Apex Legends: New "Havoc" Gun Is Available Now -- See It In Action

Apex Legends made its first change to its core weapon set with the introduction of the new Havoc assault rifle, part of a recent update. The gun is the first look we've gotten at how Respawn Entertainment's battle royale title will function as a live-service game, ahead of the game's first season, which starts in March. Along with the new gun, Respawn made a few fixes to the game and released a trailer to show it off.

In a new trailer, Respawn demonstrated how the Havoc energy rifle works. The gun handles in a similar way to current weapons like the R-301 Carbine or the Devotion light machine gun. You can see how the Havoc handles in the trailer below, or watch us use it to secure a victory in the video above.

The most interesting thing about the Havoc as seen in the trailer is that it's different from the rest of the guns in Apex Legends. It accepts two kinds of "hop-up" attachments; these are rarer items you can add to certain guns that change the way they perform, but usually guns only support one kind of hop-up. For the Devotion LMG, for instance, you can add the Turbocharger hop-up, which speeds up the charge time when the gun begins to fire. The Prowler submachine gun can take the Select Fire hop-up, which can switch the gun from its default burst-fire mode to a fully automatic mode that makes it even more deadly.

The trailer shows that the Havoc can handle either the Turbocharger hop-up or the Select Fire hop-up, and each has a different effect on the gun. The Turbocharger speeds up the rate at which the gun hits its top speed in fully automatic mode--like the Devotion, the Havoc seems to have a short charge time before it gets up to its full energy bullet-spewing potential. With the Turbocharger, the gun looks pretty effective at short and medium ranges.

The Select Fire hop-up allows you to switch the Havoc to a single-fire mode, which fires one charging shot. In the trailer, Select Fire makes the gun effective at longer ranges and, from the looks of things, can turn the Havoc into a sniper or scout rifle.

That's a whole lot of versatility in one gun, and more than we've seen so far in Apex Legends. The Havoc also suggests that future additions to the Apex armory could offer even more customization depending on the attachments and loot you find in the game once you drop into a match. That could make the potential changes coming with Apex Legends' first season pretty powerful, but we'll have to wait until March to find out for sure.