Bangalore has been at the centre of the maelstrom that is Apex Legends’ main story for the past three seasons. Her love triangle involving Loba and Valkyrie started back in Season 9, but that has evolved into a quest to find her brother, Jackson, an IMC fighter who was recently reported missing.
Her story has come to a head in Season 12, culminating with challenges in the Firing Range that are not only fun to play, but hit some deep emotional beats, too. I played through them all in one sitting to fully appreciate the story that Respawn is trying to tell, and nothing prepared me for how it ended.
I've been a big Loba fan since embarking on the Broken Ghost questline with her back in Season 5. Her fight for vengeance against the murder robot Revenant who killed her parents was one of the best stories to be woven into the battle royale, but I had no particular affinity for Bangalore. Until now. Spoilers for the Season 12 Bangalore story below. You've been warned.
Thinking about it, until Season 8 Bangalore had been somewhat neglected. She was one of the day one characters, and yet we’d never really explored her back story. She was just a generic soldier with annoying voice lines. She still has the annoying voice lines, but at least we know more about her these days.
We’ve seen Bangalore and Loba’s relationship flourish and flounder across the past three seasons, and it always looked like this would be an endless will-they-won’t-they to annoy players for all eternity like Ross and Rachel with guns. Friends would have been much better if they gave everyone an R301, but I digress. However, as Bangalore has sought closure regarding her missing brother over the course of Season 12, her other emotional pursuits have begun to come to their conclusions too.
Wrapping up a character’s various story arcs in one neat package is a difficult thing for any game, but it’s even more impressive in a battle royale. But Apex Legends managed it. Interspersing the shooting gallery challenges at the Firing Range with flashbacks was a powerful way of showing how Bangalore was coping with her emotions, and effectively married gameplay and lore. When flashbacks of conversations with Jackson and Loba came to her, your vision blurred a little as Bangalore grew misty-eyed. The challenge grew more difficult for this period of time, before she focused on the task at hand again and your screen cleared up. Bangalore is trying to cope with her grief in the only way she knows how - channeling it into her firing drills. But it’s hard for her, and it’s hard for you too.
At the end of each challenge you hear another, full, flashback of a conversation with Wraith, Jackson, and then Loba. Each is accompanied by a bespoke piece of artwork displaying the scene. It’s here that you really learn about Bangalore’s past, through her conversations with others.
First, with Wraith, who explains that Jackson isn’t lost, he’s almost definitely dead. The records were burned, so it’s not 100 percent confirmed (nobody is ever dead forever in the Titanfall universe. Apart from Forge. And Viper.), but Bangalore’s search for her missing brother has come to a conclusion that none of us expected. I for one thought he would turn up again right at the end of the season, ready to be introduced as the Season 13 Legend. That still might happen, but it certainly seems less likely now.
Next, we get a flashback to a conversation with Jackson himself. He’s made a cake that their grandmother used to make, but Bangalore won’t eat it. She can’t handle the grief. The cake isn’t just cake, it’s got all the memories of their beloved grandmother baked in. But Jackson tells her that ignoring those memories isn’t the best way to grieve, and that he embraces them. Prescient.
Finally, as if coming to terms with the fact her brother is dead wasn’t enough, Bangalore recalls a conversation with Loba, the woman she loved and lost. The pair argue in a bar about conversations we heard seasons ago, and Bangalore reveals she’s accepted an offer to leave with Revenant, Loba’s mortal enemy.
She’s not leaving the games, but she’s joining Revenant on his quest to find his head (long story) and running away from her problems rather than confronting them. However, the final scene shows that she has undergone some emotional growth.
Bangalore is on the beach in Storm Point, drinking a beer in the ruins of her brother’s crashed ship. It’s a family tradition, but this time she’s alone. This is the first playable cutscene, and although it edged on the borders of ‘press F to pay respects’, flinging a bottle cap into the ocean to remember Jackson and honour his death was a fitting end to Bangalore’s three-season long arc.
The camera pans out and Bangalore’s self-imposed isolation from those she loves is mirrored by her surroundings. It’s rare you get a quiet moment in a battle royale, when you’re ordinarily competing against 57 other players and chatting with your two teammates, but Apex Legends stuck the landing here. Bangalore’s story has come to a natural conclusion that ties up a web of loose ends, yet still allows her room to move forwards. She’s come through a lot and has grown emotionally, something which even visual novels or narrative-heavy games fail to do convincingly. Managing to achieve all this in a battle royale is a testament to Apex Legends’ writers, and leaves me incredibly excited for the game’s future.