What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
So let’s be honest, up until the last year or two the lore of League of Legends has been
kind of a mess.
Champions were introduced with very little backstory, and the lore was only tied very
weakly to the world of Runeterra and the actual gameplay of League in general.
That’s something that Riot has been working on fixing in 2015 and 2016, so we wanted to
highlight the change in approach they have made when it comes to lore and storytelling
in general, and how they tie it into the game that we actually play!
And if you enjoy the video definitely hit that like button because if this video hits,
let’s say ratings, then I’m gonna .
League of Legends has always been kinda shitty when it comes to lore.
For starters, the game itself makes very little sense.
Previously, the lore of the game was that it’s hosted by the Institute of War, and
the player takes up the role of a Summoner, who can control a champion to fight on one
of the Fields of Justice maps owned by the Institute of War.
Most champion backstories ended with a reason why they chose to join up and participate
in these battles, but most of the time those reasons didn’t make a lot of sense since
there’s no limit to why certain champions are picked.
For example, you can say that the League of Legends battles were started so that Noxus
and Demacia could fight things out in a more controlled way - but then why can they be
on the same time, or fighting against people from a totally different faction that is unrelated?
It didn’t really make sense, and Riot decided to scrap that old game backstory, with only
one issue - they didn’t replace it with anything new.
For now, they’ve ignored that issue and are focused on fleshing out the universe of
Runeterra, giving the newest champions awesome backstories about how they fit into the world,
and even revisiting the lore of champions they are reworking to make sure that players
can have a genuine connection to the characters they play as.
It’s definitely been a step in the right direction, this year especially has seen some
awesome lore written for the new champions in particular, and it doesn’t seem like
Riot are going to stop any time soon.
Today we wanted to talk about Riot’s new approach to storytelling, and how they are
going about connecting the lore to the game itself, piece by piece and champion by champion.
Riot Ant In Oz gave the best description of the new method Riot are using to do this in
his article about story hooks.
He explains something fundamental about stories for different franchises - that the deeper
you go into the fine details of these worlds, the more there is to discover about them.
For people that enjoy the lore or stories behind games, movies, books or whatever else,
the thing that often keeps bringing them back are those little details that get the reader
asking questions, or making them wonder what else there is that they don’t know about
yet.
It’s those small details that spark the imaginations of readers, and Riot are making
a focused effort to make sure they are fully fleshed out - simply because there’s pretty
much nothing more rewarding for an avid reader than being aware of a small detail, that is
later addressed or revealed more in depth later down the road.
An example Ant In Oz gives is from Star Wars, how during A New Hope they mentioned the Clone
Wars, a pretty massive event in the history of the franchise.
These little hooks to other parts of the story are so valuable because people remain curious
about them, making it super satisfying when the answers are finally revealed when the
story is built upon further.
He also compares this to being knowledgeable about a franchise, then seeing a little snippet
after the credits of a movie from that franchise and seeing a face that is familiar to you,
but not to the average viewer that isn’t so invested in the franchise.
It’s like a little reward where you are on the same page as the creators, and it’s
this kind of feeling that Riot want the readers of their lore to have when they introduce
new details or champions.
Let’s say you were brushing up on the lore of your favorite champion that was reworked,
and you noticed a character mentioned that you’d never heard of before - and there
was no other mention of that character anywhere else in the lore.
You’d be curious about that character’s existence, and what role they played in the
universe, even though they might be overlooked by other people.
Then let’s say Riot released a new champion, and you recognised it as the same character
you were aware of from the lore - you’d get super excited, and probably feel an immediate
connection to that new champion, making you equally excited to try them out in game and
learn more about them.
Riot refers to these little details as hooks - things that other writers can build on when
they are further developing the narrative.
That’s not to say that everything is going to be tied up neatly by Riot’s lore department
though.
An important part of storytelling is that the author is only going to give you the details
that you actually need to know at the time.
This can
change a lot depending on the size of the narrative universe though.
Sometimes the narrative is focused on one particular plotline, and sometimes, say in
the Marvel universe for example, you follow a ton of different plotlines simultaneously.
League of Legends is more similar to the second, since although there is one world that everything
occurs in, readers are viewing things from a ton of different perspectives, and the driving
forces of those stories are the champions themselves.
You can still include plot points which involve a number of different champions and tie them
together, for example the whole Shuriman ascendency thing and how it ties together champions like
Xerath and Azir, but really all those individual champion stories are just helping to fill
the universe of League of Legends, by building up the world of Runeterra.
Something Riot have been working on lately is throwing these ‘hooks’ into places
outside of champion backstories, after all it’s super important that they tie the lore
and the game together so that players feel like they are getting something out of being
familiar with the lore.
The way Riot is accomplishing this is adding the hooks to things like the champion reveals,
short stories or even the in-game voiceovers.
Sometimes these hooks can be built on by future reworks or champions that Riot designs, and
ones that aren’t explored will probably just be built on by passionate creators in
the community that see something awesome and are inspired to develop the story for themselves.
Just as important as creating these story hooks though is resolving them, and Riot have
been working hard to make sure some of those interesting threads actually end up leading
somewhere.
For example, building on the relationship between Twisted Fate and Graves, or revealing
who it was that murdered Miss Fortune’s parents, leading to her revenge as her story
was developed.
At the same time, Riot are creating completely new pieces of narrative, aimed at moving the
story forward in terms of the general timeline.
As the name implies, backstory is about the past, so to advance the timeline it’s necessary
to explore new areas in the world, or develop a champion’s identity beyond what we know
from their backstory.
There’s a lot of things that we know from the backstory that make us curious about the
future for the champions - good examples being mysterious characters like the ‘C’ that
Caitlyn is always hunting down, or where the other Darkin than Aatrox are.
These mysteries are what keep people coming back to the lore when new things are released,
in the hopes that questions will get answered and new details will emerge.
In turn, that generates more interest in the game, and just makes League of Legends even
more powerful as a franchise.
One thing that Riot have been actively working on that could have a positive influence on
player interest in the story is the new client.
The new client is going to be way more capable, and it could enable Riot to potentially feature
the stories they write about champions or the LoL Universe in the client itself.
That means the lore of the game would be accessible in the same place that you play the game,
so players will be encouraged to read a little of it for some background rather than having
to first navigate to the website and seek out the information from another source.
Maybe you are looking through the store and like the look of a few champions - imagine
being able to just read the backstories immediately and decide which one you feel you connect
with best, it could make a real difference in which champions people buy, especially
for more casual players that aren’t just buying champions that are in the meta or being
played by professional players.
It’s all about getting players connected to the backstory of the game, an attempt to
turn them into fans of the universe rather than just the game - and it could help Riot
grow an even more dedicated audience than the game has already generated itself.
It’s always going to be a challenge for Riot - not every player gives a shit about
the background of each champion, so really they are writing all this stuff to flesh out
their franchise and make it more consistent and attractive to people that actually care
about it.
That’s not a bad thing though, even though it takes a ton of effort to do, the end result
is players that are even more involved with the franchise - and Riot can be happy knowing
that players are just generally happier when their favorite champions actually have their
own place in the world of Runeterra.
Maybe those stories don’t have any direct affect on gameplay, but every good game should
have a backstory that the players can be passionate about, so props to Riot for finally kicking
things into gear with the lore department.
Anyway that just about wraps things up for today’s video, it’d be really cool to
hear what you guys think of Riot’s new approach to storytelling.
Leave us a comment and let us know what your favorite part of the lore is, maybe it’s
a champion with an awesome backstory, or a hidden character you’ve noticed be mentioned
that you think might show up in game one day!
And it looks like that’s gonna be it from me, if you enjoyed the video drop a like,
subscribe if you want, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you guys next time!