Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

Can We Discuss Recent "Story" Elements?

Beardyface86·2/23/2015, 8:43:27 PM·27 votes·2,641 views

Ever since the veil has been cast off about the want for a less restrictive lore, all that has happened is that the lore has become almost nonexistent.

Champs (not cannon now mind you, just lack of a better word) have no flow into the story or lives of other champs save for a few directly related people strung in there by "nationality". It's too contrived, already there's no unifying force between the champs now and its becoming even more polarized. More and more often, with some really generic (read: boring) rewrites, the champ's stories are becoming isolated to their region (Sivir) or worse; the champ itself (Braum). Champs are becoming "just some guy in a fantasy world" instead of a part of a breathing living world. Its lazy, honestly, to say that you want a freedom from restriction and then just throw in the towel on creativity all together. Freedom is one thing, if you plan to actually rewrite the story, but there's been no rewrite. Its just been one individual churned out after the other with no part of a bigger picture.

The disappearing lore has been a disturbing thing to see in game, as its just being replaced with BORING observations that offer no deeper insight to the champ. With the disappearing lore has been a move to completely outsource the lore to the website, which is also disturbing. The fact that LoL is an online game put aside, I feel like that its becoming more of a chore to actually be interested in the story. Instead of the website and media outlets further developing the characters and experience, they're doing PRIMARY character development. It feels like the game itself is becoming more geared towards the business, esports end of things and lore, fluff, story and development are arbitrarily thrown in.

Please don't tell us you want freedom to develop the story in a less restrictive way and just change all lore entries to a boring, two sentence observation that a brain dead newt could figure out within minutes of playing the champ. Please don't ask for creative freedom and just create a sequence of champions that have no real connection to anything or anyone. Kalista (generic undead, formerly the role of Sion), Rek'sai (Graboid), Braum (YOO HOO! SUMMER SALE!) just ARE, they are non specific generic characters, they can be taken out of this game, placed anywhere else with a vague fantasy setting and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

You have your freedom of creativity and licence to do do great things, quit squandering it.

22 Comments

XalkXolc2/24/2015, 1:57:04 AM13 votes

Things like this are part of the reasons that Factions (leaguefactions.net) decided to split from Riot Lore after the Great Retcon. It felt like a cop-out, throwing out the League, which really has the potential to be a great literary tool.

Awoof2/24/2015, 7:52:16 AM8 votes

At some point I had come to the feeling they just wanted their 'badass' (I've come to hate that word thanks to riot) character ideas to make it into the game, couldn't figure out how to incorporate them with the League, and as such just removed it.

That's probably not true, but it's very difficult for me to see it different. I totally agree on you on the isolation. I have the feeling many if not most champions don't have any reason to ever meet each other.

All the decisions, leading to my described perception, with the partially overdone edginess and one-dimensional characters, just made me be settled that riot's writing team is bad.

Like, I'm not meaning to put me on a high horse, neither do I wanna say they do nothing good, they just leave me with the feeling they are not good/professional writers. /pointless opinion end

GreenLore2/23/2015, 11:24:02 PM6 votes

I dunno why sivir is now suddenly restricted to one region(I mean it was her connection to noxus that more or less started the whole shurima event). While she will definetly play more of a role in shurima,it doesn't exclude her from other stories at all.

Overall the big problem is more that lore isn't coming out at a steady pace.They don't manage to fix the techissue with the official site,but put up the short lores for champs regardless.They should really stop pushing out those short lores if they can't give us the full version on the website.

The lore itself is in my opinion quite good though,Azirs lore is quite neat,champion lores are not simple biographys,but the first chapter of their story and they did a lot of world building in the last years,its just that the lore gets released so slowly that it doesn't get anywhere.

KING OF MASKS2/24/2015, 6:42:36 AM5 votes

The only quality lore that has been released since the retcon is Sion.

Sneak Dog2/23/2015, 9:53:22 PM4 votes

They don't care about their characters. They are happy to change and/or replace characters for the greater story. Now I can't care about their characters either, knowing they could be removed the next day.

Noraver2/24/2015, 9:04:26 AM2 votes

If I were you, I would've put the quotations on "recent".

Rito is still on their Christmas break.

Kazaashi2/24/2015, 6:48:28 PM1 votes

Maybe Riot has removed the references to the League because, after 5 years of being summoned to multiple instances of the same place at the same time, League summoners finally ripped a hole in the fabric of space time and swallowed the League whole, effectively removing it from history. BIFM, the matches still take place and champs are summoned in from all over Runeterra, The League is now just in another space time continuum, separate from the Lore universe.