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Eternal Champion and the reason I don't care much about the lore in LoL

Señor Karthus·11/16/2015, 6:51:21 PM·18 votes·10,429 views

Some of you who played the Sega Megadrive/Genesis console in the 90s might know about this game called Eternal Champion. It was an exclusive and didn't get the best reviews in the world but I absolutely loved it because of its lore. The synopsis of the game was that a superior timeless being called The Eternal Champion was watching the end of mankind in a far distant future. He looked in the river of time for outstanding people whose lives could have changed the world for better forever, but they died before they could have accomplished anything. The Eternal Champion used all his power to cheat time and abduct these people from different moments in history right before they would die and brought them to his time. But since time was such a powerful force, the Eternal Champion only had power to bring one of them a few seconds before their death. So he created a tournament in which only the winner could be brought back that way, with the knowledge of the things to come to avoid death and change and save the world from its fate. The rest would be placed back where they were and face the death they were supposed to face. I was completely in love with this concept and loved to beat the game just to know how every character influenced history and changed the world for good. Even if it sometimes didn't make much sense that every one of them was a martial arts fighter, it made a lot of sense the motivations of them all to participate in the tournament. THEIR LIVES WERE AT STAKE! And they could do things to save the world from its doomed history!

But when coming to League of Legends, where Champions are summoned to fight in it.... it doesn't make any sense for most Champions. It doesn't make sense because most of them shouldn't have any motivation at all to participate in it. Many have cool stories and all but then... Why the hell are they actually in the League? I'm sorry but for me this is the biggest flaw of the lore in this game and why I don't really care much about the lore. Other than Draven and a few more that actually have motivations to participate, the rest makes no sense.

71 Comments

RiotBioluminescence11/17/2015, 2:37:20 AM15 votes

Holy crap I remember this game.

There was a warlock dude with a cane, and a totally-not-a-vampire guy. I rented the game from my local video store, a week at a time and despite being a bit terrible at fighting games, I completed both of their campaigns to find out their stories. I remember reading the instruction manual on the bus home from the store, learning about their (always very tragic) backstories. I think it was the first time I ever saw a character with the name Xavier - and I was overwhelmed with how downright cool that was.

I do think, however, that it was simply a variation on the standard Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat collect-mighty-heroes-for-a-tournament setup that fighting games are well known for. The added narrative sugar that it was their only chance at cheating their own deaths definitely added to it - but does make you wonder what 'happened' once the tournament was over. You and I saw the cut-scenes at the end (or was it text - it's been so long my brain has turned it into a cut-scene memory) but it makes no story sense to then go back to the start of the tournament and begin again. Having a story with an end - where the characters finally get what they always wanted - is a difficult thing to make sense in a game where you can play it over and over again.

It'd be really weird, for example, to have a text box pop up at the end of every Victory scene, explaining how your champion overcame their primary character conflict. It'd get really tiresome too, after the first few times.

The old 'Institute of War' was an attempt to solve that problem - summon immortal versions of champions to fight proxy battles over any dispute - but it came with its own (well discussed and sometimes controversial) problems. For better or worse we're not doing the Institute of War paradigm any more - and champions have been getting updated and expanded stories explaining their place in the Runeterra universe without an IoW.

I'm sure someone else may come along and suggest it, but if you're looking for match-influenced story, then the player-run Factions games might help scratch that itch. Otherwise, occasionally events have taken player actions and used them to influence a storyline junction - but those are few and far between. More likely, updated biographies and champion stories will show the development of characters in the world - which sometimes bleeds into the game world (as when Gangplank presumed dead in the recent Burning Tides event - and disabled from play until his return).

I feel I may not have addressed your thoughts properly, so I'll end with a question - how would you change League to better satisfy the desire that Eternal Champions created? What would be your chosen solution?

Sharjo11/16/2015, 7:01:55 PM8 votes

Well you'll be happy to know there isn't a League of Legends or Institute of War in the lore any longer! That's been retconned outta here! Thus when lore developments come they actually have some kind of stakes. What stakes?! Depends on the story, but either way there is actually no League of Legends in the game anymore, it's just the game's name. No Institute of War, that's been removed!

LordHippoman11/17/2015, 4:56:49 AM7 votes

The whole purpose of the League was, when it was still canon, to resolve political disputes in a fashion that didn't involve war, because Runeterra had been absolutely destroyed in the past by war due to how powerful mages could get. Thus the League was not only a political tool, but a way to sort of give the most powerful mages in the world (Summoners/Champions) something to do but kill eachother. Most champions aren't in the League for personal glory like Draven, people like Garen and Darius have patriotic reasons, others struck deals with the League like Zilean and Olaf (pre-Freljord retcon), and some of them are basically just prisoners that are too powerful to kill (Brand, Noc, Cho'gath). Now, some of them still make no sense (Lissandra is a superpowered ice witch who is trying to hide the fact that she is a superpowered ice witch...might as well go into the world's most popular sport and be an Ice Witch!, Yasuo is a fugitive running from the law, stops to go fight a robot and a rat.), but that's likely just because those characters were released around when Riot may have decided to pull back on the League as a plot point.

It's more about the city-state/faction power than the personal glory/goals for a lot of them. If that still turns you off to it, I do get that though.

Dominick Destine11/17/2015, 2:39:57 AM5 votes

That Sega game actually sounds pretty cool. Might have to look into it, thanks OP.

That being said, I was never a big fan of the Institute of War or The League... but it had its place and I despised that they chucked all of the lore out in exchange for... nothing. There is no legitimate reason for them to destroy the lore of the game other than sheer Roit laziness. Bring back the lore, Meddler.

I remember the players used to be called "Summoners" in-canon, in-game and in-lore. Now it doesn't even make sense, now it just sucks.

Earl Eulrich11/17/2015, 3:10:10 AM4 votes

welcome to League of no immersion...