After teasing the Vantage reveal on Twitter last week, Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment has released a new episode of Stories From The Outlands that gives players a closer look at their past before joining the Apex games
Born on the frozen and abandoned planet of Pagos, Vantage, real name Mara Contrares, grew up with no one to entertain him except for his mother Xenia and the diverse fauna of Pagos, which Mara hunts daily. He enjoyed more freedom than the average child, living by only one rule: survive.
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Now Playing: Apex Legends | Stories of the Hollowlands: Survival
Although Mara and her mother’s frigid farm is safe, free, and private, danger lurks beneath the planet’s snowy surface, making Vantage’s mother a little overprotective. We see this in the trailer when Mara takes down a bat-like creature that bites her, injuring her hand. After being bitten, Mara uses a clipped whistle imitating a bird call to signal to her mother that she is unharmed. But as he sits in the snow, he notices something below: a freighter named the GDS Vantage.
After the bat incident, Mara’s mother scolds her for her curious nature, but she seems somewhat understanding. “When the boat crashed, I was curious, like you,” warns his mother. “And it almost killed me.”
Xenia has a massive scar on the side of her face and is blind in one eye, almost certainly as a result of tangling with whatever danger lurks inside the GDS Vantage. It’s clear that he raised Mara to be a skilled hunter for a reason.
Vantage’s mother, Xenia, has a huge scar over her right eye.
Back home, Xenia bandages her daughter’s injured hand, assuring her that there is nothing worth exploring on the GDS Vantage, describing it as “an empty cargo ship run by computers.” This indicates that Xenia has explored the spaceship for herself, a detail that Mara likely notices, increasing her determination to learn more about the ship. Mara asks her mother why there is a cargo ship in Pagos with no real cargo, but finally gets a no answer.
“The outside world doesn’t matter,” Xenia tells him, when asked what the ship’s initials mean.
Unfortunately, Mara isn’t listening. He returns to the crash site, abseils inside the abandoned craft and gives the place a good look, with disastrous consequences. Contrary to what his mother has led him to believe, the ship is far from empty. As Mara explores, she comes across a row of cells, some of which still contain the decomposing corpses of the ship’s unwitting occupants. One of the cells has broken bars, and Mara realizes that her sniper rifle is the same type the ship is equipped with, indicating that her weapon of choice was looted from the ship load dropped.
Approaching the cockpit, Mara makes another grim discovery: a dead body in the pilot’s seat. It seems that the ship was neither empty nor flown by computers. Upon reaching the cabin, Mara finds another smaller bat-like creature resting on the console. When he startles her, he presses a few keys, awakening the ship’s AI system and revealing a terrible truth: Mara’s mother is a liar.
She is also a wanted felon. He was not born in Pagos, as he told his daughter. In fact, Xenia only arrived when the GDS Vantage crashed into the planet. Mara’s mother is, or was, a prisoner.
A holographic search poster for Xenia appears, showing her as she appeared before the ship crashed. The AI system’s voice also answers a question Mara’s mother wouldn’t ask, revealing that GDS stands for Gaean Detention Ship, indicating that Xenia may have originally been a resident of Crypto and Caustic’s homeworld. Xenia’s crimes are not known.
Xenia’s holographic search poster reveals that she has lied to her daughter about almost every detail of their lives.
Instead of imparting more valuable information, the AI system attacks, scans Mara, and mistakes her for Xenia. The ship’s giant metal cargo arms seem programmed for hostility, lunging and attacking Mara as they try to drag her into her mother’s cell. (Interestingly, each of these charging arms has a Hammond Robotics logo.)
Mara barely survives the fight, escaping by the skin of her teeth. As he lies bleeding on a snowy cliff, he watches his whistling bird slide off the edge of the cliff, crushing any chance of rescue. Luckily, she’s not completely alone. Echo, the baby bat that activated the AI system, gets her whistle back, but is too injured to use it when Echo returns. Instead, the creature brings the whistle to Xenia, who has been frantically using her own whistle to search for her daughter.
Echo tries to persuade an injured Mara to use her bird whistle.
As Vantage drifts in and out of consciousness, her mother approaches, surrounded by a flock of bats that almost seem drawn to her, much like the way Bloodhound interacts with crows. Crouching down, Xenia activates her personal prisoner distress beacon, places it in her daughter’s hands, and proclaims that she cannot save Mara. The scene ends as the Gaean Space Authority arrives to retrieve Mara in response to the activation of the distress beacon.
This episode of Stories from the Outlands answers a lot of questions about the upcoming season, but if you’re still looking forward to Season 14 content, you won’t have long to wait: the season launch trailer will be released on July 28 at 8am. PT / 11 a.m. ET, with Season 14 of Apex Legends: Hunted kicking off on August 9.
Apex Legends is free to play on console and PC. A mobile version of the game, Apex Legends Mobile, is available for download on Android and iOS devices.
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