Apex Legends Blows Up Kings Canyon In Season 8, While New Legend Faces "Copycat" Claim

Apex Legends Season 8 arrives on February 2, and it's going to be an explosive update -- literally. The Kings Canyon map will be "dramatically reshaped" thanks to a the arrival of a new champion, the explosive Fuse, which you can get hints of by watching the trailer for the new season, below. In addition to the third major overhaul for the iconic map, the update will also bring the usual extras, such as a new battle pass, ranked season, and weapon, the 30-30 Repeater lever-action rifle.

Fuse, is described as a "blow-up-first ask-questions-later kinda guy." With a cocky attitude and rocket launcher ultimate, he's got the firepower to get his point across in a number of different ways.

Exactly how "different" he is, however, is up for some debate. Indie developer NOWWA has accused Respawn Entertainment of copying the design for Fuse from Hunter, the main character of its upcoming game BulletVille. According to Forbes' Paul Tassi, there's a long list of "coincidences" between Fuse and Hunter, many of which Tassi admits are things you're likely to see repeated in the world of hero shooters. In fact, when I saw the original side-by-side comparison of Fuse and Hunter, my first thought was Lockwood from Atlas Reactor and Atlas Rogues, with his shock of white hair. You could also draw lesser comparisons to Overwatch's McCree and even Crucible's Sazan.

NOWWA has some reason to think this is more than mere coincidence, however. Tassi wrote that the developer "worked with EA on a potential EA Originals deal in 2020, and gave them access to an early build" of BulletVille, with the earliest image of Hunter appearing in May 2019. That's just three months after Apex Legends launched and likely well before Fuse was in development.

That said, if you want to find a character who greatly resembles a character from another game, you need only visit the home page for BulletVille. There you'll find Orion, a cheerleader-with-a-chainsaw character, who, color scheme and hair style aside, bears a resemblance to the title character from 2012's Lollipop Chainsaw. Given the deep pockets of Electronic Arts as compared to NOWWA, I doubt that this one will go to court, but if it does, I don't think EA will have any trouble finding enough evidence to refute NOWWA's claims.