"You can’t move a mountain without blowing a few things up" - Respawn on Apex Season 8

Apex Legends Season 8 is about to arrive, and with more players enjoying the game than ever before - we are so excited to see what Mayhem brings.

Fortunately for us at RealSport101, we were able to speak to the development team about all the work that's gone into Season 8 - with a couple of hints of what the future holds.

Unleash Mayhem

For those that don't know - "Mayhem" is the name and theme for Season 8.

In the trailer, we saw King's Canyon being blown up - fitting for the explosive new Legend, Fuse.

Steve Ferrera, Apex Team Director said: "Season 8 – the theme is “Mayhem” and that’s not just a shiny label we’ve put on for marketing, it’s actually the core of everything we wanted to do with Season 8.

"We thought how do we go back to King’s Canyon for a third time, really change up the rules and push the boundaries of what people expect from Apex and the rules of Battle Royale?

"We looked at Fuse as a character, to the map update, to the weapons to the loot changes and some other tweaks we can’t reveal yet – it was all in this idea of pushing expectations and breaking the rules.

"We’re always excited about adding a new legend to the game and Fuse is no exception. We’re very excited by his personality and can’t wait for our players to get to know him."

Short Fused

Fuse typifies everything about Season 8, and the Australian is sure to be a huge hit with fans.

Game Designer OT Harrison said: "Fuse is a really excitable, 80s action hero kind of guy.

"His gameplay fantasy is themed around the guy who loves to see things blow up and his abilities are centred around that."

"He’s able to launch grenades further than other characters, and he’s able to hold on to them for longer.

"For his tactical ability, he’s able to rain down an explosive ring of fire around his enemies to trap them and create gameplay opportunities in mid-to-long range space that can cause a little bit of chaos.

"We’re really excited to get players on board with him and the things he can do."

Leave destruction

The map is perhaps where the most significant changes lie in Season 8.

King's Canyon has been updated for the third time after a series of explosions have left it with a completely new look.

Level Designer Rand Stayer said: "For Season 8 with a map update we really wanted it to resonate with the theme “Mayhem” – and with mayhem comes destruction.

"Looking at previous map updates, a bunch of destruction has happened to the map already where things have been taken away and we didn’t want to take that same approach this time around. We wanted to destroy something, but also bring something new back.

"We said during development, you can’t move a mountain without blowing a few things up and that’s exactly what we did."

For those looking to find a playspace to make their own, Stayer goes into more details:

"We took the celebration ship and we crashed into the northern mountain range to open that up into a brand new playspace. The crash site is where the ship rests now in a stood up form, providing a brand new king-of-the-hill playspace.

"We’ve revealed a giant rack of uncovered Leviathan bones creating a nice open rotation on that side and we’ve also cut a rotation into the pitch from that side that leads out to sniper purchases overlooking the sniper tranch in the spotted lakes.

"We’ve decided to add a bit more breathing room – with so many updates on King’s Canyon already, we felt we needed to remove some of that map congestion which has led to a lot of multiple teams fighting in the same area at the same time which in some ways can seem very unfair."

What's Next?

Although the development team remain tight-lipped on the Nintendo Switch version of the game (which is the immediate priority), they did some light into what the Next Gen plans are.

Ferrera said: We can’t get into anything specific, but we definitely have plans for what we want to get out.

"At the end of the day, everything we do especially in a live service environment means we have to prioritise certain things – and there’s a lot of game that comes out every season, so we have an order in what order we want to tackle these things in.

Right now, our big focus is actually on Switch, so that’s the next big milestone, but rest assured we have some ideas and some plans as what we’re going to bring to Next Gen as we get to it."