What I've been seeing a few times is that people really don't like the new lore about the Targon champions. I mean personally I thought Riot did a decent job and it might have not been the best but what I want to know is why does everyone else have a dislike for it? From what I've read, people don't like it because it heavily changed the characters and I could possibly see that but I specifically want to know how it changed them and why it makes people mad.
As far as i know, some people disliked the fact that Leona is now more "aggressive" because she killed people and things like that
... Seriously people, she has a weapon on her hand... you think that is a decoration or something? weapons are usually used to kill.
(and the "pantheon" isnt "pantheon" problem as well)
I personally think was a very good lore, and that the player complaint ultimately boiled down to not understanding what happened.
They always thought Leona as a pacifist monk that would not hurt a fly and when they noticed that she can actually use a weapon to kill invaders they overreacted. Then there was the Atreus and Pantheon whine where they liked the new character ( because that is what Atreus was, a new character ) that got killed immediately, making up then the whole "space parasite" thing and projected it into every other aspect.
So yeah, the complaints in these boards were buried deep into misunderstanding and projection. Leona is stil Leona with a developed prospective on how she deals with the violence and how her order works, Diana is still Diana with a developed prospective on her mission, Taric is finally not a joke character and Pantheon is what he was always supposed to be - a cold distant warrior.
I'll be honest I still trying to find valid reason other than muh feel regarding the targon update. I've been resorting to telling them to fuck of at this point since they can't be reasoned with at this point.
I mean there was barely a change, they remove the bad messiyah like trait from Leona and Pantheon lost his friendship with leona? To be fair pantheon was flat as pancake in term.of character before.
I think people in general were content with the Targon lore changes. It's just a vocal minority that were kind of upset. It was really only 2 or 3 people repeatedly starting discussions on the boards about how much they hated it.
A lot of people think the whole "Aspects" thing takes agency away from the champions and puts it on the space Targonians, so "Pantheon" isn't really "Pantheon", he's the alien thing that inhabits that body.
There's also some disagreement about if the whole "Space Empire" thing was too far for League to go, like, scale-wise.
Personally I liked it, as I think that if handled right, the aspects can coexist with the champs in a good way, and "X is a random thing from space" is not new for League. It was the original lore for: 
, and probably a few I'm missing. I understand the complaints, I just think that the pros outweigh the cons.
Personally, I love the Targon lore, but I also wasn't around for the old lore. I was going to post an old comment by Warlord Dienekes, where he told me why he doesn't like the new lore, but then I saw that he already commented his opinion. So never mind.
In general the opinions on the targon update were rather split. Its just that those who dislike a change are more likely to get vocal about their opinion than the other way around.
In general the most divisive points seem to be: 1.The targonian space-aspects,mainly because they are largely shrouded in mystery,while affecting the targon lore to such a large extent and might be the mightiest faction of them all(after all they have Aurelion sol at their command) 2.Pantheon being retconned from a regular badass-soldier into an aspect,especially since said aspect gets pretty much no characterization in his lore and comes off as a jerk. 3.Leona being more agressive in her lore(especially the part where she was ready to execute Diana) 4.Diana being less agressive and ready to find a peaceful solution with the solari,which contradicts her ingame-quotes
I think more people took issue with the development of the characters from pre-Aspect to post-Aspect. For example, Pantheon was known by a different name and he was abused and whatnot, but then he gets inhabited by a mysterious celestial force of war that completely defeated the purpose of his pre-Aspect character development. That's all.
I, personally, like it. I think that there is some strange connection between Aspects and Ascendants and the way magic works and the cosmos. I believe Riot has some mechanics in mind for the Runeterran universe that underlie several different pieces of these stories. It just makes more sense that way.
Well, I dislike it a lot so I'll bring up why and then get yelled down for being a whiner or whatever.
In any case, let's make something clear. The old lore was never very good. Unfortunately, the new lore also isn't very good. There's more of it, but the quality of that lore is really lackluster, in my eyes, and the changes made are often very strange and not exactly necessary except as a means of forcing the elements into the lore of the stuff I really don't like. Taking the few parts of the old lore that actually were good or at least interesting and either pointlessly altering them or replacing them with strange things that don't interest me at all.
The big one is of course, the Aspects themselves and how they warp everything around them. From the old lore, Leona was still Leona, Diana was still Diana, they simply got a power boost from their gods. But every mistake they made was still them. Compare that to what has happened in the new lore, and Leona was acting as Leona right up until she gets possessed and then suddenly her entire personality changes to match with what she was before the lore change. Which is unnecessary and kind of weird.
Really, Leona's entire story is muddled. At first, she acts like the Leona the original fans of the character liked. She stepped up against the codes of the rather barbaric Rakkor, and got herself almost killed for her conscience. Good, that's exactly what her fans wanted to see. Then, she goes to live with the Solari, and suddenly her personality changes. Now, I am sure that the argument for anyone disliking her personality change will say "Oh she was always aggressive, she has a sword" or "Now she has more depth" but I really don't think that's the case. For the first part, there's a difference between being aggressive and what Leona actually was in her new lore.
In her new lore she is literally fantasizing about killing Diana the first time they meet because Diana was saying things she didn't like. Not doing anything wrong, this is before she kills the Elders. She's just talking and Leona is reveling in her role as an executioner. Which, none of her old fans really saw her as. But then we know how that plays out, Leona runs up the mountain, meets the alien thing, gets possessed and suddenly she's fine with Diana again.
Why that's strange, because that is literally Leona's personality pre-retcon, and at the beginning of her own lore. Her sudden shift of personality doesn't add anything, in fact since it wasn't explained why she changed or how it really just comes out of nowhere as sloppy writing. Where the characters personality is warped to get the effect that the writers want without paying attention to what a character was before that point.
Even stranger was how Riot itself seemed to kind of ignore the retcon. At the end of both their stories, Leona is fine with Diana and wants to share their knowledge and Diana is trying to find peace with the Solari (which is not at all what her in game dialogue is like, but whatever, I assume that will be changed when they get around to updating dialogue for non-reworked champions sometime in the next 3-4 years or so). But then a month or so later, Riot made a big poll event about who would win in their grand rivalry, Diana vs Leona. But, the rivalry was just written out of their lores, Riot members even said in the thread that yeah this rivalry is no longer canon, and yet their rivalry was still such a huge part of what the community sees in them that they're still setting up events around it.
Which goes again to promises, set up, and execution. For the few folk who liked and even cared for the old Leona and Diana stories, the writers and designers were dropping hints like crazy that there was more to the Leona and Diana relationship than we knew. That their meeting would be a heartbreaking thing. And, it was set up in a way that I personally (and this is only personally) found interesting. Because in the old lore, Leona was definitely the "good" person. But she was also unequivocally on the wrong side, which I love when that sort of thing happens. The Solari were the ones who were attempting to stamp out the old Lunari knowledge, she didn't know that, and it created this tension of seeing these two paragons having a theological battle that would be made across the mountain.
The other thing I have against it, is really the entire star empire possessing alien things. Which, reading it I thought was one of the strangest most unnecessary additions to something I have ever read. But this has to do with what I find interesting. I like history. I like normal people dealing with the political and social fallout of their actions. And, I'll admit, I had built up what the Targon lore would develop to in my head, but it seemed so obvious to me. The Solari were leaderless, and they were the religious and vaguely political bodies that ran the entire mountain. The Lunari were on the rise looking for allies to change the political balance of the mountain. And the Rakkor were still there, the wild card warriors, would they choose the Sun or the Moon? And who else would be dragged into this political struggle. That stuff fascinates me.
Then what we got is that very interesting story shoved aside to focus on aliens, with a star empire we never heard of before. The champion that I really liked for being a normal soldier who could fight these monsters and gods, became a really awesome soldier guy. Then got possessed by another alien, and somehow that alien was just as bland and characterless as the character was before the retcon. I mean come on, Riot, I will not say that old Pantheon was a great character. He wasn't, there was stuff there to develop from. But the new Pantheon? He's just as bland, only instead of a Spartan he's a Goa'uld. He still doesn't have a character. In fact he barely registers in his lore, he shows up the last couple paragraphs to kill a few raiders and we get a vague warning about future terrors.
And that's not even getting into the somewhat sloppy little details that Leona's and Pantheon's lores don't even line up properly in a timeline.
Now, I will say. Taric's lore? Actually pretty good. But as a whole the story that those who enjoyed the old lore were waiting to see got rather violently pushed aside in place of dealing with a space empire and star dragon.
If you like the new lore, more power to you. I hate it. It took an event I was looking forward to, a political and social drama of soldiers and ideals. And turned it into a people getting possessed by aliens. The drama I wanted to see barely registers when compared to a world ending dragon and void threat. But, again, I don't care about Sol, or the aliens. The new lore didn't get me to like or become interested in the new story they've delivered. Instead I'm just vaguely rooting for Sol to burn the space Targs all up and leave Runeterra alone.
But even then, what really confuses me. If Riot really wanted a space empire, with a light/dark dichotomy, where the light side probably isn't as good as you'd think, forcing their conflict to come to Runeterra. Well, that's literally what Morgana's and Kyle's lore were set up as. Why didn't they just use them?
Though I will say, the vitriol about the lore change has definitely gone down. When it first happened, there were a lot of people who complained about it. Now, most of them seem to have stopped posting, and a few have stopped playing the game entirely. But, that's to be expected I suppose. It has after all, been months.
