Earlier today, Respawn launched the Apex Legends Voidwalker Event, the second of two recent events in the game. Following on from the Iron Crown event, Voidwalker features some similar features, such as a “town takeover,” albeit with a better approach to cosmetics and micro-transactions. However, to launch the event, Respawn surprised fans by not releasing a trailer; instead, they released an 8-minute cinematic short which delves into the backstory of Wraith.
Stories From the Outlands: Apex Legends Voidwalker
Voidwalker is the second episode in Respawn’s “Stories From the Outlands” cinematic series. However, it adopts a wholly different format. The first episode was ‘A Father’s Letter,’ which was released as a trailer for Wattson. The video is less than 2-minutes long, and has a very different approach to the animation. Voidwalker is much more cinematic, featuring an event from Wraith’s life which almost manages to pose more questions than it answers. In the cinematic, Wraith seems to be hunting the scientists who experimented on her. However, she then meets her past self, suggesting that time travel is somehow involved.
The short gives fans some insight into how Wraith’s portal abilities work, and their potential link to both time travel and causality. The older Wraith, whose unique attire is now available to purchase as a cosmetic skin during the Voidwalker event, seems to have a different personality to the younger Wraith, and at one point mentions that she had to leave “my world”; implying perhaps that Wraith’s portals may also be able to cross between multiple realities. All told, while fans did learn things about Wraith, most are likely to still have plenty of questions. The short even introduced concepts which make Wraith’s abilities seem even more complex than before!
Hopefully, this sort of cinematic release is something that Respawn hopes to repeat in the future. The quality of the animation was markedly improved from the release of ‘A Father’s Letter,’ for one. Plus, the lore of Apex Legends is, at present, rather blank. Although Respawn have dropped hints here and there, they have rarely delved directly into the backstories of any of their characters; something which many fans would no doubt be happy to see them do.