Apex Legends dev teases major ‘unexpected’ features in Season 9

Apex Legends game director Chad Grenier has teased content due to release in future seasons, including as far as Season 11, but highlighted Season 9 as a time when players will be getting some unexpected content.

Apex is currently in Season 7, which launched on November 4, and brought with it a new map, the game’s third. Season 8 is up next of course, but the team at Respawn are always working many seasons in advance, and Season 9 seems to be a high point.

Speaking to IGN about their workflow while the entire team has been moved to working from home, and yet have still managed to successfully launch two full seasons and work on at least four more.

But, at the end of the discussion, Grenier gave some mouth-watering teasers about what players can expect in Season 8 and 9 in particular, with a few surprises planned.

“I would love to just talk about all of it, because I’m so excited. Season 8 is shaping up to be amazing, it’s just great, and almost entirely done working from home.” But when talking about Season 9, Grenier sounded even more enthusiastic.

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“Season 9 is also going to be great, really looking forward to it. In Season 9, you’re going to see some major things that you did not expect. So it’s just a really exciting time right now.

“Despite all the working from home challenges, we’ve hit a stride, and we’ve figured a lot of the things out about how to work together and how to build great content. And there’s no shortage of great ideas in our studio.”

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What could these unexpected features be? There are a few possibilities. Top of the list for many players would be more non-Battle Royale style modes. The success of LTMs like Winter Express will certainly give Respawn confidence that these kinds of modes can work in Apex. They’ve already said this is something they want to work on.

Other possible avenues are more PVE style modes, or perhaps a more fleshed out story mode. The Season 5 quest was a small hint at what could come there, but Respawn has dialed this back in Season 6 and 7, opting for weekly comics to tell the game’s story instead.

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There’s also the possibility of another map, but given we’ve just had Olympus added, this seems less likely, as another new map within six months is probably excessive – for both players and developers.

Season 10 and 11 are also in the works, Grenier confirms, and no doubt plans are also being formed for many seasons beyond that. As always, we’ll keep you up to date on everything you need to know about the present and future of Apex Legends.