Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

Lore: outdated stuff, retcons "killing" old lore, general "lack of care"

Dies to Wolves·7/5/2015, 5:32:06 AM·40 votes·3,203 views

Firstly I'd like to point out that I don't really pay much atention to lore nowadays because, honestly, I think it's been going to shit for a while so I kinda stopped caring rather than let myself feel letdown again and again

but there's a particular issue that keeps forever bugging me, so I thought "eh, wtf, let me make a quick thread here about it", at least to free my conscience, even though i'm pretty sure this post won't make any difference at all

anyways, let me get to the point. Here's my perspective from something that happens often: "Hrm, let's update this story! It's stale, nothing happens to it!" - proceeds to retcon it to something else. "Hah, now that it's changed, we can surely eventually continue this story (rather than just continue the older version)". In the proccess of retconning it, fuck up interconnected shit up. Proceed to NEVER touch that story or the interconnected (and now messed up) stuff. Mission... accomplished?

Example: that old soraka / warwick lore rewrite. No idea why the hell did you guys felt like you needed to change their stories, but ok, you changed it. In rewriting warwick's lore, you guys invalidated singed's lore (as in, either singed's lore is wrong, or warwick's lore is wrong). I remember a red then saying "don't worry guys, we will update singed's backstory too!". Here we are, I don't even know how many years later, and you guys never ever ever ever touched singed again. What was the point in changing warwick's and soraka's stories, then? If it's supposedly to "enable" it to be continued, if you never touch on it again, and in the process you just make it less interesting AND at the same time fuck up other champion's (in this case, singed)'s lore? Why?

Or the infamous big lore retcon. "We feel that it limits league's storytelling", so let's break shit down. In doing it, you fucked up a LOT of stuff; as an example, Lee Sin. The dude started as a prodigal aspiring summoner (oops, they don't exist anymore); shit happened so he stopped spell casting became a monk blablabla. Burnt himself alive in protest for the noxian occupation of ionia, which led to the awesome ionia vs noxus league rematch thingy to settle things up. Eh, guess that never happened either. I guess he just burnt himself til noxus was sick of the smell of burning human flesh and left ionia.

"oh, but rek'sai is a monster!!!!!! oh but bard has a video!!!!!!" you don't need to go all "hey, the league never existed!" to make those work, or heck you could have just in-lore destroyed the league, or maybe retcon a bit of the importance / power of the league rather than just remove it and screw over the lore, without EVER going back to fix stuff. Woohoo, now "lol's stories can move foward!" Except they don't. All in all, it moved back

end rant, good night, I'm off to sleep.

51 Comments

RetroRage967/5/2015, 5:44:04 AM15 votes

So true! I was really hoping all the lore would be updated after all the shit happened with Retcon, but nobody did anything. Who is Olaf now? What is he doing after killing every living that can fight back in his world? What the fuck is Nocturne? He's just a free-roaming evil spirit thing? Nothing to confine him?

Basically, Riot fucked up everybody's lore to make it less childish, less storybook-like.

I DON'T CARE.

I don't care if every warrior in Runeterra joining some fight club is too storybook-y! I want it to make sense!

Riot, cut the crap and fix the lore!

Dies to Wolves7/5/2015, 2:31:58 PM13 votes

Something that makes me salty is that we got a lot of "just wait and see guys, we are working on it, you'll guys like it!!!" responses from riot, when asking for more lore. After, what, almost a year of waiting after those responses were given, what we got was... "ok, now the lore is retconned and screw you all!" and we still don't get more lore. So basically, we lost a lot while gaining nothing new.

"oh, but ekko had a comic!" Yes, he had. A comic on his lore. I think riot kinda is supposed to make lore for the new champions playable characters on release. It's not something to brag about. It doesn't fix the broken old lore nor is it an "increase" in the lore. It's a different medium for the lore of a new character, ok cool, but... so what.

Also, there was that whole 2 sentence summary bio thing. At first riot's positioning was "it's just temporary while we fix a tech issue that prevents us from something something". After a LONG ass time waiting for them to fix it, we got a "well, actually, we want the short bios there for people to quickly know what the champion is about!!!11!! and then we will post the long bios elsewhere". This is the kinda stuff that makes you lose hope and trust on a company.

Dextix LT7/5/2015, 12:06:21 PM11 votes

Narrative department consists of a bunch of idiots which do not know how to storytell or even create lore. Just them saying that IOW is a "Limitation" and that "A story of a character can only end with its death" shows what bunch of detached idiots work there.

THey, however, will never admit their fck ups. Right now, they are on a power trip and feel they are gods. THey feel they know everything and we dont know anything. When its really the other way around.

Now i know what people will say "But IOW limited the story and it was just a convienient plot hole for the game to happen". It is partly right. Yes it is a "plot ole" for the game to happen, but it helped the lore to be connected to the game. Without it, they do not have connection.

I have yet to see someone complaining that existance of "Avengers" in the film universe limits its characters. Why? Because such things do not limit anything.

However, i dont even know what to say further. We all know that narrative wont change (still on god like power trip), we all know that they will never admit mistakes. We all know that they will never establish proper communication with the community. We all know, that they wil not create new lore to replace old lore, because it just doesnt bring money to them.

NorthernDruid7/5/2015, 11:58:23 AM9 votes

They took out the core setting elements that held everything together in order to tell a completely different set of non-lore stories.

Then 9-10 months happened.

And nothing significant was ever done.

I'm still waiting for them to reveal the new setting, but at this point I don't excactly have my hopes up.

Riot stopped telling the story they were telling because they wanted to tell a different story instead of telling the one which is lore for the game.

It still is lore btw, they didn't actually retcon anything outside of making a few bios shorter and shifting a bunch of champions over to shurima.

And I'd rather keep it lore, than have rito keep pushing their distinctly game unrelated stuff as lore.

vileelf7/5/2015, 6:08:29 PM6 votes

The lore has just been downhill ever since they ended the JOJ. We used to get all the awesome stories about great heros in the battles or noxus and demacia, mage stupidly giving rise to powerful beings, the threat of Malzahar and the void always looming around the corner, and swains rise to power through the use of several champions. Now what do we get? A 5 min video that looks cool, but doesn't tell use all that much about where that champ came from or whats going on.

GreenLore7/5/2015, 4:36:57 PM4 votes

Overall I think the retcon isn't the main problem. I mean yes the retcon is removing a lot of lore and I understand it if someone is against it.However it would be a lot more acceptable if we got more lore to replace the lost lore.

But there are 2 problems that make the retcon really problematic: -They slowed down with the lore releases,which wouldn't be so bad if the individual lore pieces gave us lots of information,but...

-they are now releasing lore in a more episodic way.This means that every lore piece just details a rather small part of the champs story and since we don't get many lore pieces in the first place,it means we are stuck with a really small amount of new lore.

Combined this means that we loose a lot of lore through the retcon,most of it which isn't properly replaced by anything due to the lore team not releasing that much lore and even if it is replaced by something it doesn't give us as much information as the old lore used to do.

TheRainInSpain7/5/2015, 6:41:28 PM3 votes

Videos and cometic events (such as holiday stuff) look cool and above all, advertise the game to new players.

Lore takes time and creativity, but doesn't really add to the game's playerbase and thus its money pot.

Good lore can be made by just about anyone with enough dedication. I'm willing to bet the actual storymakers got extremely butthurt over fanfics.

Doctor Dyment7/5/2015, 7:04:52 PM1 votes

Well, certain aspects of the old lore are still present and cannon, such as Morgana and Kayle. So all the lore that happened outside of the Institute of War still happened, but the Summoners just don't exist anymore. Yes, a good portion of the lore was chunked away in favor of smaller, character by character lore builds instead of large overlapping ones, but that doesn't mean that all of it is gone. Try to look on the bright side, and maybe eventually it will come to us, eh?

Ariel the Cruel7/6/2015, 5:17:17 AM1 votes

or heck you could have just in-lore destroyed the league

See Arcanist Ziggs lore.

For centuries, the guild hall stood as a shining beacon of magical progress. Rune-inscribed spellbooks covered its towering walls, watching over generation after generation of neophytes as they memorized their daily incantation. It was a bastion of magical knowledge the world thought would last forever.

Then someone played wiffle ball with a smoldering orb of incineration...

Next . . .

<champion lore>

I can actually fix this one pretty easily too. 1 sec. . .

The mysteries that surround Soraka are numerous. How did a simple celestial of the stars suddenly become able to walk? How did she craft her vaunted banana staff? What is she searching for as he crosses the Runeterra world? One thing is for certain: trying to stop the inexorable Soraka is a fool's mission.

And . . .

The mysteries that surround Warwick are numerous. How did a simple creature of Zuan suddenly become able to talk? How did he craft his vaunted suit of armor? What is he searching for as he crosses the Ionian battlefield? One thing is for certain: trying to stop the inexorable Warwick is a fool's mission.

See? The lore isn't as bad as you make it out to be. All the solutions are there, just waiting for a bow.

Dreamspitter7/7/2015, 1:59:10 AM1 votes

#Graham Mcneil

He was sent by The Emperor to save us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_McNeill https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/38ctgr/graham_mcneill_to_write_for_riot_game/

Pegasus1777/8/2015, 12:19:32 AM1 votes

There was nothing wrong with the old lore... Where did they get this idea it was too kid orientated. I enjoyed it. I was hoping they would elaborate on it. Like who is Jinx sister that the shop keeper mentions? Is it VI? Whats the full story behind Ekko because that comic was a bit vague. Or the one that ive always wanted... Is Katarinas father alive? Secretly i always hoped Katarinas father was made a champion. If the lore is scrapped it might never happen....

General Du Couteau MAKE IT HAPPEN RITO!