 

Doom Eternal 

With all the delays happening, it seems that one of the next big, if not the first huge game to be released this year will be Doom Eternal.  You could argue that Animal Crossing could be the first huge game as well but with the mass appeal and the multi platform nature of Doom, Eternal has to take the crown. Back in 2016, Doom, Bethesda and most importantly the team at ID reinvigorated the franchise. 

The 2016 reimagining took what was great about the originals and created a working version in the modern day. The self awareness, speed,  gameplay, the story turned this game something greater than it has any right to be.  It was on the heels of this success that ID has been tasked with the challenge of creating a better game that isn’t just more of the same. This week media previews went live with most people getting full hands on with the campaign for around the first three hours. 

The game looks to be heading in the right direction and building quite well on the excellent foundation that Doom 2016 created. Based on the preview coverage that I saw from places like Giant Bomb, Gamespot and IGN there are plenty of things to be excited for.

One of the most interesting additions to Doom Eternal is the new platform sections. At this point it’s unsure how embedded into the game it will be but it looks to add a mobility layer to the game that was already heavy on fast mobility. In the first game, there was plenty of collectibles, hidden items and the introduction of the platforming would add a new layer to that segment of the game 

The other new feature of Doom Eternal is the new engine it’s using and that is Id tech 7. It’s the first game to use the new engine and one of the main features of the  new engine is the enemy destructibility. This leads into one of the other highly touted systems coming to Doom Eternal and that is strategically target enemies similar to Dead Space. In Dead Space, you couldn’t just aim for the head of the enemy which had become the norm in most shooters or any game with a gun instead you had to think a little more and target limbs of the enemies and dismember accordingly. Doom Eternal looks to borrow a page from Dead Space playbook and that’s a excellent place to draw inspiration from. In Doom, many enemies have ranged attacks in the form of cannons or rocket launchers attached to them and this new system allows you to remove the ranged threat. This new system will add a level of strategy that Doom 2016 didn’t have. You will  encounter multiple enemies, you will need to quickly identify what enemies and more importantly what part of these enemies needs to be dealt with immediately. 

With these two new major components to the series in addition to more guns, more enemies and bigger worlds, Doom Eternal is shaping up to be a proper sequel to the beloved 2016 game. It looks to even feature RPG like upgrade trees to upgrade your abilities, your praetor suit and your weapons. One area of the game where details have been sparse is the new multiplayer. The single player component was so good in Doom 2016 that the lack of a great multiplayer mode didn’t generate any negative press. The game featured a traditional suite of standard modes as well as a level creator mode called snap map.

Both of these multiplayer modes were designed in conjunction with outside studio help. This time around, Id wanted to create the multiplayer aspect in house. Rather than just do what the competition is doing, the team wants to innovate in the multiplayer arena. Sometimes that approach works and sometimes in doesn’t, which was the case in 2016. This time around the mode is called Battle Mode and it is basically a 2v1 with one player controlling the Doom Slayer and the other two people being in control of demons and their horde. It could be a fun and interesting spin on multiplayer but with the lack of information we have on the mode, it’s too early to tell

One of my main concerns with Doom Eternal getting delayed out of 2019 and into spring of 2020, was that same genre or not it would be competing with some heavy hitters. Funny enough, it seems that with the exception of Animal Crossing, and those two games don’t share the same audience, things have opened up for Doom Eternal. With less than two months to go before Doom Eternal is released on March 20, 2020 many of the competing games have been pushed back. Outside of FF7 remake, and RE3 remake, Doom Eternal doesn’t have much in the way of either shooter competition or blockbuster competition for at least a few months. As for the reason why it was delayed Executive Producer, Marty Stratton shed some light on the four month delay with VG247

"We were crunching pretty hard most of last year.  We really truly do try and be very respectful of peoples' time and lives. We have very dedicated people that just choose to work a lot in many cases. It was nice because we want the game to be perfect. We want it to live up to our expectations and consumer expectations."  Pushing the game from November of 2019 wasn’t the worst thing that happened as they think the extra time will really shine through. In terms of where it ranks with the other games this studio has make they feel pretty confident about the quality saying it’s “the best game we've ever made. I don't think I'd say that if we didn't have that extra time”