You’d be hard-pressed to find a triple-A game more diverse than Apex Legends. The game’s roster features openly gay characters, a range of skin colors, and a non-binary character. It’s proved to be quite a progressive game in a time when such things are needed more than ever. With the launch of season 15 on November 1, things get even better as Catalyst joins the roster, a trans woman.
The team at Respawn worked with GLAAD, an LGBTQ charity, to create a design and backstory that members of the community would be pleased with. They also made sure to hire a trans actress, Meli Grant, to provide Catalyst with a voice. This isn’t something in the background either, in her story trailer she talks about her transition and her feelings about it.
“If you’re not upfront about it, people are gonna find ways to deny it,” lead writer Ashley Reed tells me. “They’re gonna say, ‘That’s not what you meant.’ We have seen that with some of our other characters who identify a certain way. We’ve seen people say, ‘Oh, no, that’s not what they meant.’ Even when we come out and say, ‘That is what we meant.’
“I think the voice actress Meli put it best: ‘Make her inescapably trans.’ So that is what we did.”
It doesn’t stop there either, as this core aspect of her character informed many other features too. In a happy coincidence, the team began to refer to her as the “Techno Witch” due to her ability set, which they later realized allowed her to slot into the Wiccan trans subculture, giving her a more defined place in the world.
The artists behind the Catalyst’s design worked hard to mix the functionality and style that all legends need to have, and eventually they settled on using liquid to represent her tech magic, reminiscent of a liquid-cooled PC stuffed to the brim with RGB lights.
This is a brilliant step forward for representation in triple-A games and Respawn has no intention of stopping here. The eventual goal is for everyone to have someone that represents them in Apex Legends, and it won’t be over until this kind of thing is the industry standard. Apex is now and has always been for everyone, except bigots.
“We’re surrounded by a bunch of very diverse people in our own lives, so it would only make sense that the future would reflect that, and this cast would reflect that because they’re from all over this future place,” Reed says when I ask if that statement is accurate. “So it’s kind of inescapable that if you have a problem with that, Apex isn’t for you.”
It’s important to note that being trans isn’t the only aspect of Catalyst’s character. She has as fully-formed a personality as any other legend – a big sister-type who tries to be a role model, but doesn’t always nail it thanks to her lack of life experience at 29 years old. Not that she’d admit that, as Reed explains.
“She’s very like, ‘I’m very worldly and know what’s going on and I don’t have time for anybody’s [expletive]. Why is everyone so dumb?’. Very gothy and sardonic. But also like, is she covering up for old wounds like a lot of goth kids are?”
Catalyst comes to the game when Apex Legends Season 15 launches on November 1, 2022.
Written by Ryan Woodrow on behalf of GLHF.
