Summary
- Apex Legends aims for better representation, learning from past mistakes and incorporating diverse perspectives.
- The game faces challenges in balancing storytelling with live-service elements and avoiding toxicity.
- Future plans include representing a broader global community and incorporating more nationalities.
It took approximately three seconds for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Apex Legends’ narrative lead Ashley Reed to bring up the recent Ba꧂ngalore controversy. We sat down to chat about Apex’s representation for Pride month, and she was quick to acknowledge the rainbow-coloured elephant in the room.
In a recent on social media site X (formerly Twitter), Respawn had published a picture of its LGBTQ+ Legends, who are quite numerous by this point. Unfortunately, Bangalore hadn’t made the cut. Despite a prolonged will-they-won&r💫squo;t-they love triangle with canonically bisexual Loba and definitely lesb🐼ian Valkyrie, the whole affair ended with Bangalore saying they were “just friends”.
Reed, like thousands of fans who responded to Bangalore’s absence on the poster, sees it differently. “Because she hasn't said anything [about her sexuality] directly, we were like, ‘maybe that's not right’,” she explains. “But we want to get her on that banner, because all the neon signs point that way.”
Telling any kind of story within a live-service battle royale is difficult, let alone one with two dozen characters and myriad relationships between them. And Respawn is sure to take care when representing people in the game – it doesn’t want to just slap a label on and say, &𝐆lsquo;oh, he’s gay now’.
Reed has a story about this specifically. Originally, the team was going to reveal Gibraltar’s sexuality wheneverꦗ it became a crucial plot point. They always 🥂knew he was gay when designing the character, but they didn’t think it needed to be immediately stated outright. However, that changed when Reed experienced the same thing happen in another piece of media.
“We saw some other material where it was just dropped, by the way, this person's gay,” she explains. “And we were like, that feels so bad. I was on the marketing team at the time and had a chat with the writers and they were like, let's work this in.”
The result was Gibraltar’s character bio referencing a motorcycle ride with his boyfriend. Fans read it immediately and, in Reed’s words, “blew up” in a good way. While she didn’t name any names with the other 🍷media that didn’t make its characters feel like authentic representations, my mind immediately flew to Overwatch, which makes less effort to tell a contextual story between its 5v5 firefights than Apex does but attaches LGBTQ+ labels to its characters with little other effort to make them feel genuine.
“It's really rough to put it on one person and be like, you are the representative of your entire group.”
However, it hasn’t always been plain sailing for Apex. Reed admits that the narrative team has learned from its own mistakes as much as those that others have made. They didn’t utilise authenticity readers in the early days – “it wasn't something that was like called upon in our previous titles” – and it often came down to a few LGBT+ members of staff to act as the sole spokespeople for their identity. Obviously, this was an unfair burden to place on their shoulders.
“It's really rough to put it on one person and be like, you are the representative of your entire group,” Reed says. “Especially if there's criticism of that representation later, because then they're kind of like, have I failed as a person in this group?”
Nowadayꩵs, Apex doesn’t rely on one person so much, it includes authenti👍city readers and hires more diverse candidates to the Respawn team, so the people they ask for input aren’t alone in their experiences, and aren’t the sole representatives of their sexuality or gender on the team.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, however. Reed understands as well as anyone that there’s a dichotomy bℱetween a live-service game – that needs to keep as many players as possible engaged – and risking offending bigots by including LGBTQ+ cღharacters. She doesn’t lose much sleep over it, though.
“We don't want to cultivate toxicity by saying we're gonna carve out a space for toxic individuals who are going to be terrible to other people,” she explains. “We don't want that. That's toxic to the game itself. That level of toxicity erodes the rest of the playerbase because it shows these people are welcome and they are making you unwelcome.”
"[Mirage] has a Bob's Burgers vibe to me."
We spend a lot of the interജview looking back. Looking at the Legends of the past. Looking at the improvements Respawn has made, both in terms of staff and in the game itself, to authentic representation. Looking𓆉 back at Bangalore’s complicated past. But what about the future?
“There's a lot I still want to do in terms of representation, representing an even larger global community,” Reed explains. “There are nationalities we've wanted to incorporate into the game since launch.”
I put one further question to a Respawn representative (not Reed, who wasn't involved in these decision-making processes): "Apex is currently involved in the Esports World Cup in Saudi Arabia, where it's illegal to be gay. And there are esports players who've played in the ALGS who have made homophobic and transphobic comments on social media/streams. Do you think this can undermine the effort you put in on a narrative front?" Respawn did not comment.
Apex Legends already encompasses a broad spectrum of sexualities, nationalities, and personalities, but it’s clear there’s always room for more. Alter, the newest Legend, was confirmed by their writer as being asexual, despite the fact that it hasn’t come up in the game yet. The same happened with 💎Fuse’s pansexuality, although that was explored a little during his burgeoning relationship with Bloodhound. One character has always perplexed fans – and himself – though, so I had to ask about Mirage.
“With Mirage, I don't know if he ever will [confirm his sexuality]. He's just that kind of person. He’s just always unsure,” Reed explains. “He has a Bob's Burgers vibe to me, where just occasionally Bob will pop off with a like, oh, this very attractive man. Okay. And [tꩵhen] wanders off and goes back to what he was doing.
“That reminds me of Mirage. I wouldn't say we'll never get a solid confirmation from him, but it feels like a very him thing to do, to just leave it hovering.”
It’s worth noting that Mirage wasn’t included in the Pride banner shared on social media, suffering the same fate as Bangalore. But maybe they both represent other players. Players who may, too, be questioning their sexuality. And the more people who are represented in Apex,❀ the happier Reed and the Respawn team are.
“If people feel like they're seen in the game because there's somebody in the game that reflects them, then I'm very happy about that. In that way, it’s like a counter to the people who are telling you, get out, you don't belong here. They are incorrect. And we are going to hard code that in to show you ജthat they are incorrect. So I hope that helps reduce 🥂toxicity, helps people feel more welcome within our game.”
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