An Apex Legends dev has revealed that they had slightly different plans for Olympus before it was actually released at the start of Season 7.
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After months of speculation about where Respawn Entertainment would be taking Apex Legends players next for the game’s third map, fans of the battle royale were sent to Olympus at the start of Season 7.
The brand-new map has quickly become popular with players – even if some would still prefer to have the original Kings Canyon map in the rotation.
Like World’s Edge and the new Kings Canyon, it offers players plenty of different ways to play as it has long sightlines for snipers, plenty of close-quarters areas, and plenty of verticality to boot as well with spots like Oasis. But, the way it is in-game now wasn’t always how it was going to look.
Jason McCord, the game director at Respawn, revealed some early images of the map, noting that it was in development all the way back in early 2019 – just after the game initially launched.
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The early image resembles part of the map that in-game now – with the volcano-like Central Turbine, Phaserunner portals, and Riftall taking pride of place. However, take a glance into the distance and you’ll see cities instead of clouds. It actually looks similar to the images used in one of Loba’s teasers.
In response to one fan, McCord noted that the external cities were just skybox art that the artists were trying out as a background rather than an extension of the map. “Artists wanted to try showing lots of floating cities around in the distance, but it was too confusing so we just used clouds,” he said.
That's just early skybox art explorations. It's flat and painted in, not gameplay space. Artists wanted to try showing lots of floating cities around in the distance, but it was too confusing so we just used clouds.
— Jason McCord (@Monsterclip_JM) November 23, 2020
Had the artists gotten their way, and the cities were used as backgrounds instead, you can only imagine that some poor soul would have attempted to drop there – only to discover that they’d be rapidly approaching elimination through falling off the map.
It also shows that, even though rumors about Olympus didn’t startt for months after, the devs were already hard at work on it, so who knows what they’ve got lined up next.