In an interview with Famitsu, Respawn’s David Duong and Square Enix’s Yuma Watanabe gave some behind-the-scenes details about the current FFVII event in Apex Legends and talked about included items and things like Turks skins that didn’t make it in. The event will last until January 31, 2024. [Thanks, Famitsu!]
In the interview, Duong noted that there are many people working on Apex who were huge fans of FFVII growing up, and so they decided to approach Square Enix for the collaboration. On Square Enix’s side, the team members were also huge Apex Legends fans, so they were surprised and delighted at the suggestion. Duong also mentioned that FFVII Rebirth’s aesthetic, characters, and vast library of skills were perfect fits for the Apex world, which is why they chose to use that game for the collaboration.
In the FFVII crossover event in Apex Legends, you can get skins that look like Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, and other party members. However, Watanabe stated that in the original discussions, the skins would look like SOLDIERs, Shinra soldiers, and Turks instead. As a whole though, the Apex Legends team lead development on the collaboration event and very few staff from Square Enix were involved. This was to prevent any information about Rebirth from leaking out.
They mentioned lot of the work went into how the Buster Sword works. The teams spent a lot of time designing the sound, animations, and appearance to let players indulge in the fantasy of swinging it around. However, the Buster Sword in Apex Legends is shorter than the real thing. This is because the actual size would make it difficult for players to see, and the long reach would make it unsuitable for an FPS game.
FFVII Rebirth will come out for the PS5 on February 29, 2024. Apex Legends is readily available on the PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Windows PC, Nintendo Switch, and mobile devices.
