Horror, as a genre that spans multiple media formats, has a few core tropes that everyone recognizes, and one of the staples is the combination of slow-paced moments that build creeping dread before being paid off by a sudden shock. While a fast-paced battle royale like Apex Legends isn’t the obvious place to find fear-inducing moments like this, there’s actually more potential for fright in this context than you might imagine. And of course, the game’s designers have their own input in adding spookiness in a traditional, direct way through cosmetics.
The Presence of Permadeath
Perhaps the most obvious way in which Apex Legends overlaps with horror as a genre is in how it handles death. Players have one chance to survive in a given match, and if they die, they’re sidelined until the whole thing concludes. The element of finality that comes with permadeath means there’s much more at stake with each encounter, and so there’s always an injection of tension and fear that goes above and beyond what you’ll find in traditional multiplayer shooters.
The Seasonal Events
For more in-your-face horror tie-ins, Apex Legends has its own events that recur to satisfy the player base’s demand for seasonally appropriate scariness. The Blood Pact event, running between mid-October and early November, typifies this and allows players to choose to fight for Beasts or Demons, with unique challenges and perks as part of the Wildcard mode. This includes the ability to move faster and jump twice, not once, when moving with a weapon stowed, or use Super Cells to regain all shield health in a flash.
Along with these mechanical updates, events like this have special horror- and Halloween-inspired cosmetic changes, including skins and map tweaks. It’s the equivalent of how this Big Bass Halloween slot takes an existing game and adds a spooky new layer of style, keeping existing fans interested while hopefully appealing to casual horror-heads as well.
The Aural Experience
Sound is another lynchpin of any good horror game, and Apex Legends takes cues from its more conspicuously spooky counterparts in a few areas here as well. The audio is set up to be as immersive as possible, and players who have their headphones on will benefit most from the tactical advantage that this brings. They’ll also be exposed to SFX that can be truly frightening, depending on the context.
Specifically, it’s the sounds that other players make while moving around the map, using weapons, and approaching for the kill that will ratchet up the tension with every passing second. And crucially, because there are moments of downtime, especially when looting is going on, the game delivers on that horror trope we discussed at the start.
So, horror works in Apex Legends because the game itself can create intense and terrifying moments during normal gameplay, and because the developers use seasonal events and sound cues to make fear part of the fun. It might not be an obvious bedfellow with Resident Evil and Silent Hill, but the horror genre is broad enough to encompass a variety of experiences, from the slow burners to the action-packed.
