Frozen Time : Riot's Failure to Create a Narrative
Other Titles - PULL THE TRIGGER or A DUMB RANT
So folks, here's an essay for y'all. You probably don't want it, but I'm gonna do it anyway.
For quite some time I've like the lore in League, for the most part. The game has so many characters in the game its hard to not find at least 1 that you like. They created the Universe website and starting creating cool short stories too. The dark ages of "Urgot has a dark and mysterious past" is in the past aside from memes; however, with how much time I've spent keeping track of lore changes, retcons, and reading the little flavor stories, I have only come to one conclusion. Riot does not want to finish any arc of any story. If you're unfamiliar with the term, wikipedia has it as - " A story arc (also narrative arc)[1] is an extended or continuing storyline in episodic storytelling media". If you've watched TV dramas, generally for a season they will have little stories between each episode with little nuggets feeding an overall larger plot that comes to a head in the season finale. If it isn't resolved in the finale, the next season's opener takes care of it and kickstarts the next "arc". As for League of Legends, they continually pretend to have "arcs" but never realize the payoff and consequences. The absolute only time they will ever "finish" an arc is when they create a characters origin story. Riot likes to have the characters have some major character development into the "legend" but then refuse to take the next logical steps and apply the character to the world they have created. They've done this with every major lore update since the very first one back in 2013, the Freljord update. It is almost exactly 5 years since they did that update on 4/2/2013 so I felt like it was a good idea to go back, and see how far we've come since then. Honestly the major trigger why I even feel like I can make this rant.
So on 4/2/2013 they released the Sejuani and Trundle relaunches onto the PBE, with new lore. Trundle is who I'm going to be focusing on because I have this lovely post by Riot Runaan to use as quote material. So lets go back, back to the past, where everybody was from the Freljord.
Trundle got an entire relaunch to turn him into an Ice Troll. As for why they did a complete relaunch instead of say, the Gangplank update, Riot Runaan has this to say:
> You guys are right: Trundle’s old story was compelling. It was a strong arc with a cathartic ending that finished the story of Trundle’s involvement with his tribe. The thing is, that story was effectively finished. Any evolution from the point at which Trundle decides to doom his tribe felt arbitrary when we discussed it internally. > >We explored evolving Trundle into a frost troll as a solution to the problem of his story feeling complete. For example, we tried stories like “ice of Freljord slowed the disease” or “the Ice Witch cured him,” but they felt like Band-Aid solutions to get from Story A to Story B. This would not have been meaningful character development; it would have been an excuse to move the story forward in an inorganic way. A fresh start allowed us to create a strong, compelling, and open-ended story for Trundle
They wanted an open-ended story for Trundle. If you've payed attention to a lot of the new lores coming out this is consistent. They absolutely refuse to have a character accomplish a goal. None of the characters in League are allowed to succed or allowed to fail. They must stay in an eternal state of limbo. This, I feel, is partially a consequence of coming off the old Institute of War lore. The game and its lore was neatly tied together. You couldn't have a character die, or accomplish a goal because the Institute was the one helping them accomplish that goal. Aside from Kayle selling herself into slavery, most characters willingly there could leave and stop fighting for the Summoners. They could never actually finish anything. "Oh Urgot got his revenge on Garen now he can finally kill himself" doesn't really work when you're trying to tie the narrative to the game, and so, the narrative could never grow outwards beyond the Institute. However, for some reason, even though the Institute and summoners have been gone for YEARS, we still have the same problems. Even the lore updates that look like they are progressing the characters are hidden origin stories into a passive state of existence. A character could never evolve beyond what the game portrays them as, even though the game and the narrative are as separated as they could be. Lets take a short detour into what I'm talking about, the Bilgewater update.
In the Bilgewater update we got a few major lore changes; Gangplank update and TF/Graves beef ending. If you look through the veneer and flair of the presentation, we can clearly see that these two changes are in fact not character arcs coming to a close, but character arcs beginning. Riot pretended the old lore was still in tact for these characters, pretended that the weight and time spent on these stories still existed, but they didn't. For all purposes these were brand new stories in the new universe. We were introduced to Gangplank and punk'd for what his real base design would look like. It wasn't Gangplank changing with time, it was delayed origin story. Riot didn't take time to establish GP, or how his pride would be his downfall. It was established and realized in the same story in order to bring us the Gangplank we have now. Same thing happened with TF and Graves, except it was done even worse. Riot created new backstory and pretended it functioned the same way. In the old story TF sold out Graves for power. Graves coming for revenge was clearly justified and we could empathize with him. In the new lore, Graves was just a fuck-up. They did a shit job and the crew died while Graves got caught. Graves thought TF was responsible so he broke out. Within 30 minutes of them meeting back up the issue was resolved, because the issue wasn't that much of an actual issue. Graves was dumb. We got it. They make Graves such an angry fuck-up they completely write out the ability for TF to explain anything. When a beef that long has been happening and it turns into a problem solved by a "Lets talk" you've fucked it up. So basically they've wrote the new origin story for TF and Graves. They wrote TF's from scratch and hashslinged Graves together. Now in-universe they are friends. Ok. They've done nothing with it. That's the end of the story. Its over. Oops. BACK TO THE OPEN ENDED STORY TRUNDLE.
So Trundle gets relaunced with a terribly written story that has lines like "He out-muscled the Ice Witch's guards and outsmarted her dark magic traps", but Runaan makes a point to say this:
> We’ve taken a lot of steps to make Trundle the greatest frost troll he can be while still preserving the key elements of who he once was. This opens up a lot of opportunities for stories and serves a greater goal of building out our world into a more cohesive, unified whole.
Opens up opportunities for stories. Lets take another passage to make a point.
> Things like this give us a lot of storytelling potential for Trundle in the future—let’s talk about that!
> Story Possibilities
> So, where do we begin with Trundle, the Troll King? Where can we take him from here? One key factor is that Trundle is still the underdog of the Freljord. Ashe, Sejuani and Lissandra seem to be the main power players here, but Trundle is the unexpected fourth force in the grand scheme of things. There’s a lot ahead of him, but can the Troll King rise to the challenge and reclaim the Freljord in the name of his kin?
And my last passage I purposefully left off my first quote
> Trundle’s old story was essentially finished, but new Trundle’s story is only just beginning. It’s essentially Act 1… where will the rest of the Troll King’s story take us?
Hmmm. This sounds interesting. I wonder what they've done with Trundle in the 5 years they've had him.
http://puu.sh/zXNFz/6689f13885.jpg
oh. Nothing. Well ain't that neat.
Trundle has done nothing. He is nothing. Hail King Nothing.
I need to emphasize this point. I can understand why they refuse to follow through with payoffs. They want to make new characters. They want space for new characters. Having a character go through a story can destroy that space. Its understandable you don't want to do that, but I absolutely refuse to believe you need to have every single character be an open-ended story. A character can accomplish a goal and still find purpose in other things. Runaan believes that a writer creating a challenge for a character beyond their initial scope is "arbitrary". I have to disagree. Characters have arcs. They need to finish an arc so we can have payoff. A new arc needs to take its place for that character. I want progression. I want to see a character "evolve" from his entry point into League of Legends. Conflict demands resolution.
So this isn't a complete rant of things I hate, let me point toward a story they've made I love. Its a style that has happened more than once, which I'll get to after. The story "The Bird and the Branch" with Taliyah and Yasuo is one of my favorite stories even if its technically an Taliyah origin story. It has character interactions I find enjoyable and gives way more character to Taliyah then any character has gotten since in my opinion. We have Yasuo in the twixt of his struggle with the Noxian invasion as a background. Taliyah is struggling to use her gift, Yasuo helps her. It is an amazing story.
Link : https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/featured/taliyah-short-story
Now onto what I was saying in that it has happened more than once. When the Galio update came around and they had to re-release Demacia lores, they used him as a condiut to tell Lux's origin. Galio helped persuade Lux that her magic wasn't evil, she wasn't evil. Its a very similar story but they serve a purpose to set up the character. There I am at the issue again. To set up the character.
I enjoy these stories. I enjoy the updates. I don't enjoy having to write everything in fanfiction so I can get some resolution. I want finality. I want endings into new beginnings. You can't keep giving us climaxes and refusing to give us the resolution.
As a very small side-note, I think Riot needs to come to term with characters possibly being a static character. Sometimes a character can't be much beyond their original scope, and that's fine! If you look at Olaf he's probably one of the most static characters you can have. His prophecy means he can't die in any story, and in terms of his impact outside of battle he can't really do much. Olaf is stuck in a Man vs Himself conflict with coming to terms with his death and that's a great story to tell. You don't need him to be a dynamic character where he has in impact in all Freljordian life as we know it, his "arc" is his entire life leading up to his death. The lessons and the journey there is his arc. Maybe Olaf learns a life lesson about how his afterlife isn't worth other people dying, who knows? Aside from that story though, Olaf isn't going to be doing much. Gragas is largely the same way. Gragas is kinda the Tom Bombadil of League, and its alright to have that kind of character. Anyway. /rant.
