Apex Legends is celebrating two major milestones this month: It's 20th season, and its 5th birthday. After shadow-dropping in 2019, the free-to-play FPS became an instant classic, receiving praise for its lovable characters and its expansive storyline, which has been ongoing since the game launched. But the last five years have been a particularly wild ride for developer Ashley Reed, who started out writing content for Apex's official website but now serves as the game's lead writer. In honor of Apex's five-year anniversary, GameSpot sat down with Reed to get the scoop on Season 20: Breakout's narrative arc, talk about some of the game's biggest plot twists, and find out what it's like to write a story with 25 main characters and no ending in sight.

Reed--whose name served as the inspiration for Ash's human name--has worked for Respawn since 2016, starting out as a content writer for some of EA's websites before being tapped to work as a writer for the game itself, and eventually becoming Apex's lead writer in 2021. Despite sharing a name with one of the game's most vicious, unempathetic characters, chatting with the real Ashley Reed revealed that she's personable, humorous, and above all, incredibly enthusiastic about her work. But with no new Legend scheduled to join the roster this season, I was curious to learn exactly why that was the case, what role Reed plays during "Legend-less" seasons, and what kind of plot twists players can expect in Season 20 and beyond.

"Typically, with the the anniversary seasons--the first season of the year--we try to let the celebration take center stage, so we try not to introduce a lot of plot-heavy stuff during the anniversary season," she explained. "Especially this one, it's a big anniversary! We don't want to distract from that [by adding a new Legend with a new backstory]."