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Another thread about the Darkin lore change

PerchancetoGame·6/26/2018, 12:26:36 PM·5 votes·2,984 views

I know that other people are commenting on this but figured adding another thread to the discussion board would help get Riot's attention that this is something to address.

The Darkin lore established with Varus's narrative change was not only recent, it worked quite well. Being new shouldn't be reason enough to keep something if it doesn't work but this was interesting. It implied epic moments from this world's history like the warrior queen shattering the bridge to the Darkin world with Varus's bow, and had room for similar character development as Twlight of the Gods, where the remaining Darkin come to grips with being stranded and hunted on a strange world.

"Twilight of the Gods" is well written and gripping. You really feel for these fallen god-warriors and it answers the question of what happened to the other Ascended following the fall of Shurima. But tying the Darkin back to the Ascended and Shurima just feels...forced. Like the narrative team is hell-bend on making literally everything in their world neatly fit together, like there's a rule of conservation of story matter and all stories have to be consolidated. There's room in your universe for more than one world/war/interdimensional evil. I can understand how it's simpler to have one other wordly big bad (the void) but I feel like this is a case of tunnel vision.

I get that this change can't really be undone but it's good for future reference, especially when Riot reps have freely admitted that sometimes their departments aren't always in sync. This feels like the situation here.

8 Comments

WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOO6/26/2018, 1:24:23 PM2 votes

I wouldn’t be able to take another inter dimensional evil seriously tbh. I get annoyed when writers lose sight of their original scope and purpose.

PerchancetoGame6/26/2018, 4:08:02 PM2 votes

I never said they shouldn't interact or exist in a vacuum. My issue was tying the origin stories together and that their original lore was not completely incompatible with what Riot wanted for the new version. Of course these entities wouldn't tolerate the Darkin invasion. Until Aatrox's complete lore was released, I assumed that the Targonians had stepped in to help in the war against the Darkin, maybe made some friendly gestures and betrayed them (judging from Aatrox's VO).

I had enjoyed the shades of grey in Varus's lore of while the Darkin ravaged the world, you could still understand how Varus was wanted to avenge his people. Now? It's feels a little out of character that this broken warrior who lived for nothing but killing voidborn and then just killing would be all for avenging the Darkin. Though to be fair, that last part may be more of an oversight in the lore change where part of the old bio was cut and pasted in. Saying that he's back to continue his eternal killing spree, this time without any superiors to direct him, would fix this.

ModKnightsKemplar6/26/2018, 1:41:47 PM1 votes

I just vehemently disagree.

How many big bads can a world have before they start interacting? If this were a cartoon, sure, we could have 5 different mega-bad guys who just line up to replace each other as each one falls to the heroes, but that actually makes for a less believable world imo.

My questions have always been things like:

"Why doesn't Demacia just sail an army to the Shadow Isles and crush Mordekaiser?

"Why don't Ornn and Anivia just run over the Lissandra's ice palace and burn it to the ground?"

"Why don't Nasus and Aurelion Sol just jump into a portal and crush the Void for good?"

"Why the hell do the Aspects of Targon allow the Darkin to run around fucking shit up?"

The recent lore is answering a lot of these questions that were... pretty difficult to answer before. You can't just set up a sting for Evelynn; she's a literal demon. You can't just march up to Lissandra and chop off her head. You can't just run around the globe as a Darkin and avoid interacting with all these entities that are pretty invested in the world.

What we see here isn't a forced attempt to rein in Aatrox, what we see is an answer to the question: "Why are all of these other God-like beings letting this literal God of War run around slashing people to death in battles that they *almost assuredly" have a stake in?" The old Aatrox lore was cool from the perspective of the peasants; he was mysterious and powerful and we couldn't understand his motives.

But characters with question marks for motives don't fit into an epic lore like this. Bard is probably the most we're going to be able to get away with, and the story material we have for him does outline some motives. These champions ultimately have to interact with each other to stay interesting. I don't see why writing stories with those interactions present is offensive.

Terozu6/27/2018, 4:27:35 PM1 votes

Varus' invasion story was filler like Eve's story before her rework.