Boring names for the civilizations in the game?

dalphy08·Feb 20, 2019·4 votes·1,877 views

Hey guys!

I'm a Cryptologist and Symbologist, and I know a lot about where languages come from. Believe it or not, it's actually one of the most potent arts there are!

So basically, I find the names of all the cities in this game like Noxus or whatever, the names of the heroes from them and such (heroes in legend tend to inherit the morphemes (small words that make up a bigger word) in their name from the town or Kingdom they're from) are NOT really exhilarating. I find that the names all sound too much...I dunno....like a bit rip-offey of that typical british accent medieval genre that's been so imitated now after Lord of the Rings came out and dominated the genre. You can't just whilley nilley a medieval fiction, because it's going to come across VERY FLAT if you don't put enough effort into really understanding the civilizations.

Like J.R.R. Tolkien actually studied old languages, like old languages of the Norse and Greeks, as well as many old Sand languages to form the Haradrim empires and that really cool old looking script they use in the PS2 games and such! (The elvish-looking text)

So in short, I find the lore to be very dry. I feel like it didn't match up with the original artwork of the game back in 2010, or some of the richness in Warcraft 3.

Your thoughts?

5 Comments

Whyte LyonFeb 20, 20193 votes

You haven't delved too deep into the lore, have you? Cause you might not have felt the need to make this thread otherwise. I dont know what your perspective on Icathian/Vastaya/Buhru/Orchnun/Shurima culture, but they're all unique languages. There might not be any single fully fleshed out language on a level as Tolkien created, but remanents of a few unique elements are scattered throughout the world building and the VO of a few champions.

dalphy08Feb 20, 20192 votes

[{quoted}](name=Whyte Lyon,realm=OCE,application-id=6kFXY1kR,discussion-id=XLHVFow5,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2019-02-20T04:01:32.284+0000)

You haven't delved too deep into the lore, have you. Cause this wouldn't have felt the need to make this thread otherwise. I dont know what your perspective on Icathian/Vastaya/Buhru/Orchnun/Freljord culture, but they're all unique languages.

I have!

Or perhaps, not even as much as I could have, because it didn't really give me my Medieval fix!

"Aurelion Sol", "Kai 'Sa", and the art that goes with them (because remember, all the pieces of each character & place have to connect together to sell the plot. It doesn't matter if you were thinking of something really cool when you made the character art; because when the game loads, if the artwork show in the overworld/play section of the game: then you will see NOTHING of your story carries over!) are very unimpressive.

Like, okay, she's a "Kai 'Sa". What does this name mean? Is it just a quick lure to make you think you're playing something different than Call of Duty 2? I feel the voice acting and the over-comediazing of the characters make me think that maybe even the company doesn't take the story too seriously.....

(YES I know, we are here to just play an AOS at the end of the day perhaps, but it doesn't mean gaming has to be like that. If it were, it would mean we'd never have moved past the side-scrolling camera view era of gaming)

And I feel that it's a bit strange to on one hand, see all these deadly swords and armor that has steel thorns on it; a massive white jaguar thing that wants to eat you, a dark Nocturne guy who blankets the battlefield in complete umbra.....then you see some like baby Squirrel in it's pyjamas running around? A weird shorthaired girl Tristana that looks like one of those weird 80's toys you never figured out why you had, Annie at least can be viewed as possible as it's one of those daring comedic things; to try and lighten the feel a bit.

But like, Chinese restaurant sushi kitchen characters? Arcade techno headphone soldiers? That could have been an interesting Matrix type cyber-punk thing maybe, the classic Arcade greaser gangsters from the 90's who always made it hard for my daughters to play games. But it didn't really happen properly! Other weird ones, like I fail to see why a SOCCER TEAM would be in a medieval battle...the original artwork of the game would have more likely featured ancient Olympian type athletes, where is that atmosphere gone?

Other numerous ones that can't be all named right now...as I forgot!

RiotBioluminescenceFeb 20, 20197 votes

I fear I'm not following you here, 100%.

The second part of your post here seems to be complaining about the thematic inconsistency of things like Arcade, PROJECT, cooking, and football characters running around in game, alongside characters in pauldrons and waving staffs/swords. The issue is perhaps that you're not familiar with the fact there are optional, cosmetic-only, 'skins' (appearance modifiers) for the characters in the game. Any character without one of these skins applied, in their default state, exists within the core 'canon' universe of Runeterra - where Demacia, Noxus, Ionia, etc. are nations, where Azir is a risen emperor of Shurima (or wants to be), and Ekko is a kid running around the dangerous alleyways of Zaun.

The skins are not, in fact, intended to exist in any realistic way, alongside others from a different alt-universe or skinline. (With a few very unusual exceptions.)

I hope that helps clear up why they don't seem to match up very well - they're not supposed to. The goal is that a skinline will have internal consistency - so PROJECT Ashe should look correct next to PROJECT Lucian or PROJECT Yasuo. Similarly, the Star Guardian skins all exist within a consistent story universe together - and indeed, there are short stories about that universe. But these alt-universes are NOT the same as the Runeterra universe.

And speaking of Universe, this is a site that mostly carries information/stories from the main, Runeterra, universe, though if you check the top menu, you'll see an entry for "Alt Universe" with some content from these other skinlines.

https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_US/

I hope that clears things up a bit for you. I would like to hear more about your (or anyone's) thoughts on place names though. Can't say I quite understood your points on the topic so far, though.

CauseSCIENCEFeb 20, 20192 votes

Kai-sa comes from her father, Kassadin, which means, Whom does the desert know (in shuriman i think)

As for the soccer team stuff, they're skins, they're not supposed to be canon (exluding Star Guardian, Blood Moon, Odyssey and Project, of course which are confirmed alternate universes).