Apex Legends’ heavily-teased upcoming map, Broken Moon, might be evidence that bigger isn’t always better for the Apex Games’ terrain.
According to members of the level design team at developer Respawn, Broken Moon is slightly larger in size than World’s Edge, making it the second largest battle royale map in the game and smaller than Storm Point. “We felt that that scale really provides a strong baseline for the pacing and feel of the game and the player count,” lead level designer Jeff Shaw said in a press event.
This size also lends itself to bigger zones: The team is trying out a handful of larger-scale POIs to combat the popularity of hot drops. Structurally and height-wise, the map is more similar to Kings Canyon and World’s Edge than its tropical predecessor.
With these larger areas, which will make up some of Broken Moon’s 16 total POIs, Shaw hopes that players will have more room to breathe at the beginning of a match. The team hopes that when players drop at these large-scale POIs, they’ll have more places to land, more time to loot, and more loot options, even if several other squads dropped in the same place. They also give players the chance to make more informed decisions about their next move rather than having a fight forced on them by proximity.
The map’s Zip Rail system is intended to cater to players who frequently tread the same paths from the outer fringes of a map toward the center. They allow players to rotate quickly across long distances, but they also leave those using them open to attack if they are seen or ambushed by another squad, creating a risk-reward situation similar to that of the gravity cannons on Storm Point. The development team hopes to diversify the paths players take through maps during the course of a match to make sure each round feels fresh, the latter of which is a major theme for season 15.
Apex season 15, known as Eclipse, begins on Nov. 1.
