What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
Once again on What Could Have Been, we’re going to be looking at a really old champion—Orianna.
Orianna on the other hand was what’s called a bottom-up design; Riot started with the
mechanics and gameplay features that
they wanted to put into League of Legends, and then they figured out how to theme it.
We usually start out What Could Have Been by starting with characterization and concept
art, but since that’s not really true to Orianna’s development timeline, we’re
going to go bottom-up too and start with her gameplay.
Riot Xypherous, Orianna’s designer, commented that her entire kit had been designed before
any theme conceptualization had started.
To create Orianna’s base kit, Xypherous took a relatively simple approach; he started
with Sivir’s Boomerang Q, then broke it into three separate parts.
This gave him the core of Orianna’s gameplay—she’d have a controllable weapon that she could
send out or return back to her.
Essentially, using QWE in a rotation with Orianna will act very similarly to throwing
out Sivir’s Q, although of course with a few other benefits tied in.
Q will throw the orb out, dealing damage to enemies it passes through.
W emits an AoE slow and damages enemies around the orb, and E brings it back and adds a shield
and resistances for a little bonus utility.
In those three simple abilities, Xypherous had found a way to create a completely unique
approach to traditional mage gameplay.
Rather than slinging spells, she controls an orb that stays on the battlefield.
This is allowed Orianna players to leave their orb wherever they choose, as long as they
stayed close enough to it, giving way to the ‘zone control’ playstyle that allows you
to force enemy players away from specific locations on the map.
The difficult part was finding an Ultimate that fit in well with the rest of her gameplay.
Xypherous tried quite a few different things in a bid to create the perfect synergistic
Ultimate.
One of the early versions acted similarly to Orianna’s E, but instead of targeting
an ally, you could attach the orb to an enemy in a similar way to Lulu’s Help, Pix!
In fact, we’re guessing that Xypherous liked the idea of this ability but didn’t think
it was really contributing to Orianna’s gameplay enough as an Ultimate, so he saved
it for a later champion as a basic ability.
He also tried one version where Orianna’s orb would become a mini shock aura, although
he didn’t specify whether it was an instant effect like a Blitzcrank Ultimate, or a damage-over-time
skill similar to Viktor’s Ultimate.
Although it matches better with Orianna’s kit than the enemy-attach Ultimate, it’s
still not really impactful enough to do credit to her gameplay, and
Orianna still lacked enough crowd control to be a true zone control character.
Another attempted solution was pretty crazy—pressing R would simply give you another ball to control.
That’s a pretty powerful effect, making it a strong candidate for her Ultimate, since
it would allow you to essentially double your damage output, crowd control and shielding
capabilities, giving you even more zoning capability.
Unfortunately, it was an absolute mess to control, and it would likely have given Orianna
a skill floor so high that only the very best mid laners would ever bother to use her.
The ideal solution to Orianna’s Ultimate ended up being a lot more simple in it’s
design—like her W, it’s an AoE effect that occurs around the ball, rather than Orianna
(unless of course she chooses to attach the ball to herself).
Unlike W however, her Ultimate deals even more devastating damage, and also gives a
bad-ass black hole-like crowd control effect that sucks all enemies into the center in
a massive shockwave.
Command: Shockwave achieved a few key things: it synergized with the rest of her kit, it
gave Orianna some much needed hard CC, and it turned her into a massive threat that caused
enemy players to be extremely careful when it comes to play around her ball.
With the design of Shockwave, Orianna’s gameplay was complete, and it was equally
satisfying to play as it was to play against, making her one of the most well designed champions
ever from a gameplay perspective.
With her kit complete, it was time to actually create a character that matched up with it.
The working concept up to this point was simply ‘Ball Girl,’ which goes to show just how
little focus had been put on characterization so far.
Riot knew they wanted the concept to be a girl, and they knew she’d be controlling
a ball.
Riot Xypherous made his own attempt at defining the Ball Girl as a fully fleshed out character,
having been inspired by Touhou Project’s Hong Meiling.
Hong Meiling is a martial arts specialistic, typically wearing a dragon martial arts robe.
Xypherous used this design as a base, then added in a Chinese Dragon Orb as justification
for her ball-controlling prowess.
The theme was pretty simple, although hugely different from the Orianna we know today—as
a character, she’d essentially be a dragon reincarnated in human form, but she’d still
be the one possession of her dragon orb.
As a character concept that’s pretty cool, but for unknown reasons the rest of the team
decided to move in a different direction; possibly because Riot had other ideas for
dragon champions or because they wanted to cover new ground rather than defaulting to
Eastern design influences.
The creative team and art team got together and came up with a new concept, one that would
eventually become Orianna.
The early concept art shows it pretty clearly—the new direction was Clockwork, with Orianna
being a clockwork girl controlling her clockwork ball.
In terms of bottom-up design, this provided Riot with the context for their new champion.
All that was left to do was refine her visual design, give her a name and build out her
character to create a backstory that would give player something to resonate with.
The Lady of Clockwork was finally complete, and she went on to become one of the most
successful champions in the history of League.