The Entire Apex Legends Story Explained

When Apex Legends launched in February 2019, it introduced a new, fairly unique battle royale experience that shook the gaming world up in a major way. The tight first-person-shooter combat, unique character abilities, and genre-changing ping system helped the game stick out. Not only that, the unique setting of Apex Legends and the aesthetic of its characters caught players' eyes.

Fans were especially interested in the narrative contained within Apex Legends because it was a spin-off of another iconic Respawn franchise – Titanfall. While the title was light on story elements at first, each season introduced new events, cinematic tie-ins, and in-game changes that dove deeper into the mysteries surrounding the world of the Apex Games.

With Season 5 and the introduction of master thief Loba and her treasure quests, there emerged an even bigger focus on narrative than ever before. To help get you caught up on what you need to know about the world of Apex Legends, here's a complete rundown of the story so far.

In order to understand the world of Apex Legends, you need to understand the story of the Titanfall series. Apex Legends takes place in the aftermath of something called the Frontier War, which is the central conflict throughout both Titanfall and Titanfall 2.

The Frontier is a vast collection of planets in the deepest regions of our solar system, and was initially colonized by members of the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation, or IMC. This group, formerly known as Hammond Engineering, was a massive industrial conglomerate on Earth that funded explorations into untapped colonies across the solar system in order to exploit the resources of these unknown worlds.

The IMC settled the Frontier, but when war broke out back home near Earth, the IMC abandoned these initial colonists to refocus its funding and efforts on the war at home. Decades later, the IMC returned to the Frontier to claim ownership over it, but a thriving civilization had been developed there, and the colonists refused to hand over the reigns. This led to a clash between the Frontier and the IMC that sparked decades of warfare.

The Frontier War spanned decades of conflict and multiple devastating campaigns, and nearly everyone in the Frontier either had involvement in the Frontier Wars or knew someone who was involved. A few of these Frontier citizens went on to become iconic Legends in the Apex Games.

One of these Legends, Bangalore, went by the name of Anita Williams during the Frontier Wars. She was born into a family of IMC veterans, and was a flawless soldier since she was young. She would end up participating in the final, catastrophic battle of the Frontier Wars: the Battle at Gridiron.

Anita and her brother were stranded in The Outlands after this battle, and when unknown attackers ambushed them, Anita found herself alone in the Outlands and had no choice but to put her skills to use in the Apex Games to earn enough money to find her way back home.

While Mirage didn't fight in the Frontier Wars, his three brothers did. All three went missing during the wars while Mirage and his mother developed holo technology together.

Two of the most popular Legends in Apex Legends have pretty mysterious histories, but a few key hints and Easter eggs point at them potentially being major members of the Frontier Wars.

The first is Wraith, everyone's favorite moody, multi-dimensional assassin. Years before the events of the battle royale game, she found herself inside an IMC Detention Facility for the Mentally Ill, with her memories gone and voices whispering in her head.

We know the vivid details of how she came to be broken out of that facility: it happened thanks to an alternate-dimension version of herself that also bestowed upon her the abilities of the voidwalker. There's only one brief hint at her life before she was Subject 61137, though — an audio log in Apex Legends that reveals she was once a Research Science Pilot for the IMC.

Pathfinder also has no memories of his past or who created him. He does, however, have an obsession with high-fives. Another MRVN robot obsessed with high-fives existed in Titanfall 2, so perhaps they're one and the same.

Despite going on for what seemed like forever, the Frontier War did eventually end with the Battle at Gridiron. There was no clear winner of the conflict, though. The IMC was decimated, the Frontier Militia was no more, and the remaining citizens of The Frontier found their home in shambles. Some chose to stay where they were and attempt to rebuild, but many ended up relocating to the farthest corners of The Frontier — a collection of lawless planets untouched by war called The Outlands.

This wasn't a natural oasis for long, though. An ancient blood sport in The Outlands, the Apex Games, was revived and revitalized by a mysterious new group called The Syndicate in order to take advantage of the fresh blood and talented fighters. The only solid thing known about The Syndicate is that Kuben Blisk, an ex-IMC fighter and antagonist from Titanfall 2, is likely the founder of The Syndicate.

Kuben Blisk and The Syndicate planned to turn the Apex Games into a flashy blood sport broadcast across all of The Outlands, but the collective needed help from many talented individuals in order to bring the massive scale of the 60-person battle royale to life. One of those sharp minds was Luc Paquette, the lead electrical engineer of the Games. While he was always engrossed in his work, his daughter Natalie Paquette studied all of his manuals and projects to stay close to him and feed her passion for electricity.

Eventually, she became smart enough herself that the Games commissioned her to design the Modified Containment Ring that encircles the map during each round of Apex Legends. Her father died the day the ring was revealed, though, and in her sadness, a group of friends convinced her to join the Games with them as a Legend. She did so as Wattson.

Crypto has a similar story. He was once a computer engineer for The Syndicate, designing the drones used to broadcast the games. When The Syndicate framed him for the murder of his sister, though, he joined the games to seek revenge and answers.

Entering the Apex Games was harder for Crypto than it was for any other Legend. Not only was he not an experienced fighter, but he was still high on The Syndicate's hit-list and would likely never make it through the qualifying rounds without getting found out. To circumvent this, Crypto spent much of Season 2 hacking his way through the Apex Games and The Syndicate, ultimately finding the info he needed to log directly into the servers and insert himself into the roster as a Legend.

Crypto needed to make sure eyes weren't on the servers while he did this, though, so he decided to run a distraction by destroying the Repulsion Tower in King's Canyon, the area where the Apex Games are held. Not only did this keep The Syndicate distracted, but it also forced the games to temporarily move to a new location called World's Edge. This long-abandoned stretch of lava and flash-frozen ice was foreign to all of the competitors but one. Before the flash-freeze explosion and invasion from the IMC, World's Edge was the home of Bloodhound and their tribe.

Every season of Apex Legends has added a new Legend to the roster, and Season 4 was set to add Forge, a handsome prizefighter backed by the rebranded and reborn Hammond Robotics. After the end of the Frontier Wars, Hammond Robotics went through a massive rebranding campaign to distance itself from its involvement with the IMC and weapons manufacturing, as well as its involvement in developing simulacrum — robotic soldiers with human minds.

Many people forgot about the dark history of Hammond Robotics, but a simulacrum known as Revenant discovered the company's crimes when his programming failed and he finally realized he was a robotic nightmare and not a true human. When Hammond Robotics re-emerged to bring Forge to the Apex Games, Revenant finally had the opportunity to get his revenge. He murdered Forge during a live interview, and pressured The Syndicate and Hammond Robotics into letting the synthetic assassin take Forge's spot in the Apex Games.

On the same day that Revenant discovered the dark truth of his identity, he spurred the long-festering revenge story of another Legend in Apex Legends. Revenant murdered Macros and Alanza Andrade that day, a pair of Bonnie-and-Clyde con artists who had a huge bounty on their heads after Marcos stole an artifact from an unknown owner. It turns out that thievery ran in their blood, as their orphaned daughter Loba supported herself in the years following the murders by picking pockets, cracking saves, and amassing her own horde of stolen fortune.

Loba was satisfied with her lot in life, but when she discovered that Revenant joined the Apex Games, she plotted to kill him by destroying a facility full of Revenant bodies in King's Canyon. This destroyed Skull Town and Thunderdome, but not Revenant. With no choice but to join the Apex Games, Loba ended up putting her quest for revenge on hold in order to pursue something — or someone — named The Broken Ghost.