After seeing the shift in direction that the Narrative department has taken since the retcon, this has seemed to be the case.
Especially after that new Amumu video.
The exception being the Harrowing Video, which was pretty awesome...but admittedly didn't tell us much about what was going on in Runeterra.
Anyone else agree/disagree?
So far, it just feels like the literary equivalent of eye candy, bite-sized and half-assed with no substance.
The OP mentions "shift in direction," but to me it feels like rito's Narrative team (assuming there is one -- at this point I'm making that assumption on faith) is completely directionless. They announced the retcon and since then nothing of any real substance has come in to fill the massive gaps that have been left; the biggest and most pressing of those being the question of why all these so-called champions are killing each other in this arena called Summoner's Rift.
It's really starting to bother me because they're releasing these little snippets like Amumu's music video as well as the Music of League, but to me everything rings hollow because there's no solid foundation for any of it.
They want us to figure out the story.
In which the clues are usually too vague for anyone to speculate on anything.
As I have said, the current narrative team was hired under Tom Abernathy, and they share his design philosophy, to them plot does not matter, and that's just stupid.
Hm, I think Riot will come with a story that'll be told for the stories sake, not to just show off some characters. The diary seemed like a first step, a story told to teach us about the world rather than to show off Rek'Sai.
So far, they haven't done so yet though. They just set settings and showed off characters.
Uhm the harrowing told us quite a lot about the history of bilgewater and the other harrowings(not really a story for a character,but a lot of background for Bilgewater/Shadow isles),which I wouldn't really call a character theme.
The amumu video wasn't even done directly by the art team(they probably just provided some basic information for the video,like how amumus curse manifests etc.).
Also the Azir and Xerath lore are hardly just excuses to express their character themes(one could argue about kalista and so on though),but yeah individual stories don't really progress currently,which might be because they are still busy retconning.
Amumu is sad. He has no freinds.
Kalista is betrayed. She seeks vengence.
Lissandra is plotting to take the freljord. She will never succeed nor fail, and will simply keep on waiting forever.
Character themes and stories should, ideally, be highly correlated. I think what you mean more technically is 'plot', which in literature is identified as the text describing 'what happened'. A story is a more broad idea, which in literature typically identifies as always having a theme.
Glad someone cares about the lore though. I'm wondering what happened to all the characters whose previous lore left them kind of isolated from the others. Yasuo is supposedly chased by all of Ionia but I guess the other champions are to busy (if we can even call them champions any more cuz no IOL). and what about Master Yi who seems to have fallen of the face of Runeterra alongside Wukong as they never appear anymore. And even better, what the hell is Taric or Malphite doing here now?
Smash is a little different though You know their stories somewhat when going in. Part of league is that Riot has to give us some new backstory. (You know, because the retcon)
I can sorta agree, mind I haven't actually read any of the short stories they've been putting out.
If they did change to less substansial stories, at least that would mean fewer directly contradicting things.
Meaning we get more fodder for our "You say retcon but nothing so far is actually contradictory with the old stuff" canon.
