Apex Legends' Meli Grant Talks Catalyst's Abilities and How…

Apex Legends is an ever-expanding universe that doesn't shy away from LGBTQIA+ representation, which is both needed in the video game industry and as a whole for gamers who seek role models in the media they consume. This is an important aspect of modern games, and while it's not something that a lot of developers actually put into their work, this is slowly changing for the better despite occasional lapses such as Bayonetta 3 dropping LGBTQIA+ themes. Still, Respawn Entertainment's Apex Legends has proven time and again that it's not afraid to feature multiple queer Legends, with seven confirmed LGBTQIA+ characters and a likely eighth in the form of Mirage out of 19 total.

The latest addition is barely a week old: Catalyst. Catalyst is Apex Legends' first confirmed trans character, which is a big deal for trans players in search of representation and also as a way to make trans stories more visible in the industry, possibly showing that they are not only needed but also actively looked for. Catalyst also is an important step in the right direction because she is voiced by a trans actor by the name of Meli Grant, showing that queer talent can do an outstanding job with queer characters. Grant talked to The Best War Games about how Catalyst's identity finds its way into the character's powers and abilities, as well as how Catalyst's story can be about being trans without making it all about that trait.

Meli Grant Explains How Catalyst's Abilities Help Normalize Her Story and Experience

While she is overt about her being trans, it isn't necessarily something that defines her as a whole, and the trailers Respawn Entertainment released for Catalyst instead show that she might be defined more heavily by the events surrounding her friend, Margo. According to Grant, Catalyst deferred to Margo quite a lot in the past, and it's possible that Catalyst being hurt by Margo's disappearance is what led her to create walls around herself, both metaphorically and literally.

"There have been multiple jokes in fact over the course of recording her, and some of them were lines that may have not made it into the game, but we've had jokes along the way about how she has her walls up. She seals doors and puts up walls, kinda locks the world away. It does feel like her abilities could be the outward expression of her coping mechanisms, so I feel that aspect of it."

Catalyst is a supportive tank Legend with a focus on protection abilities, which is not just part of her gameplay loop, but also her personal background that defined her as a person. Her keeping her defenses up is meaningful because it's a coping mechanism after allowing the world to hurt her when she lost Margo. That's when Catalyst's darker and more serious personality came to be. Still, as Grant points out, Catalyst is quite capable of recurring to a sarcastic sense of humor, and she has lines where she jokingly says that she has her walls up, acknowledging her own behavior in an innocent act of self-mockery.

Although Catalyst tends to shut away people in her life as a way to cope with the world's harshness, Grant believes that trans people need a strong support system to overcome part of the negativity or even the hate others can put them through. To this end, Grant believes that Apex Legends' Catalyst should be the first step in the right direction for the industry to try and normalize trans stories as much as possible, both for representation value and because it can help make them stand out for how ordinary they can be.

"With Catalyst in particular, it's after she transitioned, and she's still figuring out the growing pains of how to move through the world and what femininity means to her, how she presents that. She has her own issues at home, disagreements with her family and friend group, she has hobbies, she cares about the environment, and she's worried about her planet, and she's doing what she can to fight against a corporation that doesn't care about the people living there and only about the profit from digging what's underneath the soil. There is so much more going on for her than her trans aspect."

That's why Catalyst being trans is not where her story begins and ends, but rather it's just one of the facets of the character. Similarly, Grant spoke about how she replied to a hateful comment about her work on Apex Legends, saying that trans people are not normal. To this, Grant replied that her life does look quite normal to her in how she needs to pay rent, balances her diet, and worries about whether she should take the highway or not, and that's why normalizing the trans experience beyond being trans is important.