'Apex Legends' Octane: Abilities and Guide to the New Character

Apex Legends’s ninth playable character might look a lot like Junkrat from Overwatch, but Octane’s playing style is totally different in almost every way.

Apex Legends Season 1 kicked off on Tuesday, and Octane’s release coincided with the release of the game’s first-ever battle pass. Respawn’s official Apex Legends website has a full profile up for the character, outlining his backstory and full toolkit of abilities.

He’s labeled the “Adrenaline Junkie,” and all of his abilities support that label. Heir to the CEOs of Silva Pharmaceuticals, Octavio Silva blew his legs off with a grenade while trying to propel himself through a Gauntlet speedrun, all to make a sick video for YouTube, or whatever the Apex Legends equivalent is.

But thanks to Lifeline (another playable character), he was able to get bionic replacements for his legs. The end result is a new contender in the Apex Games who’s totally reckless and for players who don’t mind sacrificing a bit of health for mobility.

Octane’s active Stim ability costs 10 percent of his health to increase mobility by 30 percent for six seconds. (This boost is comparable to Bangalore’s Double Time, which activates when she’s under enemy fire.) Losing health might seem counterintuitive at first, but Octane’s passive ability, Swift Mend, automatically restores his health over time. This effectively rewards reckless behavior and allows Octane to move quicker than pretty much every other player.

Octane’s ultimate ability is Launch Pad. He deploys a pad that allows anyone to bounce high into the air. To be clear, this is not a Fortnite launch pad that catapults players so high they can then redeploy their parachute.

Octane’s pad functions more like a trampoline that can bounce players on top of most smaller buildings. Combined with Stim, Octane can quickly disengage from encounters when needed and hide, or he can simply use both to outmaneuver and disorient enemies long enough to make the killing blow.

Octane has only been available for a few hours, and just like whenever a new character comes to Overwatch, everyone is obsessively trying him out. For now, expect to see a lot of Octane in every single match of Apex Legends, but considering his interesting set of abilities, he might remain one of the most frequently played characters for a long time to come.

Octane is now available in Apex Legends for 750 Apex Coins or 12,000 Legend Tokens.