Apex Legends Devs Talk Going Back to Year One with Launch Royale

The launch of Apex Legends season 23 came with a surprise: Launch Royale. This LTM winds back time to represent the first year of Apex Legends, limiting players to the original loot pool, the original characters (and their abilities), and the original Kings Canyon map. While this LTM does skew toward the original season zero experience, there are some concessions to ensure their experience is nostalgic but enjoyable, such as the inclusion of modern loot box UI and the inclusion of Octane and Wattson (who were season 1 and season 2, respectively).

After the release of Launch Royale, Game Rant sat down with a few members of the Apex Legends team to explore the creation of this LTM and to get the developers’ perspective on all the changes between season 0 and season 23. This included design director Evan Nikolich, lead BR designer Eric Canavese, lead legend designer Devan McGuire, mode & events lead Mike Button, and senior technical designer Kevin Wolski. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: To kick things off, what was the process and decision-making like to bring back basically day one Apex Legends?

Button: Before the event team took this on and we identified season 23 as a good spot for this, there’d been some early exploration. There’d been discussion about this idea for quite some time. When it started to become more of a reality, that’s when we really started digging in with the team, especially with members who were there for that day one launch and really built that experience from the ground up. Many of us were players, including myself, during that launch and those earlier seasons, so it was a lot of information gathering first and then sharing it with Kevin and the rest of the crew that had to put this together. There was some exploration of, “Alright, well, what are the things we want to hit, what do people remember, what do we feel needs to be represented, what would be a challenge or need some tweaking? What did all that actually look like?

We were basically itemizing the whole thing, right? What were the weapons and how did those weapons change over time? What legend abilities are missing? Even down to animations. Wraith’s sprint was on the list of ‘Man, I’d love to see that again, but I have no clue how we even do that.’ It was then a case of how does Wraith with old animations and abilities live alongside Wraith with modern sets, especially in the case of Lifeline who is getting the rework. It was a decently long process of just breaking all that down and then the team tackling it.

We’re really pleased with how it came out. We got a lot more stuff than we thought we would. It’s a pretty good representation of that year one experience.

Q: In general, what’s the biggest difference between working on this event and other LTMs?

Button: I’d say the biggest difference for the event team is we’re usually poking at novelty and new and experimental stuff, and this was quite a shift, right? Because it’s more about capturing that authenticity from more than five years ago now. That’s quite a ways back to go, and Apex is a game that has evolved and built on top of itself over time. We haven’t really jettisoned anything entirely, right? A lot of this stuff has had many iterations, changes, and updates built on top of them. Untangling that, finding a way to back to the originals, and making sure it was representative of that original memory or experience was tough.

What really made the call of “Yeah, we’ve got to do this” is when we had a good first vertical slice prototyped up, and we were playing it as a team and we were having a blast just seeing the differences and remembering different things. That’s a common thing. When we play test something, if you can get a reaction or you can hear people in the office shouting or getting excited about something, it’s a sign we’re on the right track. There was a ton of feedback coming in for Launch Royale, and we were just taking it all in: the positive and the negative. When you get that kind of engagement, you know you’re on the right track, and we had it pretty early with Launch Royale.

Q: Talking big picture, what’s the overall goal in bringing back this classic experience?

Button: The goal, initially, was just “we hear people are interested in seeing this. We are having fun with it, so let’s package this up and get it into player hands.” I think they’ll have a similar experience.

I wouldn’t say this was a goal, but something that really stood out to us–and I think we’re seeing this reflected with the player base, even in the early days here–is this spotlight on all the things that have changed over time, how far we’ve come, and all the improvements over time. That’s whether you’re a new player and you didn’t get to experience this or a veteran who missed this one thing and you fondly remember something now that you’re hands-on again. Putting that into perspective, in a way.

When you only had like a hazy memory of what the game was like, now you can just go see it again, and it’s so obvious how things have improved. That was, again, not a driving goal. We didn’t go out intending to be like “We’re going to show them how much the better game is now” because I hope we’re doing that with every release and people are excited about the new things that we’re doing. I definitely think it provides some perspective and that becomes a sort of side dish at the end of the day. We learned to appreciate it internally, and I think we’re seeing players appreciate it right now as well.

Q: Octane and Wattson were seasons one and two. Was there any discussion around not including them and going purely day one? If so, what was that like?

Button: There was definitely lots of discussion, lots of back and forth. We playtested both versions, and there was even discussion about going to year two. I think, at the end of the day, we felt that the first year of the game was really key in establishing Apex Legends and what seasons looked like.

When we spoke with the team and collected player feedback, that first year was what most people remembered and that shadow drop. We attempted to replicate that as much as we could with this shadow drop of Launch Royale. I think a lot of people talked about when Octane showed up or when this gun became available, so I think the first year is what Launch Royale turned into, leaning more toward season zero, but we felt like it was a better experience with some of those things from the first year rounding it out. That was how we landed there.

Q: As a developer, what’s it like to see Lifeline Revived alongside OG Lifeline and looking at that growth over six-ish years?

McGuire: It’s incredible to see where she came from and there were a lot of things that the community has always called for. We harken back to that as inspiration for where Lifeline Revived took some of her kit, so seeing that original aspect that we’re pulling nostalgia from mimicked on both sides of the game is cool. This is what she had, this is what it turned into. It was a pretty cool transition to experience firsthand, and it feels like players who are familiar with that experience at the time will pick that up immediately just based on her kit. Those who didn’t get to actually try that out now get to see how she worked back then, how that evolved into the Ultimate, so it’s a really cool dichotomy.

Button: I’m echoing my answer from before, but it wasn’t our goal with Launch Royale to show old Lifeline so that the new Lifeline gets to shine. You can have this direct comparison, though, but it’s really awesome, almost a happy accident. Lifeline Revived has been in the works for a while, Launch Royale as well, but they were never specifically connected. You generally try to get it to a good spot and then find a place for it, so they aligned well and made sense for Season 23 together. As Devan was saying, I think it’s so cool to see how Lifeline’s fantasy has evolved over time, how there are things still very true about Lifeline, and how things are new and exciting. It’s a great juxtaposition to what she used to have in her kit.

Q: The weapon meta and loot pool is also so very different. When you’re looking at the weapon meta today versus how it was at launch, do any key things stand out?

Canavese: When I’m playing Launch Royale, every time I pick up a gun, I’m reminded of why I made a change over the last five years. I’m like, “Oh yeah, we did that because of this. We should not have put 3x on SMGs. Oh, the Wingman probably shouldn’t be heavy.” Every time I pick up a gun, I’m reminded of all of these changes, and it makes me think about how far we’ve evolved from that.

It’s super, super awesome to go back to the nostalgia and I love being able to have that reference point now. With rose-tinted glasses, you think about launch Apex, and you’re like, ‘It was this amazing experience!’ And it really is super fun to go back and play that, but now that we have this reference point, we can see how the game has evolved over all this time. It’s really invigorating to think about how we were able to achieve such amazing milestones year after year. It gives me hope, and I look to the future and I think, “What are we going to do in another few years?” How is the game going to evolve even more?

I think it’s a really cool experiment that we’ve done. I’m really happy that we were able to do it, and I hope we can continue to do stuff like this in the future.

Q: Was there anything from the original Apex Legends where you couldn’t 100% replicate the original experience?

Button: I think we got way more spot-on than we were even anticipating from the start. Kevin and his crew really put a lot of passion into this. They listened to the team, listened to feedback, did a lot of research, and most of what you would expect to be authentic to that OG experience is here. There are little intricacies where maybe we hit a bump in that journey, but for the most part, it should be representative of exactly what you played on day one.

Wolski: Yeah, like Mike said, I was also pretty surprised at how far back we could roll some of these things. There were a couple of concessions made. One example I could give is the old muzzle flashes on all the guns. We went back and forth on this, and technically we could bring this back. We could do it, but for the sake of player health, things like that were changed for a reason. We ultimately decided not to bring things like that back. The original loot box UI is another. We felt that the new one was just better and it wasn’t really worth it to bring back a clunkier experience just to be authentic. There was definitely this sort of litmus test on some features of whether it was worth reverting a quality of life feature just to be authentic. In certain cases, we stuck with how it is now just because it is that much of a significant improvement and we don’t want to make the gameplay worse. We wanted to focus more on what the experience was like: the balance, how the legends and weapons worked, the map.

Q: With some LTMs, there are things that have made it into the base game, EVO shields being a prime example. This obviously goes in the opposite direction, going back, but I was curious if there was anything you were hoping to see or maybe learn from Launch Royale? Is there anything you’re looking out for in terms of player engagement?

Nikolich: That’s…I’m really thinking about this. It’s a good question. I would say, beyond any one particular thing, it’s just what do players gravitate toward. What are they like? Are there some things that we can play with? Do we experiment with not having shields off-drop? Would people be excited about that or not? I know it’s very spicy and definitely way different. When you drop hot now, you’re very vulnerable and it definitely changes the game. But yeah, we’ll just see what makes players stick. I mean, maybe this is just pure nostalgia and there’s nothing there, but in a broader sense, we’ll follow the data and see what players do. There’s Twitter, Reddit, and all that other stuff we listen to, but players will tell us very clearly in the data we collect what they like and what they don’t.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to add about Launch Royale?

Nikolich: Just come in and enjoy the nostalgia. Tell us what you think, how you feel when you reflect back. I also really look forward to people getting into the Ranked grind and trying out all the new buffs. We have improved Support legends, we got a new Lifeline, and just want to see how players flex with all the new changes we made to the sandbox.

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