Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

A lot of League's lore is unfinished, with many unanswered questions. (Examples included)

Ink Rose·12/30/2014, 9:21:41 PM·18 votes·2,565 views

I am in love with much of League's lore, but I can't help but notice that there is a lot of holes in it. There are many, many stories here that are unfinished and leave questions that seem like they will never be answered.

Here are a few of the many examples of this:

~Why in the world did the Solari kill off the Lunari? This still has not been addressed with a specific reason, all we have is speculation. Who is really in the right here? Leona or Diana ? It's too hard to tell when we know hardly anything about the conflict.

~Jinx and Vi 's backstories. These two are heavily shrouded in mystery, mostly Jinx. We know hardly anything about her, and still have not gotten confirmation whether they are related or not. Is C part of this in some way?

~Kalista , Hecarim , and the Shadow Isles in general. How was Kalista killed? To be honest that should have been her lore. Like, why in the world ISN'T that what her lore is about? Nothing at all is known about Hecarim, which is even more of a crime than Kalista's lore. Not to mention the Shadow Isles. What's the full backstory of that place? What's with the fallen king?

There are many more examples of this in tons of other lore stories, these are only the ones that stand out to me. The sad thing is it seems like the answers to these mysteries will never be solved. That they were meant to stay mysteries forever. And yeah, I can understand as a writer leaving some things to speculation to keep things exciting... but the problem is there are SO many intentional mysteries in the lore it gets a little grating, leaving you feeling like not much is actually known about Runeterra.

I do not mean to bash on the Lore Team at all. They can put out some great work. However, I think this is the main root of why people are having trouble and complaining about the lore. Because we still don't know much about Runeterra, ESPECIALLY after the huge lore change. After all this time we still don't know how the world works after the Institute was taken out of the picture. What's preventing all out war against the factions?

The short stories that have been given to us thus far are really, really great, especially the Azir and Xerath ones. We really need more of these explaining backstory, not leaving even more questions then when we started.

The point I'm trying to make is there are way to many unanswered questions in the lore that have never been addressed in the years League has been running. I think it's time to at least answer some of them, perhaps through the short stories.

(One more thing to note, why does it take so long for each short story to be released? Writing and editing small stuff like that can be done within a day. I think it would be nice to give us one short story a week, but those are just my thoughts.)

21 Comments

LordHippoman12/30/2014, 10:00:42 PM12 votes

League's Lore has always had this issue. It's hard to finish a character arc when that character has to have a reason to stay, has to live, and has to not have any huge changes (Well, I guess you could do a VU to reflect that, but that's a lot of work for a game that has Lore low on the priority list).

The whole "Revenge Against Another Champion" angle that a lot of champs have (Graves Morgana Rengar ) is, by definition, almost impossible to resolve, because if either of them dies, that creates a gaping plot hole. There's also the whole "mystery is their whole backstory" issue with a lot of champs (Evelynn Fiddlesticks Shaco ) that is great for giving writers room to work, but very empty in actual substance until that void is filled.

That's why I think champions like Swain get so much spotlight in the lore. It's easy to do things with Swain because he doesn't have a set final goal, or at least not one he's revealed, but a lot of little ones we can see him work towards. He manipulated Boram and took power in Noxus, but that's not necessarily the end of his role. More stuff could happen with Swain. He has some mystery (What's with the bird?), but enough actual story and relationships that he's interesting, but not just a giant question mark.

Athenes Lulu12/31/2014, 12:20:50 AM8 votes

No, Rito refuses to expand on any kind of lore, leaving (almost) everything unfinished just so they can be lazy on "storytelling" and keep us guessing.

"We want to make everyone happy so we leave questions unanswered! It's fun to keep people guessing anyways :))))"

Anything that seemed like an "almost finished" story are reworked. Come on, that's the MAIN REASON that they reworked Trundle's lore, because it "has an end". And also wondered why the IoW was retconned? Simply because they don't want progression in which that leads to endings.

So, bottom line, they probably never will. Unless the game itself declined, then the "lore" is just gonna be like another stereotypical MOBA.

EDIT: Looks y'all took this a bit too literally. Rito actually has been making great introductions to characters, but with fairly empty backstories that they never seemed to finish. In the past, champions have almost complete backstories with possible stories to tell in the future. The problem with the new champs is that they don't even have enough to tell who he/she is, but instead we have cinematics and scenes to tell their first impressions, in which doesn't really explain much either. Not only that, ever since the discontinuation of the JoJ, we see no signs of progression of storylines or "chapter twos" at all, or any form of expansion on some character relations (Come on, how are Sona and Taric "friends"? Why would someone like me even want to be friends with that "tiny master of evil"?).

DWT123451/2/2015, 11:37:41 PM3 votes

agreed. They keep on starting too many story arcs without continuing. Imagine if the lore was an old-fashioned drama show.

"Will Jinx and Vi ever reach amends? WIll shurima reach its former glory? Will xerath ascend again? Will Viktor turn everybody into cyborgs? WIll the void invade runeterra? Will Lissandra conquer the freljord? Will Sion ever regain full memories of his past life? Will Skarner awaken his kind? Find nothing out and more, next time on... LEAGUE OF LEGENDS!"

I also hate how riot only focuses on some giant overall lore sstory. Cant we just get a story with one or two pre-existing champs rather than making a new one? Give us more backstory on Orianna! Yorick! No? Ok.

ShakySurgeon12/30/2014, 9:54:03 PM3 votes

Bump.

Mori Please12/31/2014, 4:45:17 AM2 votes

i feel like they are leaving loose ends for us to imagine but they leave too many like theres probably millions of fanmade things revolving around those loose ends

Velivolo1/5/2015, 12:05:27 AM2 votes

I think it's really a matter of opinion. I think Kalista's lore right now is absolutely fascinating, and you clearly differ. There are a lot of interesting tidbits that have been told about her current state, and aren't one-dimensional. For example, how does one summon Kalista? The sword-wife in her lore entry uses a sort of ritual to call her, while in her animatic she doesn't seem to require one at all. How would one summon her in Shurima? Noxus? Does she appear the same to all of them? For example, if she's summoned in Ionia, does she resemble her bloodmoon skin? What is her connection to the harrowing, the most recent in particular?

I highly disagree with this statement. She can be so much. How does she relate to those she's enacting vengance for? Does she immediately amalgate their souls? Do they retain consciousness, and can they know their vengance is complete? On that note, do any of the souls she's amalgated besides her own have any shreds of memory or self-awareness? HOW does she enact her vengance? Is it always as simple as hunting them down and spearing them to death?

Kalista avenging champions in-game isn't cannon, so I don't care about that.

You're being overly dramatic and you know it.

Seriously, Kalista is fascinating. You just have to look deeper than some superficial backstory.

The Soulforged1/10/2015, 8:08:04 AM1 votes

If I wanted a book, I would choose anivia as the point of perspective, just because she is an ancient creature who has lived through every event that we know of on runeterra I'm guessing.

Dreamspitter1/1/2015, 10:55:28 AM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Ink Rose,realm=NA,application-id=6kFXY1kR,discussion-id=mPpVHwt8,comment-id=,timestamp=2014-12-30T21:21:41.419+0000)

I am in love with much of League's lore, but I can't help but notice that there is a lot of holes in it. There are many, many stories here that are unfinished and leave questions that seem like they will never be answered.

Here are a few of the many examples of this:

~Why in the world did the Solari kill off the Lunari? This still has not been addressed with a specific reason, all we have is speculation. Who is really in the right here? Leona or Diana ? It's too hard to tell when we know hardly anything about the conflict.

#REMEMBER

Diana had to uncover the ruins that revealed the Lunari even EXISTED. They experienced a "damnatio memoriae" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae

And of course the Solari were in the right, because history is written by the victors and hey....it was Heresy.

http://i.imgur.com/p14kUEC.jpg

~Kalista , Hecarim , and the Shadow Isles in general. How was Kalista killed? To be honest that should have been her lore. Like, why in the world ISN'T that what her lore is about? Nothing at all is known about Hecarim, which is even more of a crime than Kalista's lore. Not to mention the Shadow Isles. What's the full backstory of that place? What's with the fallen king?

Shadow isles is explained in Maokai's lore Maokai

GreenLore1/1/2015, 7:01:08 PM1 votes

Overall they seem to want to leave some room for exploration.

I mean this way we can speculate a lot about stories and create our own theories,but that goes basically away once the story resolves.

This does not mean that they should never resolve the stories though and I think that riot has been lacking in that regard(since basically ever).

I've noticed that in the earlier days they didn't seem to put that much thought into the characters,some simply had "mystery" as their backstory and be done with(Shaco Evelynn Hecarim Mordekaiser Swain ) and in some cases it became appearant that they never had an answer for these mysteries(the interview with shaco didn't reveal anything about him). Nowadays they seem to plan these things in advance a bit more(for example we learn nearly nothing about gnar in his lore,but from additional sources and riot comments it is known that he was frozen and that he was attacked by the watchers,even if it wasn't directly said until now),but sadly they withhold these things and save them for later,while also adding new mysteries and being more busy with retconning than actually adding which leads to our current situation.

Diana x Me1/1/2015, 7:23:53 PM1 votes

Did i really just get downvoted for making an educated guess? I never said it was confirmed or fact. I am simply piecing things together as logically as i can. I have looked at and thought upon alternative theories but this one makes the most sense. What did i say that was offtopic or offensive to merit negative feedback? Its not like i go around downvoting people because i disagree with them as It is their opinion and i respect that.

Anyway, yeah a lot things have not been reiterated upon or given much explanation on. Its possible they purposely left off things so that it would be open ended and leaves people to make their own assumptions and interpretations. Although, some back stories did not really give you anything to work with or think about.