You jump from the dropship. World’s Edge rushes towards your face. You land at Fragment, obviously, and desperately claw for a rifle, a pistol, anything. You hear your opponents land next to you. The supply bin atop Streamer Building is empty save for some light ammo and a laser sight. You start punching. You’re sliced in half by a Buster Sword. Crypto is dressed like Cloud Strife for some reason. You check you’re still playingApex Legends. You are.
Apex Legends’ Final Fantasy 7 crossoveris its weirdest yet. The live-service battle royale has referenced TV shows or real-life people before (there’s an Octane skin clearly inspired by One Piece and the excellentPost Malone eventlast year that broughtThree Strikesto the game), but this feels different. This is the first time Apex Legends has officially crossed over with another video game and, in doing so, has strayed further from its in-universe lore than ever before. We chatted toRespawnandSquare Enixdevelopers to find out how the crossover came about, how the Buster Sword fits into theTitanfalluniverse, and where the game goes from here.
“With a lot of us as life-long gamers at Respawn, we’re huge fans ofFinal Fantasy,” explains David Duong, Respawn’s senior director of game product management. “A lot of us grew up playing FF7 over and over again on our PS1s and they are all characters we’re intimately familiar with from a fan perspective. When looking at potential integrations and partnerships, we wanted to work with folks that we felt shared the same values as we did with respect to our characters and storytelling.”
Reaching out was easy enough, as Duong notes that a lot of people know each other in the games industry. However, the initial ‘wouldn’t that be cool’ conversations quickly evolved into official pitches from developers with mutual respect for each other and their respective games.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake project senior assistant producer Yuma Watanabe “couldn’t hide [his] surprise” when Apex made contact with Square Enix about the collaboration. “I was surprised in a good way but, of course, I was also a bit anxious about the collaboration,” he explains. “Both Apex and Final Fantasy 7 have many fans, and I wondered whether the corresponding fans would enjoy the resulting collaboration and what kind of collaboration would be best to conduct with Apex, which is of a different genre and player demographic.”
His worries were assuaged when the process got underway, however, and he saw how passionate the Apex team was about doing right by Final Fantasy. Together, the two groups of developers set about making a crossover between two fundamentally different games, and it was quickly decided that this needed to be done the Apex way for the collaboration to work at all.
“The worldviews and settings of both games are firmly established, so fusing them together was one of the most difficult aspects of the collaboration,” Watanabe says. “That said, the collaboration this time was about ‘implementing Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth-themed elements in the Apex world,’ and we thought upholding Apex’s gameplay was most important.
“For example, compared to the Final Fantasy 7 Buster Sword, the newly implemented ‘Buster Sword R2R5’ and ‘Buster Sword R5’ have a shorter blade. If the size of the Final Fantasy 7 Buster Sword were to be implemented as is, the blade would make it difficult to see the character’s figure, and the reach of the sword would be too long when the character swings the sword, which is not ideal for a first-person shooter game. Therefore, when faced with such issues, we have taken an approach that focuses on Apex’s gameplay.”
As someone who has only played a single Final Fantasy title (I know), the comical size of the weaponry was immediately noticeable, but I never thought of the effect it could have when implementing a facsimile of the same weapon in the battle royale shooter. While Apex Legends has a reputation for expensive cosmetics, and the Buster Sword is no exception, the developers try to ensure fairness and parity across all players. While some may argue that the Season 4 Flatline skin has smaller ironsights and therefore gives you a marginal advantage when ADSing, none of Apex’s cosmetics are pay-to-win. Wattson winning a match by decapitating a bald Wraith with a full length Buster Sword would have been funny, but ultimately both developers decided that competitive integrity must come before stylistic commitments.
“One thing appearing in another game doesn’t necessarily mean you need to reconcile the lore together.” - Final Fantasy 7 Remake project senior assistant producer Yuma Watanabe
Duong agrees with Watanabe, saying that Respawn wanted to make the world of Midgar “shine, but in the Apex way.” He sees the crossover as “a big opportunity for us to celebrate together with our communities. And who doesn’t love using a giant sword in combat?”
Not every part of the event has gone down well, however. The Buster Sword has abysmal pull rates from the event loot boxes, and the reward forspending $360on the crossover? A mythic death box, inspired by the one-winged angel himself. While you do see the death box when you kill opponents rather than it just flashing on your screen as you die, it’s still a ridiculous amount of money for a frankly hilarious cosmetic option.
“We’re always trying to find new ways for our fans to personalise and customise their experience in Apex,” Duong says, explaining the team’s decision to create Apex’s first unique death box for the event. “While the team was going through this exploration, it was one that felt and looked really good. Using the death box is also something that we felt was unique to Apex that we wanted to take advantage of. It felt like a cool player moment to have opponents stumble upon a mound of these different death boxes and we hope it’s something players have fun with as a flex throughout the match.”
Some fans, myself included, feel like this event is an extreme departure from the Titanfall universe where Apex resides. This isn’t Fortnite, we don’t see John Cena fighting Peter Griffin every match. This is a real universe with no connection to our own, and the regular doses of Apex lore seem to be getting replaced by crossovers and money-spinners.
Duong understands this, but says simply that “not everything” in the game ties into the wider lore, and the Final Fantasy 7 event is just for fans to enjoy. “When executing on this collaboration, it was about doing right by both franchises,” he elaborates. “It wouldn’t be a Final Fantasy event without a Buster Sword, so we definitely wanted to find a way to bring it to the game. It staying in the game with you is kind of like a souvenir/reminder of this moment. We did a lot with the sword to both pay homage to Final Fantasy while also finding opportunities to make it fit in the Apex universe.”
Watanabe agrees that fans are looking into this too deeply. “One thing appearing in another game doesn’t necessarily mean you need to reconcile the lore together,” he says, “as this is a fleeting moment that is a celebration of the IPs for our fans.” He also acknowledges that these sorts of crossovers “can go bad”, but they “talk to players in focus groups all the time and if this was something that we thought was going to be extremely offensive, we wouldn’t do it.”
I’m personally not too bothered about the fact that these two universes are colliding from a lore perspective, but I do think it shows where Apex’s priorities lie in 2024; with crossovers and stunts to bring more players in, rather than committing to expanding the lore or gameplay we already have. Developers labelling the games as IP gives this crossover a sour note, like it’s a business transaction above anything else. Add to that the increased price of loot boxes and the comedic rewards within them, and the whole thing feels a little hollow. With this and the Post Malone event in quick succession, it looks like crossover events are here to stay in Apex. While Respawn didn’t have anything to announce on that front, Duong says “we are always looking for opportunities where we can build exciting experiences for our players.” Five years into the game’s life cycle, are IP skins and permanent references enough?
Next:Apex Legends Better Not Have Cheaped Out On Its Character Death
