Remember Omen, the demon champion that they cancelled just because they wanted to put in Riven sooner? Well I think that was a poor excuse for cancelling that champion. Omen actually looks pretty cool, which leaves me at a pretty angry loss to why they would cancel him.. just for Riven.. so delay Riven's release.. what the heck? Are you going to cancel Ao Shin too? Cause if that happens I'll get REALLY pissed. For a look at Omen, click on the link.
Remember Omen, the demon champion that they cancelled just because they wanted to put in Riven sooner? Well I think that was a poor excuse for cancelling that champion.
A complete misconception, actually.
Take a look at the presentation Designers are Human Too - Causes of Poor Design Decisions by Tom Cadwell, Riot's Design Director. He explains that Omen suffered from a number of major design issues, and "we want to get Riven done sooner" wasn't one of them. The fact that Riven was close enough to done to fill in the gap was more convenient than planned: Omen was already 50% done, and had a lot of work put into him.
There were a number of reasons he was cut. Firstly, not enough of the team was really excited about the concept -- it started falling flat soon enough that it was a warning sign. The character design itself didn't read well -- it was hard to tell if it was supposed to be ranged or melee. Perhaps most importantly, they put a lot of effort into Omen, and they didn't see the sort of quality improvement they wanted: that's an enormous red card in design.
In general, it appears that Omen was, largely, a conceptual failure. Tom basically calls it a character that someone should have said "no" to the presented concept of far earlier.
Did it maybe have some potential in a different form? Maybe. But the effort needed to take it there wasn't worth the time, energy, or expense given the development path Omen seems to have followed.
omen is what is now known as rek'sai
Well, like you've already discussed with The Djinn, Omen wasn't canceled because they wanted to push Riven out sooner, they actually had to delay a whole patch cycle so they could rush Riven out in his place.
The fact that he was canceled doesn't mean he is never going to make it in game, it just means he is likely going to be a very different critter than they had planned him to be. Riot scraps concepts all the time (like Gavid the plant king, now Maokai and Zyra, or seth the sand mage, now Azir, and so on), and just because Omen was halfway through production doesn't mean they are going to leave him permanently buried.
