Apex Legends developer ‘motivated to do Revenant justice’

pcgamesn.com:

Apex Legends game designer John ‘JayBiebs’ Larson has responded to a Twitter discussion with former Apex developer Daniel Zenon Klein talking about the low pick rate of Revenant, saying that the team is “motivated” to provide gameplay that can “do his thematic design justice.” The discussion initially began when Klein responded to a fan querying how he would look to encourage people to play the legend, who is the lowest-picked in the battle royale game’s thirteenth season.

With a disclaimer that he hasn’t worked at Respawn since August 2021, Klein says that he is “not surprised at all that he’s barely picked.” He notes that the primary reason players pick characters in Apex is how it affects their chance to win, and that this means that a legend’s kit “needs to answer relevant questions” in order to make them a viable choice.

Revenant’s ability set, says Klein, is very “in keeping with his creepy theme” – but rarely offers a good opportunity to react to a situation. Even his ultimate ability, Death Totem, which Klein notes is very strong, is only really useful proactively – that is to say, you need to use it before a fight starts – meaning that it can be very inflexible.

Klein goes so far as to say that, were he still at Respawn, he would “absolutely look at Revenant for a full rework.” However, he notes that the Apex design team is “really small and trying to do a hundred things,” so there aren’t always the resources available for such things. He then invited current game director John Larson to comment, to which Larson graciously responded saying that he largely agreed with the breakdown that Revenant feels very theme-first to the detriment of his actual functionality.

“When Rev first came out I racked up 6,000+ kills