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Apex Legends dropped its twentieth(!) season this week, with Apex Legends Breakout bringing a whole bunch of new content for the battle royale favourite. Celebrating the game’s fifth anniversary, the latest season has shook things up, by introducing a new Legend Upgrade system and an overhaul to Ranked mode as well as a new map.
It’s this map – which goes by the name Thunderdome – that’s attracted some attention from community of another popular shooter game The Finals. Over on the The Finals subreddit, a thread by a community member going by the name xenn64 has started a discussion on whether the new map was “heavily inspired by the Finals”.
However many – us included – aren’t entirely convinced by the argument put forward by the op, and there’s several reasons why.
1) It’s already established in Apex lore
There’s also a number of players pointing out Apex’s already established lore too, which this map leans into. “The Thunderdome (which this map is based on) is a fighting arena which has existed in Apex lore for years. This is just the first time they’ve made a map out of it,” says ItsHen.
2) The Finals Skyway Stadium map is ‘ever-changing’
It’s hard to put a coherent argument of a map copying the work of another, when the whole selling point of The Finals maps is their destruction makes them constantly different. Given Apex Legends maps are pretty static, it’s a stretch to say there’s too much copying over here.
3) Both games have similar premises – but so do a lot of others
Even in the thread itself, many are pointing out how both games have a similar “lethal gameshow” premise. “The finals didn’t invent stadiums bro, siege did that even b4 the finals and probably many more games did that too,” points out Useful-Connection205.
4) Skyway Stadium has far more trees
Just look at the amount of shrubbery on display in The Finals map. Thunderdome takes far more inspiration from its desert surroundings than anything, with a number of rocky outcrops and surfaces for players to fly between.
5) Apex Legends is much, much older than The Finals
OK this is an obvious one, but at the end of the day this new map still uses a lot of existing assets that have been in Apex Legends for a long time. With five years under its belt, many features almost blur into the background – so it’s not even as if they weren’t already there. It feels like the recent Palworld and Pokemon discourse has just made people making too quick conclusions sometimes.
It’s of course entirely understandable why such comparisons are being made – both games feature squads of three locked in combat. And while Apex Legends takes more of a Battle Royale route in its standard mode, it also features a number of other modes – or Mixtape modes as it calls them – that have a similar playstyle.
All this being said, it’s perhaps Hitroll that puts it best – “It ultimately doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s coincidence. Maybe they took inspiration. It doesn’t matter that much.” – and they’re absolutely right. Games have been riffing off each other for years, and are bound to have some similarities – and these ones are pretty loose.
There’s certainly room for both shooters in the gaming sphere, and there’s plenty of players who no doubt can and will play both, and perhaps they’ll make some new fans from one or the other camp.
In the meantime, for more on the new season, check out our Apex Legends Breakout rewards guide – how to unlock free Legendary Wraith skin or our breakdown of the Apex Legends Season 20 Breakout Battle Pass.
