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Ekko Comic Critisisim

Jasonco2·5/21/2015, 8:40:45 PM·4 votes·1,458 views

So now that's Ekko's comic is out I just wanted to create a place where people (such as myself) could explain what we did or did not like about it. Now I'd like to keep this free of things like "it sucked!!! give us moar!!!". This isn't the place for that. This is the place to delve into deeper into what exactly about Ekko's "Launch Story" that we felt worked or didn't work. I'll start...

I felt the comic was well drawn and written. It gave us a wonderful glimpse into Ekko's personality and his values. In this way it was a perfect introduction to him as a character.

That said, my biggest problem with with his story was the lack of world building. Specifically, the same comic could have shown up with some nouns swapped around and we'd be wondering if Ekko was a LoL champions or from DOTA or some other IP. There was nothing there (IMO) to root it to the world and lore that supposedly exists in LoL.

To illustrate what I mean, I'll give an example of something I think could have fixed that. During his multiple attempts, after a failure, he takes a single rewind to stop in front of the mural. Tired and exhausted, he reflects on those he's lost before now: Jinx, Vi... mysterious disappearances and lost friends that he'll probably never see again. But not this time. With new found resolve he rewinds time again and we see him finally get there fast enough to learn about the whistling man. Then the comic continues as it did.

The comic was a wonderful start; but I truly feel it felt short of the kind of world building I'd like to see in Launch Stories moving forward. Any other thoughts from the community?

7 Comments

Melancholy Exile5/21/2015, 9:33:34 PM4 votes

{quoted} During his multiple attempts, after a failure, he takes a single rewind to stop in front of the mural. Tired and exhausted, he reflects on those he's lost before now: Jinx, Vi... mysterious disappearances and lost friends that he'll probably never see again. But not this time. With new found resolve he rewinds time again and we see him finally get there fast enough to learn about the whistling man. Then the comic continues as it did.

Personally I think that this particular story would have been greatly improved by something along these lines, although I don't think there's any real need to delve into his connections to other Champions at this point in time.

"Chronobreak" could have been the story of how the loss of a particular friend inspired Ekko to throw himself into the quest to find some way to offer these people a second chance, eventually lucking out and developing the Zero-Drive ... but ultimately having to deal with the fact that there were some people he just couldn't save. It could have have really hammered home the point about the damage to the Z-Drive leaving him with "no more chances, no more hope, no more rewinds ..." because we could have seen the power of that hope and how it had saved him from his former despondency about how powerless he was to make a difference.

I miss League Judgements because their purpose was not only to show us something of a Champion's past but also to offer us new insight into how they had become the person that they were upon their arrival at the League, and 'Chronobreak' is ultimately just an expansion on the statement "when there's a threat to his friends, he'll endure anything to defend them" from Ekko's bio. I obviously can't speak to how much effort went into developing this comic and how much more it would take to do something more expansive, but I would far rather see something that delved into Ekko's past to show us what made him the character in League of Legends than a relatively standalone story like this.

Ultimately we have something here which, while certainly interesting, only gives us insight into a very small part of Ekko's story and character. We don't really know what his relationship with Ajula was, how many times Ekko has done something like this before, where this falls in his personal timeline, how and why he developed the Zero-Drive and what came of that - a lot of things - and if current standards are anything to go by we probably won't know the answer to any of those for quite some time.

Sneak Dog5/21/2015, 9:43:26 PM4 votes

I feel like the comic told us awfully little in a lot of pages. It looked all nice and flashy, but in the end, I feel like it only barely managed to settle Ekko's character and place him in the world. It didn't really make me excited for him (I also blame Riots willingness to remove/change characters for this) or give him any relations to other champions.

KabiMode5/21/2015, 9:04:48 PM1 votes

I definitely would like to see more in detail in both the launch stories and the lore.

In the case of Ekko, what I particularly am interested in the wall. I know that Ajuna was put there because Ekko couldn't save him; however, I am fairly certain that Jinx and Vi are still alive. I am not sure if Jinx and VI have already been assigned a cannon reason for being on the well, but i have yet to see one.

Valaran Nara5/21/2015, 9:09:48 PM1 votes

Personally, when it comes to the LIMITS of the Z-drive, if he could rewind time without ANY limits, then he could take his time trying to figure out how to save them.

Rewinding all the way back to the mural for motivation, THEN resuming seems less...dire of a situation than starting back at ONE EXACT SPOT and having to fight against what you know is the inevitable. If he could revert to the wall, then he wouldn't need to race against time. He'd just need to rewind far back enough to keep his friend from leaving in the first place.

Strawberrycocoa5/21/2015, 9:28:49 PM1 votes

He calls the whistling man a "Piltie". As in Piltover.