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Lore: What Is It Supposed To Be?

TonyTonyMordecai·3/15/2015, 10:32:31 PM·13 votes·1,435 views

Hi All,

Just to give an understanding, I started playing League when Quinn was still the login screen, a little before it changed to Zac on the login screen.

Right now, I'm trying to understand what the lore is even supposed to be... Is it supposed to be the history and relationship between the champions and the world of Runeterra and how things came to be? Or is it supposed to be the individual champion's history of why they are the way they are, and what their interactions with other champions are to make them the way they are, and vice versa.

I didn't know anything about the "summoners" and such when I started playing, and I even stopped playing for a year because of a couple player's attitudes towards me in a bot match, and I came back when Vel'Koz was new, and that was a little before Braum came out.

I thought the lore was supposed to be the individual character's story... Which made sense when they shortened the lore section on a few of the characters and people were upset, because it really only gave a snippet of who they are. The part with the Sion rework was cool, how they talked about the old general, and then the whole issue with how the battle was going poorly for the Noxian army, so they gathered sacrifices and then Vladimir used his magic and power to revive Sion to let him go on his rampage. I kinda thought that was a cool way to bring character interaction back...

But now, I am really confused, because I don't know how Riot is supposed to make lore about a game that doesn't really have an ending point, or really make interactions between characters if the game's story is somewhat "limited" on the basis that the "summoners" are just playing pokemon and throwing their selected champions into the Summoner's Rift to duke it out...

Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way about the lore, and I'm just going to be picked on for not sharing the same understanding or passion for the stuff like the "journal of justice"... Seriously, who would elect Swain to be the leader of Noxus... He can barely bend his legs when he walks (in game, of course).

So please explain all of this to me, or to the best of your abilities, because I just don't get it.

7 Comments

Sharjo3/15/2015, 11:48:16 PM11 votes

So first off, the idea of Summoner's has been removed from the lore as of September just gone. League as a game essentially operates similarly to Smash Brothers; the characters exist in the context of the lore, have their own stories, backstories, homelands and what not, but the game we play isn't canon in a lore sense.

The lore for League essentially revolves around the world of Runeterra and its various nations and characters. The champions of League are pretty much the main characters of the world, and they all have a place in it. The plot of the game isn't just one story, but various stories interwoven in to an over arching plot. Events have happened, wars have happened, characters have their various motivations, goals and dreams they aspire to, and a large number of them are directly in conflict with each other.

As of right now though the Lore's a bit borked. Riot removed the Summoner's and the organisation that they belonged to: the Institute of War. They did this while not having everything prepped, so some aspects of the lore are in taters because they're not updated for this change. Obvious examples are these guys:

Fiddlesticks Jax Kayle LeeSin Malphite Morgana Orianna

These guys have lore that was intrinsically tied to the IoW, and that hasn't been updated yet, putting them in a limbo where we have no idea what's going on with them.

Also as they're updating stuff and adding new stuff, there's tech issues with the website and client that have been going on for months now. As a result we have short versions of the lore in place of the longer, extended lore that hasn't been released yet, and folks are disheveled, disheartened, angry and resentful of narrative; the team primarily associated with lore for this game.

So to summarise:

  • The lore is about the world of Runeterra, it's various nations, and the champions associated with it, who are the main characters of the story. There's no guarantee this game will actually have an "ending" to it, as there's so much stuff that can be done.
  • The lore is undergoing an overhaul at the moment which is compounded by tech issues and drastic changes that have irked (to put it likely) members of this community.
  • Summoner's and the organisation they belong to ain't canon, and the game itself isn't canon to the lore; the games you play aren't a part of the lore, they're just games using characters from the world.
  • Certain stories focus more on nations, but the main characters and the main focus of the series is mostly concerning its main cast: the champions of League. Their stories are the primary plots of this game world. At least I'm pretty sure that's what it's supposed to be.

Also as a final note, Swain is really powerful and managed to obtain the rank of Grand General (ruler) of Noxus in a really complex conspiracy. He's totally deserving of that spot.

If you want a better grasp of the lore's finer points, league of legends wikia has a lot of stuff available. Riot's got many problems when it comes to lore, and one of them, among the multitudes, is that lore is spread out and hard to find if you're looking. the wikia is your friend in that regard, so look no further than there. it even has a few of the longer stories that Riot's made available despite the tech issues.

Hope that cleared up something!

The Red Warden3/16/2015, 3:09:01 AM6 votes

Swain actually can use his legs he just doesn't so that others will underestimate him. If you want proof look at the tyrant Swain skin, which is a canon skin of what Swain looks like after he became leader of Noxus. The cane has been turned into a staff and he walks fine without it. His dance also shows that the cane has no true purpose; he looks to make sure no one is watching then drops the can and boogies using both legs.

Swain is a genius and a manipulator. He isn't the best soldier, that would be Darius, but the best soldier realized that Swain would take Noxus to levels he never could. Swain isn't shown fighting that much because he would rather just startegize to make you lost before he has to, besides he would probably win anyway with his bird magic anyway.

Swain "I'm five steps ahead of you."

The Whamboozler3/16/2015, 4:26:25 PM6 votes

There isn't an end-all, be-all on what lore should be. Many games have little to no lore and do fine. The reason people are upset is that LoL used to have different lore, and many consider it BETTER lore to what we have now. It explained why 5 random schmucks were fighting five more random schmucks. It gave a lot of characters interesting places in the world it created, and reasons to interact. It told a story, and a pretty decent one. It had easter eggs and secrets (LeBlanc imitating J4 to start a war, anyone?) and themes of politics, corruption and actions that felt big, because they affected the entire world they'd created. It left questions that people burned to know. How long did people ramble about Kassadin's daughter, or Kog'Maw's "Daddy"? What happened to Katarina's father? Did Swain or LeBlanc kill him as part of their coup? Was he in hiding? Nearly every Ionian champion made had a huge grudge against Noxus because of that whole "Invasion" thing not to mention all the chemical weapons and war crimes. Several champions existed ENTIRELY because of the IoW, which was meant to be an alternative to the land-destroying magic that had been used in the past, but there were hints that the Institute itself was possibly corrupt, or that at the very least there were people who were manipulating it to their own ends.

Most of all, the old lore made YOU a character. If you wanted to think of it that way, at least. You were a summoner. You called to your side a champion and aided them as they fought on your behalf for whatever cause it was you were fighting for. Sure, most people didn't care about it, but I'm sure there were plenty of people who liked thinking they were fighting to expand Noxus or to protect Demacia. Matches were still random fusterclucks of people fighting for no reason, but you could imagine meaning, and it was a neat thing that not many competitive games have.

Then riot literally stated "all of that is no longer canon and we'll be replacing it with new lore". And... they haven't. Not really. They've replaced this over-arching story about politics, intrigue and war with a few localized short stories that have no connection to each other and that don't explain anything about the game itself. Essentially, by removing the IoW from the lore, all the matches may as well exist in some dream Teemo had while high on mushrooms. If they'd started out this way, it would have been one thing, but the game had been running for years and a lot of people had gotten attached to the old lore. To rip it away from them just because it constrained them a bit in coming up with new champion ideas is a very disrespectful thing to do to your fans. Imagine if in one random X-men comic they just stated "Actually all of the comics before this never happened, Charles Xavier just had a lot of vivid dreams about them after he fell and hit his head! Mutants are just people with lazer feet and no one minds much. Don't worry... we'll tell a whole bunch of NEW stories with those same characters, they just won't know each other, interact much or have any reason to interact at all, really since we took away one of the most plot-important parts of the setting."