It’s been a busy couple of days for Apex Legends fans. Not only did ALGS take place from May 2 to May 5, but Season 21: Upheaval launched on May 7. Alongside changes to the Broken Moon map, a few balance tweaks, and the return of Solos mode, Apex Legends season 21 is introducing the latest character, Alter.
At ALGS, Game Rant had the opportunity to speak with narrative lead Ashley Reed about the story and lore surrounding the various characters in the game. We briefly spoke about the new Season 21 character Alter, the makings of a new character, and a few dynamics that exist between characters dominantly seen at ALGS. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Apex Legends unveils the cosmetic rewards and other items the Upheaval Battle Pass will provide players in the game’s new season.
Reed Talks ALGS
Q: Before we jump into narrative and stuff, I wanted to ask how you’ve been enjoying ALGs?
Reed: It’s been really cool because it’s obviously very far away from the kind of stuff I do. The narrative and dialogue do not take center stage here at all, but it’s cool to see the stories that form here, just from the players themselves, their narratives and their struggles. That’s really interesting to me, and just getting all the energy from all the fans is great. It’s really cool to see.
Q: Just watching the level of gameplay on display here, has anything special caught your eye?
Reed: Well, obviously the meta. The meta has really jumped out, but then I actually enjoy it when somebody chooses to go off-meta, I actually thought it was pretty funny. Never To Change was like ‘Alright, we’re at where we’re at, and we’re just going to have fun.’ They actually made some progress playing off-meta characters, which is really cool. It’s also just fun to see. If you’re playing off-meta, that’s really interesting because that means you’re really confident in that character. No one’s going to know how to deal with you, which I think is very interesting.
Q: I saw a Newcastle and I was very excited because there has been one at most the entire time.
Reed: Everybody freaked out, yeah, because they do have that huge cast to pick from. Some characters—if you’re trying to evoke a certain thing, you’re trying to attack a certain strategy—they’re going to be the ones to pick. But it’s cool to see the differences of, ‘Well, maybe we’ll go this way instead.’ Especially because I’m a big controller fan. Those are the characters I like to play or the support class, so it’s cool to see them represented in this.
Reed Talks Alter and Developing Apex Legends’ Characters
Q: Obviously, the big story right now with Apex is Alter. What was the process behind creating Alter? I know Ian and Jaclyn were the main ones who worked on her.
Reed: Yeah, those two were our primary people working on Alter, so their word is what you want to look at, for sure. But from my perspective, it was very interesting because we, as a group, knew that we wanted to do a villain, like we hadn’t had a true villain in a long time. We had misunderstood characters, characters who maybe have issues, but we hadn’t had a bad b*tch, I guess. There is a more professional way to say that, but somebody who is truly evil for the sake of it kind of thing. I don’t think we’ve had that since Ash.
Q: Yeah, it’s been a hot minute.
Reed: It’s been a while, so we’re ready for a villain character. It was really cool to see that take shape. Then, Jaclyn was really great about wanting to represent a character from her own background, and it was very cool to see that take shape and all the work that went into that, as well as the careful attention to detail getting the Cantonese in there.
Q: What is the process for each character like to nail down what their background is going to be? And then, you know, implement it properly.
Reed: Yeah, so we don’t have a board or anything like ‘Okay, check that one off. We’ve done that one, we’ve done that one.’ However, there are things where we’re like, ‘You know what we haven’t seen this,’ ‘This means something to me,’ ‘I want to represent this,’ or ‘Oh, I don’t see this represented in gaming much. I want to put this out there.’ For example, the last character I worked on personally was Catalyst. We had the general gist of what the character was going to be. We were like, ‘Well, you know, we’re interested in doing a trans woman character. Let’s pursue that. It’s of interest to us.’
We’ll start there. We get the shape of the character before we start looking at the background. That comes up a wee bit later, but it is very early on in the process when we start coming up with the bio, understanding who the character is, and why they are the way they are. Then background, ethnicity, and pretty much any other facet of that come into play there. Once we’re like, ‘Okay, we’re pretty solid on this,’ then we start looking into talking to anybody internally who identifies with this experience. We want to get their feedback on it really early on, and then once it takes shape, we start talking with outside consultants. They’ll look at our dialogue, the concept art, and all that other stuff to just get feedback and will sometimes work more formally with organizations or we’ll work with individual contractors. With Catalyst, we worked with specific organizations like GLAAD. Other times, we’ll hire a specific consultant to look at the stuff for us. Then, when the character is ready to go, the character heads out into the world.
Q: To also kind of go back to something you mentioned earlier, Alter is the first villainous character in a good while. How does that sort of thing come about? How does that change the standard development of a character, if at all?
Reed: I wouldn’t say it does. We kind of treat all the characters the same way. First, we primarily look at, ‘Okay, here’s the kit, what kind of person would do this thing?’ Obviously, it isn’t inherently a villain-thing to break through walls. If was someone, say Newcastle, who builds walls, if we wanted him to be a villain, we probably could have swung that, but we’re always talking about how we want the player to feel. We want those who play with Newcastle to feel big, powerful, and protective, so we decided this character should feel that way. They should feel like the person this player wants to be.
A character who punches through walls, sneaks in, and sneaks back out, ‘We’re like, okay, this character, this player is going to want to feel kind of like a troll, almost like they’re disrupting the battlefield.’ They’re turning things on their head, so it confuses their opponents. That seemed like something a trickster character would want to do, and that fits in really well with the concept of a villain. If we had Conduit’s kit, where this person is very helpful and a healer and we’re trying to make that character a villain, it’s not impossible but a little like you’re working against the energy. We try to focus on the fantasy of the character and what the player is going to feel like playing them. Are they going to identify with the character who’s attached to the kit?
Reed Talks Apex Legends’ Narrative
Q: That’s awesome. Obviously, I understand you probably cannot comment too much on this, but what would you say as a sort of summary of the general direction for the season 21 story upheaval idea is?
Reed: I would say, we’re thinking a lot about disruption because we just had our fifth anniversary of Apex, which was amazing. We looked back on the last five years and looked forward to the next five years, what’s coming, what are we going to be doing? We’re thinking about it. ‘Okay, what’s working? What do we want to change? And what are some ways where maybe we’ve done something a certain way for so long, but maybe we do something different?’ That’s less the story, I suppose, but it gives us the story of our development process. What do we want to do for the next five years? And how can we disrupt what we maybe thought was fine before, but it could be different? It could be different in the future. Alter the character is very interesting in that I kind of feel like she almost disrupts the story. If there was a planned narrative, she kind of pops in and changes the trajectory of that, which is a bit vague intentionally. You’ll see something about that later in the season.
Q: With the creation of these fake backgrounds for Alter, and everything, can you talk about the process of picking these backgrounds and misleading people with it, the purpose of it?
Reed: That was a creation of Jaclyn and our director, Amanda Doiron, because they knew—I think that this came primarily from Jaclyn—that this character is never going to be honest about what is actually going on in her life. She has no interest in appeasing anyone or showing vulnerability to anyone. She’s just like, ‘I just want to mess with everybody.’ That came along quickly. She would not just tell you what her backstory is. The idea came up, and then it was actually very fun throwing stuff at the wall. There were a lot of ideas that didn’t get in there. I think, at one point, we had a script with like 20 or 30 different stories, and we were like we can’t have this many. That’s insane. But yeah, once we knew she was not going to be honest, then it just became like a fun free-for-all, which was a blast, actually. We were just sitting there saying, what about this, this, this, this this? So that was really cool.
Q: IWhen it comes to battle royale games, what do you think makes Apex Legends story kind of differ?
Reed: What makes it differ? I’m trying to think about it. Well, I would say it’s something we think about very early in the process, sort of from the beginning of when we work on something. I will say all of our choices are design-first, so we look at what’s going to be good for the game. But very quickly, we talk about how this fits into the universe, and we think that’s very important. It is a foundational part of the game that this has to make sense in the context of this universe, and we want to make sure that this universe feels rich and alive and that these are real people, larger-than-life people definitely but like people that you actually want to hang out with and enjoy your time with. There’s no character we want to release who’s just whatever. There’s a lot of work put into making them fun to play and making them fun to be around. I obviously can’t speak for the development of other games, but I know it feels like that’s what sets Apex apart as a battle royale. The story of the universe and the people in it is really important from the ground level.
Reed Talks Hero Dynamics and Developing New Characters
Q: The dominant meta we’re seeing is Bangalore, Bloodhound, and Caustic. If we stick all three of them in a room together, how are they going to interact narratively?
Reed: Oh man, I think they would just kind of be weird around each other because Caustic hates Loba, Bangalore’s friends with Loba. I think Bloodhound is like, ‘We’re buddies, but you got your drama that can stay over there.’ I feel like Bangalore and Caustic would be tense, but they’re also both very serious business. They’re probably like, ‘We’re going to put this aside just to get the job done, but we’re not going to like it.’ Bloodhound would just be over here, like ‘Y’all have too much drama.’ Bloodhound has got their own drama that they won’t admit to, but they’d be like, ‘This drama is yours to deal with and I do not like this energy.’ It would probably be very tense.
Q: I feel like any combination of trios getting stuck in a small room together is just for the most part a bad idea. There are obviously some that would be okay.
Reed: There’s a few. I was going to say see Seer, Loba, and Valkyrie, but actually, never mind. Seer, Loba, and maybe like Lifeline — people who haven’t been close enough to have serious drama would probably be fine.
Crypto, Watson, and Mirage. I think that’d be like the odd couple like, ‘hey old man, hey you jerk,’ but it’s loving so that’d be a fun trio.
Q: So, I know this also might be a bit of a hard question or hard pick, I guess. But of all the legends, whose stories you’ve developed and everything, who would be your favorite?
Reed: So, that would be Loba, Catalyst, and Ash. That’s hard. That is still very hard. My favorite. Oh, my goodness. I mean, I love Loba because she was like my first, and she’s very fun because there is a lot of drama around her. I love that she’s so classy but so cutthroat. There’s so much fun you can have with that character. I also love Catalyst because she was the first one I actually wrote from top-down blank page to finished product. Loba was kind of in production when I started, so Catalyst has a special place in my heart for that reason. She’s just a little too well-adjusted. We do have that problem with some characters where it’s like we’re writing a story for you, but you’re so well-adjusted. It’s hard to ignite drama around you. With some characters, it’s much easier.
That sort of didn’t answer the question. I guess Loba is the most fun because she creates the most drama. Ash is also really cool because she’s got a lot going on, but she has to be the unloved middle child as is her duty. But yeah, I’ll go ahead and say Loba, but Catalyst is right there. Just got to find a good dramatic story.
Q: I’m sure that answer probably changes day to day,
Reed: Oh, all the time. Plus, when I joined the team, I was in love with Lifeline and Octane.
Q: Their relationship is the best.
Reed: They’re so dramatic too because it’s so back and forth, on and off. Right now, I’m like, ‘Man, that got dark.’ I don’t know how or if you come back from this or if you just have a very different relationship because they’re so codependent.
Q: That would be a good description. Which Legend is the hardest to work with?
Reed: I think Bangalore is probably for me because she’s so different from me. We have very different views on the world, on what’s important, and just priorities in general, so she can be a little tricky. She’s also very military-minded. It can be hard to get in that headspace sometimes, but it is cool to find, as with all characters, the thing that’s like, ‘Ah, I identify with this about you.’ You don’t have to overemphasize that thing, but it’s kind of an in to help you write that character. Bangalore was very fun to write for season 13 because that’s when Newcastle came along, and suddenly she was like, “Oh my god, there’s a huge turning point in my life right now, and I can’t just be serious and gung-ho with single-minded focus. I have to actually think about my life.’ That became a really interesting thing to write about for her
Q: Who wants to sit around and think about their life though?
Reed: I know, nobody. She wants to shoot things. I’d also say Caustic is a little difficult for the same reason, because he’s actually sociopathic, and it’s kind of hard to get into that headspace sometimes. But, realizing sociopaths do have feelings, they just don’t express them in that way, gives an in.
Q: Last question, so we can get back out to it. Thank you for all of that, but I’m just sort of curious if you’re pulling for any teams here at ALGs?
Reed: It changes from minute to minute, really. I cheer for Alliance because I got the Alliance gear, but Wonton Dumplings really came from behind and so did Keno. I’ve seen the struggles that Not Moist has been going through for the past couple of months, so if they could eke out a win, that would be pretty impressive. Heroez, they just came from behind in that last session. If I had to pick right now, I’d say Wonton Dumplings because I loved their name. There are so many good ones.
Reject Winnity Ultimately Won the ALGS Split One Playoffs
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Apex Legends
Apex Legends is a free-to-play battle royale game made by Respawn. In this shooter, players take up the mantle of a Legend — one of the playable characters — and form a squad with other players. The game is set in the same universe as the Titanfall series and the two franchises have had many crossovers.
- Released
- February 4, 2019
- Publisher(s)
- Electronic Arts
- Genre(s)
- Battle Royale , First-Person Shooter
- Engine
- Source on console/PC, Unreal Engine 4 on mobile
- ESRB
- T for Teen: Blood, Violence