This Apex Legends Heirloom Tells A Sad Story For Octane

Octane is such an adrenaline junkie. Granted, that’s his entire schtick–we’ve known this about the Apex Legends character since his introduction in Season 1: Wild Frontier. The dude blew off his own legs in order to gain the necessary boost of speed to beat the Gauntlet record after all. But the speed demon’s heirloom takes Octavio “Octane” Silva’s obsession with chasing the high to new extremes and acts as a reminder that the adrenaline junkie’s backstory is a sad one.

Coming to Apex Legends next week, during the System Override Collection event, Octane’s heirloom is a butterfly knife. This isn’t an ordinary blade though–the knife is filled with Stim, the drug that Octane uses to achieve his enhanced speed. And so Octane has customized the butterfly knife so that it can be used to both slash opponents and inject the drug into his own body.

While inspecting the heirloom, as seen in the video on the Apex Legends blog, Octane will dangerously twirl the butterfly knife around and then stab himself with its plunger to get the Stim into his system. He’ll stab himself just because. He doesn’t go on to use the drug to run faster either–Octane just celebrates the rush of the Stim coursing through his veins.

It’s the first time we see Octane use Stim recreationally. Both in-game and in cinematic trailers, he’s only used Stim as a means of achieving greater speed in a pinch. There have been signs that Octane is addicted to a drug for a while–when standing still on the home screen or during a match, he’ll start uncontrollably twitching–but this seems to confirm the long-held belief that the character is specifically addicted to the Stim he uses for the Apex Games, not a more traditional stimulant.

Which is kind of sad when you think about it. Octane is now such an adrenaline junkie, he needs to inject Stim into his body just to feel anything at all–it’s not enough to only use the drug to feel the rush of fighting skilled opponents during a match. When taken into consideration with his falling out with Ajay “Lifeline” Che, one of his oldest friends and perhaps the only one he’s ever had, it’s a sad reminder that even though Octane is the resident wild child of the legends, he’s also one of the few individuals in the group who’s totally alone. With no friends or family to turn to, his only joy in life comes from the Apex Games, when he can hang out with the other legends and abuse the drug he’s addicted to without judgment.

On Respawn’s part, it’s great storytelling to use an in-game item like this–providing greater context for a character who doesn’t seem all that deep at first. The developer has proven it isn’t averse to unorthodox storytelling methods when it comes to fleshing out the lore in Apex Legends, and the battle royale game is made stronger for it.