In case you didn’t know, the EVA-8 Auto shotgun is called that because it fires its pellets in the shape of an eight.
Mind. Blown.
So you’re maybe running around in the early part of an Apex Legends game and you come across the EVA-8 Auto. You grab it and then blow some fool’s head off just as they come around the corner, and if you take a moment to look at the pattern of bullet holes in the wall behind that person’s corpse, you’ll notice the pellets outline a figure eight.
Was that by design? Probably, but that’s not actually why they called it the EVA-8. At least, not initially.
Like most things from Apex Legends, the EVA-8 can trace its lineage back to the original Titanfall game. The “EVA” portion of EVA-8 stands for Extra Vehicular Activity, which was the colorful euphemism used to describe when pilots jump out of their Titans and start murdering people with regular old guns. In this case, a semi-automatic and auto-loading shotgun.
That explains the EVA part, but what about the 8? That’s simple: the EVA-8 fired 8 pellets per trigger pull.
Flash forward to Titanfall 2 and the EVA-8 would get the Auto moniker stuck at the end. That’s because the semi-auto shotgun was now a fully automatic shotgun that would empty its drum magazine in less than a second. It also had 8 rounds in it instead of 6, providing more reason for the gun to be called the EVA-8.
Finally, we arrive in Apex Legends where the EVA-8 Auto works much the same as it did in Titanfall 2, but with one additional feature: the pellets now outline the number eight. Also, there are nine pellets instead of eight. Just to make things a little confusing.
We can thank Reddit user SneakiestFever for finding this one out and sharing it with the world.
The EVA-8 may be falling out of favor in Apex Legends after the introduction of Season 2’s changes. Now, shotgun ammo stacks up to 16 rounds instead of 48, drastically increasing the EVA-8’s inventory requirements for extended use. Most people consider that a huge nerf, especially when something like the Alternator can make much more efficient use of its light ammo stacks.