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Grade the Shurima event

Sunfield·9/22/2014, 10:13:52 PM·3 votes·916 views

1st part - was good, video was a nice suprise, but the story itself... I dunno, didnt really get me going. "Here is Sivir and Cass, Sivirs weapon is the key, Cass stabs Sivir, Cass turns half snake". There wasnt any real build up to this. But I did enjoy the whole Ascension thing and Xerath, Nasus and Renekton parts where well done. In fact, I do like the new Renekton better and the reason for his insanity.

2nd part- this vid really got me going. I loved that Sivir is getting more background as she was revealed to be a relative to Azir. I did like his part too, not just for the visuals (which where god damn epic), but him as a character as well. When the video ended, it left the feeling of something greater drawing near. Best part imo

3rd part, epilogue - it felt... rushed. No really, I do understand that the 3rd video would be a bit too much to expect, but is this paragraph really all we got? Its not a satisfing conclusion and while I do get that it was supposed to be an open ending, leaving some space for more content, I did expect much more. The ending is supposed to kick it off with a style and here it was definetely lacking.

Overall 7/10, the Ascension mode was enjoyable, characters and story aside from Cassiopeias part where well explained and the videos definetely up the quality of the event. More than I expected, but much less than it built up for.

So, maybe instead of downvoting and hating put your own grade? Its important, because its supposed to be a feedback discussion and if you downvote it it means you dont want to see it on boards... meaning you dont want others nor yourself to express their opinion

5 Comments

Starlighte9/22/2014, 10:30:06 PM2 votes

There is a commonly accepted opinion among most well-known writers that "tying a bow" on a story degrades its value. The best of stories aren't black-and-white and have multiple different interpretations and theories associated with them. Take Tolkien's LotR or Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice. Both of these well-regarded fantasy series have multiple different interpretations and hundreds of theories. Part of the reason these are so well-regarded is because of that.

The issue is these authors had thousands of pages of text, and truly immense worlds that they had the ability to write about. They had NOVELS, whereas LoL's lore has an issue where even if we took all of the written, video, and other lore and combined it into a text form and printed it, It wouldn't even have the beginnings of one novel, let alone a trilogy (Tolkien) or a heptalogy (Martin, hopefully finishes it before he dies).

And I needed to get that out before I gave my grade, because context matters.

I felt the Shurima event was an F. Just like the Freljord event, and the Shadow Isles event.

Leaving loose ends, and not tying a neat bow on stories is something that only novelists can get away with. The problem right now with our Lore is that Riot is trying to write it like short stories, where they can reasonably leave things open and let our imaginations run wild, but they're attempting short stories in a universe and a world optimized for a novel.

Short stories don't have the world, the setting, the political intricacies that Runeterra does. So why are we treating it like it could fit right in with a collection of Poe's short stories?

Sure, tying things up and making conclusions potentially closes up possible avenues for future stories. But that is OK! Some avenues NEED to be closed or OUGHT to be closed. Look at Freljord for example. Riot even had us vote on our faction with icons, similar to the Lunar Revel event. But what came of it? Nothing. And that sucks as fans, because we were given a conflict with no resolution, and no promises to come back and resolve it in X amount of time. That leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths.

The Shurima event had two main issues that led to, in my opinions, it's failure.

Massive retcons. Nobody likes retcons, especially when they seem to be for an arbitrary reason, with no substantial evidence to suggest that it was "for the better".
A lack of resolution or conclusion. These stories should not be constructed in short story fashion if they are part of an overarching story of Runeterra. It needs to be treated appropriately like a novel, because quite honestly it IS a novel.

Lord Milutin9/22/2014, 10:19:05 PM1 votes

Prologue - 7 First part - 6 Second part - 9 Epilogue - 0 Ascension - 8 Azir - 8 Cassiopeia TU and small GU - 9 Renekton TU - 8 Promo site - 9 Rewards - 10 Guardian of the Sands Kha'Zix - 8

dialMARK4acti0n9/22/2014, 10:38:07 PM1 votes

10/10

I love the direction lore is going!