'Apex Legends': Octane Is Looking More And More Like The Season 1 Battle Pass Hero, What We Know

There's one giant question remaining about Apex Legends, and it's this: how is this game going to make any money? Sure, it's selling cosmetics, Apex Coins, all sort of legends' skins right now, but they're not much to write home about. The real moneymaker here is going to be new characters, the first of which Respawn is expected to reveal alongside the Season 1 battle pass. And while we're pretty early in this game's lifespan, so far things are looking pretty leaky: Apex Legends itself actually leaked out last year, though nobody paid it much mind. And all the leaks so far are pointing to a new legend showing up next week, and that legend's name is Octane.

Rumors about Octane have been circulating ever since his name showed up in a datamine a while back that had a whole laundry list of characters as well as a few abilities. Now the still-theoretical adrenaline junky has moved to the forefront of the Apex Legends discussion thanks to some additional leaks that suggest he's going to to be the face of Season 1 when the battle pass launches, either as part of the pass itself or as a premium purchase released around the same time. And the evidence keeps mounting that this is a real leak.

Octane discussion moved to the forefront of new legend talk when a somewhat controversial photo began circulating on Reddit last week. It's a little Borderlands-meets-Apex, and it's certainly a striking piece of work. Daily Esports recently claimed that a source both confirmed the start date for Season 1 as of March 12 and supposedly verified the Octane leak, at the same time providing a higher-quality image of the earlier leak. Another Reddit poster also gave us what appears to be an in-game 3D image that matches up with the 2D one. We've also had more than one leak appearing to show an in-game snapshot of Octane's abilities. 

Octane is apparently stimpack-style hero, borrowing an ability archetype that's at least as old as Starcraft, but probably older than that. He can inject himself to increase his movement speed at the cost of health, which he can apparently recover with a gradual out-of-combat healing mechanic. His ultimate is a Jump Pad that can bounce himself and teammates(and possibly enemies) around the map, which sounds a little less useful than his standard abilities.

Leaks and rumors should always be taken with a grain of salt. That being said, there are some reasons to like this one. For one thing, the original artwork is both high quality and consistent with the style of Apex Legends. Now, that doesn't mean it would have been impossible for someone talented to mock up a little sketch based on the art style and the name "Octane", but we have to use a sliding scale of believability here. The harder it is to fake something, the more believable it is, and this would be pretty hard to fake. Not only do we have the original artwork, but we also have a 3D image and an ability set to match.

People have gone to elaborate lengths for the sake of internet hoaxes, there's no doubt about that. But there's enough here that I'm going to call this one probably true.