Apex Legends’ “Solo” LTM won’t return, but Arenas may, says EA
Apex Legends is one of the biggest battle royales out there, with millions of players logging into the game every single month to battle it out for team supremacy. At one point it time you could go things solo to take home that crown, but that option was removed years back, and it sadly seems like it’ll never return.
Game Informer spoke with lead legend designer Devan McGuire about the chances of Apex Legends’ solo mode returning, and he made it very clear that that’s not in the cards.
“This is a squad-based game, and that’s why you don’t see solos. We had that experiment a long time ago, and we’re not bringing it back. A single character should never be the answer to every problem. They should be part of that team dynamic. That’s what creates interesting strategies in the game. And we hold that as a game pillar when designing a legend: To make sure that we never break what’s core to the game. Our design pillars, the ones that we use for developing abilities and the core fundamentals of legend play patterns, are that the character needs to be ownable. It needs to occupy its own playspace amidst all the others on the roster so that it’s not stomping on the toes of someone else’s fantasy.”
[Lead legend designer Devan McGuire]
While that beloved LTM seems completely dead, there is hope for another very popular mode that was removed. Apex Legends diehards will no doubt remember Arenas, which saw two teams of three going up against one another in smaller locations. This mode was introduced in Season 9 and then removed in Season 15, but design director Evan Nikolich makes it seem like Respawn could bring the mode back at some point in the future.
“Arenas has been backburnered, but it’s in our quiver to use again at some point. When we introduced Arenas as a standalone mode, I don’t think we fully understood what we were doing in terms of bifurcating our audience. We have to build something that is more unified and brings players together to play the entirety of the game. Not just like, ‘I’m an Arenas main’ or a ‘BR main.’ It’ll potentially come back in the next 12 to 24 months. It’s definitely something on our roadmap.”
[Design director Evan Nikolich]
