Apex Legends Season 21 Trailers Review: Lore, Gameplay, and More
Respawn released three videos this week, so today, we’ll be breaking down the Apex Legends Season 21 trailers, paying attention to the details, and speculating on the future plot.
Table of Contents
Let’s start with the fact that this time, Respawn decided to upheave (got it?) the usual order of trailers. As a rule, the video from the “Stories from the Outlands” series was released first, followed by the animated launch trailer for the season, and then the gameplay trailer third.
Apex Legends Trailer: “Alter — Based on a True Story”
This time, the first video was a trailer for the new Legend from the series “Meet the Legends” (such a video usually comes fourth). Since the new Legend of this season is a mysterious lady, obviously this video replaced the “SFTO” video.
At first, it seems like Alter is actually telling pieces of her past. But then it becomes clear that she made up all these stories. Some of her stories look more or less believable, in one of the stories she retells Bloodhound’s past, and some look completely absurd.
The video’s ending is interesting. It reveals that Alter is an interdimensional traveler. She holds a photo of Horizon (Dr. Mary Somers) with her son Newton. We see hints of Alter and Horizon’s connection in promotional materials, in-game phrases, and even in Alter’s bio.
Like Sylvie from the show “Loki”, Alter travels between worlds on the brink of the apocalypse, witnessing or contributing to their demise. “Many of these worlds hadn’t met their end by some random event; they had been destroyed by the same person,” — these words end her biography.
Last season’s plot centered on the so-called Time Gauntlet from Titanfall 2. Horizon tried to get it to go back in time to her son. However, she noted that such time travel could create a time paradox. Later in the story, it turns out that she was the one who invented the Time Gauntlet in the past.
Apex Legends Gameplay Trailer
The second trailer shows Alter’s Abilities, as well as some Season 21 changes.
In this trailer, Alter’s Ult mechanically resembles pre-rework Revenant’s Ult, Death Totem. Essentially, her Ultimate is like a mini-portal you can leave behind before a fight to return if things go south.
Additionally, this ability reminds us of the exclusive character from Apex Legends Mobile, Fade. Fade had the ability to travel back in time through the Void. Does this mean that Respawn decided to rehabilitate this character somehow after the Apex Legends Mobile shutdown, or are they just reusing the same ideas?
Apex Legends Trailer: “Into the Void”
The third trailer is dedicated to the mini-event that started with the Season 21 release.
The video is narrated from Caustic’s perspective, and the event is also dedicated to him. The Legendary Skin, which is the main reward of the event, contains a unique intro animation for Caustic. In this intro, Caustic brutally beats Ash and then throws her body away.
It turned out that many players didn’t understand the meaning of this animation. Let’s look back at the plot a few seasons ago to figure it out. In Apex Legends Season 9, it was revealed that Caustic has lung cancer (that’s why he often coughs). Knowing about his imminent death, Caustic applied to Hammond to transfer his mind into a Simulacrum (like Revenant and Ash) and to replace his human body with a robotic one. However, his request was rejected. You can guess he may be jealous of Ash since she was saved from death by transferring her mind into the Simulacrum.
Besides, the trailer also shows Caustic’s scientific interest in the Void. He thinks that the Void can somehow change or improve the Legends. Apparently, this all has something to do with the Catalyst’s ferrofluid since Caustic says it could become a “new variable.” On the updated Broken Moon, you can see huge masses of ferrofluid that have come out due to destruction, which previously helped hold the structures of the lunar base together.
Conclusions
Breaking the usual order of things, the developers seem to be cooking something interesting. Will this be the so popular now concept of multiverse? Is Wraith related to this since she is already her parallel universe self? Will we see Newton, Horizon’s son, as the new Apex Legend? Did Horizon accidentally destroy other worlds with a time paradox? And finally, who is Alter?..
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