We break down Apex Legends’ most chaotic clip of 2023, showing just how bad visual clutter can get

Visual clutter in Apex Legends is known and expected at this point in the game’s lifespan. There’s visual clutter that happens from shooting weapons, as well as getting hit by weapons. Various ultimate abilities and explosions make seeing your foes difficult. There are even abilities that have the direct purpose of obscuring vision.

Seeing so many of those things happen all at once, however, is still a site to behold. That’s why we’re going to break down this endgame clip from Apex content creator Decypher.

There’s… a lot to unpack here, so let’s set the scene. Sitting at Diamond I, this is a fairly high-ranked lobby in the game’s ranked mode. That doesn’t mean that the average endgame would be anything like one from the ALGS, but it suggests that several teams know what they’re doing and have experience maneuvering in a tight endgame like this. As the circle closes into the open, the only real cover that the players have are a fence line and the cover they can create with abilities. And most of those abilities happen all at once.

As Decypher drops down to the ground to finish off a squad, an enemy Catalyst ultimate, Dark Veil, and an enemy Bangalore ultimate, Creeping Barrage, both go down. Trying to avoid the huge damage and stun that the Creeping Barrage can inflict, Decypher takes the lesser of two evils and goes through the Dark Veil. Unfortunately, there’s another Creeping Barrage missile on the other side of the Veil, in addition to holes in the fence that enemy teams can shoot through. So there’s little choice but to go back through the Veil and tank the damage from the Barrage in the sliver of fenceline that’s somewhat safe from enemy fire.

Going through Dark Veil blinds and slows you, which creates the dark, black-and-white effect on Decypher’s screen. But there’s also a stun and blurry effect that occurs whenever you get hit by the Bangalore ultimate, not to mention the flash of the ultimate exploding.

This is all made worse by immediately getting hit by bullets afterward. Normally, the bullet damage indicators are a bit easier to ignore, but the black-and-white effect of the Dark Veil blind makes them pop up as an opaque white, making vision even worse. Decypher uses Wraith’s tactical to phase out for a brief second and avoid taking damage, and conveniently, that also helps the remaining timer on the Dark Veil blind run out.

Unfortunately, Decypher phases back into the game at the exact moment that another enemy Dark Veil pops up, and multiple Bangalores begin using their Smoke Launchers to obscure the remaining circle even further. A heat shield goes down and more bullets are fired, but it’s anyone’s guess where anyone else is in the circle and who is actually winning a fight. And it all ends in untimely death.

Obviously, having a legend like Seer put down an ultimate here is enormously beneficial since it allows people to see enemies through all this visual clutter. Still, it seems like it’s almost impossible to move, let alone see where anyone else is at.

Let this be a lesson to you if you find yourself in one of these chaotic endgames: recon characters don’t just help themselves see other enemies. They can be the lifeline of an entire team that’s stuck in Catalyst ultimates, Bangalore smokes, and anything else Apex throws at you.