Apex Legends' Kings Canyon map adds a whole new area in Season 8
With lotsa changes coming to the rest of the map too
Apex Legends' eighth season arrives next week, and it's bringing with it a new character, a new weapon, and the biggest changes to its Kings Canyon map yet. If you've seen the Season 8 launch trailer, you'll probably have noticed that new Legend Fuse made quite the explosive entrance to the battle royale, demolishing the side of a mountain where his celebratory gunship went down. Thanks to this, we'll be able to explore parts of Kings Canyon we've never seen next week, because it's opened up a previously unplayable section of the map.
This new area, aptly named Crash Site, can be found in the northern part of Kings Canyon, just beyond Artillery (where there's now a new door to access the Crash Site from). The downed gunship is just chilling there looking a bit worse-for-wear, and it's surrounded by scaffolding that offers varied high and low-ground positions for players to fight on.
My Apex buddies will be saddened to hear that all this destruction has caused our favourite drop zone, Slum Lakes, to be washed away by flooding. It's now called Spotted Lakes, and all the dingy buildings have been replaced with a huge modern Filtration Dam to clean the water that was contaminated by the crash.
A large part of the map redesign is to improve rotations in a lot of the northern areas, so there are new zip lines and routes to move between zones like Runoff, Artillery, the Pit, and others. One of these is a lovely scenic route where some big old Leviathan bones are sticking up out of the ground.
Respawn are also adding new structures like observation towers next season. These are perches that players can raise into the air by clicking on a panel. They'll likely reveal your position to any enemies nearby, but they look like they offer some decent high ground to defend yourself and get a lay of the land in return.
Some new loot buildings are being added too. They're called explosive holds, and you can break into them by launching a grenade at the door. Again, I feel like this has a high chance of revealing your location, but could be worth the risk if you can get some better weapons or armour.
Respawn have more cool before and after pics of Kings Canyon over on the website, so do check out the Season 8 updates if you'd like to see them.
Apex Legends' eighth season kicks off next week, on February 2nd.