Apex Legends: Ribalta, interview with the development team

Apex Legends

Ribalta, the new season of Apex Legends, started on August 3 and players are already experiencing all the changes and innovations introduced by the tenth expansion of Respawn Entertainment's battle royale. Much of these innovations, including the whole creative process behind the new legend, Seer, were told by the Respawn developers during a long and interesting Apex Legends interview: here's what they revealed.

Seer, look and background

Even before the Metamorphosis trailer, Seer's anticipation started with the short story "The Moth and the Flame" published in three chapters. The story tells of a forbidden love between a princess and a man, and the tragic end of the princess, who was burned alive in the stake of her own beloved and guided there by a moth.

The night butterfly is the embodiment of those who desire what harms them most, just as moths are attracted to the light of a living flame. In the Metamorphosis trailer we witness the birth of Seer, at the exact moment when a moon in the orbit of his home planet explodes. It would therefore seem that the curse of the Moth has reached Seer, who grew up as an outcast but within a loving family consisting of a scientist father and a mother halfway between a warrior and a shaman.

What seems certain is that Seer has joined the Apex games to demonstrate two very important things: his distance from the curse that everyone shares him with and his innate artistic and theatrical skills. A charming, elegant and mysterious character but at the same time very far from the aesthetics of both Apex in general and the other legends. "We wanted to create something different and recognizable compared to the other Legends" tells us Hafid Roserie, Art Director of Ribalta. "This is why we chose a particular silhouette, complete with a hat. Some details then derive from a narrative reflection: the golden fingertips, for example, are linked to the manipulation of drones, accompanied by very theatrical gestures. We tried to work on contrasts. to give Seer a unique essence, which he totally embraced ".

Seer in the Emergence presentation trailer We are talking about an extremely atypical character in the game's roster, but capable of instilling incredible confidence; Seer's self-confident trait undoubtedly comes from the character's writing, as if it had been transmitted by the creators to the creature. "What I loved most about creating the character of Seer" confesses Amanda Doiron, Lead Writer "was being totally free to create what we wanted. At Respawn we are always encouraged to experiment and get out of the box a little and Seer is a example of this. For the first time since I've been in the industry, I didn't wonder if the character was going to be too weird or niche. So we added layers, made bold choices; he was definitely a character who gave a lot. work done with a professional dancer for the mo-cap of the character, the narration that goes through the story of the Moth and the flame, all experiments that I had never done during the development of a triple A game. " As for the creative process behind the birth of a legend, Doiron tells us that everything starts from a blank sheet in which layers upon layers of details are added, increasingly involving the various development departments.

Skill of Seer

The stylish Seer In talking about the creative process, Travis Nordin, Software Engineer in Respawn, is called in the conversation, to whom we asked, given the very technical nature of the Legend, if he had any particular advice for both novice players than more experienced. Before bringing back the answer, it is a good idea to make a small recap of Seer's abilities.

Passive - King of hearts: With his passive ability, King of hearts, Seer can pick up the heartbeat of enemies in the area he is in. aiming phase without being detected.

Tactics - Center of Attention: To verify the presence or absence of an enemy, the assassin can launch drones in reconnaissance using his Tactics skill, Center of attention. The engagement of the drones generates a slowed explosion that tracks and interrupts any activity of the enemies engulfed by the shock wave

Ultimate - Artwork: With its Ultimate, Artwork, Seer recalls a swarm of drones that create a dome on the battlefield, inside which all moving enemies are visible. Walking slowly and crouching will allow you to evade the drones and hitting the core that powers the dome will destroy it.

"I don't know if I really have any advice for pro gamers!" Nordin joked. "Certainly Seer goes well with a stealthy and tactical style of play: with his passive ability it is easy to get an idea of ​​what is around the team and eventually hunt down a single player. At that point the skill comes into play. tactic, with which you can open a fight, hitting an enemy by surprise, or first engage an opposing team and then use it by interrupting a shield recharge, for example. "

After seeing the trailer for Ribalta released during the EA Play, the feeling was that of having recognized in Artwork the same principle of the Impulse Blade of Titanfall 2, and out of curiosity we tried to talk about it with Nordin. "Absolutely, let's say it's an iteration of that skill but adapted to Apex gameplay: Titanfall is based on constant player movement while in Apex it is possible to evade Seer's scanner if you stand still and crouch".

Map and Weapons

A look at the changes at World's Edge Limelight brings big changes to the map and when we spoke to Garret Metcalf, Senior Level Designer, the developer seemed eager to find out how the public he would react to changes. "What I hope will make a difference are the changes to the north of the map: we wanted to attract more players to the northern part of World's End and for this we made it bigger than Refinery.

Same goes for Thermal Control that it is now larger and can accommodate more teams and more equipment on landing. " The map also introduces the cable car cabins, which restore the moving element that was the train in the past, and that players liked a lot; new rotation options have been added, more lava, more ice ... in short: with Ribalta, Metcalf and his team have really thought big.

Rampage, the new LMG Another important addition is a new creation born from the mind of Rampart, or rather, by John Ellenton and the rest of the Game Designers. We are talking about the LMG Rampage, a rifle with a fairly slow and effective rate of fire of medium range that increases the rate of fire when powered by a termite stick. We pointed out to Ellenton our penchant for the Spitfire: "Chances are some Spitfire fans will like the new LMG but the dynamics behind it are a bit different. Conceptually it works like the Sentinel, so it needs to be loaded with another item; it's very versatile and when the cadence increases it becomes a perfect weapon to exert pressure on the opposing team. It inflicts a considerable number of damage but does not have the impact of a Spitfire: if you try to engage in a close combat with the Rampage, especially if not loaded with termite, it is not certain that you will emerge victorious from the clash ".

Seer in the company of Bloodhound and Rampart We finally wanted to close the interview with a question fueled by profound curiosity and linked to proximity between Apex Legends and Titanfall. In fact, every season, whenever something vaguely related to Titanfall is mentioned in Apex, the Titanfall 2 servers record important peaks. With the announcement of Valkyrie for example, there were two days of fire in the multiplayer of the old game Respawn, accompanied by a social buzz where hundreds of young guys asked what was that game in which a Northstar could be piloted ... and especially what a Northstar was.

"It's crazy to still see players discovering Titanfall 2 through Apex today" confesses Steven Ferreira, Team Director, excited. "They try their hand at the Titanfall 2 campaign, which still remains one of my single player experiences in a shooter (and our Steven too, ed) and come back to play Apex even more excited. It's an energy that definitely invigorates the whole team: when we saw those spikes in Titanfall 2 servers we talked about it in meetings and it was so surreal. It's the same enthusiasm that led us to offer the weekend free and hopefully it continues to happen season after season. We are all Titanfall fans and keep going look at this precious original source to tie it even more to Apex. " We like to glimpse in these words a future in which the third chapter of Titanfall will also be part of this gigantic expanded universe, in the meantime we await that moment playing Ribalta, which promises to be a great, new season.

Did you notice errors?