Apex Legends’ season quest kicked off with Loba convincing the legends to build a mysterious artifact with a little help from her silver tongue and veiled threats. The characters had to retrieve nine pieces of a relic and assemble it when they had all the parts. It sounds like a simple premise, but the story’s development showed that nothing about it was simple.
The story has evolved so much in nine weeks. Loba was using the legends for her own gain and working for Hammond Robotics, but Bangalore discovered her plan. Caustic betrayed his fellow legends and ratted them out to Revenant to stop Loba from digging into his past. The mysterious relic is in fact a simulacrum named Ash, who was featured in the Titanfall franchise.
A lot happened in The Broken Ghost—and here’s everything you need to know about it.
Loba’s true motives
Loba’s white-hot vendetta against Revenant set the events of season five in motion. The thief’s search for Revenant’s “source code” led her to blow up Skull Town and kicked off the hunt for The Broken Ghost.
In the season five launch trailer, Loba fired at Revenant’s source code: his preserved human head, uplinked to the simulacrum’s body. The gunfire triggered the facility’s security system and teleported Revenant’s head to an undisclosed Hammond Robotics facility on Psamathe, far away from Loba’s grasp.
Over the course of The Broken Ghost, the legends discovered that Loba met with Cheryl Amacci, the head of Hammond Robotics’ legal department, to discuss a proposition. The company would give Loba the location of Revenant’s source code so she can end the simulacrum for good, but in return, she’d have to assemble a mysterious artifact.
She drafted the legends to help with her assignment but kept them in the dark about Hammond’s stake in the matter. The crew uncovered her ulterior motive with a little help from Octane and an impromptu kidnapping by Lifeline, who provided them with a transcript of the meeting between Loba and Amacci.
Loba wanted to destroy Revenant for good, even if it meant giving an unknown artifact to one of the most morally-dubious companies in the Outlands. But Loba’s opinion may have changed after a confrontation with her mortal enemy.
Revenant: The Broken Ghost
Before Loba’s vendetta against Revenant, he also looked for vengeance on Hammond Robotics. The company uploaded his memories to a robotic body, turning him into a simulacrum, and tricked him into believing he was human. Each death deleted his memories and granted him a new metallic body, which he saw as his old, human self until a program malfunction exposed his true nature.
The malfunction allowed Revenant to access all his memories from his previous demises. Being an assassin is a dangerous line of work, and thanks to Hammond, he remembers everything about his countless brutal deaths—stabbing, drowning, and even being set aflame are just some of the few causes of his many deaths. Some of his in-game voice lines reference the fact that he can’t bear any more resurrections and his most obstinate enemy can actually become a precious ally.
Loba wants to kill Revenant for good by taking out his source code. Over the course of The Broken Ghost, the simulacrum revealed that he wants to help Loba put him out of his misery. “Three hundred years of death, of fear, of terror all rushed back in a single, solitary second,” he tells the thief. “It’s hell. Every second of my existence is hell.”
Revenant is physically incapable of harming his source code thanks to “one piece of programming that didn’t fail,” as he called it. He needs Loba’s help to locate the source code and take it out. “For lack of a better word? You’re my savior,” he tells the thief.
The revelation that Revenant wants to die leaves Loba confused. Searching for revenge will ultimately give the simulacrum precisely what he desires the most. Bangalore asks the thief what she’ll do next. “For the first time in a long time, I don’t have a clue,” Loba responds.
Hammond promised to give Loba the coordinates to Revenant’s head after the legends assembled the artifact. Assuming that the company keeps its promise, the next part of the storyline between the simulacrum and the thief will center around the quest to destroy Revenant’s source code.
But before the legends chase Hammond’s lead, they had to reassemble the artifact—and Titanfall 2 players may find a familiar face in the quest.
Ashes to Ash
To assemble the relic, players had to religiously retrieve a new piece of the artifact each week. The artifact gradually took shape. Its first few parts didn’t point toward anything specific, be it through their appearance or their in-game description. But as the pieces (and hints) piled up, players got a glimpse of what the artifact could be.
The result is Ash, a simulacrum from Apex‘s sister franchise, Titanfall. Before Revenant’s introduction to the public, she was the core example of simulacra and an early source for players to investigate more about Revenant.
Respawn hid a few hints about Ash during the quest. The fifth piece, the Faraday Armature, contained the logo of Vinson Dynamics, a fictional company from the Titanfall universe. In chapter six, Wattson said she thinks the Armature was retrofitted. Vinson Dynamics rebuilt Ash after her death in Titanfall 2‘s story campaign, a subtle hint at the upcoming reveal.
The introduction of Ash opens up a series of new plot points. Hammond Robotics has a clear interest in keeping the simulacrum active, which may be a potential point of friction between them and the legends over the course of the future. Like Revenant, Ash also has her own motivations. In the Titanfall franchise, she hunts down more information about her past, trying to pry it off the Remnant Fleet, the leftovers of the former IMC, which has ties to the “old” Hammond Robotics.
Ash’s role in the quest is the climax of The Broken Ghost. After collecting and assembling the artifact—her robotic head—players need to enter a hidden bunker in Kings Canyon and bring Ash back from inactivity.
Her participation is short, but the length doesn’t take away from its impact. In the final chapter of the quest, players need to build Ash with their own hands, plugging her head into her hanging body in another one of the loot bunkers in Kings Canyon.
Ash’s chassis hangs from a support connected to a Charge Tower. In a cutscene, players plug her head into her body to send Ash back online and complete the quest. After twitching herself awake, the simulacrum leaves the player with a cryptic message.
“The path ends here. Welcome to Olympus,” she says.
What’s in Olympus?
Ash’s ominous greeting is a hard hint toward the future of Apex. Olympus has an important meaning to some of the legends and could play a visceral role in the developing story between Loba and Revenant—or it could be anything from just a change of setting to a new map.
Loba teleported Revenant’s source code to the planet of Psamathe in the season five launch trailer, where Olympus is located. The city is also key to the backstories of Loba, Octane, and Lifeline. Revenant killed Loba’s parents in Olympus, which is also the hometown of the Combat Medic and the Adrenaline Junkie.
Based on how The Broken Ghost ended, the enmity between Loba and Revenant could blossom into an unlikely partnership. With Revenant’s head on Psamathe, the storyline will likely move to the planet as well.
It also opens up more possibilities for Octane and Lifeline, the two Olympus-born legends. The duo could meet up with someone from their past. The new setting also opens up opportunities to explore their relationships with their estranged families. Octane’s absentee father or Lifeline’s warmongering parents, for instance, could be powerful drivers in their stories.
The extent of Olympus’ role in the upcoming seasons of Apex is still unclear, whether it’ll just be a new setting or a full-fledged map. But the city will certainly be a significant part of the battle royale’s immediate future.
Published: Jul 15, 2020 02:49 pm