Apex Legends will add wall-running in its next event: the Galactic Games. The feature has been a long-desired feature for the Battle Royale game, due to its association with Titanfall, but the feature will only be part of a limited-time event.
Apex Legends has been around for more than half a decade now and has established a fanbase of its own, but the game (and the name) was originally spawned from Respawn’s Titanfall series, as Apex Legends exists in the same universe.
From Apex’s original launch in 2019, fans have wanted to be able to run on walls in the BR. The feature was a hugely prominent aspect of the Titanfall series of games, with Titanfall 1 providing the proof that the feature could work for competitive online shooters.
Titanfall 2 continued the trend, adding a hugely popular single-player campaign to the running and jumping mecha mayhem. Sadly, Titanfall 3 has gone the way of Half-Life 3 as it seems it’s not on the horizon, and in fact may never happen.
As such, Titanfall’s beleaguered fanbase will have to settle for Apex Legends’ Galactic Games event.
Apex Legends: Galactic Games Event
The Galactic Games event begins on August 19, ending on September 9. Wall-running is included as part of the event’s effect on Wildcard, Apex’s fast-paced, close-quarters mode.
To make matters worse for Titanfall veterans, wall-running won’t even be on by default in the mode. Instead, it will be one of several Wild Cards in Wildcard (is this confusing?) that players can choose to craft at the replicators.
Wild Cards are stats or ability bonuses that you can attach to your character. Your Wildcard character gets a new Wild Card slot in Wildcard Rounds 1, 2, and 3.
Wild Cards included are:
- Mad Dash: gain a dash ability
- Recharger: recharge shields while running
- Personal Space: melee knockback is increased
- Hard Hitter: melee damage is increased
- Status Report: reveal enemy locations on knock
- Wall Runner: gain the ability to Wall-Run
- Speedy Charge: Tactical and Ultimate abilities charge faster
Happily, you can take out the frustration of losing wall running by hitting your enemies with a bat that can send them flying out of the Wildcard arena.
The bat will be available to all players during the event, so you can bonk your way to emotional stability as you come to terms with the fact that the feature Apex Legends players have been begging for is not long for this world.
Perhaps it’s for the best. After all, characters in Apex don’t have the Jump Pack that made wall-running such a joy in Apex. Perhaps that can also be added one day, likely also for a limited time.
Why isn’t wall-running in Apex Legends?
Repsawn Entertainment Executive Producer, Drew McCoy explained why the game does not have wall-running back in 2019. The Titanfall dev noted that, while it was originally included as part of development, when played out in reality, it did not align with their strategic goals for what they wanted to game to be.
McCoy stated, “When we first started making it, to be completely honest, we had double-jumping and wall running. We had triple-jumping for a while. We had Titans in tons of different forms. For us, we don’t restrict ourselves when we’re early on in a project about what ‘has’ to be there. So even though we were like, yeah, this is probably going to be the Titanfall universe, we didn’t put any hard requirements on what had to be there.”
He added, “While prototyping and playing and iterating, things stay or they go as a result of whether or not they’re achieving our goals. Things like wall running and double-jumping, they actually really hurt the strategic and learnable aspects of combat. Because a player can get anywhere almost immediately. So there’s no thought process like ‘okay, I saw someone run around that building, now I know they’re going to be in one of two places.’ No—with double-jumping and wall running, they can be anywhere.”
So enjoy it while you can, as the core of the Apex Legends gameplay, as the devs see it, is antithetical to wall-running, hence why it is included instead in the smaller, more chaotic Wildcard mode.
Darragh Harbinson is an esports writer specialising in Counter-Strike. He has written for Esports News UK, Esports Insider, UKCSGO, Dexerto, and Rush B Media.