Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

@Riot - Kassadin and Malzahar, their stories lack substance together

Oleandervine·3/4/2018, 4:30:34 PM·6 votes·842 views

Riot, I wanted to discuss your new lore for Kassadin and Malzahar. Somehow, Kassadin leaves, then returns home to find his home sucked into the void, and his family gone. Then years later, he hears about Malzahar the prophet and his cult, and instantly determines that he must have been the reason and so creates a personal vendetta against him. Mind you, Malzahar has never met Kassadin at this point, he's just roaming the desert spreading the gospel of the Void.

This "connection" between them is utterly weak. It has none of the substance their old lore has, where Malzahar attempted to goad Kassadin into becoming his protege by hurling his daughter into the Void to force him to go into the Void. Their new story has as much impact as a scenario if my dog goes missing and I hear that Maybelline makeup got in trouble for animal testing so I go on a rampage against the CEO of the company. There is no substance to the new story, and you stripped an interesting relationship of hate between the two men in lieu of a very loose connection based on rumors Kassadin heard.

Your lore team is supposed to be updating the lore and making it fun and interesting, not diluting it and making it as vague as possible while still expecting us to connect and enjoy the hero-enemy relationships the characters had in the old lore.

9 Comments

Whyte Lyon3/4/2018, 9:52:14 PM1 votes

I think another issue that will ad more frustration to the "lacks substance" criticisms some people are having, is because nowadays there is less stories given to each champion LU. With less content to flesh out details and satisfy questions that people want to be answered.

Two-three years ago it was mandatory that every champ who was to have their lore updated, should all receive 1 long bio story (600 word limit) and 1 colour story (1,000 word limit), and Riot tried to update as many champs in one go as they could. Along with that the Universe site would be updated with new art and a separate novella (unlimited word count).

However, as of this year the lore discipline have changed what will happen with each lore update from here on out. If you weren't aware, now the lore department choose a limited few to release updates for and those picked will only have their long Bio's updated with a strong promise to re-visit these champions again sooner rather than later. And we were promised to re-visit Noxus before this years end, although the same hasn't been promised about the Void or Malz & Kass.

Anyway my main point is that this feeling of "lacking substance" isn't helped now that each champion is receiving a small 600 word reintroduction, while before with 2 stories each it was at least 1,600 words. Which is about 6-8 mins of decent reading material to drool over. But the 600 word biography on its own is a quick 2-3 mins of reading material.

It's simply not enough content to be satisfactory, regardless of the promise that they will have their stories continued further soon enough.

Mataka Tek3/4/2018, 11:10:47 PM1 votes

Great Malzahar story means nothing as they have him nerfed to hell. The actual story should read... Malzahar the prophet, who peaked into the void, and saw his balls chopped clean off by riot and lost his powers to see himself since then.