League's Lore, or the Absence There Of

Fiorinol··108 votes·6,977 views

Today, we are going to the same place League's lore is going; nowhere.

66 Comments

moogle89034 votes

This man says what we're all thinking.

Deadly Mittens20 votes

In game interactions between champs, like Kalista Graves and TwistedFate is a step in the right direction, but I miss the journal of justice and its progressing/dynamic story, as opposed to static champ quips. Since the journals removal, the last story progress I remember was.... Freljorde, wait no they never resolved that. Will we ever hear what happened to Kassadin's daughter? Where is the progress in Yasuo's pursuit of the true killer? Is it physically possible to shave Braum's mustache?

Answers we will never find item 3070

Xyrne7 votes

And here I am like a turd still waiting to find out who the hell Jinx's sister is. At this point I don't think Riot even knows. Or cares.

Awoof7 votes

Jinx "You think I'M crazy?! You should see my sister." Jinx - doesn't have a sister and obviously is crazy.

I mean, I wouldn't expect there to be more to it.

Sneak Dog1 votes

Jinx is 10. Vi is 6. Jinx sister is probably 6, 100 or unintroduced to the lore.

Edit: not 50, 100

Awoof4 votes

I think someone at riot already said Vi and Jinx aren't sisters, but not 100% sure.

I dunno, I'd still go with it just being the joke.

Doctor Ivellius1 votes

I believe either the Latin American or Brazilian client / website / something said they actually were, though I don't remember where or how to find it, exactly.

Himeko1 votes

There was a comment by Nikki Taylor made a comment about 'Get Jinxed' saying 'Vi's sister's theme.'

There was also a championship video where one of the commentators said "Oh, wait, thats not jinx, thats the sister of jinx" or something like that.

That being said, theres no guarrentee that either of these are true, as they are Hirez's lore department. http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/story-art/Vza1RHTz-confirmed-jinx-and-vi-are-sisters

I would like it if they are sisters personally. But hey, we wont know because the lore team isnt updating the stories :C Hopefully soon..

Photos of Ghosts1 votes

What? what do these number mean?

moogle8901 votes

Roman Numerals. VI = 6 JinX = 10 C = 50 (I think)

Photos of Ghosts1 votes

Yea the Jinx thing quite surprised me, why should we only take the X ^^

Blue Moon Wolf2 votes

the answer for Braum's mustache is it's possible, but It will grow back even stronger as it's shaved off, so you can, but it will only be for a second and you would need something stronger to try again.

VardenSalad1 votes

But the question becomes "How did Braum acquire a Saiyan mustache?"

The Soulforged16 votes

That video really spoke out what I feel is trash about lore atm.

NorthernDruid14 votes

:O

Thanks for pointing out how hollow the champions are without an interactive, evolving setting to exist in. And without any exploring material, such as the League Judgements.

Without the lore being tied to the game, then there is nothing to provide the direction they need to build the story they're telling.

And remember, they're creating entertainment, not art.

Art is something you create for yourself, for your own satisfaction.

Entertainment is made for your audience, in this case your Summoners.

Big Bang Bob12 votes

Why would they trash months of decent lore, only to trash the in-client lore, tell stories that either set up stories that are never completed, are hidden in the boards, tell you little about anything, or have nothing to do with anything? To make matters worst, they take forever to actually release anything and I have no idea what's happening in Runeterra.

summoner 7 "So what is this league game about?"

Shen "Well this nation called Shurima was rebuilt when its emperor was raised from the dead. Some people are fighting on a mountain. There's also this mummy whose looking for a friend. This vengeance lady kills this thug dude. Oh, and this ancient creature was unfrozen.

summoner 7 "So why are you fighting? Who are you fighting?"

Shen "Did I mention the lore has nothing to do with the actual game? I should also add that I have no idea who's fighting who. These guys called the Demancians and Nuxians don't like each other though."

summoner 7 "Who wrote this? Is this some sort of work in progress."

Shen "Well once the game did have a complete lore that was added to every now and then, but they trashed it because they didn't like it."

summoner 7 ...

TauNoob111 votes

Something's wrong I can't upvote this more than one time.

KING OF MASKS10 votes

Excellent video, really top-notch.

I completely missed that "plot is overrated" story, too. Pretty hilarious in retrospect.

DG Ashabel11 votes

That statement by Abernathy was very awkward because, well, I generally expect people to do what they preach.

Abernathy wrote only five games other than League of Legends, among which Destroy All Humans! had him removed from character writing and replaced by another writer, DAH!2 was mostly forgettable and driven less by characters and more by making fun of the Cold War era, Saboteur was noted for having a decent overarching script bogged down by forgettable characters and Halo: Reach was outright retconned by Bungie due to their dislike of how Abernathy handled a major historical event in the Halo universe; it relied more on manipulative tearjerkers than the actual characters and emotional weight of the event.

So he preaches abandoning plot and focusing on games with interesting characters... despite mostly writing very forgettable characters. Like I said, awkward.

LeeDark2 votes

Honestly, I can't imagine how he got the job with that resume.

DG Ashabel3 votes

I wouldn't say something that harsh. He's not the best writer ever, sure, but then he wrote only five games. He's bound to slowly keep improving as he works more.

It's just that when you start complaining that game designers should abandon plot and focus on character pieces, I expect you to have written at least one character piece.

LeeDark2 votes

I absolutely would say something that harsh. Riot can afford someone better, that's for sure, and he worked on DAH ten years ago. Ten years without improvement isn't good--CERTAINLY not good enough to be given a job as the HEAD of the lore dept.

Darrosh Jewfist9 votes

I enjoy how you called on Riot for what it's doing to the lore - which is nothing. I wished you went into more detail about other issues with the lore aside from the now vastly diminished depth, such as unanswered questions about what is still canon and not canon (champion judgements), how several champs don't have their lore replaced (lee, jax, nocturne) and the sheer board and forum silence on the over all state of the lore and refusal to discuss when we can expect the new lore.

Fiorinol9 votes

[{quoted}](name=Darrosh Jewfist,realm=NA,application-id=6kFXY1kR,discussion-id=jvRAjkmX,comment-id=000c,timestamp=2015-03-19T04:37:51.773+0000)

I enjoy how you called on Riot for what it's doing to the lore - which is nothing. I wished you went into more detail about other issues with the lore aside from the now vastly diminished depth, such as unanswered questions about what is still canon and not canon (champion judgements), how several champs don't have their lore replaced (lee, jax, nocturne) and the sheer board and forum silence on the over all state of the lore and refusal to discuss when we can expect the new lore.

I tried looking into what is canon or not anymore, and I can't even come to a proper conclusion; it's hazy and confusing because the parts are all over the place hidden in forum posts that haven't been very popular, these forum posts also aren't even repertoried anywhere. And while some champions don't make sense in the lore anymore, quite a few champions just have this very short description, they're just "there". It makes me feel like Riot simply gave up on lore and decided to just come up with whatever looks cool to them.

And I didn't feel it was necessary to talk about the sheer forum silence. Because that is something I want to leave for another time; lore isn't the only thing we've had a lot of radio silence on.

GenoXx8 votes

When did they ever Touch Tristana......Narrative ....did you make another hasty choice without us knowing???

Fiorinol10 votes

{quoted}

When did they ever Touch Tristana......Narrative ....did you make another hasty choice without us knowing???

When they did the Tristana rework/visual update.

GenoXx5 votes

I didn't know they updated her lore as well....

Criomhthann4 votes

No one did, they didn't advertise it because they didn't feel it was important.

Killer of Poros4 votes

{quoted}

When they did the Tristana rework/visual update.

I fear for the day taric and mordekaiser mains get their update

Photos of Ghosts8 votes

Meanwhile Skarner cries.

NineTailed Jinx7 votes

I'm still salty about how the narrative team has been acting recently. I really wish Dawngate hadn't got cancelled. the Chronicles really made Monday, Wednesday and Friday special and a majority of my favorite lore choices won(forever a Bandit Hustler). but really Riots Narrative team really disappoints me.

but um Gnarsies, there's one tiny little detail in the video that bothers me. at 5:21. You know Jinx is from Zaun right?

DG Ashabel8 votes

I think your correction about Jinx only proves his point. Jinx is essentially a forced meme. Riot pushed her out on all the noise about how she's oh so quirky and strange-looking and shoots people, but she has so little identity outside the noise that people struggle to even pin down her faction. Her visual design is all Piltover, so the only way you'll know she's from Zaun is if you went out of your way to look.

I personally ran into at least three separate interpretation of Jinx's character - a vindictive and homicidal psychopath a la Penguin and Harley Quinn, a madwoman with a purpose a la Joker and a punchclock villain who drops her crazy act when she's "off-duty". That people interpret her in so many ways shows how much of blank slate she is.

That's pretty much the issue with recent champions. They're all noise and marketing buzzwords with very little identity beyond that.

RasCaelestis3 votes

Actually, based on the lore there's no real way we know that Jinx is from Zaun. The only indication that was ever given was that in her lore it says that people said that her clothing is similar to street clothes that are 'in style' in Zaun. Apart from that, we know nothing.

DG Ashabel4 votes

Jinx's champion page on this website explicitly lists her as from Zaun, which is what I meant. The note about her street clothing resembling that of "in style" in Zaun is actually pretty silly. Are they implying everyone is wearing hotpants and bikinis in Zaun despite it being portrayed as an industrial wasteland? Is "hotpants and bikini" even a fashion style, given that it's a pretty normal thing to wear in hot weather?

Note that this also plays into how Zaun developed even less of an identity under the so-called Foundations team. Back in the day, its art direction was simply "mad science" and most of its characters didn't look human. Now that they're trying to expand into more normal-looking clothing, the coherence is simply not there. Jinx is dressed in hotpants and a bikini while Twitch is wearing a billowing Parisian longcoat you find in period pieces like Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera and Count of Monte Cristo.

It. Makes. No. Sense.

RasCaelestis2 votes

I admit, I forgot to look at the part of champion pages that say where the champion is from, I just went off her bio. I completely agree with you though. Even though there was never much cohesion between the Zaunite champions, they all had at least some part of their style/design in common.

Viktor, Singed, Twitch, and Mundo for example have a similar overall theme of 'weird science' with elements of 'dystopian steampunk' (contrasting Piltover's more positive version of steampunk). They don't have much in common beyond that, but at least it's something. Jinx has very little in common with any of them. She's also not completely Piltovian, but in my opinion she's got more in common with those champions than the Zaunite ones. From the way I've always viewed Zaun, it's a very dog-eat-dog city. You either get ahead of competition, or you wind up on the streets (or worse). Everything citizens do is done for a specific reason and that includes what they choose to wear. I vaguely remember one of the JoJ articles saying that in order to be outside for very long you needed to wear a gas mask, and that the sky was constantly a greenish-grey color from the ever-present pollution and contamination. Additionally, all of the clothing/gear of the champions mentioned previously serves a purpose, with the exception of Mundo (though that could be because all the experiments he's done on himself have warped his body so much that he has a much stronger tolerance for external contaminants). In that kind of environment, Jinx's "hotpants and a bikini" make absolutely no sense as you said, and I can't see any Zaunite (no matter how 'crazy') risking their own life just to make a fashion statement or look cool.

On a slightly related note, I'm not the only one that forgets about that section of Champion info-pages from time to time. According to Kalista's 'Location/Place of Origin' thing, she's from "faction_" It's been that way since her release.

LeeDark7 votes

The comment on the Amumu video was a load of crap. Sure, it was expensive as a piece of game music, but it absolutely IS promotional. JUST the quality of the video acts as a draw on potential customers. "Look at how much effort we put into this! Look at how polished it is!" As a piece of LORE, however, the Amumu video was NOTHING.

Rinky Dinky6 votes

A good video

Zastie5 votes

He's spot on about one-dimensional characters. Riot sets up a champion (outfit, voice, abilities, IE a theme), makes them look interesting (VIA video or some obscure post), then leave it on some odd note that disallows it to continue as time goes on.. for whatever reason.

Why?

Well, that's all the pro scene needs. They can cut costs on actual reasoning (lore) and instead make everything simply for appearances. Nothing more. Just in the name of the best way to make money.

Why?

Because Riot started fairly small, and with a closely-knit community, but suddenly grew gigantic. With this the higher-ups started shifting the budget towards the most profitable outcomes. All the while they give little bits of lore just so they can say they're doing something, and they're being creative, and they're open to possibilities.

What I miss about Riot is when they were more focused on the player-base, and when I say that I mean how to satisfy them, not devise the best way to drill into their wallets. They used to make LoL* interesting*, now that they've gotten a large notice for doing that they've deviated from being interesting. With the sheer amount of players they have, and time/money spent, they can do away with trying to be unique and simply cut to the chase and get our money. Had LoL grown at a more moderate rate this might not have happened, but need I remind Riot that the reason they are where they stand now is because of how interesting LoL was, mainly due to its lore.

I Main Swain5 votes

literally exactly my sentiment. league of legends used to have something interesting that tied it together, a reason for the games existence. now, there isn't even so much as a reason for the name, let alone a reason for all these guys to be beating the crap out of eachother in a large arena. I'd go ahead and type out what I've been suggesting, but I think i'll make a post and just link it from now on. i'll get carpal tunnel if I dont

NONCEHUNTERS5 votes

If there's one thing to be taken from Waystone Games' Dawngate, and its short but sweet lifespan, it was the lore. It was written and portrayed so brilliantly, both in and out of game, that it was almost as if the game itself was nothing more than a tangible telling of a pre-existing story.

Himeko3 votes

This video is saddening.

LANWhale3 votes

Amen broter.

But honestly, were is the lore we were promised?

TheTyeGuy2 votes

Riot said that the shortened champ lores are placeholders. When they have everything up and running, they will expand upon it. Right now, they are cleaning the slate to introduce the new storytelling. It's just taking a really fucking long time.

I don't AGREE that riot should have put in these placeholders, I think they should have been more prepared earlier on rather than still be working on it now, leading people to think that they don't actually care. It was a poor decision. The lore is coming though. It just sucks to wait. Since there isn't a lot of stuff, it makes stuff like Bard's video or sion's lore feel inconsequential because we have NO IDEA how this connects to the world as a whole.

I don't agree when you said shurima will never advance story wise. Because of my aforementioned statements, I feel like it will happen eventually. Whatever "eventually" means.

EDIT: Right. This is the "unpopular" opinion. I forgot. It's still right.

EDIT: Nobody REALLY thinks that a company as huge and successful as Riot would be okay with how it is right now, right? Would any professional company as big as them actually say "Ya know? Let's disappoint our fanbase because her der fuck them we make LC$ muneez!"?

Criomhthann4 votes

Nobody REALLY thinks that a company as huge and successful as Riot would be okay with how it is right now, right? Would any professional company as big as them actually say "Ya know? Let's disappoint our fanbase because her der fuck them we make LC$ muneez!"?

I don't see why the sentiment is unreasonable. Riot is not a charity, they are a business; by definition their objective ultimately reduces to profit. Extensive lore wouldn't really make any, especially not in a MOBA.

It stands to reason that they wouldn't bother with it because it's not a sound business investment.

Zendrô1 votes

What would Kingdom Hearts be without it's extensive, complex story line?

IceKingChernobog13 votes

a kid who finds a giant key running around through multiple Disney worlds killing shadows. also DARKNESS!

Xyrne12 votes

That's almost as descriptive as Tristana's lore! And in only one sentence! Riot, hire this man.

IceKingChernobog4 votes

you almost made me choke on my hot chocolate XD

LeeDark8 votes

A good example of a ridiculous idea that GOOD writers managed to turn into a GOOD story. A kid with a magic key discovers that all our favorite Disney movies are connected in some kind of multiverse... and they are connected to Final Fantasy, too. You pitch me that idea as a game, and I'd laugh in your face. But somehow, their writers managed to make it amazing.

But the League is too restrictive. I'm gonna go ahead and say that the Kingdom Hearts writers could've made it work wonderfully.

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