ALGS Championship 2025: E-District deep dive

The Apex Legends Global Series (ALGS) Championship in Sapporo is here! Forty teams from around the globe have converged on Japan, striving for its top prize in a pool of $2 million USD. And for the first time in the event’s history, a third playable map is part of this best-in-class team-based battle royale FPS: E-District (Electro District), a map largely inspired by Japan in both its physical make-up and culture. That’s right—this is the first time ever that not only will ALGS take place in Japan, but that this map will be part of the ALGS Championship, and it’s bringing a whole new level of strategy, gameplay, and excitement to the world’s best Apex Legends players, fans, and its growing global community.

In celebration of this monumental event, we’re offering a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of E-District, with insights from the map’s design leaders, including Lead Map Designer Garrett Metcalf, World Director Ed Agostini, and Director of ALGS League Operations Chris Pipher.

Let’s get into it!

“Gameplay comes first.”

Constructing Suotamo City

From the drop, E-District itself is a story that can be read from its authentic, lived-in environment. From the pinks and blues burning brightly in the night from its neon lights, to the spray-painted alleyways displaying messages from the hearts and minds of an increasingly disgruntled working class, to overturned cars and piles of rubble scattered throughout this dense urban environment that speaks to the boiled-over rage and subsequent riot that unfurled. It simply feels alive.

From a gameplay perspective, the design emphasizes verticality, offering plenty of opportunities for high-stakes encounters as players traverse across rooftops or battle it out in various urban environments separated by massive walls.

To Lead Map Designer Garrett Metcalf, it was a puzzle he was determined to piece together.

“If you think about an urban city, it’s quite flat,” says Garrett. “It would just be the most boring map you ever play in your life. So the first question was, ‘How can I bring out variations of landscape?’”

The number one tool for designers when making a battle royale map is organic terrain. Designers can easily manipulate the ground, change heights, and shape it to how they want it to be. But in an urban city, it’s mostly hard surfaces.

“It took a lot of massaging and thinking through how all these sections of the map connect and feel believable,” says Garrett. And while he feels they mostly achieved that sense of realism, his guiding compass was always about the experience.

“Gameplay comes first,” says Garrett. “At the end of the day, if I have a big, tall retaining concrete wall, I’m thinking ‘How would players feel playing on this thing?’ Or even about a Legend like Horizon–can their ability reach the top? And on top of that, the Legends that don’t have movement abilities, I need to make sure they have a way of dealing with it. Those concerns trump realism.”

E-District, being an urban city, also offered a unique opportunity. Garrett was able to zero in on designing an entire Apex Legends map around urban warfare.

“On a macro-level, there are big, dense areas with urban layouts, and then more open layouts,” says Garrett. “On a micro-level, you have multi-level buildings across the whole map, which we have never done before. But in terms of urban warfare, we built it with this variation in mind. To have rooftop-to-rooftop combat above, and street combat below.”

All of these design choices break down into a push-and-pull between close-quarters, mid-range, and long-range combat scenarios, ensuring players are always on their toes, while also feeling distinctly unique and interesting among the five other maps currently in play.

“When we build our maps, we try to give each one its distinct fantasy.”

Crafting the world

As Garrett was hard at work thinking up the level design, World Director Ed Agostini put pen to paper in crafting its narrative, history, and people.

“When we build our maps, we try to give each one its distinct fantasy,” says Ed. “Garrett had inspirations with cyberpunk aesthetics, and when we got into the lore of Apex we found there’s planets and cities that have similar vibes, and then we built on it. We quickly knew we wanted to do planet Gaea and Suotamo City.”

This storytelling spark led the team to ask themselves exciting questions. Like, what was the history of this city? How would being an island impact this region? Its culture? Its purpose? There may even be an old city that the new one was built on top of, like how fast modernization took place in Japan. And if so how would the people living there feel and act? 

“But we took it one step further,” says Ed. “We wanted to create a melting pot of cultures that you don’t really see much in video games that is heavily influenced by major cities across Asia. Apartments are dressed to represent different cultures. Arcades that were influenced by Japanese arcades. The store signage is a wide mix. And we worked with groups to help keep us in check, and it led to one of the most beautiful places we have designed.”

With the gameplay and narrative designs in place, E-District was ready to roll. And for events such as the Apex Legends Global Series (ALGS) and the competitive scene, E-District was about to offer a whole new experience.

“The addition of E-District is definitely going to impact strategy for teams.”

E-District in comp play

For competitive play, there hasn’t been a new map added to the pool since Storm Point’s inclusion in February 2022. So when E-District was ready, Director, League Operations, Apex Legends Esports Chris Pipher was excited to explore the new map himself to see how it differentiates from previous work.

“I’m far from a professional player, but in my opinion, one of the significant points of differentiation for E-District is the amount of elevation on the map,” says Chris. “The tall buildings afford teams an extra opportunity to take cover and contribute to exciting and sometimes unpredictable finishes, often with more teams remaining in contention until the end of a match than we’re used to seeing.”

Now, E-District is going to be played at the highest level at the ALGS Championship. This means the competitive matches will have three maps instead of two, adding whole new layers of preparation and strategy for these professional teams.

“The addition of E-District is definitely going to impact strategy for teams,” says Chris. “For starters, each series at the ALGS Championship in Sapporo is going to include all three ALGS maps (World’s Edge, Storm Point, and E-District), so that alone is going to have a massive impact on preparation and Point Of Interest (POI) draft strategy, as previously teams only had to draft starting positions on two maps.”

“I think that just by the nature of the map’s verticality, teams will have the opportunity to try out different Legends and compositions,” adds Chris. “For example, maybe we’ll see teams put a little more emphasis on selecting Controller Legends who might do a bit better on a map like E-District versus more open maps like Storm Point.”

“...E-District will definitely provide teams with the opportunity to try new things, that I’m sure of.”

Legends are forever

E-District is a testament to the incredible talent and dedication of the Apex Legends team. From its intricate vertical design to its strategic depth, every aspect of this map was crafted with the player experience in mind. As the ever-evolving game continues to grow, the team at Respawn will continue to aim for bigger, bolder, and better experiences for its players, fans, and communities. 

With the ALGS Year 4 Championship currently live in Sapporo, Japan, there’s no better time to dive into Apex Legends and experience E-District firsthand. Join the action now and see for yourself why this new map is a game-changer.