[Update #2]: Apex Legends' Season 12 - Defiance is launching on February 8, 2022 with the new Legend Mad Maggie.

[Update]: The Dark Depths update is bringing in a lush new Arena map and a bunch of free cosmetics on January 11, 2022.

In order to help pass the time before the big Season 12 update arrives at some point in February, Apex Legends devs have now unleashed a brand new animated short. Unlike some of the previous ones, the freshly released Stories from the Outlands: Gridiron is not here to tease new content, but rather to give us a bit of an insight into Bangalore's history.

So if you're interested in learning some more Banga-lore that's thankfully not 10 minutes of her overexplaining basic concepts to people, allow me to share with you the cinematic short. It's quite an interesting one!

If there is one thing I can complain about, it would be how the short manages to both nail what Pilots would be like to average people, and simultaneously mess up the exact same thing. Pilots are essentially super-human, so seeing everyone terrified of them dashing around the battlefield is quite apt. On the other hand, seeing two wounded people try to fistfight someone that can smash through walls just seems ridiculous. The Pilot losing because they were being cocky is perfectly fine, but I can't help but feel like that whole fight could've been done a bit more elegantly.

Whatever the case may be, it was still a fun animated short that gave us more information about an underdeveloped character, so I'm definitely still happy to have it. And if we're lucky, we might get another one in the near future as well since Season 12 is likely to land in early February!

Once the next big announcement goes live I'll make sure to let you know. For now, however, I'll leave you with my favorite Apex short - the Pathfinder focused Stories from the Outlands: Fight Night.