When Respawn first announced Apex Legends Season 4, the new Legend didn’t come as a huge surprise. Although rumours had been circulating about the character Revenant, datamined leaks had also revealed details about Forge, the new addition. However, just days later, Respawn released a video wherein Forge was assassinated. As it turned out, Forge was never intended to come to the game. In fact, Design Director Jason McCord has now revealed that the character was designed primarily to fool dataminers.
The Reason Respawn Created Forge for Apex Legends
Ever since its launch, Apex Legends has had a long history of dealing with datamining. Although plenty of the content revealed by datamining has never actually come to the game (the studio did once caution fans that such content might represent cut content or concepts which never left the design stage), some of it certainly has. As a result, it has been tough for Respawn to actually surprise their fans.
When Respawn revealed Forge, most fans thought that the subtle teases about Revenant were indicating that the studio would be releasing a second Legend during Season 4. Few, if any, were expecting Forge to die in his own character trailer! According to McCord, who recently revealed details about Revenant in an interview with Dotesports; “We actually purposefully leaked fake concept art and details of Forge’s kit in patches, so there would be a bread crumb trail by the time we announced him.”
“It’s pretty insane, really,” he continued; “I can’t think of any other game that has gone through such hijinks”. Certainly, their efforts to mislead the dataminers paid off. Forge’s murder was one of the few things that has actually come as a surprise to most Apex Legends players for quite some time. However, it does illustrate just how severe a problem Apex Legends has with datamining; after all, while leaks do happen in plenty of other games, few games have had quite so many, so consistently. For now, it remains unclear whether Respawn can actually do anything to address that. Unfortunately, it might simply be something the studio has to deal with, although they have at least become rather inventive in doing so!