@Riot Rek'Sai: On Personality and the nature of Monstrous Champions

Rek'Sai has been revealed and then was put on the PBE. I have some concerns about her dynamically, but mechanically she seems like an interesting champ that I'm looking forward to playing. I am very disappointed with her aesthetics, however. Not with how she looks, I like the fact that she has no eyes and the "fin" on her back screams land shark. You have visually hit the mark. The aesthetic issue I have is with how she sounds. Her lines are all different growls, snarls, grunts, etc. Yes, I get that she's a monster so she'll monster it up monster style with monster sounds, but every other monster champ in the game was able to retain that feeling while appearing intelligent. Gnar may speak in a non-common language, but that at least can be interpreted as a language (and he definitely has a personality). Mega Gnar may speak mostly in growls, but he is still capable of some speech and the guttural roars are meant to juxtapose against the playfully chatty squirrel that is Mini Gnar. So while Gnar is unintelligible, but definitely has thins to say (e.g. Demaglio), why was Rek'Sai allowed to be the first champ without a real script?

Now this isn't related to the stories you can tell about her at all. I almost didn't make this thread here, but it seemed like Story/Art was the closest to the point I was going to make. I feel where LoL is concerned, stories are where you detail motivations and relationships. You have a champ and he/she interacts with something or someone, and that gives you a clearer vision of how he/she fits in the world. The actual game is where you're meant to express the personality of a champ. Perhaps not all the details of an entire champ's psyche, but the main thrust of how this champ thinks. I could be told through a written story that Ron Swanson is a mostly impassive libertarian who connects deeply with the equally impassive April, but watching Parks & Rec will give me a much better idea of how those qualities expresses themselves through the character. Point being, screaming all the time isn't a good way to establish a personality and a little dance or laugh isn't going to do the job that a series of understandable (read: relatable) spoken lines will.

Establishing personality is important because it's a large part of a champ's fantasy. Vi is a good example of a champ that hits all the necessary points when it comes to fulfilling the fantasy: how she looks (fat hands), how she sounds (Vi stands for I'm going to punch you a lot), and how she plays (you punch people with your fat hands, a lot). Parenthetically, this is also the reason I don't play Nautilus. I love Naut's script and how he looks, but his game play is boring to me. While game play should be what ultimately causes a player to enjoy a champ, being able to form a connection to that character will be one of the first things a player will wrestle with and will decide how close a player feels they are to acting how the given fantasy. The fact that Rek'Sai has no script is especially grating when I recall the Omen champion. If I remember correctly, he was cancelled because he was generically monstrous. He was a monster without a real personality, one with whom you could not empathise. All of the other void monsters have a personality. Even with how old Cho'Gath's VO is now, you know he likes menacing humans and feels uncomfortable in Runeterra. Kha'Zix is a omnivorous creeper, Kog is a hungry puppy, Vel'Koz is Johnny 5 with eye lasers (input input input). Rek'Sai is a monster. She's blind. She digs. Can break dance.

I'm probably still going to buy Rek'Sai purely on her interesting mechanics and land shark by itself isn't the weakest fantasy. I just feel as though you could have done more to give her something people could have really latched onto.