This week, Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment revealed the high-flying, missile-launching Legend Valkyrie. The new fighter has close ties to the characters and story of Titanfall 2, which has resulted in a massive spike in players for the 2016 game.
Valkyrie, AKA Kairi Imahara, is the daughter of Viper, a Northstar titan pilot in Titanfall 2 and a member of Kuben Blisk’s Apex Predators. Player’s fight Viper as a boss on the way to stop the IMC from using a weapon of mass destruction called the Fold Weapon. Blisk would go on to start the Apex Games after the events of Titanfall 2, and Valkyrie would salvage her father’s titan to build the flight suit and armaments she wields in Apex Legends.
Players who wanted a refresher on what happened to Valkyrie’s father, or to experience it for the first time, have flocked to Titanfall 2 in great numbers. Since Respawn began teasing the yet-to-be-revealed Valkyrie’s connections to Titanfall 2 last week, the game’s player count jumped from an average of about 1,500 a day to an average of 15,000 on Steam, according to Steam Charts. In fact, there are more people playing Titanfall 2 now than when the game first came to Steam last year.
Steam is the only game service that has player count statistics publicly visible, so it is unknown what the player counts look like on PlayStation or Xbox. Titanfall 2 was free to PS Plus subscribers in 2019, and Titanfall 2 is free to play on both Xbox Game Pass and EA Play, so it is possible just as many or more players are on the game using those platforms as well.
Valkyrie will be playable in Apex Legends on May 4. The specifics of her kit have yet to be officially revealed, but according to Valkyrie-related leaks her passive ability will let her hover in the air, while her tactical ability will involve shooting a cluster of missiles. Her ultimate will reportedly function like a Jump Tower for her and her teammates, allowing them to relocate across the map at will.
Valkyrie won’t be the only addition to the game come Season 9, as Apex is finally receiving the much-rumored 3v3 Arenas mode. The feature was confirmed with a launch trailer released Thursday, but a full gameplay reveal for the mode is slated for Monday, April 26. Story-wise the mode is being run by Ash, another pilot from Titanfall 2 that players may remember for her chilling personality and ceramic face.
Apex Legends is available now on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One, with a mobile version currently in beta testing.
Source: Steam Charts
