Note: The final shipping legends were the product of numerous incredibly talented individuals across multiple departments and disciplines. While I initiated, implemented, and drove these character designs in terms of abilities and gameplay, the final product was only realized through a team effort.
Live Service Disclaimer: Apex Legends is a live service game. Legends are subject to balance changes and even full kit redesigns. I stopped working on Apex in late 2019 and my last Legend design released in 2020. I claim neither credit nor responsibility for the current live state of Apex characters. While much of my work survives in its original form, subsequent alterations and balance changes are the unique contributions of other designers. My commentary, observations, and philosophy on Apex character design extends to my designs at the time they launched and no further.
Live Service Disclaimer: Apex Legends is a live service game. Legends are subject to balance changes and even full kit redesigns. I stopped working on Apex in late 2019 and my last Legend design released in 2020. I claim neither credit nor responsibility for the current live state of Apex characters. While much of my work survives in its original form, subsequent alterations and balance changes are the unique contributions of other designers. My commentary, observations, and philosophy on Apex character design extends to my designs at the time they launched and no further.
Key Details
Project: Apex Legends
Feature: Bangalore - Soldier Character For New Players
Fantasy: Professional Soldier
Niche: Frontal Assaults & Defender Disruption
My Role: Pitched, Designed, and Scripted Character Abilities
Released: February 4th, 2019
Feature: Bangalore - Soldier Character For New Players
Fantasy: Professional Soldier
Niche: Frontal Assaults & Defender Disruption
My Role: Pitched, Designed, and Scripted Character Abilities
Released: February 4th, 2019
Kit Summary
I designed Bangalore’s kit to solve the tactical problem of crossing open ground on large Battle Royale maps. Drawing inspiration from WWI assault doctrine, I built a smoke‑based sightline denial ability, a creeping‑barrage ultimate, and a passive that encourages aggressive forward movement under fire.
Work Overview
- Pitched, designed, implemented, and iterated all three abilities. Collaborated with Designer Carlos Pineda on final polish.
- Prototyped numerous ability alternatives to find final kit.
- Worked closely with Art, FX, Narrative, and Animation to interweave character persona with gameplay mechanics.
- Provided historical research for narrative team.
Designing Bangalore
Design Overview
Bangalore's kit is best understood in relation to early Apex level design.
A decent portion of our character roster predates our launch map, Kings Canyon. When Jason McCord began working on Kings Canyon, the scale of combat spaces increased significantly. It was several times larger than any level we had previously shipped.
This introduced a new challenge: the distances between points of interest were much larger. Advancing over open ground when an enemy squad held a superior defensive position became a real problem. If the circle was at your back, charging into gunfire was sometimes the only option. It often made defeat feel inevitable. It also presented an opportunity. Players just needed the tactical tools to attack the problem head-on.
There was a desire for a well-rounded soldier character. Gibraltar, Bloodhound, Pathfinder, Caustic, Wraith, Mirage, and Lifeline all had specialized combat roles. We needed a "default" choice who was tactically flexible and provided a natural fit for players coming to Apex from other popular shooters.
With the new "open ground" problem and the desire for a soldier character in mind, I turned to history and military doctrine. The best real-world touchstone for crossing open ground without air support or armor is the tactics deployed during WWI. Two specific assault tactics stood out. The first was smoke shells. The second was creeping barrages.
A creeping barrage is an artillery bombardment executed in concert with an infantry advance. Shells are fired about 50 to 100 yards ahead of the infantry to screen their advance. The idea is to force the defenders to ground. By the time the shelling ends, the assaulting force is on top of them.
The name is a reference to the "Bangalore Torpedo," a weapon used to clear defensive obstacles in WWI and WWII. The weapon was invented in the Indian city of Bangalore and was first fielded by Indian troops serving in the British Armed Forces. It was used across the Allied forces of both wars, seeing service from No Man's Land to the beaches of Normandy. It cracked open defenses. The name captured what I wanted the kit to be: an homage to soldiers around the world.
Bangalore would storm the beaches, go over the top, and as George Patton famously said, "go straight through [the enemy] like crap through a goose." I wanted players to feel confident in extremely fraught firefights. I wanted them to run towards danger. It would take careful ability design to encourage these behaviors in players.
The Abilities
Smoke Launcher [Tactical]
I started working on the kit by developing the Smoke Launcher. Using smoke to obscure vision isn't a novel concept in shooters, but this ability is tailored to Apex combat. Its two defining aspects are its effective range and deployment pattern. Bangalore is designed to mount frontal assaults on fixed positions. The smoke needs to effectively eliminate defensive firing positions across a wide swath of the frontline. This forces defenders to reposition significantly, buying Bangalore's squad time to aggressively advance.
I settled on a launched projectile that players can fire up to several hundred yards. On impact, it deploys a wall of smoke perpendicular to the direction the shell is fired. When the shell strikes a wall, it instead pops smoke perpendicular to the wall normal and flush against the surface. This allows Bangalore to easily obscure sightlines along the length of low cover walls, block windows, and compromise elevated sniping positions. Bangalore's smoke was the first multi-charge ability in Apex. I found that two smoke shells back-to-back granted the character enormous tactical flexibility.
Refining Bangalore's Tactical had more to do with the smoke itself than the deployment mechanism.
Players had a strong desire to shoot smoke directly at opponents. People simply expected that it would deal damage. I wanted to avoid turning smoke shells into a weapon, as increased lethality reduces the average player's ability to participate. I made the shells deal a small amount of "ear flick" damage—just enough to generate a hit marker. The questions around damage evaporated. It also allowed for "smoke checking." If a player shoots a smoke shell and gets a hit marker, they confirm the enemy's location. This made the ability feel more nuanced and responsive.
Smoke, like the rest of Bangalore's kit, is tailored toward helping her reach the enemy position. Her ability to storm the position is based on positioning and gun skill.
However, her power shifts drastically when she finds a Threat Scope or teams up with Bloodhound, as this allows her to see enemies through her smoke. It's an extremely powerful combo that cuts both ways: enemies can compromise smoke cover using the same tactics.
This created a rock-paper-scissors dynamic with limited player agency. It taught me an important lesson: think of the character roster as an ecosystem of potential interactions. When designing and balancing kits, you have to consider the secondary dynamics created by character synergies just as carefully as you consider the individual kits themselves.
Despite this, Bangalore's Tactical remains one of the most broadly useful abilities in the game. It can be used when assaulting, screening retreats, rescuing teammates, deterring third parties, hiding rotations, popping doors, triggering traps, and much more.
The final result was a tactically flexible tool that established the backbone of Bangalore's kit.
Rolling Thunder [Ultimate]
I designed Bangalore's creeping barrage ability, "Rolling Thunder," to complement the Smoke Launcher during assaults. It is intended as the ultimate tool for disrupting a defensive position.
Bangalore deploys the ability by throwing a marker grenade. This calls in a creeping barrage of delayed-fuse bombs. The bombs begin landing near the marker and progress forward in the direction the grenade was thrown. Each bomb lands in sequence, sticking into the ground. Once all the bombs have landed, players can clearly see the bounds of the ability. After a few moments, the bombs explode in the same order they landed. This creates a winding detcord explosion.
If Bangalore's squad follows closely behind the explosions they can effectively screen their advance towards the enemy position.
Shock and awe is the point. Defenders quickly find themselves surrounded by a sea of ticking time bombs. It strongly incentivizes them to stop shooting, head indoors, deploy defensive abilities, or withdraw. If defenders aren't coordinated, they can panic, scattering in different directions. This forces them to consolidate before they can reestablish an effective defense.
Like many early Apex abilities, the threat of damage is a tool to alter your opponent's behavior. It limits their options by attacking their strategy. I prioritized disrupting defenders without increasing lethality. The detonation delay allows enemies to escape damage by forcing them out of position. It makes assaults safer, without killing defenders outright. As long as the defense is compromised, the ability has done its job. To further reinforce this, I implemented a shell-shock status effect that the bombs apply. This punishes defenders who simply accept the damage in order to hold position.
Rolling Thunder can also be used to deter third parties, block enemy rotations, or pin squads inside buildings. This tactical flexibility meshes well with the rest of Bangalore's kit.
Double-Time[Passive]
I settled on Bangalore's passive much later than the rest of the kit. The smoke launcher and creeping barrage were working well, but I could feel something missing: player confidence in the face of danger.
Bangalore's abilities are most effective when players capitalize on the disruption they create.
Players need to be confident and aggressive. I often saw the opposite. Bangalore players would deploy their abilities and begin to advance, then slow down the moment they started taking fire. Their advance would stall and they would die as a result. Apex is a single life mode and players were afraid to die. Their hesitation was killing them. They needed confidence to keep pushing.
I'm about to go on a bit of a historical digression, but it's relevant, so bear with me.
Bayonets likely saved lives during the wars of the 18th and 19th centuries. When we look at American Civil War casualty and hospital records, bayonet injuries are extremely uncommon. We're talking way less than 1% of combat injuries. Why is this? It turns out, when hundreds of screaming soldiers are running at you with bayonets, you're not likely to stick around. Charges tended to go one of two ways. Either the attackers broke before they reached the defenders, or the defenders fled before the attackers arrived. Only soldiers trapped in buildings or forts typically fought hand-to-hand.
In essence, these charges were a deadly game of chicken. The force with greater confidence carried the day. As an attacker, you have to keep moving. You cannot afford to lose momentum or the attack will stall.
I needed to instill Bangalore with the confidence to maintain momentum throughout a charge. Damage punishes players for getting shot. What players needed was a reward that counteracted their hesitation. Gunfire needed to be an opportunity to advance, rather than a deterrent. I could use that dynamic to manufacture confidence.
Looking for inspiration, I listened to the accounts of soldiers who landed at Normandy on D-Day. One commonality jumped at me. It was the most high-stake run of their lives. They just went for it. They had to. There wasn't the luxury of time to think about it or hesitate.
I could replicate this behavior in game by accelerating Bangalore when bullets passed near her. I wouldn't give players time to think about it.
The results were immediate, Bangalore players started advancing under withering fire. The Passive consistently helped Bangalore players aggressively capitalize on their Tactical and Ultimate. The kit was finally complete.
Bangalore's kit is best understood in relation to early Apex level design.
A decent portion of our character roster predates our launch map, Kings Canyon. When Jason McCord began working on Kings Canyon, the scale of combat spaces increased significantly. It was several times larger than any level we had previously shipped.
This introduced a new challenge: the distances between points of interest were much larger. Advancing over open ground when an enemy squad held a superior defensive position became a real problem. If the circle was at your back, charging into gunfire was sometimes the only option. It often made defeat feel inevitable. It also presented an opportunity. Players just needed the tactical tools to attack the problem head-on.
There was a desire for a well-rounded soldier character. Gibraltar, Bloodhound, Pathfinder, Caustic, Wraith, Mirage, and Lifeline all had specialized combat roles. We needed a "default" choice who was tactically flexible and provided a natural fit for players coming to Apex from other popular shooters.
With the new "open ground" problem and the desire for a soldier character in mind, I turned to history and military doctrine. The best real-world touchstone for crossing open ground without air support or armor is the tactics deployed during WWI. Two specific assault tactics stood out. The first was smoke shells. The second was creeping barrages.
A creeping barrage is an artillery bombardment executed in concert with an infantry advance. Shells are fired about 50 to 100 yards ahead of the infantry to screen their advance. The idea is to force the defenders to ground. By the time the shelling ends, the assaulting force is on top of them.
The name is a reference to the "Bangalore Torpedo," a weapon used to clear defensive obstacles in WWI and WWII. The weapon was invented in the Indian city of Bangalore and was first fielded by Indian troops serving in the British Armed Forces. It was used across the Allied forces of both wars, seeing service from No Man's Land to the beaches of Normandy. It cracked open defenses. The name captured what I wanted the kit to be: an homage to soldiers around the world.
Bangalore would storm the beaches, go over the top, and as George Patton famously said, "go straight through [the enemy] like crap through a goose." I wanted players to feel confident in extremely fraught firefights. I wanted them to run towards danger. It would take careful ability design to encourage these behaviors in players.
The Abilities
Smoke Launcher [Tactical]
I started working on the kit by developing the Smoke Launcher. Using smoke to obscure vision isn't a novel concept in shooters, but this ability is tailored to Apex combat. Its two defining aspects are its effective range and deployment pattern. Bangalore is designed to mount frontal assaults on fixed positions. The smoke needs to effectively eliminate defensive firing positions across a wide swath of the frontline. This forces defenders to reposition significantly, buying Bangalore's squad time to aggressively advance.
I settled on a launched projectile that players can fire up to several hundred yards. On impact, it deploys a wall of smoke perpendicular to the direction the shell is fired. When the shell strikes a wall, it instead pops smoke perpendicular to the wall normal and flush against the surface. This allows Bangalore to easily obscure sightlines along the length of low cover walls, block windows, and compromise elevated sniping positions. Bangalore's smoke was the first multi-charge ability in Apex. I found that two smoke shells back-to-back granted the character enormous tactical flexibility.
Refining Bangalore's Tactical had more to do with the smoke itself than the deployment mechanism.
Players had a strong desire to shoot smoke directly at opponents. People simply expected that it would deal damage. I wanted to avoid turning smoke shells into a weapon, as increased lethality reduces the average player's ability to participate. I made the shells deal a small amount of "ear flick" damage—just enough to generate a hit marker. The questions around damage evaporated. It also allowed for "smoke checking." If a player shoots a smoke shell and gets a hit marker, they confirm the enemy's location. This made the ability feel more nuanced and responsive.
Smoke, like the rest of Bangalore's kit, is tailored toward helping her reach the enemy position. Her ability to storm the position is based on positioning and gun skill.
However, her power shifts drastically when she finds a Threat Scope or teams up with Bloodhound, as this allows her to see enemies through her smoke. It's an extremely powerful combo that cuts both ways: enemies can compromise smoke cover using the same tactics.
This created a rock-paper-scissors dynamic with limited player agency. It taught me an important lesson: think of the character roster as an ecosystem of potential interactions. When designing and balancing kits, you have to consider the secondary dynamics created by character synergies just as carefully as you consider the individual kits themselves.
Despite this, Bangalore's Tactical remains one of the most broadly useful abilities in the game. It can be used when assaulting, screening retreats, rescuing teammates, deterring third parties, hiding rotations, popping doors, triggering traps, and much more.
The final result was a tactically flexible tool that established the backbone of Bangalore's kit.
Rolling Thunder [Ultimate]
I designed Bangalore's creeping barrage ability, "Rolling Thunder," to complement the Smoke Launcher during assaults. It is intended as the ultimate tool for disrupting a defensive position.
Bangalore deploys the ability by throwing a marker grenade. This calls in a creeping barrage of delayed-fuse bombs. The bombs begin landing near the marker and progress forward in the direction the grenade was thrown. Each bomb lands in sequence, sticking into the ground. Once all the bombs have landed, players can clearly see the bounds of the ability. After a few moments, the bombs explode in the same order they landed. This creates a winding detcord explosion.
If Bangalore's squad follows closely behind the explosions they can effectively screen their advance towards the enemy position.
Shock and awe is the point. Defenders quickly find themselves surrounded by a sea of ticking time bombs. It strongly incentivizes them to stop shooting, head indoors, deploy defensive abilities, or withdraw. If defenders aren't coordinated, they can panic, scattering in different directions. This forces them to consolidate before they can reestablish an effective defense.
Like many early Apex abilities, the threat of damage is a tool to alter your opponent's behavior. It limits their options by attacking their strategy. I prioritized disrupting defenders without increasing lethality. The detonation delay allows enemies to escape damage by forcing them out of position. It makes assaults safer, without killing defenders outright. As long as the defense is compromised, the ability has done its job. To further reinforce this, I implemented a shell-shock status effect that the bombs apply. This punishes defenders who simply accept the damage in order to hold position.
Rolling Thunder can also be used to deter third parties, block enemy rotations, or pin squads inside buildings. This tactical flexibility meshes well with the rest of Bangalore's kit.
Double-Time[Passive]
I settled on Bangalore's passive much later than the rest of the kit. The smoke launcher and creeping barrage were working well, but I could feel something missing: player confidence in the face of danger.
Bangalore's abilities are most effective when players capitalize on the disruption they create.
Players need to be confident and aggressive. I often saw the opposite. Bangalore players would deploy their abilities and begin to advance, then slow down the moment they started taking fire. Their advance would stall and they would die as a result. Apex is a single life mode and players were afraid to die. Their hesitation was killing them. They needed confidence to keep pushing.
I'm about to go on a bit of a historical digression, but it's relevant, so bear with me.
Bayonets likely saved lives during the wars of the 18th and 19th centuries. When we look at American Civil War casualty and hospital records, bayonet injuries are extremely uncommon. We're talking way less than 1% of combat injuries. Why is this? It turns out, when hundreds of screaming soldiers are running at you with bayonets, you're not likely to stick around. Charges tended to go one of two ways. Either the attackers broke before they reached the defenders, or the defenders fled before the attackers arrived. Only soldiers trapped in buildings or forts typically fought hand-to-hand.
In essence, these charges were a deadly game of chicken. The force with greater confidence carried the day. As an attacker, you have to keep moving. You cannot afford to lose momentum or the attack will stall.
I needed to instill Bangalore with the confidence to maintain momentum throughout a charge. Damage punishes players for getting shot. What players needed was a reward that counteracted their hesitation. Gunfire needed to be an opportunity to advance, rather than a deterrent. I could use that dynamic to manufacture confidence.
Looking for inspiration, I listened to the accounts of soldiers who landed at Normandy on D-Day. One commonality jumped at me. It was the most high-stake run of their lives. They just went for it. They had to. There wasn't the luxury of time to think about it or hesitate.
I could replicate this behavior in game by accelerating Bangalore when bullets passed near her. I wouldn't give players time to think about it.
The results were immediate, Bangalore players started advancing under withering fire. The Passive consistently helped Bangalore players aggressively capitalize on their Tactical and Ultimate. The kit was finally complete.