Disliking The Approach

Irongrinder·11/25/2014, 5:20:57 AM·12 votes·1,219 views

So...the primary complaint with Gnar's lore is that we effectively learn nothing about Gnar by reading it. Nothing about his personality, his backstory, and, in Gnar's case, specifically, his name isn't even mentioned.

But now (NOW), Riot is LISTENINGtm!

By LISTENINGtm Riot will take our feedback into account, and actually give us some in-depth information with the latest release, Kalista!

...or they'll just do the same thing over again. Oookay. Good job, Riot, good job. Fantastic. Wonderful. Slow clap. I'll tell you what, if you're LISTENINGtm to us, I'm STAYINGtm with you. Get it?

5 Comments

Shíny11/25/2014, 7:25:01 AM7 votes

This is a big problem (IMO) with their new approach and it shows inconsistency in their story-telling and their approach to it.

Riot's justification with the Big Retcon of 2014™ was that players related more to champions than to summoners and placed themselves in the champion's shoes more often than not. The stories told during this year of the great retcon contradict what they say they value though.

Stories told of Braum, Gnar ,and Kalista all very much emphasize the legends aspect of LOL but give nothing that allows for connection to these characters.

Braum's lore lists his heroic feats but gives no context for them, his personality or how he interacts with others isn't explored at all.Fan theories have pointed out that Braum could be a selfless hero or he could be a glory-hound and even some theorize that he's something sinister connected to Lissandra. How can anyone connect to a character that has no clear identity?
Gnar's lore gives even less, Riot chose for gnar to interact with rengar for their first story.While this gives the story a humorous theme, it doesn't actually explore anything that we didn't know already about gnar.The story mentions three qualities of gnar's identity : being a prehistoric hunter, being playful, and throwing possibly lethal tantrums. None of these qualities or any other part of gnar's personality are explored and the story almost gives the same amount of spotlight to rengar with expanding on his views of the jungle and hunting style. How can anyone meaningfully connect to a character who has nothing explaining their personality and background?
Kalista's lore was met with much criticism, as it was a story that explored the sword-wife more than Kalista herself.The story had no new info that couldn't be gleaned from reading Kalista's "intro text" on the client . How can anyone meaningfully connect to a character whose identity has yet to be explored at all?

In-game voice-overs are unreliable and more often than not make caricatures of characters ( Azir do you have a moment to talk about shurima?).

The problem right now with characters created alongside the new lore initiative is that they are for the most part, contradictory to what lore says they value in their characters: characters that people can connect to and are memorable.

HeresyUntoFedex11/25/2014, 5:53:29 AM2 votes

Hey, there is nothing wrong at all with a character's backstory to be about random pointless events that give us no ensight at all about who they are on a personal level...

Nothing at all....