Welcome to Storm Point, Apex Legends' sun-soaked new map

Last week, Apex Legends introduced us to next season's bloody summer holiday with a flashy cinematic trailer. Today, we got a proper look at what Respawn has packed for this unseasonable vacation—and where better to start than with the tropical new location itself?

Marking a year since Apex was last given a new map with Olympus, Storm Point takes our murderbuds on a sun-soaked holiday to a sprawling island retreat. With locations ranging from bone-white beaches to overgrown jungles, Storm Point looks both sprawling and towering, with hints at verticality well beyond what we've currently seen.

It's also home to a thriving ecosystem, one that doesn't seem entirely happy to have its home turned into a bloodsport arena. It looks like both wild Prowlers (the Titanfall universe's lizard-dog-things) and nasty spiders lurk in the undergrowth, ready to chow down on unprepared Legends. Luckily, Olympus' Trident hovercars are parked around should you need to outrun any hungry beasties, and there are some wonderfully Halo 3-inspired Gravity Cannons to help punt you across the map.

The trailer also gave us a better look at the CAR SMG, which has the particularly spicy feature of being able to take both heavy and light ammo. Considering how ammo-hungry contemporaries like the R99 and Volt are, being able to snatch ammo from both sources seems particularly thrifty.

Finally, we get a better look new hero Ash's abilities. The first is a thrown tether that, as teased, slows enemies while lightly shocking them. But the other looks tremendously spicy, a directional phase dash that can carry Ash a truly terrifying distance in any direction in mere seconds.

We'll get a chance to tan ourselves on Storm Point when Apex Legends: Escape launches next Tuesday, November 2.