The Wingman-and-Peacekeeper combo is quickly taking over Apex Legends, and with good reason—it owns. The combination is also having an unexpected consequence on me: I found myself actually invested in a video game’s meta.
The Wingman is a pistol that can kill a player in three headshots, and the Peacekeeper has the potential to deliver 110 damage via body shots if all the pellets land. In the hands of a skilled first-person-shooter player, this combo can be unstoppable. In my unskilled hands, they bridge a skill gap and challenge me to play more effectively.
I’m not usually one to care much about guns in a game, but Apex Legends is changing my perspective a bit. In my quest to become a better player, finding a Wingman and a Peacekeeper on the map always feels like an opportunity. They’re the weapons that have granted me my measly handful of kills, but more than that, I know that if I get more practice using these guns, I can learn to be a great player.
It doesn’t hurt that the community is basically obsessed with them as well, reinforcing my opinion that these guns own. Just this morning I scrolled through the Apex subreddit and found this post:
In the comments, one player bemoans the ubiquity of this loadout, saying, “Everyone is always rocking it. So much so that I get excited to hear a Devotion spinning up even when it’s in my face. ‘At least I didn’t get 2 tapped by a Wingman’ - Anyone after a loss.”
They’re not wrong. I usually get killed by a few Peacekeeper body shots or a well-timed Wingman headshot. But I’m learning something fromthe community’s mass consensus that this is the best loadout in the game. Watching a new game form its meta in only a few weeks has been fascinating to me as an outsider looking in, like in the case of Overwatch. I always used to think, “If everyone’s complaining about the meta, why don’t they try to find their own ways to play successfully and have fun?” Now that I’m actually playing a competitive game, I understand that the power of peer pressure is undeniable. I’d never pick up a Mozambique, for instance, even though I watched a video of someone getting a squad wipe with the much-maligned gun this morning. And if I see a Wingman or a Peacekeeper, I’ll always grab it, just because I know they’re “better.”
Every time I have a Wingman and a Peacekeeper, I feel like a smarter player for knowing what the best guns are. It doesn’t mean I actually play better, though. That will just come with time.