Apex Devs Talk Lifeline’s “Rebirth,” Season 23’s New Rocket Launcher, And The Future Of Apex Legends

Apex Legends Season 23: From the Rift is nearly here, and has brought with it a number of surprises, from a Titanfall grenade launcher to a total rework of one of the game’s first Legends, Lifeline. Respawn recently reaffirmed its commitment to making Apex Legends the best it can be, and 2024 has seen the game undergo numerous changes, including the introduction of enemy health bars and an intensified focus on tackling cheaters.

In light of Season 23’s major game-changers, GameSpot sat down with Respawn to pick the brains of the game’s dev team and learn more about Lifeline’s ability rework, the game’s new Rift Relics (including the aforementioned grenade launcher), and the studio’s plans for the future of Apex Legends.

There have been a lot of recent changes to Apex Legends, including the way Respawn markets upcoming seasons. Season 23: From the Rift marks the first time we’ve seen a season’s title contain multiple words. If you had to give Season 23 a one-word name, what would it be?

“One word? Oh, man, I was just gonna say ‘Support,’ but that’s not snappy,” design director Evan Nikolich said, though after some amusing deliberations, the dev team offered up “Revival,” “Riftception,” and “Riftruption” as potential one-word season titles.

Season 23 includes so many exciting game-changers. Are there any Season 23 additions the team is anxious to see how players react to, or are you guys just excited for players to get their hands on all these new features?

“Definitely excited about it,” Legend designer Devan McGuire said. “I think there’s some anxiety among the team around how potent the reset potential is between all the class perks that are there, like being able to revive with [health] regeneration that gets you right up to full as fast as you can now with support characters, and the ability to pop small meds or double just as a class feature on whole means that if you run a support on your team, you’re getting back into the fight real quick.”

“If you run two supports on your team, that’s double the potential for your allies to get back in the fight, and there’s potential concerns that maybe a double support meta might evolve and that might take off into a place that we don’t know, but that in itself is exciting, and the game is ever-evolving, so even if that does take off and become something that happens for the season, that’s a cool thing,” McGuire continued. “That’s a shift that we’re eager to take on, and then if it becomes a problem the way that the [akimbo] Mozambiques kind of overstayed their welcome, that’s something we can shift away from, too. So we’re anxious, concerned, but also eager to adapt and learn from those changes as they come and see if that creates something fun in the interim.”

Season 23 sees the introduction of over 25 Rift Relics–new items that appear to have slipped into the game via the strange rift tears popping up in the world. Is the EPG-1 grenade launcher the only weapon included among the Rift Relics, or are there more?

“There are quite a few more weapons in the list,” lead legend designer Mike Button revealed. “I’m not going to reveal specifically what those weapons are, but as we alluded to in the [pre-season preview] panel, I think people are going to be pleasantly surprised. There are going to be some [Rift Relics] that are familiar.”

How does adding in over 25 new items–including weapons–affect your ability to balance a game that already has over 25 characters with unique abilities in need of constant balance tweaks?

“It’s pretty disruptive, but by design,” Button revealed. “I think in [limited-time] events, we kind of feel like we have–because of the temporary nature of these things–a bit more room to play with power and that disruption level, to maybe an extreme in some cases, because this [Rift Relic] will be there [one minute] and then gone the next. And our playground is really outside of ranked. You won’t see Rift Relics appear in ranked. That’ll remain a pure and balanced experience.

“But we want to kind of create this playground for players, and every week in this case, we’re trying something a little bit new. You’re not going to see event-style content contained to one or two weeks, but all season long. You’ll see this build up of more and more things. You’ll see things rotate in and out of the Rift Relic pool. There’s a balancing component there for sure. Part of [having] fun is also [maintaining] some balance. It can’t be all craziness all the time. So we have levers to pull just as we would with core content. If we have to react to something and tone it down a little bit when it goes live or boost something, we’ll be keeping an eye on that. But we’re trying to ride that edge a little bit.”

Speaking of boosts, what else can you tell us about Boost Kits, the new items that can be equipped in a player’s Survival Item inventory slot to give them special abilities?

“I could share one more Boost Kit with you,” Button offered. “We have a Boost Kit called Void Reflex, and the way that will work is as long as that’s equipped in your survival slot, if you would otherwise take critical damage or go down, you’re going to instead phase out, exactly like Wraith’s tactical [ability]. You’ll get a second with one HP to reset. It’s not as long as Wraith’s tactical–that’s part of the balancing element here. [If] everybody’s rocking Void Reflex, we don’t want people phasing out for 30 seconds all across the board in combat. But [there’s] enough time that you can dodge into cover, maybe hop into Lifeline’s reworked ultimate [ability], heal up quick, and get back into the fight. So that’s been one that’s really been a game-changer in the playtest where we’ve had it live. And that’s one we’re especially excited about as well, in addition to all the rest.”

Season 23 marks the second time a Legend has been “reborn” with a new appearance and a new ability set. Last time it was Revenant, whose rebirth had a whole storyline behind it. Are we going to see some lore explaining how Lifeline ended up with a metal arm, a new hair color, and a totally different skill set?

“Yeah, you will get the details on the lore behind Lifeline’s rework,” principal writer Kevin Lee confirmed. “It’s a bit of a lighter touch than the Revenant rework this time around, just because we wanted to be a bit more agile and on our feet with her rework and not totally overhaul the Lifeline that we know and love. But I will say, after the past years of story and stuff like that, Lifeline played a key role. But lore-wise, I feel like she was sort of being pulled along to all the major story events. She wasn’t really pushing them, she was just reacting to a lot of information and [was] kind of [just] there.

“Basically, I feel like this rework, even just lore-wise, she’s getting more of her own agency and ability, she’s kind of rediscovering for herself why she’s in the [Apex] Games, who she is as a person, and really kind of grabbing a hold of that and making that sort of agency a bit more of her character again, which is exciting.”

On the topic of Lifeline’s agency, she can be seen showing off one of her new abilities in the Season 23 trailer. She’s holding onto DOC and gliding through the air. What was the thought process behind “Lifeline should fly”?

“You’ve probably seen her doing it already quite a bit in previous trailers and stuff. She always has DOC there as her support, [to] get her out of danger in a lot of those situations,” Funnell said. “So that was a big inspiration for it. I mean, the gameplay side of it was we were kind of looking for ways to give her more weight, more ways to keep up with her teammates. Because her being that combat medic, she wants to be in the fight, she wants to be with her teammates all the time, she wants to be supporting them and reviving them. That can be difficult when you have people like Revenant or different movement characters that are launching themselves away from you and running away. So that was the inspiration.

“We were like, ‘Well, what if we just had DOC, you know, do the things that he does in trailers, but for [Lifeline] in the game itself?’ So it meshed together very well in that way, and then given all of his upgrades and stuff that are happening this time, it was kind of fitting to give him some more utility besides just being the stationary heal drone. It just worked out really well.”

You guys clearly had a great time putting this season together, but there were surely some bumps along the way. What was the biggest challenge Respawn faced when designing Season 23, and how did you navigate it?

“The event stuff and Rift Relics–just the amount of stuff–was a massive challenge for the team, and really everybody rallied,” Button said. “You know, I think there was a time where we were like, ‘Oh man, I don’t know if we can come up with something for every week [of the season].’ Some of these things that we’re going to see go live [this season] are things we might have leaned into individually as a whole [limited-time] event being built around. Even in the last year, you could have seen the EPG as like, ‘That’s the event.’ In Rift Relics, there are groups of these things and a ton of them.

“Again, a lot of these [Rift Relics] are harkening back to Apex history or even Titanfall in the case of the EPG. So there are a lot of folks who were itching to do something like this and injected their passion, their love for the game into these things. I don’t think we could have done them all without that [passion]. So just the team as a whole kind of rallying to help make that happen was a big one for me.”

What was the team’s main goal when it came to implementing all these huge meta changes?

“I would say the disruption, just breaking up the play patterns of players and shifting in surprising delight,” Nikolich answered. “The biggest thing is breaking expectations. So, you know, taking a Legend that has not really changed–other than moving some numbers–since 2019 is one [goal]. I think also seeing a lot of changes in the weapons meta–and we’ve got a lot more coming with that and with a lot more frequency. So we’re really committed to really hitting not just every season, but every split with something that’s meaningfully different for players.”

What aspect of Season 23 are you the most proud of?

“I, from a Legend standpoint, am super proud of Lifeline’s glide [ability],” McGuire said. “I think that’s just been a universally beloved addition that fits with things that we’ve seen Lifeline do in the trailers up to this point, and something that I know I, personally–and a lot of the team–have always wanted to get into the game. That has been a really great landmark to finally achieve. I think finding an ultimate [ability] that fit Lifeline, it seems kind of obvious now where it landed that it’s, ‘Hey, we’re going to harken back to the old rez shield and fast heals and put that into an ultimate form.’ But the journey that we took to get there was wrought with a lot of panic and confusion and chaos and strife along the way, and some highs and lows that we suffered to get there, and [we] pulled it off at the end. So I think that–through all the prototypes that went through to get to where it is now–is a big achievement, even though it seems like an obvious sell at this point. It was a large effort.”

EA recently confirmed that there are no plans for an Apex Legends 2, but we’ve also heard in the past that EA wants Apex Legends to have a 10- to 15-year lifespan. What are your hopes for the future of the game?

“We want to grow the game with the player base, with the community,” Nikolich said. “We’re not trying to build something in secret and launch it all at once. Over time, some things are going to hit, some things are going to miss. But our goal is to keep curating and tending to this garden and growing it and changing things and reacting to the players. The big thing is there are players that were what, nine years old when Apex came out? And now they’re 14 and they’re stepping into their first competitive shooter. Why should they choose Apex? So our focus is to get more nimble. We react more. We’ve always listened to the community, but [we want to] really get into our community and meet their expectations. You know, the players expect their games to be constantly updated and living, and we have to hit that. So that’s our commitment going forward. And yeah, there’s going to be a lot more change. What the game looks like today in November 2024 is not what it will look like in November 2025.”

Apex Legends is available to play for free on console and PC. Season 23: From the Rift begins November 5 at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET.