Apex Legends’ Forge suffered a gruesome death at the hands of Revenant. Now, a fan concept has brought him back for round two.
An Apex player designed “Reforge,” a simulacrum version of the former fighting champion, including concept art (which conveniently shows him crushing Revenant) and a basic skill set that still needs work. His backstory is straightforward: “he’s back and he’s PISSED OFF.”
Reforge’s appearance draws from Forge’s canon look and is based on his officially-designed mechanical arm. The character art shows the legend with white armor and his waist has a detail that reminds players of a wrestling belt—a nod to the character’s fighting past.
The concept for making him a simulacrum is also compatible with Apex’s established lore. Hammond Robotics was behind the simulacrum program and it also sponsored Forge’s bid to join the Apex Games.
His skillset is still a work in progress but it contains three abilities so far. His passive is called “Eyes in the back of my head.” The author admitted that they had no idea what it would do, but it would “play off on his original death via backstabbing.”
The tactical skill is called “Meat Shield” and would allow players to instantly kill downed enemies and use them as shields with a tradeoff on his speed. The concept feels redundant, however. Apex’s finishers are already an insta-kill move on downed enemies and successfully delivering an execution will refill players’ shields.
His ultimate, “I’ll do it myself,” activates an unspecified beast mode, likely inspired by Bloodhound’s Beast of the Hunt.
Parts of the community shared their enthusiasm about the concept and added some tweaks to Reforge’s kit. A player suggested that his passive would reveal enemies who fire at him or lock sights, while another theorized that his ultimate could give him extra speed and damage resistance while forcing him to exclusively use melee attacks.
A series of Respawn staff members confirmed that Forge is indeed dead. Animator Moy Parra gave a steadfast denial about the character’s undeniable demise:
“Yes. Forge was murdered,” Parra tweeted. “He is dead. As dead as it gets. Super duper dead. On a scale from 1 to 10 that he could be alive, he’s at 0.”
Design director Jason McCord confirmed that Respawn created the character to confuse data miners and planned on killing him off. “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,” he said.
Published: Mar 11, 2020 10:21 am