Hot Drop: Newcastle's Powerful Abilities Make Him A Great Protector, Like A Rook In Chess
Hot Drop is GameSpot's weekly Apex Legends column, in which Jordan Ramée takes a closer look at Respawn's battle royale to provide additional insight into the game's evolution, as well as dive deeper into its episodic storytelling and characters.
From the get-go, Jackson Williams has been characterized as a piece on a chessboard. Specifically, he's been compared to a rook, the castle turret-looking piece that can only travel horizontally across the board. Now that Jackson is officially a legend, releasing in Apex Legends Season 13: Saviors as Newcastle, the rook connections aren't letting up--Respawn told GameSpot that the chess imagery informed Newcastle's appearance, voice lines, and ability kit.
«Very deliberate [connections],» Apex Legends senior producer Tim Lewinson told me when I asked about the lone rook sitting in front of Jackson in the Stories from the Outlands: Gridiron trailer, and Newcastle's «checkmate» comment in the Saviors launch trailer. «Glad you caught it. There's probably some other Easter eggs that you'll find as well, sort of referring to that chess connection.»
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Narratively, I find this connection to be fascinating. If Newcastle is a chess piece, who's the person that's controlling him? In terms of the story, what chess board is Newcastle metaphorically fighting on? It could just be the Apex Games in general, but I think it's more than that.
A few weeks back, I theorized that Apex Legends is heading toward all-out war, and I still think that's the case. But something else is going on
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