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Now that her lore’s been released, here are my honest thoughts on Kai’Sa.

Valor Bot·3/3/2018, 9:05:21 AM·7 votes·2,061 views

https://pre00.deviantart.net/6f00/th/pre/f/2018/051/7/c/void_adc_mood_piece_by_the_bravo_ray-dc3rwb7.jpg Concept art by Larry “The Bravo” Ray

Positives

  • Kai’Sa is relatable. She’s down to earth, loves peaches, and comes from a humble family. Not only does this make her feel human, it provides an interesting contrast to the current lineup of Void champions, who are for the most part quite bleak, single-minded, and unrelatable. This is good; change is good.

  • Kai’Sa has a resonant theme. Survival is one of man’s greatest abilities and deepest instincts, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that we would find a character like Kai’Sa so compelling and powerful. At a base level, she offers the fantasy of a lone hunter surviving on the fringes of a dark and inhospitable realm, turning their eldritch weaponry against them with bio-augmentations. There’s no shortage of coolness factor with her character.

  • Kai’Sa is a champion the League community’s wanted for a long time. This is an awesome gift from Riot to us and the prospects of other side characters coming to life in the future too is exciting.

Negatives

  • Kai’Sa didn’t overcome the Void, she merely survived next to it. Okay, this was immensely disappointing. To clarify: Malzahar never dumped Kai’Sa into the Void proper; he simply opened a fissure into the realm that she survived on the outskirts of. So, Kai’Sa doesn’t really live in the Void (aside from the few milliseconds in which she is blinking through reality with her ultimate) so much as she just hunts around it, slaying the beasts that crawl out of the fissure. This lessens the impact and stakes of her situation by so much. When I read this, I no longer felt the punch of Kai’Sa’s character or the admirability of her accomplishments. I mean, if you’re going to release a character titled “the Daughter of the Void,” why not follow through with the concept entirely?

  • Kai’Sa didn’t survive through sheer cunning and determination, she got lucky. While I have to hand it to her for going three lightless days in the dark and surviving despite the fact, the events that follow feel so convenient and plot device-y it hurts. The first Voidborn Kai’Sa encounters is not only small and ineffectual enough for her to handle on her own, it also just so happens to be a symbiotic organism that merges with her to become an artillery-like augmentation that’s perfectly suited for survival. I mean, the odds she wasn’t devoured by something much larger beforehand is remarkable enough, but then she also coincidentally comes into contact with a creature who helps her live? I thought the Void’s sole purpose was to consume and devour. This relates to my earlier point of Kai’Sa not being aspirational enough (at least narratively speaking); Riot wants—or appears to want—her to be the character we look up to for having survived the Void on her own; the brave soul who overcomes fear and terror to rise up and live on in the face of adversity; a testament to the boundlessness of human will. Yet, what ultimately saves Kai’Sa is the product of sheer dumb luck.

  • Kai’Sa’s visual design doesn’t look like a natural extension of her character, but rather an attempt to appeal to a mass audience. Not to say I couldn’t be convinced otherwise, but my (cynical) hunch is that Riot’s surveys reported a large number of players wanting more sexy female champions in the game (if this article is anything to go by) so they seized the opportunity in the form of Kai’Sa. Which is perfectly understandable from a financial perspective, but as a die-hard League of Legends fan, I really want to believe Riot isn’t in the business of compromising the integrity of their characters and stories just to cater to the masses. To clarify why I think her visuals fail to line up with her character: (1) The Void symbiote suit or “second skin” that Kai’Sa wears protects her body up until around her chest area, at which point it fades away to reveal her cleavage. This is a deliberate design choice, but not one I can find any practical, in-universe reason for (and any reason given would be suspect at best, anyway). (2) Kai’Sa has no visible bruises, scars, or other signs of hardship that might indicate a ten-year-long struggle with the Void, aside from the symbiote on her back which we can’t really see or perceive the consequences of. (3) Kai’Sa presumably hasn’t had access to clean water in her time near the Void, yet she looks immaculate and well-kept, despite the fact raw meat has likely been her only mode of sustenance. While I don’t believe she should look like she’s just walked out of a mud pen, some bits of visual information indicating her fight for survival would be nice, at least.

  • Kai’Sa’s voiceover doesn’t convey enough of her personality to be appreciable. There are roughly twenty-five lines dedicated to an in-game kill streak, but none where we really get to see the tragedy and desperation of her character shine through. I suppose that’s appropriate given how used to fighting Void monsters she is by now; but a glimpse into her struggle and suffering would really help add another layer of depth to the character, IMO. I don’t mean to speak for everyone here but I think a champion’s in-game voice lines shouldn’t just be limited to what they’d do or say if they were fighting on Summoner’s Rift, especially since we only get so much champion-specific story content as is—VO is really the main in-game avenue for this at the moment and should be dripping with character building and storytelling as a result.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I’ll still play Kai’Sa because her gameplay is fun and I think she looks cool regardless of her design’s shortcomings, but I do think she could’ve been a much better character both visually and narratively.

Hope I wasn’t too harsh

[galio-happy]

16 Comments

Żügżwäng3/3/2018, 10:45:46 AM4 votes

More sexy shaming... Why can't a sexy woman survive the void. Seriously why do people pretend like they don't have the most basic human urges, or that it is wrong. There hasn't been a "sexy"champ in a while, and kaisa is far from what they could have done. Her look is very, very pg. Like you said, she has an ordinary relatable look to her.

Jaspers3/3/2018, 10:37:49 AM4 votes

She still lacks interactions depicting that of someone who was alone for an extended period of time but if she had purpose it helps the mind stay focused.

My main concern is for 10 years she was near/next to an entrance to the Void, 10 years she didn't think to maybe leave the cave system or whatever it was and let her dad know she was alive. The dad she knew wasn't currently home and traveling. Her story reads like he died too, and that no one cared enough for her to look, neither are the case.

I did find it funny that the villagers finding the little girl made comments about Kai'Sa's look being a monster, yet for the most part, she's a woman in a suit and appears that way... you know with boobs and everything.

Draclen3/3/2018, 11:35:35 AM2 votes

I feel like there’s a few things you can change/add to fix these issues:

  1. Make Kai’sa around the 15 year age range. It’s more believeable that a 15-year-old is capable of survival in a hostile environment than a 10-year-old, who in some cases might be too naive to notice a danger before it already kills them.

  2. Have Kai’sa be there for at least a month before she gets the suit. This would show she survived a fair amount on her own and that the suit was picked up as a last resort. Which leads into my next point...

  3. Write a scene we’re she sees some creature killing a symbiotic Void being to gain enhanced abilities by wearing its skin, thus causing her to do the same. This would be after being in that rift between the Void and our world for a good deal of time and becoming desperate to survive, so desperate she’s willing to let some of the Void grow on her if it gives her the ability to live. Having the decision to gain the suit be not only purposeful but also based off the actions of a non-human creature stresses the theme of adapting which she’s all about. If we want to take it one step further, what if the creature she watches kill the symbiotic organism is a another’s Void monster that wanted to gain more beneficial traits (I think it’s fair assume that Void creatures are fine with killing each other; after all, what do they eat down there). If I’m remembering correctly, Kai’Sa’s voiceover has a line that goes something like, “The only way to survive the Void, become like them”. Something like this would push that idea to the maximum, literally observing and mimicking one of them to avoid death.

Overall I like Kai’Sa myself. I think she’s neat, has a place in the overall lore, and I’m interested to see what happens when she comes into contact with other characters (namely Kassadin). However, I feel like there were some poor story choices in the set-up to her origin that unfortunately effected the rest of her lore as a result.

Beacon Academy3/3/2018, 10:38:49 AM2 votes

I'd like someone to explain to me how a Void creature is "hard as steel" but killed by a knife big enough to be a present for an eight year old girl.

Ifneth3/3/2018, 11:22:28 AM1 votes

I agree with everything you said.

GreenLore3/3/2018, 11:36:26 AM1 votes

Kai’Sa didn’t overcome the Void, she merely survived next to it. Okay, this was immensely disappointing. To clarify: Malzahar never dumped Kai’Sa into the Void proper; he simply opened a fissure into the realm that she survived on the outskirts of. So, Kai’Sa doesn’t really live in the Void (aside from the few milliseconds in which she is blinking through reality with her ultimate) so much as she just hunts around it, slaying the beasts that crawl out of the fissure. This lessens the impact and stakes of her situation by so much. When I read this, I no longer felt the punch of Kai’Sa’s character or the admirability of her accomplishments. I mean, if you’re going to release a character titled “the Daughter of the Void,” why not follow through with the concept entirely?

I think this is actually something positive,at least when you look at Kai'sas design and personality. If she was really inside the void,then I don't think she should have been able to overcome it(and with the void erasing you,it wouldn't even make sense for her to be mutated),so Kai'sas design and character would have been extremely unfitting for such a background,which was the main criticism of her.

Chromatic Eagle3/3/2018, 3:33:53 PM1 votes

To clarify why I think her visuals fail to line up with her character, the Void symbiote suit or “second skin” that Kai’Sa wears protects her body up until around her chest area, at which point it fades away to reveal her cleavage. This is a deliberate design choice, but not one I can find any practical, in-universe reason for (and any reason given would be suspect at best, anyway).

You can toggle her helm, which also covers her chest.

Nylisa3/3/2018, 4:48:34 PM1 votes

ai’Sa didn’t survive through sheer cunning and determination, she got lucky.

you make a very solid point here so let me bring couple of questions that might help this discussion :

1- maybe that luck was the reason she felt determined to survive? like "hey i killed this one maybe i can get out too" .

2- i might be reading a bit too much on this but : maybe after the Void creature fell on her and merged with her that somehow effected the creature and rewired it into protecting her, because she was scared and determine to protect herself? this raises some questions like what the void creature is actually made of that responds to feeling or shall i say instincts of its host like that. and it is a parasite kind of creature after all. or maybe the void creature did that just to remain alive and protects itself and knows that Kai'sa survival means its own survival?

just some shots in the dark but might shed some light on this.

LordHippoman3/3/2018, 6:26:27 PM1 votes

I honestly think I mostly feel the same way you do on most of these points.

I think she's a victim of her own hype a little, too. We've had seven years of waiting for Kassadin's daughter, that's a ton of building expectations, and it's going to be hard for literally any design or lore to match it.

I can't say I don't like her, but I can't really say I do either.