At least the game’s big-picture effects play to the developer’s strengths, particularly those of its new, proprietary Apex engine.
The series’s continuing appeal can be reduced entirely to the free-form environment.
What saves this tossed-off narrative is the way it, like every other aspect of the game, interacts with the destruction.
Imagine a roller coaster that stops for maintenance every 30 feet and doesn’t allow you to exit, even after you’ve already been around the track a few dozen times.