Apex Legends Season 20 Overhauls Legends with Ability Upgrades

New Legend Upgrades in Season 20 will change how Apex Legends characters are played.

By Tanner Dedmon

Apex Legends won't be getting a new character in Season 20, but the Legends that players know will all have something new to look forward to once the next season starts. In Season 20, Respawn Entertainment is introducing a new upgrade system that allows players to chose upgrades mid-match for not only their Legends' abilities but also for their Legends overall in order to compliment different playstyles. It's a system which Apex Legends game designer John Larson says is the single biggest change that Legends have gotten since Apex Legends released, and from the looks of it, it's going to completely change how each Legend is played on a match-by-match basis.

Respawn Entertainment showed off the Legend Upgrade system during a preview of Apex Legends Season 20, and while we only saw parts of the different upgrades that Legends will be able to pick from, seeing the possibilities alone is enough to inspire players to start theorycrafting what "builds" they'll opt for in Apex Legends.

Apex Legends "Upgrades"

legend-upgrades-gameplay.jpg

Though it's a totally new system for players to get their heads around, the way Legend Upgrades work in Apex Legends is pretty simple. Each Legend will have four different "Upgrades" at their disposal. Some of these will change the Legends' abilities themselves while others will essentially give Legends' passive effects as if they found special attachments for the Legends themselves. Players will be able to choose one of two upgrades once they obtain their Blue Evo Shield while the second choice between two additional upgrades will be made once players get their Purple Evo Shields. This new Legend Upgrade system works in tandem with Season 20's "Evo Core" changes which make it so that Evo Shields are now powered by Evo Cores which level up with you as you get kills and do things your Legend's classes are meant to.

Take Gibraltar, for example. During the Apex Legends Season 20 preview, two different options were shown when Gibraltar reached his Blue Evo Shield: one called "Big Ups" that revives teammates to 40 health when picking them up as opposed to the 20 health they usually get, and another called "Killer Handling" which auto reloads shotguns whenever Gibraltar knocks an enemy. The other breakpoint for Gibraltar allowed him to pick between "Baby Bubble" which makes his Dome Shield smaller but with a faster cooldown, or "Bubble Bunker" which adds four seconds to the duration of his Dome Shield. 

Another specific Legend Upgrade was shown off for Mad Maggie which made it so that her Wrecking Ball ultimate would explode in a burst of fire left on the ground to deal damage to enemies over time once it finished its path. The fire effect is meant to take inspiration from Fuse's ultimate, but it leaves a different pattern on the ground compared to Fuse's circle.

legend-upgrade-screenshot-1.jpg

The UI shown for the Legend Upgrade system showed that players can hold down on the d-pad to upgrade their Legend which suggests this might be something that players can hold onto if they're not quite ready to make a decision just yet. This flexibility could prove helpful during moments where you're not sure whether a teamfight is about to break out or when you're trying to gauge where a zone will be next.

A separate look at the Legend Upgrade interface shown outside of a match suggested that players could view a particular Legend's possible upgrades in the same way that they'd look at the character's abilities or their class perks. During the Apex Legends Season 20 preview, Larson said that this system will allow for "another lever when it comes to Legend balancing" so that those Legend Upgrades can be buffed, nerfed, or changed entirely if balance updates are needed.

Legend Upgrades will be live for every character once Season 20 starts, so expect to see some massive meta changes once they're implemented.

Trending Now: