August Brinkman, otherwise known as Ballistic, is set to join the Apex Games in season 17. ThisApex Legendsassault-class character changed a lot ahead of his upcoming release, which is not unusual in development. At one point, he was basically Batman and, at another point, he was Scandinavian before Respawn settled on the refined British gentleman he is. He also started out development as a weapon-based support legend forApex Legendsbefore his kit found its home in the assault class.
Game Rant recently spoke with narrative lead Sam Gill and senior legend designer John Ellenton, who played key roles inBallistic’s story and gameplay. Because of this, our discussion covered Ballistic’s initial concept to release, his abilities, background, relationship with other characters, and more.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Q: To start, could you speak a little bit more about Ballistic’s relationship with some of the other characters?
Gill:Because Ballistic is coming in for his second time around as a legend, he was a legend when he was younger, a lot of our legends have like a memory of him from when they were growing up. I think I mentioned Gibraltar had a poster or two of Ballistic on his walls.
There are some legends who also know that Ballistic used to be a hero and are quite dismissive of him because of that, which is sort of how I feel about famous people. “I don’t care about you,” there’s a bit of that.Bangalore certainly has a bit of that energy. You know, she’s like a new school gun master, whereas Ballistic is like an old school gun master, so they have a lot of rivalry about who is the best. It’s kind of a friendly rivalry, but a rivalry nonetheless. It can have a sibling vibe, I guess.
The big one is Pathfinder, who spentanamount of time as Ballistic’s really crappy Butler. You know, like dusting down Ballistic’s $20,000 vases or whatever, but like knocking them over all the time. I don’t think he lasted very long. So in-game, if you happen to have a Ballistic on your party and there’s a Pathfinder, there’ll be lots of banter about those days that will play out back and forth.
In fact, as the season goes on, we’ll see some other pieces of content come out that will fill in the blanks of that story. And to be honest, that’s some of my favorite content of the season—really funny but also quite sad and lonely. Not to say the season’s not aspirational, but man, there is some real human sadness in this season, get ready to be sad fans, and a bunch of other interactions with other characters which I’ll let fans discover as they play.
Q: Gameplay-wise, it seems Ballistic’s Kit is pretty universal, but are there any characters he pairs best with when thinking about team comp?
Ellenton:Yeah, I’d say Pathfinders, Octanes, any characters that can help him get into the fight because he doesn’t have any movement tech of his own.Buffingan Octanewho can push the fight, put a jump pad down, and you can play off that. He’ll be the assault and then a Skirmisher class could really help support him. But yeah, as you said, the weapon utility that comes out of the Ultimate works with everybody, so I’m really interested to see what kind of comps people come up with.
Q: Does his tactical and ultimate have any effect on weapon-based abilities like Vantage’s sniper rifle or Rampart’s Sheila?
Ellenton:No. Weapon abilities, any ability, grenades, none of that overheats. It’s purely just the floor weapons you can pick up.
Yeah, I was thinking about that after the session the other day, and I was like an unlimited ammo Sheila sounds terrifying.
Yeah, no, it won’t give unlimited ammo to abilities, and it won’t give unlimited ammo to crate weapons either. It’ll get the fast reloads, but you still will eat through the ammo pool of crate weapons.
Q: On the other end of that team comp question, what are some of the best counters against Ballistic?
Ellenton:High mobility is good for avoiding the tactical, so like your Horizons, your Pathfinders, people that can quickly duck behind cover and move away from the tactical. I thinksupport legends like Newcastlewill be very strong and Rampart. People can put up walls, create cover, and zone out the push that can happen from his abilities.
His play pattern is to single out of target and coordinate with your team to push and try to take out that one target. Then, you’re in a 3v2 scenario. Any team that can stop that push or deny that initial tactical hit will probably have some good success defending against Ballistic.
Q: Could you talk about how Ballistic’s development changed from his initial concept to his release?
On the gameplay side of things, we initially had the goal of him being a pure support legend, with it being all weapon base supporting, so supporting through weapons. And we tried a bunch of stuff, we tried a turret for the tactical, we tried a zone that would ping enemies, and we tried a bunch of passives that would give information about what guns the enemies were using. We tried a bunch of stuff to like get better weapon attachments.
But once we landed on the smart bullet and the tactical that was a little more offensive, than we really started to feel what that playstyle was, which was to single out a target, use the ultimate to buff the team, and then push. He still has the utility and the support aspect in his ultimate, but his tactical drove him into a more aggressive play style. But, we just couldn’t find a balance of pure support by buffing weapons that didn’t end up feeling like it was more offensive and more aggressive.
And we didn’t want to just buff damage and stuff like that, because messing with TTK is sacred in our game. We didn’t really want to go that route, so that was another barrier we had. We can’t just say you do more damage, so we had to find other ways to enhance the combat without making it unfair to the person fighting Ballistic. Reloads, you still have to shoot, you still have to hit your targets; you can just maybe get back into the fight a bit faster. Infinite ammo just helps with your inventory economy. If you’re low on ammo, now you can useBallistic to keep you in the fight. The movement speed is just a way to keep the pressure up without having to Holster your weapon essentially.
Q: And the story side of his development?
Gill:At one point,he was Batman, literally just Batman—orphan, dead parents, lots of money. That changed because he was Batman. Not a great move. He still lives in kind of Wayne Manor a little bit. There’s like vestigial elements of that.
For a while, he was Scandinavian. I really didn’t want him to be British honestly because it was too easy a choice for a character who was so refined. You know, it’s something of a trope really. But sometimes you just find that resisting the natural path doesn’t lead to the best results. Organically, it felt like he really should be a refined British gentleman and that’s what he became. We were able to lean into the things you would expect of that, but also know what audiences would expect from that kind of character and kind of lean against them too, you know? He’s not exactly who you’d expect him to be.
He’s a man full of love on the one hand, and on the other, he’s a bit of a bastard. I mean, that’s one thing that’s maybe true of almost all of our characters—not a great parent. But you know, the heart of storytelling is not a lack of drama.
I mean, Newcastle is a pretty good dad, I would argue.
That’s true. And so isHorizon, she’s a great momif certainly separated from her child, but there’s a healthy relationship there. Seer, as well, has a very healthy relationship with his parents. We don’t ring the same bell all the time.
What made it different here is we have a child of Ballistic, who is old enough to be an active participant in his own story. In the case of Horizon and Newt, he’s in a whole other era of time. So Horizon misses her kid and is always trying to get back to him, we may see something on that story pretty soon, but he can’t really react to any of that because he’s separated, you know. And Seer’s parents, I mean, they just want to live their lives, and they’re old enough to live good lives. They’re not really an active source of drama.
But here we have Ballistic with a son who is old enough to be having opinions that counter his Dad’s. Like, you know, “wait a minute, no, I dreamed of being in the games, and you ‘protected’ me from living out my dreams.” He’s old enough now to make his own choices and counter what his dad is doing. We’ll see a little bit of that play out this season and hopefully beyond, instead of it being a family drama that plays out on the sidelines.
It might be something that’s a bit more active and emotionally devastating perhaps. Again, it’s a sad season.
Q: So the son could be a legend someday?
Gill:It’s not the sort of thing that I want to promise, but I can certainly see it. I would love to see a world where father, son, and Ballistics ex-wife…I’d love to see the squad of that whole family. The dynamic, I think, would be really interesting.
Q: Very dramatic. Alright, so real quick. If, at one point, Ballistic was Batman, who was Robin? Pathfinder?
Gill:Oh, man, we got to make those legendary skins. Surely, that’s a good idea.
Ellenton: At the time, it was his butler. He did have a butler that was going to take up his steed, right? Because we still wanted him to be an older gentleman.
Gill:That’s right, there was. I don’t remember much about it. There was a ward character, so there was actually a Robin for a while, but it was just too one-for-one.
Elleton: I can see fan art of Ballistic and Pathfinder asBatman and Robin, though.
Q: You mentioned that he had a turret at one point. Is that something you could expand on, like why it wasn’t used?
Sure, yeah. We stepped away from the turret because it was really unhealthy for the game. It put down a target that sounded like a gun, so it would draw your focus away from an actual immediate threat. We didn’t want the turret to be something that was going to kill you because having player abilities that can kill are very, very difficult in Apex. It’s generally not something we want, likeFuse is maybe on the higher end, but there’s still counterplay.
It was really frustrating when you hear a loud shot, so you focus on it and start shooting it to just realize it was the turret, then you’re killed by the actual threat. It just betrayed the player’s trust of what was happening in the game. It was almost abetter decoy than Mirage.
So like a deadly Bamboozle?
Exactly. It was a decoy that fought back, even though it wasn’t doing much damage. You were just taking damage and hearing a gun from something that wasn’t a player. It was just not very well received, and we didn’t think it was healthy for the game.
Q: Ballistic is the first character after season 16’s massive class changes and having a season without a character. How did that impact his development? Did he get more time than usual?
Ellenton: I think we started his pre-pro probably earlier. We might have got a little more time to spend on the kit and really refine it, but once you know all the other streams like art and animation start coming in, then the timeline is pretty similar. It was more for me, I just got a little more time to front-load, prototype, and really refine the kit. But like with all things as we playtest and refine, things change.
Basically, once we get art on board, then we’re like, ‘okay, this is what we’re going with,’ because we don’t want to change directions when, you know, a gun has already been modeled or a character has already been modeled, stuff like that. It was a little bit more, but it wasn’t a crazy amount more, maybe a couple months more basically.
Q: Do you think that impacts him in-game any or was it just a benefit of it?
Ellenton:I think it was mostly a benefit. Yeah, hopefully, he comes out in a good spot. He’s going to be hot and powerful, and we’ll have to see how people react. We’ve got a lot of knobs to tune. We know where we can adjust if we need to quickly react to things.
Q: If I recall correctly, I’ve spoken with a few other devs in the past and the philosophy has always been to release a legend strongly and tune from there if need be. Is there anything that particularly you’re watching for him when he releases?
Ellenton: Yeah, so we’re definitely keeping an eye on the damage output of the tactical because it has damage on hit and then there’s the damage when you overheat. And then also just like how fast it takes to overheat, how fast it takes for the overheat to cool down how long that debuff applies for. That’s on the tactical side.
On the ultimate, it’s mainly how long it lasts for, how fast it is to activate, the speed the buffs apply, things like that. Those are all pretty easy knobs for us to play with and see if we can rein it in if we need to. But hopefully, he’s in a state where he’s good. He’s strong, but not frustrating to fight against. That was our goal: Give enough counterplay that, even when you do get hit by it, you feel like you have options.
Q: With his tactical, it seems a lot of people are excited by that nod toward the smart pistol from Titanfall. What was it like working in maybe not that heavy lore, but that kind of nod toward it?
Ellenton: Lore-wise, we basically were like Ballistic hired some dude was like, “hey, I want the tech from the smart pistol but in my own gun,” so he’s using the targeting system from the smart pistol, but the bullet, the output, and everything about how it functions is quite different. It’s its own thing.
It does a similar thing where you have to aim at the target, but it’s a much smaller aim window. It’s not quite as wide as the smart pistol. Then once it locks on, you can shoot and the bullet travels and tracks the target. It’s not super smart. It’s not going to go around geography, it’s not going to go through windows, and it’s not going around corners. The counterplay is to get behind cover, and it will probably miss and hit the cover instead.
It’s a highly inspired look as you might have seen. It’s anApex version of the smart pistol, but we took into account the single shot. It opens up like a double-barrel shotgun, so you put one bullet in and cock it back. It’s very different in the sense that there’s not a clip. It’s not shooting multiple bullets.
Gill: I think, in development, we called it the clever pistol, right?
Ellenton: Yeah, I think you can see CLVR on the pistol. It’s a little more classy.
Q: Was there any point where there was any actual consideration of bringing the smart pistol over with Ballistic or as its own weapon?
Ellenton:I was very adamant about it not being the smart pistol. This is inspired by it and it’s a retrofitted version of the smart pistol, but I didn’t want there to be any confusion with the smart pistol. I didn’t want it to feel like a smart pistol.
The smart pistol is pretty polarizing. I think some people love it, some people hate it. We’ve seen where someTitanfall people are sweating about the smart pistol. So yeah, I wanted to separate it from the smart pistol for sure, but still pay an homage to this.
Q: His early reception so far seems to have been a whole lot of “Daddy.” Was that something you were anticipating?
Ellenton: Once we started getting the model in-game, we were definitely getting that feedback internally. I think one of the art designers calls him “Gun Daddy.” And then once we had the bigger playtests where we bring in external content creators, streamers, and pros, we were getting that feedback too. I don’t think we went in with the intention of him being some hot older dude, but it definitely turned out that way.
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Apex Legendsis available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
