New Champion Lore compared to Previous Lore

ninja devestator··6 votes·2,155 views

I know I am a bit late on the offering my opinion on this particular topic, but it has been something that was once my favorite part about a new champion release.

I read the post about Story Telling in Runeterra and how you guys wanted to revamp some of the backstory of champions and setting itself, but it seems like the best part of that storytelling has been taken away.

I wholeheartedly enjoyed reading the lengthy Lore of the characters. For example, Darius' lore did a great job in explaining his place in Noxius, his rise to power and his motivation, but then I look at the new Lore for Nasus, and it led to a lot of confusion about who Nasus is, why he is, and what his place in the world is supposed to be.

Compared to his previous Lore, I knew the purpose of Nasus' being, his place in his world and his current goals. Now, especially after the introduction of Azir, I'm wondering how Nasus got his powers. Was it from the same ritual that Azir used on himself? Why was Nasus allowed to even partake in such a ritual?

(This is just one example on how I read the new Lore compared the previous telling.)

To me, this new Lore system no longer tells me WHO this champion actually is but rather a summed up version of WHAT this champion is. To me, it just doesn't feel like a "backstory" anymore.

I really want to be interested in reading that section on the champions again and I really want to understand how you guys came to this decision to tell their story like this or if I'm just the only one who feels like this.

12 Comments

Ninja of Dusk2 votes

[deleted]

libraryseraph 4 votes

skins aren't meant to have anything to do with lore though

James Stone6 votes

I guess you think it's canon that Cho'Gath is a Gentleman then? Or Anivia is the personification of team spirit? Or maybe Corki discovered the secret of Gravity Inversal and now rides a tobogan or Urf just because hein?

It's people like you who make the rest of us look bad in the eyes of the neutrals.

NorthernDruid2 votes

Not that I don't like short stories. But I hope they give us proper bios as well, when i'm gonna decide which new champion to try out one of the things I check out is their lore. This decision is one I wanna make in comfort before playing checking out their abilities, maybe their spotlight and general strategy stuff. With a Bio I learn who they are, but the current 2-line lore doesn't tell me that.

Of course for old champions I just go to the wiki and check out all their lores. But for new ones who don't have a proper bio I can't. If I wanna know more than "durr-hurr Kalista is a vengance spirit" I have to read a rather long story. The thing is, while reading longer pieces of writing to explore a character I like further is something I'm exited about doing, when I only wanna find out who they are I don't wanna read a POV piece of a small section of their life or whatever. I wanna read a couple of paragraphs describing who, what and why they are.

And the difference is generally two paragraphs vs two full scrolls of screen.

I like short stories, but they don't make for good champion introductions.

So while getting more stories is cool and all, I still want the good few paragraphs telling me what their surface story is, and then I can discover more of them via the judgements of old and the short stories of today.

I so want a league judgement for Kalista.

Not to mention an actual bio.

LordHippoman1 votes

Nasus is one of the Shurima characters who hasn't gotten his new full lore released yet. Presumably, when it's out, it'll be similar to the Azir or Xerath short stories that were released on the forums. Right now we don't have much to go on, so it's honestly mostly educated guesses as to the specifics. He is ascended, so he could be an ancient Shuriman emperor or something.

My guess is that he was changed mostly to remove the part of his lore that put him in another world, since Riot has been changing a lot of those lately. We'll probably see something similar for Taric and Malphite down the road.

ninja devestator2 votes

I used Nasus' as an example because it raised a lot more questions about his backstory then it did to inform me about it.

I would really hope that there is more to be released later, and that would certainly help explain it if it were only with Shuriman and other world champs ( I noticed they did the same thing to Champs related to the Shadow Isle), but they did the same thing with other champs that have no correlation with each other.

It's just that a lot of the changes are super condensed legends about the character instead of that characters history. An example of that would be a comparison of Dr. Mundo or Nidalee's lore to Tristana or Ezreal. They used to tell a story, now it's more of a quick synopsis.

GreenLore1 votes

Overall they plan to do short lores in the client and full lores on the official site. However there have been weird tech issues with that,preventing them from putting 2 different lores on the 2 sites,which is why we are now stuck with the short lore only.

Full lores are going to be released once they fixed the tech issues. They already released Azirs,Xeraths and Kalistas on the boards(its probably easier to find them on the wiki) and accidently gave us sions full lore instead of the short version(which is why sions full lore is in his bio) and rek'sai got the diary entries of the noxian guy who tried to capture her. And recently they leaked amumus full lore while trying to fix the tech issue.

Currently all the shurima&shadow isles champions as well as the new champs(Or some updated champs like tristana)have only their short lore in the client and will get the full lore on the official site once the tech issue has been resolved(they will add a link in the client so that you can go from the client to the official site).Although it is unknown if any of the non-shurima-champs will get a new full-lore at all,so champs like thresh and so on might simply keep their original lore.

Also you should note that lore is now more episodic.The full lores don't summarize everything about the champ anymore,but are more like single chapters for that character and additional parts will be released in the future.

Dotintheparadox1 votes

The Amumu short story suggested he was some kind of myth in Shurima as well "Jackal only knows.", or he's probably going to be turned into a narrator for stories.

TheGrandAlliance1 votes

To be fair... the "lore" of mostly everyone is basically limited to a couple of paragraphs in-game; maybe some posts on site or otherwise.

In other words... the game's lore isn't detailed at all compared to, well, EVERYTHING else (Warcraft plx lol) so complaints about "RIOT changing the lore" is a most undefined concept because basically if they do ANYTHIGN they are "changing the lore" because of course... most champions are based upon a couple of paragraphs in the end...

Xano5011 votes

[deleted]

Avalon Bright1 votes

Please no. I can't handle my foxy with that ...thing.

Motajo1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Avalon Bright,realm=NA,application-id=6kFXY1kR,discussion-id=3nplm1mJ,comment-id=00030000,timestamp=2015-02-07T16:14:55.334+0000)Please no. I can't handle my foxy with that ...thing.

You and him both

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