“We have a wide varied world, and we wanted to represent that.”
Today, though, Eurogamer’s Ed Nightingale chats to developerRespawn Entertainmentabout delivering diverse representation inApex Legends.
But how are these Legends created?
How does Respawn ensure its representation is authentic, and why is that important?
I spoke with narrative lead Ashley Reed and Alter writer Jaclyn Seto to find out more.
Ashley Reed:Gosh, that is a big question!
There are a thousand very good reasons for that.
It’s important to me that people feel seen.
You get a much more vibrant community.
And I like being nice to people!
I want people to feel like this is their space, because why shouldn’t it be?
AR:This will be hearsay, because I showed up around the time Crypto was shipping.
We don’t know just one kind of person, we know lots of people.
So we wanted to represent that in the game.
EG:How important is representation when you are creating new characters?
We start with the kit, because ultimately Apex is a design-first game.
So that has to come first before anything else.
Who would base their survival on doing this?
First we come up with the personality and then we need to develop the character’s backstory.
So about then is when we start to look at what’s something we want to do?
What are we interested in?
What do we feel is missing?
Then we take that on board and adjust accordingly.
By the time the character comes out, it’s gone through roughly three different levels.
It’s something they’re interested in and want to explore.
Then we have the internal level, and then we have the external level.
EG: The latest Legend is Alter who is asexual.
Why was that particular representation important for this character?
As Alter’s personality and backstory came together, I began to think about her relationships and desires.
Was there a kind of love or intimacy that she wanted?
And if there was, what kind was it?
Ultimately, in answering those questions, asexuality felt right for her as a character.
I was fortunate that it came to be very organically.
In terms of representation, we always hope people find something in our characters that makes them feel seen.
Do you think there’s a direct correlation?
AR:I hope so.
It’s hard to say 100 percent for sure.
And that’s exactly what we’re going for.
That’s what we want.
AR:I hope so.
This is not the spot for you.
Don’t let anyone tell you differently because they’re wrong.
What would you say to anybody who may accuse Apex of being “woke”?
AR:Where have you been?
We’ve been doing that since the beginning.
It’s been five years!
But also, this is interesting!
I don’t get it.
The alternative is just, everyone’s the same?
It doesn’t seem interesting to me.
EG: Are there any other areas of representation that you would love to include in the game?
Have you considered more disability representation?
AR:Yeah, that is something we thought about a few times.
We briefly looked into what if a Legend was blind?
But we found there were barriers within the game that made that difficult to represent effectively.
What’s interesting to us?
We thought about a deaf Legend as well, we’re still toying with some of those ideas.
There are character prototypes with certain nationalities attached since launch that we’ve wanted to do.
We just have to find resources.
If we could just vomit all of these characters out into the game like ‘go!’
we would do that.
But it takes time and resources are finite.
That’s the dream.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
