Apex Legends Season 15 will introduce its second-ever largest map Broken Moon
It'll also feature the largest POIs we've seen so far, and the brand new ziprail system
Season 15 of Apex Legends is ziprailing its way towards us at a frightening speed. When it lands at the end of the month, it'll bring with it a new Legend, just like every new Season - but even more significantly, Apex Legends: Eclipse will introduce the fifth Apex map, a big and beautiful multi-biome arena called Broken Moon.
Players have been able to get a sneak peek in-game at the new map through the limited-time Golden Tickets - items craftable at Replicators which can be used outside of matches to unlock the "A New Home" teaser. This brief teaser allows you to move through a limited area of Broken Moon and ride on the map's most exciting new feature - the ziprails.
Ziprails act like ordinary ziplines from other maps, but they allow you to move at much higher speeds along predetermined routes across the map. One of the other big differences between Broken Moon and previous maps is that there are one or two major POIs (points of interest) that are the size of two or even three regular named locations, giving players more loot and space in the early game without dogpiling into one another in the first few minutes. But thanks to the ziprails you can traverse even these larger areas at very high speeds. The devs hope that this new traversal system will give players new opportunities for repositioning and rotating throughout each match.
Broken Moon will be the second-largest map so far in Apex Legends - just a touch larger than World's Edge. Lead Level Designer Jeff Shaw explained that they felt the scale of the largest map, Storm Point, was causing some lulls in the mid-game of matches (I can most certainly confirm this), so they wanted to get back to a size that they know works with Broken Moon.
At release, Broken Moon will have 16 POIs, some of them very large indeed. Set on a gigantic piece of floating moon crust, the terraformation of the landscape was only partially completed by the time the Apex Games rolled in, which means there's a lot of variety to the biomes and environments you'll find in the map. Some areas will feel much more barren and rocky (as you'd expect from a moon), while others will feature high-tech Olympus-esque structures and lush gardens. The moon itself orbits Boreas, the former home of both Catalyst and Seer, and a place steeped in African-inspired culture. A lot of this culture has apparently made its way into Broken Moon, in the architecture and gardens that dot the more developed areas of the map.
When Apex Legends: Eclipse drops, the first ranked split will feature Broken Moon, and the casual mode will rotate between Broken Moon, Olympus, and World's Edge as the three maps on offer. Aside from the new map, Season 15 will also bring with it a brand new Cybernetics-themed Battle Pass, the brand new additions of gifting skins to friends and customising your healing items with stickers that you'll see when you heal up in each game, and - of course - the brand new Legend, Catalyst, a techno-witch who seems to have some serious beef with fellow Legend Seer. We're itching for more news on Catalyst, but until then you can consolidate your knowledge of existing Legends with our Apex Legends characters tier list. Season 15 releases on Tuesday 1st November, so best get reading in preparation.