Apex Legends: Upheaval gets new legend, limited-time Solos mode, and more

Apex Legends is about to experience an Upheaval for its next season. EA and Respawn had a lot to show off for Season 21. Earlier this week, they released the trailer for the time-hopping and Joker-esque new Legend known as Alter. However, she's not all that's coming to the long-running battle royale. Shacknews recently had a chance to take a look at Apex Legends: Upheaval.

Before going into the rest of what's coming to Season 21, let's learn more about Alter. As the trailer above illustrates, her origin story isn't exactly a reliable one. All that's known is that she's from another dimension, though which one is anybody's guess. She also has a complicated relationship with Horizon, one that the Respawn team plans to detail a little more over time.

From a gameplay perspective, Alter uses her dimensional manipulation to her advantage. Doors? Alter doesn't need any stinkin' doors. If she needs to make an escape path through a wall, floor, or ceiling, she can use her Void Passage ability to craft a breaching portal. This not only allows Alter to escape from a tight space, but she'll get a brief window of invulnerability as she phases across the portal, allowing her to quickly scan her new surroundings. Teammates are also welcome to use Alter's portals, which means whole squads can escape a hairy situation.

Alter also uses a passive called Gift from the Rift. If a deathbox is behind a wall or other surface, she can scan its location and simply swipe a single item from it. This allows players to pick up a critical item, as well as scan the rest of the deathbox's contents to determine whether they're worth making a side trip to scavenge. This ability cannot be used to take armor, so sometimes taking a detour can be worthwhile.

Alter's Ultimate is the Void Nexus, which creates a regroup point for her team. The Void Nexus lasts a while, so that gives Alter a chance to create a portal that warps the team to the Void Nexus' origin. This allows for some quick escape opportunities. Of course, the Void Nexus isn't exactly subtle when it's active, so if enemy teams see the active regroup point, they can strategically station themselves accordingly and anticipate Alter's arrival.

In terms of Alter's first playground, expect to return to Season 15's Broken Moon. However, it looks noticeably different because of Olympus' collision with Moon's stasis net satellite during the events of Apex Legends: Breakout. For one thing, the map's central point-of-interest has been overhauled to make it less intimidating and more attractive as a skirmish spot. The map's promenade is now a smoldering crater and the surrounding foliage has been warped by changes to the surrounding biomes.

The center of Broken Moon is now known as the Quarantine Zone and features straightforward structure layouts and ziprails to get teams in and out. Fights in the Quarantine Zone are much more frantic given its lack of power positions and chokepoints, so expect a lot of movement around this area. The new Broken Moon also has some new points-of-interest, offering plenty of new opportunities for loot.

If you're reading this and are reminded that you aren't much of a team player, not to worry. Solos mode is returning to Apex Legends for a limited time in Upheaval. It'll be around for the first six weeks of the season, temporarily replacing the current Duos mode. This isn't the first time that Respawn has attempted solo battle royale action, but the team has observed that a lot has changed in the five years since Solos mode was last available.

This Solos experience promises to be noticeably different from last time just because of the sheer number of changes that have hit Apex Legends since then. One such change is the availability of Respawn Tokens. Players will get one single Respawn Token for use in the event that they're killed in the first four rounds. Survivability is also being improved through auto-healing, which kicks in when out of combat and also when killing an enemy player.

Players should expect to see more surprises over the course of the Upheaval season. Apex Rumbles will make their return, having proven to be a standout hit as an alternative to traditional Ranked Play. Speaking of Ranked Play, Respawn plans to deal with the rise of cheating that has come with Breakout's changes to Ranked access, but is keeping details under wraps for now. Look for new Ranked rewards as well, including the debut of new animated badges that can be awarded in the second split by reaching your first split's rank or higher. Lastly, there's a tantalizing new cosmetic type making its debut in the form of Apex Artifacts. These are universal Mythic melee cosmetics that can be equipped by any character across any game mode, each customizable via Exotic Shards.

There's a lot to expect from Apex Legends: Upheaval, including some big meta changes, like the Devotion replacing the Wingman in the care package rotation. Find more details on those over on the Apex Legends website. Look for Season 21 to launch on Tuesday, May 7.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?