Apex Legends' seventh season will be starting next month and, after some initial leaks, Respawn has teased the next playable Legend who will be added to the game: Horizon. There isn't much official information on who she is and how she'll play, though she appears to be Scottish and a scientist of some kind, judging by the Horizon-related challenges players can complete.
However, while there are still likely more characters to come afterward, some fans continue to pine for a certain character who was teased for Apex Legends but ultimately never made the cut: Forge. As a reminder, Forge was initially advertised as being the new playable character for Season 4 back in January, despite leaks and datamines pointing towards the next character being Revenant.
It then turned out that this was a ruse by Respawn to try and throw fans' expectations of, as Forge, in one of the Stories from the Outlands lore videos, was killed by Revenant. Respawn even created fake concept art and character abilities to further trick fans, but said trick has ironically backfired, since Forge still has plenty of fans who hope to see him added to the game in the future.
According to the fake abilities list, Forge would've been a melee-centric character. All his abilities involved dealing heavy damage up close, with one being stronger the less health he had. Some fans have latched onto this fake list and believe Forge had potential as an actual character.
Daniel Klein, a game designer at Respawn, caught wind of this and commented on Reddit that Forge's abilities were a "s**tpost" and never would've reached the prototype stage.
Apex is a gun game! You can't have a melee character in a gun game and have them be both impactful and healthy for the core combat loop of the game.
Klein's phrasing very much suggests that not only was Forge never intended to become playable, but that Respawn has no plans to ever add him in the future. This isn't swaying everyone, though. In the same Reddit thread, others express a genuine interest in Apex Legends getting a melee character to at least see how he could theoretically work. Others are perfectly satisfied with Klein's comment, with comparisons made to Overwatch's melee-focused character Doomfist, who one user describes as being very unfun to play as.
There is also the fact that Forge is dead, though, at the time, theories floated about that he was secretly alive and that the Forge who was killed was an imposter or lookalike. This is because Forge's appearance in the video was slightly inconsistent with his character art. For the time being, though, it's looking incredibly unlikely that Respawn will change course, regardless of fan demand.
In other news, Respawn announced an Apex Legends Champion Edition, which will launch at the same time as Season 7 and include every playable character from the get-go, as well as some Legendary skins.
There's still no official confirmation on when the Nintendo Switch port of the game will release, though the ESRB has given it an age rating, which implies that it will come out sometime soon, perhaps also when Season 7 launches.
Apex Legends is available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Source: Reddit