The future of League of Legends Story
Riot has previously announced that they are going to be doing some re-imagining of the original story line "...we have to be willing to look at ... the past and honestly reevaluate it. ...we seek to aggressively reimagine content" - (GNOX, DEV BLOG: EXPLORING RUNETERRA). Please feel free to read the entire post by Gnox, but mainly i want to focus on one paragraph in particular. But first.
For those of you who are not familiar with the premise of the game, the League of Legends is an organization created to mediate the political conflicts in Valoran. Rune wars were threatening the destruction of the world. Summoners would unleash mighty magical powers directly against foes and their holdings with little regard for consequence. As a direct response to the world's growing physical and political instability, Valoran's key magicians, including many powerful summoners, came to the conclusion that conflicts needed to be resolved in a controllable and systematic way. They formed an organization called the League of Legends, whose purpose was to oversee the orderly resolution of political conflict in Valoran. Housed in the Institute of War, the League would be given the authority by Valoran's political entities to govern the outcomes of the organized conflict they would administer. The League resolved that all major political conflict would be settled through the use of specially prepared arenas strategically located throughout Valoran. Summoners representing a particular political allegiance would each call forth a champion; the champions, leading mindless minions generated by novice summoners manipulating a nexus, would fight to achieve the objective of the arena they were in. - (source)
In short, anytime a political indifference arises, instead of going to war, each party selects 5 summoners(senators), who in turn, summon 5 champions onto a special battlefield, they fight, whichever party wins the battle on the fields of justice is the party that wins the political debate.
This has been the story of League of Legends thus far, but looking forward we might not see many of these themes.
"After a while, these early choices began to create unexpected problems. Every new champion needed a reason to join and remain in the League, and as their number grew, the net result was that over time the world started to feel, well, small, and eventually less interesting. The institutions we'd designed fostered creative stagnation, limiting the ways that champions, factions and Runeterra itself could grow and change. Furthermore, the very idea of all-powerful Summoners made Champions little more than puppets manipulated by godlike powers. The background we'd created to explain in-game action was ultimately restricting the potential narrative development of the game's defining characters... we aim to expand the scope of League's story and pursue a more dynamic and wide-ranging world fit for the outsized capabilities and personalities of our champions." - (Gnox)
With that, I give my predictions. Riot clearly wants to transition out of the limiting League of Legends itself, so when tasked with that what are the first things you start to plan out for story line? If it were me, the first question I would ask is "How are we going to tell or explain the story of why the institute is no longer needed or centralized in the story". I see three possible answers to this question. One, and most commonly done in growing stories, have some kind of disastrous event happen, for example, have a rune war actually break out. This is possible, but would only provide a short term fix that would bring us right back to the issue of "what next?". Second, you could bring a mass new setting to the current story (importing), for example, have some kind of invasion from a 3rd party world, or the discovery of an unknown threat in the world. There is plenty of story line content branching to feed off of this route, but eventually you'll reach the ends of all those branches and have nowhere else to grow and still be in the same general scenario, same world "what next?". Third, and most promising, take the current story to a new setting (exporting), for example, create a cause for story elements to travel to the void, or somewhere completely new. This allows you to maintain the old story line without completely uprooting it and simply put it on the back burner, while venturing out a exploring new possibilities. Notice a theme here? All three possibilities take attention off the old story by providing something much more urgent.
I want to further the likelihood of the third solution, venturing out, by speculating with current transitional themes happening in the game right now.
Early this year, a post was submitted to the concepts forums by ManDudeMcDudeman regarding a fan made character called "Helmet Bro, the Void Knight". In the post he give a detailed bio/backstory of the character. The post retains one red response from Riot Ahab (who has a Helmet Bro icon) that simply says, "This. is. awesome.". Since the original post, Helmet Bro has been appearing in new Update splash arts as well as portions of the new Summoners Rift update still in the works. You can see a defeated looking Helmet Bro, in the splashes of: Kog'maw, Sion, cho'gath, malphite, and talon.
Now, sure it could just be a spoiler for a new champion, we've seen this before. However, never has riot put spoilers somewhere that remains permanent, such as these champion splashes that are going to remain long after the champion is released. So, with that, I make the prediction that with Helmet Bro, there will come a new theme to the league of legends game, where the storyline is taken to the void, or, have a void invasion.
please feel free to discuss, and remember,
"I can help you do that better" -The Heimerdinger"
