Apex Legends players may have noticed that Wattson doesn’t have the most natural form while running around with her weapon. The defensive powerhouse looks a bit awkward while moving around and also hugs her weapon while sprinting. We now know the reason why.
Wattson is one of the youngest Legends in the game. Her play style and abilities are very obviously defensive, true to the background story written for her by the devs. As an engineer, she uses her knowledge to guard her squad from incoming attacks, but isn’t too well versed with wielding a weapon herself. Respawn principal animator, Moy Parra, wanted to make sure that this came across to players, and showed off how he captured it.
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As spotted by PC Gamer, Parra took to Twitter to explain that they wanted to capture the awkward stance and movement of someone who had never held a gun before to replicate onto Wattson. For that purpose, Parra’s niece, who had never held a gun before, was brought in to provide the motion capture for the character.
⏪ if you ever wondered why Wattson holds her weapons a bit awkwardly compared to say, Bangalore. That's because my niece who provided the MoCap for her had never held a gun before in her life and we wanted to capture this natural innocence in all of Wattson's move sets ⚡️❤️ pic.twitter.com/HZyfYW73LE
— Moy Parra ? (@_moyparra) July 1, 2021
“If you ever wondered why Wattson holds her weapons a bit awkwardly compared to say, Bangalore. That's because my niece who provided the MoCap for her had never held a gun before in her life and we wanted to capture this natural innocence in all of Wattson's move sets,” tweeted Parra.
Attached was a video showing the motion capture process featuring his niece, with a side-by-side comparison of Wattson’s animation. From the video, it definitely doesn’t look like Parra’s niece is too experienced in running with weapons, so it seems she was a good choice to model Wattsons animations off of.
We might soon get a look at what lies in Apex Legend’s future. EA has announced that this year’s EA Play Live will not feature any new announcements, but will focus on games that are "coming out soon". EA marketing officer David Tinson also said, “the show is a fast-paced one, coming in around 40 minutes and will feature what’s next for games like Battlefield 2042 and Apex Legends. You’ll also see the first gameplay for Lost in Random, featuring explosive dice battles, time-freezing tactics and card collection."
