Apex Legends recently received a ton of news regarding the upcoming content in the Season 9 Legacy update. During the Apex Legends Season 9 gameplay trailer, fans got a rundown of the new arena mode, a look at Legend Valkyrie, and a brief glimpse of the changes coming to the Olympus map in Season 9.
However, fans only saw a few seconds of the plant-infested Olympus before the trailer ended, giving fans only the faintest idea of what the map will look like. Now, a recent blog post by Apex Legends' lead level designer Dave Osei has detailed a variety of changes coming to the fan-favorite map.
Before getting into the nitty gritty of the changes coming to Olympus in Season 9, Osei takes the time to identify what the goals for Olympus were going into Legacy. First and foremost, the team wanted to tackle the issue of the Olympus map having fewer places of interest, or POIs, compared to World's Edge and Kings Canyon. By tackling this issue with Legacy, Osei says this will "lay the seeds for future content," also mentioning the team has big plans for Olympus beyond Legacy. Next, Osei dives into one of the biggest changes coming to Olympus in Season 9: the Icarus ship.
The Icarus is a massive ship docking on Olympus right behind the Solar Array POI, between Bosai Plaza and Orbital Cannon. The Icarus is the ship that will introduce a plant infestation on Olympus, teased along with Season 9 and Valkyrie. According to the post, the Icarus hosts four large rooms which house tons of loot. Due to the large interior space and various openings, it should be a POI where plenty of teams feel comfortable landing.
Inside the Icarus' bridge, players will be able to find corpses of the scientists who worked aboard the ship long ago, which may house items called Bridge Keycards. Similar to the vaults located around the World's Edge map, players will be able to pick up the Bridge Keycards and open the Icarus' bridge, which contains an abundance of high-tier loot. However, the post notes that players should be mindful of ambushes, as Bridge Keycards can be looted from deathboxes. Finally, the post details a handful of smaller tweaks being made across the map, including the removal of two redeploy balloons.
These redeploy balloons, commonly called jump towers among Apex Legends players, were located right outside of the Estates POI and the Orbital Cannon POI. The balloons were removed to mitigate third-partying potential in areas such as Grow Towers, Energy Depot, and Hammond Labs. Now, with the Icarus blocking up the open space that used to be there, players will have to be much more strategic about how they cross through the southern end of Olympus. The full post goes into a bit more detail regarding the reasons behind the changes, but thankfully fans won't have to wait too much longer to dive into the newly infested Olympus when Legacy rolls out on May 4.
Apex Legends is available now for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
Source: Electronic Arts